I was having a nightmare. My dreams often include personal conversations with world leaders and other serial killers, perhaps because I usually sleep with news radio streaming in my ear. In this particular dream I was just watching TV on election night, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Andersen Cooper insisting that Donald Trump was heading for an electoral college majority. One pundit after another paraded on camera, forced to provide explanations of results they clearly did not understand. They made further predictions even though each had accumulated a remarkable string of misguided prognostications. It made me squirm to watch them blather away without the slightest appreciation of their own irrelevance. It was awful. I was sure I would wake up at any moment.
I am now a few weeks into this nightmare. I am beginning to think I must be in a coma. Traffic accident, perhaps, or another fall down the stairs, as I am wont to do. (I’ve never owned a flight of stairs I didn’t fall down.) I am certain, though, this electoral calamity cannot be happening. At least now I know for sure that it is possible for a comatose person to hear. Hey, somebody out there turn off the radio please! Enough is enough. Continue reading 15. Always Be With You
Back at Yosemite’s Curry Village, we found the adjacent cabin had no fewer than ten occupants. Their cabin was identical to ours which had a double bed for two, with the theoretical possibility of a roll-away creating a capacity of three. There were four children in their group who I must presume would be stashed in a closet overnight. Even so, it must have been tight quarters for the rest of them — three men, three women, one couple with apparent grandparent status. A close family.
During our stay there were about were thirty thousand nature lovers driving through the park each day, most generally following the rules established to preserve their lives and protect the park’s very existence, with a small few running down the wildlife, littering the roadside, and improperly disposing of lit cigarettes. Spread over the park’s twelve hundred square miles, thirty thousand works out to only twenty-five people per square mile. That is about the same population density as the State of Vermont, which does not seem particularly crowded. The reality is, though, that almost all thirty thousand visitors remain in the eight square miles of the central Yosemite Valley floor. This yields a population density of 3,750 per square mile, which is about three times more crowded than New Jersey, the most densely populated US State. 
All morning the Common Folk waited and ate and drank and sweat in the blazing sun, discussing grandpa’s hernia operation and Aunt Annie’s new husband (she could have done better), while picking their favourite for the upcoming contest. 