Rocinante, the camper truck Steinbeck traveled in with his dog across the United States in 1960: National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

THURMONT, Md. – Imagine this: What if, back in the 1960s, you could have been reading John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley: In Search of America in daily bytes on a website and found out when he posted something new with a social media platform like Facebook?

Would that have enhanced or diminished the work?

Was the book really any better having been written on a typewriter and only published with ink and paper long after the trip around the country was over?

We will leave it to you, dear reader, to decide the answer to that question.

I only point it out, as I have done before with Thoreau and others, to try to get people to think about such things in a meaningful way.

Steinbeck’s last book only came to my attention yesterday because an astute reader mentioned it in a Facebook comment. I had forgotten about the book and never read it.

But I downloaded it onto my computer and my iPhone yesterday and I am reading it now, thinking it might offer some inspiration for my journey in progress with my dog Jefferson. I am now trying to come up with a name for my camper van. Steinbeck called his truck camper Rocinante after Don Quixote’s horse. Of course there is irony in that, since Don Quixote was known for tilting at windmills. In other words, fighting for lost causes.

At the very least the knowledge that I am not the first American writer to travel around the country in a camper with a loyal dog in search of something about the country might help some people understand the inspiration and the need for it.

At least Steinbeck saw a lot more of the country than Thoreau. And Steinbeck did grow rich and famous from his writing in the middle of the 20th century.

Now I have undertaken a similar journey with a much more social scientific intent.

Escaping the Heat Dome and Heading for Walden Pond

I mentioned this mission on Facebook yesterday, revealing that I am researching a story on the best places to go to escape climate change due to global warming from the burning of fossil fuels. Most of the stories out there you can find with a Google search are about the best “cities” to move to, if you want to escape the worst effects of climate change.

But as I said, “That’s ridiculous.”

You don’t want to be in a city when the shit hits the fan. You want to be camping somewhere in the mountains where there is access to lots of fresh water but away from crowds of poor people with guns. I have been thinking for the past few years that somewhere in the West might be best, maybe in the mountains outside of Denver, Colorado.

But as my doctor in College Park recently pointed out in our discussion of the issue, much of the west will be too dry and at risk from wildfires. He suggested that he was thinking about selling his winter house in Florida and considering the various mountain ranges in the Northeast. The Poconos. The Catskills.

Another friend of mine who is also thinking about this question likes to say, “Look at the Green Mountains in Vermont, my friend.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller Testifies Before Congress

Of course I had to take something of a break on Wednesday and switch from the climate change escape route story to the saving democracy story, since former Special Counsel Robert Mueller was set to testify before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees down the road in Washington.

So I woke up this morning and started a watch party on Facebook, and kept up the best I could all while changing campsites for one more night in Maryland before heading north into Pennsylvania to expand my search for campsites there. I even watched during a trip into town to wash some clothes and pick up a few groceries.

I watched on my phone as I ate a scrumptious breakfast in a quaint little diner in Thurmont, Maryland, well aware that I was being watched suspiciously by a few locals who had to wonder who the stranger was who was interested enough in Mueller’s testimony to watch it on the phone while eating breakfast. The place had no TV or radio, not even a newspaper.

No one said anything, thank goodness, so I got away with it without a fight.

This is Trump country, after all, so I have to be careful. They don’t much like journalists in these parts anymore, if they ever did. Trump has turned half the country against the prime purveyors of information in this democracy of ours. They have all forgotten what Thomas Jefferson said on the subject after being brain washed on television by the reality TV star and master distractor, the liar-in-chief himself.

I figured not much would come out of Mueller’s testimony, and I was right. You can comment all you want on Facebook and Twitter about it, and read the New York Times and Washington Post coverage as I have. There is still no smoking gun that will change the fact that no matter how many times lawyers say the president is “not above the law,” when there is a U.S. Justice Department policy that says you can’t indict a sitting president, there is no mistaking it.

The fact is THIS president IS above the law.

Congress Should Impeach

I wish there were more I could say and do to change that. I could and have considered writing an op-ed making the argument that Congress has a legal and constitutional responsibility to bring impeachment charges against Trump and to hell with the politics. And not just for what’s in the Mueller report but what had been widely reported by the daily press for months before the report was completed and released.

One Republican on the House Judiciary Committee even named the number of articles cited in the Mueller report itself. Of course she was doing it to try to discredit Mueller and protect Trump (or more accurately to ingratiate herself with this president). But to me it showed something important.

We know Trump is a crazy crook. We have known it for some time.

But where is the institution in our democracy that can say it and maybe do something about it and get rid of Trump?

The press can write it all day long every day. But if Congress won’t shoulder its responsibility and do its part because of a political calculation about an election, then only “the people” can do something about it.

But so far “the people” have sat on the sidelines hoping Mueller would be their savior and do it for them. Sorry to burst your bubble, again, Democrats.

I stand by what I originally reported about the special counsel’s investigation. I was right then, and I am right now.

Redacted Mueller Report Lets Trump Off the Hook for Conspiracy to Collude With Russia, Leaves a Determination on Obstruction of Justice Up to Congress

And since we are clearly not going to do anything about Trump, or climate change, there is only one thing left for me to do. Continue scouting places to camp and live to watch the world come to a fiery end.

One reader on Facebook yesterday asked, “if the SHTF how many (millions of) folks do you imagine will head for these prime camping spots?”

My reply: “Judging by how many are here now, not many. We have this place to ourselves today.”

If people won’t get off the couch to save democracy, what hope is there that they will even get out of the city they live in to save themselves?

People are not programmed to change their habits — without leadership. If one political party is willing to capitalize and remain in power by telling people they don’t have to worry about changing, of course people will vote for their candidate. Apparently even if he is the biggest crook to ever occupy the White House.

See y’all on the road somewhere in the mountains. We will pass through Gettysburg and camp somewhere in the mountains of Pennsylvania this weekend. Then it’s on to New York.