Hi everyone!
wow it took me a while to write this last part!  so i left off in san diego.  i'm going to do this in photos.


these two were taken on an incredible moon-laden night at joshua tree national park, which is definitely one of the best parks in the entire country, much better than yellowstone, glacier or the grand canyon.  it was unbelievably clear, peaceful, beautiful.  you didn't even need the lights to set up or cook by, the moon was so bright.

joshua trees are these trees that look as if they were designed by doctor suess which grow only in the mojave desert.  crazy.
 
then we zoomed off to the grand canyon, which was grand, but FULL of tourists.  we managed to get one photo without them though.

also our neighbors abandoned these foam mats and emily had me lie down and took my outline which we cut out and named blue emma.  blue emma liked the grand canyon.


we did a scavenger hunt at the grand canyon and i had to photograph all the 7 deadly sins, so for lust i dressed up as a sketchy man and pretended to take advantage of blue emma who, as you can see, is wearing a very pretty dress, which fits her just right.

who knew that arizona would be full of sunflowers?
 
we crossed the mountains into Silver City, New Mexico where we stopped to ask for directions at a taco bell.  the guys saw that the car had signatures all over it so they came running out and signed it, and then gave us more free cinnamon twists than anyone could ever actually eat.  sweet!
i don't have any good pictures of it, but from here we went to the gila national cave dwellings and stayed at the nicest campsite in the whole country.  it was full of sunflowers, very green, had two outdoor kitchens and natural hot spring hot tubs.  the big one was like 98 degrees and the two small hot ones were like 105 degrees, all naturally heated.  we had a good evening of whisky and hot tubs under the new mexico stars.
from there we went to a place called truth or consequences, which used to be called hot springs, but changed its name in the 70s b/c a game show called truth or consequences was offering money to any town that would do it. we stayed with the nicest 82 year old man, a guy who fought in WWII, was an iron welder on the NYC skyscrapers, worked at GM, and then when his wife died 15 years ago, started traveling around youth hostels enjoying himself to no end.  we were his first visitors to his house.  nice old pete. the sweetest and most harmless dirty old man you ever met.


white sands national monument was my favorite place in america.  the sand dunes are perfectly white gypsum, surrounded by mountains.  the campsite was a mile hike across the dunes to a pole with a number 2 on it, just randomly placed in the middle of the dunes.  we set up our tent there and trekked back to attend an evening talk.  as the talk progressed, we watched a distant purple blue angry thunderstorm come closer and closer from the direction where we had left our tent.  they canceled the talk and we raced over the dunes as the storm and the sunset coincided to make a perfectly incredible sight of dark purple clouds, and bright jags of lightning with this crazy orange hazy glow from the sunset which turned the dunes all pinky orange. 

the next day we came back after an EXTREMELY nice southern family (all the best to the riddles of charleston south carolina!) bought us dinner and a hotel room so we wouldn't have get hit by lightning trying to trek out to sleep in our soggy tent.  we got sleds and went dune surfing!  fun!


last stop in new mexico (can you tell it was our favorite state?)- carlsbad caverns- immense immense immense and just undescribably cool.  gases off of all the petroleum in texas mixed with water or something and made these big underground explosions that cleared these chambers the size of like 11 football fields hundreds of feet below ground.  then over millions of years little drip drops of calcite formed immense columns like this one.  also at 6 pm every day about 400,000 bats fly out of the cave in a big crazy bat tornado.  nutso.  also fun to watch were the 100 or so spectators trying to stay quiet for more than 5 minutes.  biology and sociology all in one blow.
 


Fun with tripod at night!  woot!  the top one is in del rio texas. the second one 30 miles off a paved road in arizona (we are ghosts!) the third one is at joshua tree in california.  camping is great b/c you really are forced to make your own fun, which i think we did a good job at.

fun with shoes in texas.  top a fence where every post is covered with an old boot.  bottom a tree off Route 66 where we took the cue and left a pair of broken sandals.

in eastern texas, we were looking for a campsite and stopped at a bar where we ended up having our dinner and three rounds of lone star texas beer bought for us, and then these very nice biker couple let us crash at their place.  trusting strangers in certain conditions can lead to excellent friendships and breakfast burritos the morning after.

from here we went through cajun country in lousiana (best food, accent, and music in the united states, far and away.  i could eat crawfish etoufee, boudin and cracklin' for the rest of my life listening to that sweet cajun drawl) and down to new orleans which was wonderful.  then over through mississippi and up into alabama.  THE BEST MUSEUM IN THE UNITED STATES is on the road between Selma and Montgomery Alabama, which people walked for four days in the 60s to protest Jim Crow in spite of the violence and terror they faced.  That museum actually changed my life.  It made me cry.  From there we went to Nashville which was great, then to Asheville North Carolina which was nice but the people were kind of cold, then down into Georgia where this, the final picture, was taken!

georgia foliage was great, lots of reds.  from there we went into south carolina, stayed at the riddle's empty house (again, may all the good luck and good fortune in the world travel with that family, they were SO good to us!) in charleston.  then into coastal north carolina.  Our last night outside of the northeast was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we celebrated Emily's birthday with a bottle of wine and skinny dipping under the Atlantic moon.  The next morning I woke up early and buried her presents on the beach (pretty deep) and presented her with a treasure map when she woke up.  Excellent place for pirating.  Then we went over the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (bridge! tunnel! bridge! tunnel!  then a bridge again!) and up up and away back home to the northeast! 

well that concludes a wonderful road trip!  huzzah! it was grand!

love
emma

  Hi everyone!

Sorry I've been so out of touch! So many adventures!  Where to begin?

well i suppose with graduation.  after a long year of stimulating classes, a warm house with a big kitchen, good music, loose leaf teaand wonderful housemates, and long cold hours in front of a laptopbanging out my thesis, i officially went from being a student togainfully unemployed on may 17, 2008 among the sunshine and warmth offriends and family.  after spending a couple of weeks at home baskingin the glory of my mother's kitchen, my father's garden and my3-year-old niece's exuberance, i moved in with my boyfriend in New YorkCity.  i was there for 6 weeks working as a waitress in a fancy italianrestuarant where i was the only employee born in the United States andas a nanny to a set of adorable but difficult three month old twins. matt and i celebrated our fourth anniversary in the city's buzzy hazeand shortly thereafter i embarked on a road trip around thisendearingly schizophrenic country of mine.

i am currently one third of the way into the three planned months ofsaid voyage.  i am with two very close girlfriends from college and ourchariot is my father's hybrid car, a red prius we have dubbed chesterdarling in honor of a lawyer of said name who, many years ago, got mycousin off when she was arrested for protesting apartheid in southafrica.  we are living out of a tent and going without particularagenda or direction in a massive counterclockwise loop of the country. so far it has been astoundingly wonderful. 

america has some trulyincredible little subcultures, a few of which we have been fortunateenough to stumble across (and one- a group of people who devote theirlives to making stone arrowheads- has inducted us through a highlymysterious and terrifying ceremony into their very own secret society).we also are visiting as many national parks and monuments as possible. they are indescribable in scope and beauty.  we just left yellowstonelast night which is the world's first national park and which hosts2/3rds of the worlds geysers.  as we rolled through the conifers andgolden plains of the rockies, we passed gigantic shaggy wild bisonlolling about the roadsides, grizzly bears catching wild fish, herds ofelk wandering about under their massive antlers, solitary coyotesskulking through the pine trees, and geysers geysers everywhere.  At160 degrees, the geysers and hot springs are hot enough to fry yourskin right off your bones, and heat-loving bacteria flourishes aroundthem painting them with colors so intense they are nearly tropical:mats of ripe-papaya oranges surround lines of fresh lemon yellow cakedwith bits of deep blood sausage red and lush jungle green.  but all ofthe other-worldly bacteria are nothing in comparison to the gaping,fantastical, unmatchable clear blue depths of the boiling centers ofthe geysers.   its the kind of blue you usually only see in weird photoshop pictures, or on forgotten bits of cheese.

coming out west has also been a lesson in our own history, and ourfuture.  back east, the native american tribes have faced a more completegenocide, and it is easy to live in theshadow of that violence without giving it too much thought.  out herethough, you cannot ignore the natives.  their reservations are vast incomparison to those out east (although puny in comparison with whatthey are legally entitled to), and driving through them, observingthese people who despite everything are not gone, are not faded, sends ajolt of vivid remembrance through an easterner's unaccustomed system. these desolate ranches, these run-down trailers, these clangy casinos,these adorable children riding giddily in plastic lawn chairs in thebacks of speeding pick up trucks, they are not history.  they are here,now.  an oglala lakota woman who gave a talk about traditionalmedicines of her people (including a heaping spoonful of skunk fat forany winter ailment....mmm yummy) directed us to a massive pow wow taking place onthe crow reservation in southern montana.  after a brief (mis?)adventure involving us and an 80,000 ton chunk of metal going 60 miles per hour we made it to the pow wow. 

the Crow Fair is every summer, the third weekend in august.  its the biggest teepee encampment in the whole world- about 1500teepees.  we drove in, winding our waybetween the scores of children riding carefree and bareback on theirpinto ponies and massive canvas structures gracefully spewing long pinepoles out their tops.  We found our way to the center of the fair,which is a massive circular arena of covered benches and a massivegrassy open center circle.  Surrounding the arena was a circle of foodand merchants, not unlike most fairs except instead of italian sausagewe feasted on indian tacos (puffy friend dough cooked with ground beefcovered with cheese, salsa, tomatoes and lettuce, weighing in at about5 pounds).  we took our tacos and plopped down behind a group of 10guys sitting around a huge drum.  there were about 15 of these drumcircles all around the big arena and, after we'd slogged our waythrough half our indian tacos, the first drum group started playing. all of them men in the circle would bang on the drum at the same timewhile one would call out an undulating chant-song, which would then berepeated by the other drummers in a call-and-response pattern.  thewhole thing would last maybe 5 minutes and then, seamlessly, the onegroup would stop and the next group in line would pick right up. 

dancers in full costume began coming into the big grassy circle.  theywore long colorful tunics decorated with bells, elk teeth, jingles andribbons, with beaded leggings and moccasins below.  the women carrieddecorated shawls with long fringes while the men wore elaborateheaddresses and wings made of turkey feathers.  the most advanceddancers had colorful ribbons hanging from every single turkey featherand with their faces painted they twirled madly around the otherdancers, like a whirling dervish covered in bird feathers, paint andbeads.  within 20 minutes the arena had filled up with hundreds ofdancers all swirling and stepping in time.  every dancer had bells ontheir ankles and the synchronous buzz of their footsteps filled theair, complementing the drums. 

after a little while, a young crow guy named david approached us andinvited us to camp in his family's area.  every year the same familiescome to the same spots in the pow wow and set up their camps. they setup their teepees, tents and campers and then construct a long communalarea with tables and cooking which they cover with dogwood branches andtarps.  David took us swimming to the river where the kids jumped offtall cliffs and rode their ponies galloping along the bank and thentook us horseback riding.  emily and carrie went with him but i rode bymyself.   now its been a good 7 years since i've been on a horse, andi've never ridden one western (loose reins in one hand) much lessbareback, but all of a sudden i found myself atop a young chestnut,trying not to clamp too hard with my legs.  as i steered around thebeat-up trucks i thought, hey i think i can manage this.  the horsestarted moving faster and faster and soon i had trouble keeping himfrom trotting, but i didn't start really worrying until he startedcantering, heedless of my futile yanks on his reins.  When I looked upand saw he was heading straight for a family with three little kids Istarted shouting "Help! Help!".  the father of the family jumped out infront of the horse, arms wide, and caught the reins.  so i almost caused a massacre.  go me.

The Crow reservation reminds me a bit of nicaragua or mexico orecaudor.  extended families are closely tied and children run aroundfreely without their parents.  Unemployment is very high(75%....actually I read that the lowest unemployment rate on anyreservation in the US is 48%) and the family relies a lot on"remittances" from family members working outside the reservation.  thereservation land was partially divided up and given to individualfamilies to control and partially left under the control of the tribalcouncil, similar to land tenure in mexico.  the birth rate is high. ceremonies are highly regarded.  most crow practice a mixture ofcatholicism and their traditional religion.  people are warm andembrace you easily.  but at the same time, its totally different.  thecrow are very proud and loyal to their tribe.  old tribal rivalriesbetween the crow and the surrounding lakota, cheyenne, blackfeet andarapaho prevent political unification to this day (actually the crowhave a much bigger reservation than the other plains tribes preciselybecause they sided w/ the US against these tribes in the wars of thelate 1800s).  every member of the tribe receives an annual check fromthe reservation's coal and its casino.  they have a legal claim toenormous natural resources.  they are victims of ethno- and genocide.  they suffer from much more serious alcoholism.  and most importantly, they ride ponies bareback (with a minimum of bloodshed).

speaking of bloodshed, or rather a very happy lack of it, we managed to "kiss" our poor little chester right up against one of the 18 wheels of a big semi tractor trailer whizzing by us as we were turning left into a campground.  the driver's door, front panel, and bumper got totally smashed. shocked, we managed to get off the road, and then spent the next hour and a half talking to the trucker we hit and another trucker who saw the whole thing happen.  they consoled us with stories of much much much much much worse brush-ins with semis and with their really cute dogs.  fortunately the car was still drivable so we made it into billings the next day and got an estimate.  an unspeakable sum plus 4 weeks to fix the thing.  whooo-eee!  but the car is still totally safe to drive, so we decided to just keep on trucking.  basically we're just going to drive 2 months around the rest of the country with one side looking as though it put on a red sox shirt and wandered into a crowd of yankees fans armed with lousiville sluggers.  but there are at least three bright sides to our brush up with the semi 1) it means that, since the door is going to be replaced, we can get people all around the country to sign it and have the sweetest souvenir ever, 2) nothing like a crumpled door to start a rousing conversation with strangers 3) if a deer suddenly jumps out in front of us, we can swerve and hit it with the left side and avoid paying those bills all over again.  sweet!

ok, its way too late and i've written way too much, but check out the photos and keep in touch!

i picked out a few good ones above, but the bulk of (unsorted) ones are at this link
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29343570@N05/

also anyone who sends me their physical address WILL get totally sweet postcards.

Love!
emma



   
cape cod beach  
   
national sand dunes in indiana, just outside of chicago


the mississippi for the first time ever.
 

rainbow over the mississippi.  rule: when its a double rainbow you have to dance like an idiot.

sculpture park in south dakota.  Rule: anything with dinosaurs is an automatic stop (dinosaur is just out of the picture in this one, but we're making dinosaur faces).


an actual palace made out of corn.  oh south dakota, you're too neat.
yes we did the wisconsin cheese hat picture.

at a tourist trap called 1880 town.  there was a gunfight later, but for the moment i'm happy with the kitten.

in the badlands


emily in my hat in the badlands


poor car.  we'll get him all fixed up.

watch out for buffalos in south dakota!

our route so far!

When two strong economic forces, one pulling people to migrate, and another pushing them to do so exist, migrants will occupy every means available to them to perform the labor osmosis that the economy so yearns for.  The desire for a better life, the chance to hunt down a glimmer of opportunity, at least for the next generation, appears to be universally strong, and people will risk death, humiliation, danger, and pay extraordinary costs in order to fulfill it.

It is important to mention that these costs are not just financial but also personal.  While living in Nicaragua, one of my friends was considering going to the US to find work, but had no chance of attaining the requisite visa.  He told me that the coyote (a person you pay to smuggle you into the US) he was thinking of using wanted to charge him $1000 for the service (twice Nicaragua's annual GDP/capita).  Furthermore, there's a chance you may either die trying (as thousands have) or simply not make it through.  Finally, even if it all does go well and you manage to make it in and get a job, you probably will not see your friends and family for years or decades because if you go home to visit, you'll have to go through all the danger and cost of getting back in again if you want to keep supporting your town, your family and keep paying your kid's tuition.  My host mom in Nicaragua hadn't seen her husband in 5 years.  A lady I sat next to on the plane from El Salvador was going to visit her husband in New York and was bringing him pictures of their 18-year-old daughter's wedding, who, when the father left, had been 9.  This is not to mention other personal costs (for instance, the longest I've lived abroad without coming home is 8 months, and I was utterly desperate for some Ben & Jerry's and Cabot cheese by the time I got back).   It is truly a testament to the undocumented worker's desire for an opportunity of a better life that he or she is willing to face such tremendous costs and risks.   This desire and effort and chugging away and not giving up despite the ridiculous odds and obstacles is what many describe as truly "American".

Anyways, back to the point.  If the legal system is that regulates theses economic yearnings is more restrictive and expensive than the dangers and costs of illegal migration then general safety (having undocumented people means no way to track them down should they commit a crime), worker protections (many undocumented workers earn far far far far less than the minimum wage), the tax base, and social services will all end up at less than optimum levels.  It is important to note that a great number of undocumented workers do pay taxes because they have fake social security numbers, and thus face the same deductions that we do.  However, those who work under the table do not pay taxes, and with an improved legal structure that both insures they earn at least minimum wage and pay taxes, could contribute more to the tax base. 

 Therefore, the responsibility of the legal system is either to find another way to eliminate these cravings of the economy (virtually impossible) or to somehow regulate the flow of migrants in a way that provides at least relative satisfaction of these forces and is less difficult and restrictive than illegal immigration.  Therefore anyone who simply proposes making illegal immigration more difficult without somehow soothing the economy's yearnings for cheap labor is not proposing a realistic solution.  A combination of decreasing the difficulty of legal migration, increasing the difficulty of illegal migration is the only realistic solution I see.

A note on language: In the US, poverty is made as invisible and distant from the upper-middle and upper classes as possible (note, many of you reading this who consider yourself middle class, as I once did, are in fact, by objective income standards, lower-upper class, as I have uncomfortably discovered).  The poor live far away from the comfortable and the rich, attend different schools, shop in different stores, eat at different restaurants, attend different churches, get recreation in different parks, use different hospitals, etc.  The more invisible people are, the less likely we the privileged are to feel ashamed of ourselves, ashamed of the fact that 12% of this country doesn't have enough food, ashamed of letting the President veto health care for poor children, ashamed of letting this country pour money into a war while domestic need is so great, ashamed of having the highest poverty rate of our class of country in the world, ashamed of locking the poor (esp. black and latino young men) in prison to keep the unemployment rate down and the less cognizant of them we will be when we (not they) create public policy.

When it comes to undocumented workers, to this distance and invisibility, we add another layer of separation: the dehumanizing language of criminality.  We can call them undocumented workers or we can call them illegal aliens, or more simply, illegals.  We can say they've come to seek opportunity, or we can say that they have "violated" our borders and "penetrated" our country.  We can say that they are fundamentally workers who, facing a very restrictive legal system, came without papers, or we can say that they are fundamentally criminals who, in their very entering of this country, broke the law.  While the former might be more in line with reality, the latter is more often used. 

It is time to face some ugly truths.  Our shit stains are cleaned off our toilets by people that we, as a race and a class, systematically marginalize and dehumanize.  Barbara Ehrenreich, a PhD holding writer, attempted to survive off of low-wage jobs for three months in the US as a journalistic experiment.  She concludes her findings in her excellent book, Nickel and Dimed, by noting "When someone works for less pay than she can live on- when for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently- then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health and her life.  The "working poor" as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.  They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high.  To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else."