Coffee slightly bitter, not as sweet as Bob’s, but then he didn’t eat a spoonful of lemon curd before lying down for the night. So yes, you consume more than your share of sugar between the curd, and the candied orange slices, the chocolate, and the blueberry muffin you brought home for him but ate instead because he was “being good.” Yet he managed, in his sugar-free state, to lay awake like you, the two of you separated by a writhing berm of tangled sheets.

Yesterday, you read that seven out of twelve trash collection centers in your county have closed because they’re short three CDL drivers and you remember how the trash piled up on Guam after Typhoon Paka whipped their ass. You remember getting up at 3:00 AM to fill buckets from the bathtub tap because that’s when water came through the pipe. You think about the power outages in Ghana, sometimes lasting for days, and how hard it was to get anything done at the end of the dry season in Belize. And you see it all starting to slide apart here in the United States. End of empire. This is what it looks like.

You walk to the garden with your white mug, a gift from Sharyl with a picture of her dead horse Silver’s sire, a white Missouri Foxtrotter with a crested neck, thinking, I’ve been drinking coffee from this mug for fourteen years.

You see no signs of new edamame damage and hope it means the rabbit you chased off yesterday has not wriggled back inside the fortified garden fence. It was such a tiny little thing, and you felt bad taking up the hose to chase it out of the garden. You flushed it from the asparagus, watching in horror as it beat itself against the corner post even though the gate was open, finally squeezing itself through a rectangle of goat fence and clawing its way up the outside layer of chicken wire to burst out the top and sprint away.

The flutter in your chest is saying, This heat is what they’re talking about — the rest of your life is gonna be crispy, fried hell. The world is up in flames, ice caps melting, and we knew it all along but lacked the political will to avoid the crash. All your advocacy, your good example — we got ourselves quoted in a book about garbage, for chrissakes — all of it for naught.

You think you might run a load of towels today but know you shouldn’t use the dryer because the world is melting, but then they’ll be line-crispy and you’ll have to crumple them soft between your fists, folding and twisting like an Inuit woman masticating seal leather.

You think about what your last twenty-five years will look like, smell like, taste like — harder than hoped, made worse every time you look at your step-daughters’ Instagram posts, their whole lives ahead, the photos of the grandkids. But you bring yourself back from the sweaty rim of existential abyss with another sip of pure bliss and a satisfied look at the trim edge between the lawn and your rose garden. You did that, you tell yourself. You made that pretty line with your trimmer.

The A/C starts up, the sharp blades spinning so fast you can’t even see them. You jump like you always do, thinking about how good you have it here. Really. You’re not on fire, or wading through water in your living room.

The warm Sumatran blend in your straight-sided mug makes you wonder where even is Sumatra? and, was this fair trade coffee? and, what does that even mean? You don’t know because you didn’t buy it, you only brew it and drink it, and ran to the porch to pick it up after the driver tossed it on the sun-bleached deck before getting back in his truck to deliver other doo-dads to other lucky people.

Yes, we’ve got it good here at the end of empire. Water, electricity, coffee . . . Probably everything will unravel so slowly that we won’t live to see the worst of it. But who knows, maybe the world will pull out of this spiral and level out. Maybe everything will be all right.

I had been out running errands and stopped to see Helen and Judy. They were pampering me with chocolate and pashmina as this went down. When I climbed back into my car, I turned on the radio and listened in disbelief. It was one of those this-can’t-be-happening moments.

I was nine years old the last time my world view was shaken to this degree. Like every other pink-faced elementary school student, I was swept up in Kennedy’s Camelot. I believed our leaders were good men, revered and invincible.

John F. Kennedy’s assassination turned these assumptions inside out and I was floored, my sense of reality crushed like a mouse beneath a hard-soled boot.

In the days following January 6, details of the riot settled into my chest like a bad cold, shattering my belief that regardless of our political leanings, we were all Americans who held some things sacred. That life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not include permission to ransack the capitol in search of the Vice President and other lawmakers who had been labeled traitors by their leader. I believed that a President would never incite an insurrection and that if he did he would meet with swift justice.

Now I know that all bets are off, anything can happen, and some will stop at nothing to achieve their moment of glory. I see that our national bloodstream is infected with people who believe the system must be shredded but who have no plan for how to replace the essential services provided by that system. And that a corrupt, delusional leader can retain a 30% approval rating.

I’ve lived in the third world, with potholes big enough to swallow a motorcycle, intermittent water and electricity, and undisguised corruption. I’ve seen how hard it is to survive when it’s every-man-for-himself, where mayhem is beyond control. It isn’t pretty and it is not what I want for my children and grandchildren.

January 6 was my red pill/blue pill moment, a gut punch to my understanding of the human race. It only took a few broken windows to see that reality has always been subjective, that we never were a union, and that there never was equal justice for all.

Ultimately, I did get my head around Kennedy’s death, and was reborn as a wiser, albeit more jaded me. I hope to one day look back upon the Capitol siege with some kind of understanding.

Both sides agree that freedom and democracy are at stake. I want to think this is where our path forward begins.

The American Dream is alive and well just around the corner, a short walk from Trouts Farm. This manifestation of ‘50s-style prosperity — a collection of family homes on wooded and rolling land — always cheers me up regardless of how much doom and gloom I’ve glimpsed in the morning headlines.

The first part of my walk is not calming. I hurry south along the Moncure Pittsboro Road with its narrow shoulder and loaded logging trucks. When I hear one hurtling towards me, I clamp my teeth shut to protect my tongue like I used to when working with young horses, and step into the weeds until it roars around the bend. I’ve learned to close my eyes until the slipstream has come and gone before stepping back onto the asphalt.

But it’s usually only one or two trucks before I emerge onto the wide, gravel entrance to the hinterlands. The first thing I see is the old Midway General Store, so named because of its location halfway between Pittsboro and Moncure. My next-door neighbor’s father ran the Midway from 1949–1968, back in the days before paychecks flattened and everyone went into debt. I like that the family kept the storefront intact; it’s a little piece of local history preserved, the clipped lawn a harbinger of more civic pride ahead.

This well-tended road curves through the woods, taking me away. The first time I walked here after our return from the dusty squalor of Kumasi,  I noticed a pattern on the shoulder and my mouth gaped open when I realized that it had been seeded with grass. And when I stepped into the sunlight with the view of neatly-tended hay fields, I was flushed with gratitude for the people that care enough to tend this land.

The image of these orderly acres would return to me during our repatriation phase, helping me override the fears that we were old and unemployable and would not be able to successfully resume our lives here in the states. We’ve been home nearly six years now and those seedlings have grown into a green carpet.

These days I am often joined by my friend Judy. She meets me at the end of her driveway where the road turns left through the trees and we continue on around the bend to where the landscape opens up. The man largely responsible for keeping paradise intact is the nicest of people. I can tell it’s him even when the sun is glinting off his windshield because he doesn’t just wave his hand, he waggles his fingers. He often stops to chat, leaning over his steering wheel or throwing a foot over the side of his golf cart, with his blue heeler, Cricket, smiling beside him.

Judy overwintered her horses in this pasture for a couple of seasons to give her own acres a rest. We usually stop to take in the view and appreciate the barn at this point, remembering when the horses were here: two bays and a grey.

Sometimes Judy brings ZuZu, a sturdy Boxer who loves to run and nose around.

Even on cooler days, Zuzu jumps into the pond where the horses used to drink, bending forward like zebras.

I was by myself the day I saw geese on that pond for the first time. The light was spectacular and so I had taken a camera to try and capture the allure of my morning walk.

This is the view that I see shortly after turning around: a lone Tulip Poplar with a juniper tutu flanking a hayfield, with the barn and the pond beyond.

When I return to the pond, the geese waddle up onto the bank and launch, flying over the trees towards our house.

A bit further, I’m back into the shade and heading towards home.

Nearly every day, sometimes in the rain, I step into this place of casual order and reaffirm my belief in a future that’s not on fire, or heavily armed, or being knelt upon. This milieu of The American Dream, born of generations of hard work and family money, is a remnant of the years between The Great Depression and Reganomics when we were assured of education, healthcare, and the right to thrive. In the coming days, as we wait for the election and a vaccine, I may find myself seeking equilibrium here more than once a day.

I picture five strangers in a floating prison with four gallons of water and three weeks of rations, stonily regarding the infinite, blue seascape. Conversation long ago exhausted, their eyes shift from the tarp covering their meager supply to the deepening lines in each other’s faces, and back to the sea of undrinkable water.

My browser feeds me news of asymptomatic ballplayers and senators testing positive for Covid-19 while the untested hoi polloi hover in limbo, staring at their kitchen cupboards. A family in Freehold, New Jersey, my childhood stomping grounds, is paying the ultimate price for honoring their Sunday dinner tradition. The matriarch and three of her eleven children have died, while others wait out their infection.

In the absence of community testing, we assume that we and everyone around us are carrying the virus. All are guilty until proven innocent. And, should we test negative, that status evaporates when we touch the next community-accessible hard surface, or pass downwind from someone with a dry cough.

The only rational response is to distance ourselves. Bob and I bang around our little dingy, embracing each time we cross paths. We’ve shrunk our world to house and yard, meandering from our news feeds to the garden, to the refrigerator. We subscribe to a spring CSA and start planting potatoes.

This morning I wake from a dream where I am hugging an older woman in a red dress, a familiar stranger with whom I’ve formed an instant bond. What I wouldn’t do for a hug from an outsider.

The United States took action too late. Our curve will look like most other countries, a hockey stick of terrible decisions, drastic action, overwhelmed health care, and triage. I click on a satellite image of two limed trenches in an Iranian graveyard, while our hospitals draft guidelines for who to turn away. The governor extends North Carolina school closures to mid-May. Many of our friends are now sidelined from work, while friends and family in healthcare, food service, and delivery scramble to keep up.

As the sun bears down, the water lures you from your rubber seat. The cooling relief quickly turns to panic when you feel the first bump of a fish against your dangling legs. You claw your way back into your life raft and watch the salt crust bloom across your arms. The fins appear, and you try not to lick your lips.

~*~

On the weekends, we break our quarantine for a walk at the dam. We’ve altered our route as more people take advantage of the park. We test the breeze, doing our best to stay upwind of other strollers. Like us, many take calculated risks: the occasional trip to town for supplies, dinner with the folks, or a walk beyond the confines of home.

I’ve given up my Tuesday walk with Shelley and Amy. Instead, we text and talk on the phone. I compensate by walking out our back gate and disappearing down the trail into Tami’s woods. At my destination, I stand on the big rocks and regard Stinking Creek, hoping to see a deer come down to drink, or perhaps another human being. On the way home, I stop and sit on Carl’s bench, beneath that stately beech. Sometimes I lie back, staring up at the beyond, thinking about what I’ll do with those peppers when I get home.

After breakfast, I open my laptop and read the headlines. The Democrats have finally initiated impeachment hearings. There’s been another shooting. A sixteen-year-old girl has sailed from Sweden to address the United Nations in New York. “How dare you!” she says, eyes blazing. Revolution, fires, famine, and floods — the world is spinning out of control.

Later, on my way home from town, I notice two trucks on the lawn across the street from Horton Middle School. A long, shiny pole lies in the brittle grass, and a Confederate Battle Flag spills carelessly over a tailgate. Inside the school, black, white, and brown kids tap their knees against their desks, waiting for the bell to ring. We know some of those kids. Their parents are not happy about the message being sent by the flag across the street.

The school is named after George Moses Horton, a slave owned by William Horton. Back then, people named their slaves after themselves. George Moses taught himself to read. He became a free man after the Confederates lost the Civil War and was the first black poet published in the southern United States.

My mother traces her heritage to an Englishman named Barnabas Horton, who arrived on the shores of Long Island in 1640. I wonder if William was also related to Barnabas.

I learn that there is a second flag, and, a couple of days later, I drive beneath it. It flicks a shadow across the hood of my car.

In August, my next door neighbor witnessed a Ku Klux Klan rally in Hillsborough, thirty-five miles away. Turns out they were armed, too. Here it comes, I think.

A bronze confederate soldier still stands twenty-seven feet high atop a granite pedestal in front of the Chatham County Courthouse in the middle of town. But not for long. The County Commissioners voted last spring to remove it by November. Since then, the monument has become a focal point for conflict. It stands stiff-boned, surrounded by crowd control barriers. The inscription reads: “To the Confederate Soldiers of Chatham County — Our Confederate Heroes.”

Pittsboro, population 4,000, is small enough that we smile and hold the doors open for each other at the Post Office. We still take our feet off the accelerator to let side street traffic fold into line at rush hour while the courthouse tower clock chimes the time.

Turns out the flag erectors, the guys with the giant poles and crumpled flags aren’t from around here and that they plan on cementing in more flag poles around the county. They are with an outfit called Virginia Flaggers.

After the first two flags went up, there was a small protest/anti-protest demonstration at the courthouse. The police arrested three protesters. One video shows two officers leading a shambling, bearded man through the sparse crowd. I almost felt sorry for the guy.

History is not written by losers, but the losers never forget. I understand how it might feel to grow up here on land my granddaddy farmed. To witness the onslaught, a wave of northerners, siphoning land, and sucking away my sense of dignity, in a world gone to shit. And how it might feel to watch a handful of liberal county commissioners remove a tribute to my ancestors that has been standing for over 100 years. I get it. I’d be upset, too.

Or, maybe I’d be ready to move on. Maybe, even if I was born and raised Southern, I might not align myself with rebel forces, six generations back, fighting to secede just as I don’t align myself with my German ancestors, three generations back, who wiped out six million Jews.

I go to dinner with a friend who is not sure what’s going to happen next. Yes, she is an American citizen, but she doesn’t look like the white people putting up these flags, and she knows that makes her a target. A few tables over, we hear the high notes of outrage coming from a similar conversation. Two men I know reasonably well, both have been to our house, are trying to decide what to do. They don’t want to stir things up any further but feel they can’t take this latest assault lying down.

Zoom out. The tweeter in residence is not handling impeachment proceedings gracefully. As part of one weekend twitter binge, he tweeted, “a warning from a pastor about ‘a Civil War like fracture in this Nation’ should he be removed from office.” Those of us who aren’t looking for another Civil War were not amused.

At this point, I don’t care if the statue stays or goes. I drive past the flags on my way to and fro without glancing up. I long for harmony. I’m sick of polarization. How do we give the old guard a sense of dignity without making the rest of us feel unwelcome, or worse, threatened?

I want to think this tension is new, but it isn’t — it’s just come to our town where I can’t ignore it. We had trouble like this in the ’60s and ’70s: assassinations, cops shooting kids, hippies against rednecks, peaceniks against patriots. Things were quiet for a time, and then the school shooting at Columbine sparked a dribble, and then a flood of gun violence.

I want to blame the highchair king and his incendiary tweets. I find it ridiculously sad that we aren’t even fighting over food. It seems a meaningless tussle when the victims appear well-nourished. But their discontent is palpable, an undercurrent of hopelessness strong enough to pull shooters into the abyss.

I think of the one-legged woman begging for cash the other day, stopping me as I made my way across the grocery store parking lot. How her partner leaned forward, nodding as she told her story, and how both of them relaxed after I sighed and reached for my wallet. I think of the millions of ruined soldiers and mental health refugees sleeping in doorway nests and culvert boxes and wonder how many of them sleep in our town.

I don’t think we are beyond fixing, nor do I believe we need an outside war to bring us together. I want what I’ve always wanted, what everyone ultimately wants: a sense of belonging, peace, and unity.

Leaves continue falling, green fading to yellow, and all turning brown over time. It’s been hot. Torpid. Frisky mornings slowing to long, motionless afternoons. The voices in the woods pulse, “We . . we . . we . . we . . we . .”

On September 11, I logged into Facebook and found myself scrolling past a minefield of 9/11-themed posts. I bristled each time I saw “never forget,” that war cry without an exit plan. I hated that this national tragedy had come to be an excuse for revenge, and was frightened by how nationalism has hijacked patriotism.

I imagine you could fashion a rosary of human tragedies and pray to each and every one: white for hissing holocaust gas, gangrene green for Civil War, red for World War II kamikaze headbands, and black for the smoke pouring off the World Trade Centers.

~*~

My aunt could see the Manhattan death plumes from New Jersey that day in 2001. She stared out her window through the trees, pacing, and taking short sips of air. She thought about her sons at work in the city, willing her beige wall phone to ring, longing to hear, “Mom? We’re both okay.”

She paced with a legion of other families while mayhem reigned at ground zero: rescue teams beyond exhaustion, stunned survivors, agitated newscasters. So many choking on the news, unable to swallow, only the dead at rest.

Bob’s co-worker at the Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission called before dawn; her voice pitched half an octave high. “Turn on your TV!” I climbed out of bed and was walking the floor in our little stick house, eyes squinting. What? Of course, we didn’t have a television. We had shed the TV on our way to Belize five years earlier.

We packed a light bag and drove down the volcano, hoping the inter-island puddle jumpers planned on flying anyway so that Bob could attend a native plant conference on Molokai. I brought my fencing tool, thinking that if we found ourselves in an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario, I might want to cut through some barbed wire.

“Even if we had a TV,” Bob said, “I don’t think I would have turned it on.” I agreed. Neither of us cared to have another catastrophe etched into our retinas. We already had unshakable images of the exploding Challenger and John F. Kennedy’s last moments.

The airports, all the airports, were closed and the skies were blessedly silent for days. Not even the volcano tour helicopters broke the calm. My father told me later on the phone, “I held my breath for a couple of days, hoping they’d do the right thing.”

A sense of peace becalmed the Pacific, petty squabbles abandoned, stranded tourists embraced. We felt lucky to be alive, all of us grieving for the people digging through the rubble 4,900 miles east. For two days, the entire nation was grounded and unified.

And then the skies roared back to life.

A year later Congress gave the president authorization to use military force against Iraq and within five months peace was destroyed by the ink of an angry pen. Our disappointment was so profound that we quit our jobs and moved to a tiny island off the coast of Nicaragua, a place without an airstrip, roads, motorized vehicles, or even a proper dock. We met the big cargo ship at the reef when it arrived with diesel fuel, and watched the crew pitch 55-gallon drums overboard for us to lash to our boat. I remember hearing the drone of a propeller plane only once and rushing out from under the coconut palms to stare.

We lived in Nicaragua just long enough to notice a cultural shift upon re-entry. The first time a grocery store clerk said, “Have a safe day,” instead of “Have a great day,” I thought I’d misheard. The second time I chuckled, wondering, Safe from what? I began rolling my eyes at every well-meaning, “Be safe!” “Stay safe!” “Drive safe!” and “Safe travels!” I wasn’t a fan of this new fear-based vocabulary.

Then I started seeing “Never Forget” bumper stickers. More salt in the wound. For all of us who had fervently hoped for peace, “Never forget,” sounded exactly like, “Never forgive.” I began to lose heart. The United States had hijacked an unforgettable tragedy and was using it as an excuse to perpetuate death and destruction.

Had my cousins died that day, I would mourn them as I grieved for all the other lives. And I would resent, even more, the overlay of nationalism and military might that seeks to blur our grief into hate and revenge. What could have been a pulling together became an excuse to kill. Two thousand nine hundred ninety-six souls sacrificed so we could take more lives. Their heartbeats immortalized in the beat of our war drums.

A few hours later, Val came to rest in a Hampton Inn parking lot. We unloaded our bags, the cooler, and my Ghanaian hospitality basket, hungry enough to make dinner plans at a Mexican restaurant a couple of miles up the road. “I’ll walk,” I said, eager to shake off the drive.

I started off down the main drag, but cut across a crunchy bean field to avoid the traffic. The sideways heat baked the bare asphalt and fried roadside weeds of Main Street. With few exceptions (there are kids goofing off in one of the playgrounds) Exmore, Virginia appeared abandoned, with more than its share of vacant real estate. Typical of small towns across Corporate America, the highway box stores thrive at the expense of the original town center.

I clipped on past consignment shops, churches, sunburned weeds pushing up through empty asphalt parking lots, a hot playground hopping with kids, and I stopped to stare at a pale green Statue of Liberty made of cement. It took a minute before I gave up trying to figure out why someone thought this was a good idea. I got a whiff of something goaty and traced it to the Smith and Scott Funeral Home. I didn’t even want to guess what that was about. Maybe I was just tired, but late Sunday afternoon Exmore seemed knackered and sad.

As I was about to write off this town, I reached the shade of some giant oaks outside a doctor’s office. A little further, gnarled crepe myrtles branched above the sidewalk. I could hear the highway ahead, and Bob drove by with a cheerful wave in our blue Chevy Volt. Moments later we were seated at a two-top in El Maguey Mexican Restaurant, looking forward to some good old beans and rice.

The next morning the sun rises over Exmore through air thick from an overnight rain, an orange ball that sends a blurry streak across the scum pond below our hotel window. We’ve got plenty of time before another five and a half hours of driving, so I head out for a repeat of yesterday’s walk.

At 7:30 on a Monday, Exmore is already shaking off sleep and getting to its feet. Whether from the energy of a new work week or my good night’s sleep, the town seems alive and upbeat. Even the chickweed-chocked landscaping pots, and the rats in the culvert strike me as fun and wholesome in a Disneyesque kind of way. Men peddling bicycles with cargo crates greet me with a respectful, “Morning, Ma’am.” Black-headed gulls pull fat worms from waterlogged turf while the robins sing from the crepe myrtle branches.

“Huh,” I think, wondering if this really is the same town. Perception is a funny thing. We get to decide whether a place is knackered or quaint.

For one thing, it’s culturally appropriate in the U.S. to live independently. For another, we haven’t had much experience living together. First there were waves of immigrants, then the westward expansion, and finally, we all got cars and went our separate ways. We don’t depend on each other like villagers in developing countries, who need each other and know it. Americans are designed for independence.

As a kid, I idolized the heroes of 50’s and 60’s television, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, Batman. They were rescuers who seldom, if ever, needed rescuing themselves. I became a movie buff and was entranced by “The Seven Samurai.” A village of farmers hire some samurais to protect them from the bandits who make off with their rice harvest year after year. The samurai risk much to put an end to this injustice. One of the most interesting facets of this movie is the secret longing these samurai have for villages they could call home. Sadly, they know they will forever be outsiders, and at the end of the movie, the seven go their separate ways.

Eventually, I too, longed to belong. When I first hooked up with Bob, he taught me how to be more of a team player. We traveled, and gained a reputation for throwing in with others. In this way we honed our interdependence skills.

Ten years ago, we made the big leap and joined a group of community-minded neighbors in North Carolina. We didn’t discuss our expectations, but we liked the concept. And for some years now we refer to ourselves as an unintentional community. We’re rather proud of that. Its working, this community thing, and we’re not even trying too hard. We get together for potlucks, come to each other’s aid when asked, and do our best to get along.

Until, lately, we decide to put some intention into it. We ask ourselves, “What do we want our community to look like?” Now we were faced with a “blind men and the elephant” situation. Some of us want a deeper spiritual connection, others, more programs and facilities. We all agree we want food grown on the premises, a school for our children, and a burial ground. We take inventory and begin deploying under-used assets. We say no to nothing, all new ideas are worth manifesting. We want it all without losing our peace and quiet, and security. The children swim in the pond, we are a village of fun and parties. My head begins to spin.

I reach into my memory for insight, and find a dog story. It was my first day at dog obedience class. I’d brought a young husky bitch, a sweet dog in need of a program. When the trainer explained that we dog owners could have it any way we liked it, I remember laughing to think it could be this simple. If we wanted our dog to jump up into our arms, that’s what we would teach it to do. If we wanted a dog to pull a cart, we could have that, too. Eat out of our hand, never touch our skin with its lips, pee outside, pee in the toilet; anything was possible. All we had to do was decide.

Back to our community. I give it some thought and can’t come up with anything structural. I don’t know what I want us to look like. I think we look fine as we are. I’m getting everything I need, perhaps a little more. I decide to turn the question around. “What do I expect from my community?” The answer erupts with clarity; acceptance, respect, and support. That’s all I want, and I want it for all of us. No more, no less.

Sounds simple.

Read Part I: The Almighty We – Proximity

I wondered why anyone would need a car like that. Heck, half the fun of driving is making all those last-minute decisions. I enjoy using my senses and reflexes to motor around town and am of the minority who know how to drive a manual transmission. Downshifting is fun! I particularly like that horseshoe motion I make before taking a corner, a flourish of my wrist that pulls Christine, my 1995 Ford Escort into second from fourth.

And yet, there are compelling arguments for autonomous cars. Commuting is monotonous, cell phones are distracting and people make bad decisions. 94% of the annual 33,000 traffic fatalities in the US are due to human error. Drivers lose their tempers in traffic and sometimes fall asleep at the wheel. Self-driving cars may be the solution.

Folks who have driven autonomously view the traffic pattern on a screen and can see their car in relationship to the others on the road. While the other cars weave in and out of traffic and bobble around in their lanes, their car hugs the middle and doesn’t make erratic moves. “The biggest source of angst comes, not from any technology, but from the other people on the road whose non-computer-assisted imperfections are all the more visible when you are being chauffeured by a supercomputer.” -Joe Harpaz, Forbes. Trials show the human drivers at fault when an autonomous car has a fender bender.

To help me understand the allure of computer assist, I went on a virtual test drive with Alex:

Like Alex, I find the technology both unsettling and reassuring. Still, I have no desire to replace Christine with a self-driving car. I like being in the driver seat with full control over her behavior. It’ll be up to me, not my car whether to pause and let someone back out of the slant parking on our main street. It’ll be my eyes, not computerized sensors that determine whether to stop for the people hovering a few feet back from the cross walk zone.

And yet driverless cars may be inevitable. A lot of resources are going into their development with the hope that consumers can hop on board within the next five to fifteen years. By the time I turn 100, autonomous vehicles may be the primary mode of transportation. By then I might be tempted if I thought I could afford one.

Maybe its sour grapes, but I don’t think we need yet another buffer between us and our surroundings. I sense another shred of humanity will shrivel after computer assisted cars become commonplace. Everything that glitters is not gold. Sometimes it’s just broken glass in your carpet.

More:

Ten ways autonomous driving could redefine the automotive world

Google Self-Driving Car Project

Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw

Study: Self-driving cars have higher accident rate

I couldn’t take another word so I punched a finger into the car radio power button and sat in silence. A prestigious panel had been discussing the latest school shooting on the Diane Rehm Show and I was still bristling from their word choices.

People who kill other people are murderers, not “shooters” and yet during the few minutes I listened, everyone used the term shooter. When they began referring to the massacre as a disaster, I lost it. Man-made violence is not an act of nature as the word disaster would imply. The latest killing was pre-meditated mass murder, plain and simple.

I get it. We’ve come a long way since two perpetrators murdered twelve students during the Columbine High School Massacre sixteen years ago. Yes, those are the words they used back then. Perpetrator, murder and massacre.

There have been 163 School shootings since then with 45 this year alone, according to Newsweek. Mass murder has become commonplace, an earmark of a violent gun-obsessed society. We’re inundated with murder and so it makes sense that media would try and soften the assault with damped-down language.

It’s a small thing, I told myself and tried to forget it. In the hours that followed my little tantrum, I wanted to share my outrage. But by the end of the day, after dozens of conversations with peers and co-workers the only person I was able to vent to was Bob. Not only are we as a nation becoming numb to the mounting legacy of violence, it seemed futile to voice my indignation. Sad times, I tell you. Sad and frustrating times.

SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS:

Denver Post December 12, 2013 – School shootings since Columbine High massacre

Newsweek October 6, 2015 – Map: Every School Shooting in America Since 2013

Oxford Dictionary – dis·as·ter [d??zast?r/] noun
“A sudden event, such as an accident or a natural catastrophe, that causes great damage or loss of life.”