091604

 

Cottage Grove to O'Brien, OR

Thursday September 16, 2004

     6:47am  I got dropped off in Cottage Grove. I woke up like six minutes ago. I crashed out behind Prime Med Medical Clinic and Family Medicine. I took a picture of where I crashed.  

     7:30am  Amanda hooked me up with a cigarette outside of the Chevron in Cottage Grove.

     7:32am  I went into the Chevron bathroom to shit and I wrote Victor the Liberator  

 on the wall. I took a picture of it. I'm going to try and score some breakfast at this market nearby. I'll talk to some people.

     7:37am  Dean at Carl's Jr, I've never tested a Carl's Jr. hamburger place before, Dean is hooking me up with a burger. I appreciate it, brother. Everybody gets credit, thanks.

     8:09am  I'm walking down some street. I want to go see if I can find this park. I'm right by the Bi-Mart. I'm giving all the cars driving by the peace sign.

                   Oh yeah, and this guy Joe walked by and I hit him up for a story. I gave him my intro and mission-objectives. I asked him if he was willing to listen and he said, "Oh no, I'm walking."

     8:24am  I came to the Coiner Park in Cottage Grove. It's dead. It's still early in the morning. I think I'm going to go to the highway and stick my thumb out.

     9:21am  I came over to this little store Short Stop. I told Sue, she listened to my whole story. I captivated her. And, she gave me a cigarette. And, she's giving me breakfast. She's giving me some biscuits and gravy. Yummy, yummy. I appreciate it, Sue. Everybody gets credit, thanks.

     9:55am  I'm just out here reading my book in front of the store. I'm reading my book and it seems to be yet another awesome book. On page 31 The Revolutionary Premise. On Chapter 4. I'll be sure to type up all of chapter 4. It's good.

"THE REVOLUTIONARY PREMISE

                   For all the conservativism of military institutions, there have always been innovators calling for revolutionary change. Don Morelli and the other officers charged with re-thinking how an army must fight in tomorrow's world were part of a long military tradition. In fact, historians have filled the shelves of libraries with books about "revolutions in warfare."
                   All too often, however, the term has been applied too generously. For example, war is said to have been revolutionized when Alexander the Great defeated the Persians by combining "the infantry of the West with the cavalry of the East." Alternatively, the word "revolution" if often applied to technological changes - the introduction of gunpowder, for instance, or the airplane or the submarine.
                   Admittedly those produced profound changes in warfare. Surely they had enormous impact on subsequent history. Even so, they are what might be called sub-revolutions. They basically add new elements or create new combinations of old elements within an existing "game." A true revolution goes beyond that to change the game itself, by changing its rules, its equipment, the size and organization of the "teams," their training, doctrine, tactics, and just about everything else. It does this not in one "team" but in many simultaneously. Even more important, it changes the relationship of the game to society itself.
                   By this demanding measure, true military revolutions have occurred only twice in history, and there are strong reasons to believe that the third revolution - the one now beginning - will be the deepest of all. For only in recent decades have some of the key parameters of warfare hit their final limits. These parameters are range, lethality, and speed.
                   Armies that could reach further, hit harder, and got there faster usually won, while the range-restricted, less well-armed, and slower armies lost. For this reason, a vast amount of human creative effort has been poured into extending the range, increasing the firepower, and accelerating the speed of weapons and of armies.

A DEADLY CONVERGENCE

                   Take range. Throughout history warmakers have tried to extend their reach. Writing about the war of the fourth century b.c., the historian Dioderus Siculus reported that the Greek general Iphicrates, fighting on behalf of the Persians against the Egyptians, "made his spears half as long again, and the length of swords almost doubled," thus extending the range of the weapons.
                   Ancient devices like catapults and ballistas could heave a ten-pound rock or ball a distance of 350 yards. The Crossbow, used in China in 500 b.c. and common in Europe by 1100, gave a soldier a "standoff" weapon of seemingly enormous reach. (So horrible was this weapon that in 1139 Pope Innocent II tried to ban its use.) Arrows reached an extreme range of about 380 yards in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet for all the experimentation with archery over the centuries, the furthest range of any arrow, as late as the nineteenth century, was 660 yards, achieved by the Turks. And in actual fighting, the maximum range of weapons was seldom attained.
                   By 1942, Alexander de Seversky in his visionary book Victory Through Air Power urged the United States to develop aircraft capable of flying 6,000 miles, then seemingly impossible. Today - even leaving aside the potentials for space-based weaponry - there is scarcely any point on the globe that cannot in theory be targeted by intercontinental ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers, submarines, refueled long-range bombers, or combinations of these and other weapon systems. For all practical purposes, the extension of range has reached its terrestrial limits.
                   As with range, so with speed. In June 1991 the U.S. Defense Department made public its Alpha chemical laser, capable of producing a million watts of power, as part of the development of an anti-missile system. The laser can, if targeted correctly, reach an enemy missile at the speed of light, presumed to be the fastest speed possible.

                   And, as to lethality - the sheer kill-capacity of conventional weapons has increased by five orders of magnitude from the beginning of the industrial revolution to today. This means that today's non-nuclear weaponry, on average, is 100,000 times more deadly than it was when steam engines and factories began to change our world. As to nukes, we need only contemplate the consequences of 100 or 1,000 Chernobyls to appreciate the awesome threat they pose. It is only within this last century that planetary doomsday scenarios become a serious subject of discussion.
                   In short, three distinct lines of military development have converged explosively in our time. Range, speed, and lethality all reach their outer limits at about the same moment of history - the present half century. If nothing else, this fact alone would justify the term "revolution in warfare."

AFTER THE ENDGAME

                   But this fact is not all. For in 1957, a mere dozen years after the first nuclear weapon was completed, Sputnik, the world's first spacecraft, burst into the heavens, opening an entirely new region to military operations. Space has already transformed terrestrial military operations in terms of surveillance, communications, navigation, meteorology, and a hundred other things. No previous breakthrough, from the first use of the sea or the air as regimes for military action, can compare to the long-range implications of this event.
                   A few years later, in announcing the U.S. drive to place a man on the moon, President John F. Kennedy declared that while, "No one can predict with certainty what the ultimate meaning will be of the mastery of space," it may well be that space will "hold the key to our future on earth."
                   These qualitative, indeed fantastic changes in the nature of war and the military all have come in a short thirty-four-year span, the very moment when the dominant civilizations on earth - Second Wave, or industrial, society - began its terminal decay. They came during the endgame of the industrial era, and at approximately the time when a new type of economy and society began to take form. Even as some nations industrialize, a Third Wave or postindustrial civilization is springing up in the United States, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.
                   And this helps explain why the military revolution that lies ahead will be far deeper than most commentators have so far imagined. A military revolution, in the fullest sense, occurs only when a new civilization arises to challenge the old, when and entire society transforms itself, forcing its armed services to change at every level simultaneously - from technology and culture to organization, strategy, tactics, training, doctrine, and logistics. When this happens, the relationship of the military to the economy and society is transformed, and the military balance of power on earth is shattered.
                   A revolution of this profundity has happened only rarely in history."

                   Oh wait, let me type up the introduction so you can see if you want to read the whole book.

"INTRODUCTION

                   THIS BOOK is about wars and anti-wars to come. It is for the Bosnian child whose face has been half ripped away by explosives, and for his mother staring with glazed eyes at what is left. It is for all the innocents of tomorrow who will both kill and die for reasons they do not understand. It is a book about peace. Which means it is a book about war in the startling new conditions we are creating as we race together into an alien future.
                   A fresh century now stretches before us, one in which vast numbers of humans can be raised from the edge of hunger...in which the ravages of industrial-era pollution can be reversed and a cleaner technology created to serve humanity...in which a richer diversity of cultures and peoples can participate in shaping the future...in which the plague of war is stanched.
                   But we appear, instead, to be plunging into a new dark age of tribal hate, planetary desolation, and wars multiplied by wars. How we deal with this threat of explosive violence will, to a considerable extent, determine how our children live, or perhaps, for that matter, die.
                   Yet, many of our intellectual weapons for peacemaking are hopelessly out of date - as are many armies. The difference is that armies all over the world are racing to meet the realities of the twenty-first century. Peacemaking, by contrast, plods along, trying to apply methods more appropriate to a distant past.
                   The thesis of this book is clear - but as yet little understood; the way we make war reflects the way we make wealth - and the way we make anti-war must reflect the way we make war.
                   No subject is as easily ignored by those us lucky enough to be living in peace. After all, we each have our private wars for survival: making a living, caring for our families, battling an illness. Enough, it would seem, to worry these immediate realities. Yet how we fight our personal, peacetime wars, how we live our daily lives, is deeply influenced by real, and even imagined wars of the present, past, or future.
                   Present-day wars raise or lower the price of gasoline at the pump, food in the supermarket, shares on the stock exchange. They ravage the ecology. They erupt into our living rooms via our video screens.
                   Past wars reach across time to affect our lives today. The torrents of blood spilled centuries ago over issues now forgotten, the bodies charred, impaled, broken, or blown into nothingness, the children reduced to swollen bellies and stick-limbs - all shaped the world we inhabit today. To cite a single, little-noticed example, wars fought a thousand years ago led to the invention of chain-of-command hierarchies - a form of authority familiar to millions of jobholders today. Even the wars of the future - whether planned or merely imagined - can steal our tax dollars today.
                   Not surprisingly, imagined wars grip our minds. Knights, samurai warriors, janissaries, hussars, generals, and G.I. Joes parade relentlessly through the pages of history and the corridors of our mind. Literature, painting, sculpture, and movies picture the horrors, heroism, or moral dilemmas or war, real or unreal.
                   But while wars actual, potential, and vicarious shape our existence, there is a completely forgotten reverse reality. For every one of our lives has also been shaped by wars that were NOT fought, that were prevented because "anti-wars" were won.
                   War and anti-war, however, are not either/or opposites. Anti-wars are not just waged with speeches, prayers, demonstrations, marches, and picket lines calling for peace. Anti-wars, more important, include actions taken by politicians, and even the warriors themselves, to create conditions that deter or limit the extent of war. In a complex world, there are times when war itself becomes an instrument needed to prevent a bigger, more terrible war. War as anti-war.
                   At the highest level, anti-wars involve strategic applications of military, economic, and informational power to reduce the violence so often associated with change on the world stage.
                   Today, as the world hurtles out of the industrial age and into a new century, much of what we know about both war and anti-war is dangerously out of date. A revolutionary new economy is arising based on knowledge, rather than conventional raw materials and physical labor. This remarkable change in the world economy is bringing with it a parallel revolution in the nature of warfare.
                   Our purpose therefore is not to moralize about the hatefulness of war. Some readers may confuse the absence of moralizing for an absence of empathy with the victims or war. This is to assume that cries of pain and anger are enough to prevent violence. Surely there are enough cries of pain and enough anger in the world. If they were sufficient to produce peace, our problems would be over. What is missing is not more emotive expression but a fresh understanding of the relations between war and a fast-changing society.
                   This new insight, we believe, could provide a better base of action by the world community. Not crash-brigade, after-the-fact intervention, but future-conscious preventative action based on an understanding of the shape that wars of tomorrow may assume. We offer no panacea. What we offer, instead, is a new way of thinking about war. And that, we believe, may be a modest contribution to peace, for a revolution in warfare requires a revolution in peacefare as well.
                   Anti-wars must match the wars they are intended to prevent."

                   Okay, that's the intro. If you are interested in read the entire text, go to the library and check it out. It's called, "War and Anti-War" by Alvin and Heidi Toffler(Free in #bookz on Undernet).

     10:12am  Mike hooked me up with a cigarette in front of the market.

     10:15am  I am walking down Highway 99 North. Cool, I see a sign that says, "Lane City College" to the left. I'm going to go see if I can check my email.

                     Ahh, it doesn't look like the college is too close by. My feet hurt. I'm limping. My feet hurt.

     11:58am  Dan's hooking me up at The Vintage Inn. I appreciate it, brother. Everybody gets credit, thanks.

                     I got hooked up at The Vintage Inn Restaurant. I got some more biscuits and gravy. It was good.

                     I'm getting some great publicity here at this intersection. I'm flying my sign.

                     On my way to save the world.

                     Let me make a prayer to Love. Please Love, grant me a ride.

                     My feet hurt. I need to be back home in San Antonio and save the world already.

     1:50pm  Visitor Information for Cottage Grove. The covered bridge capital of Oregon. Founded in 1887. Elevation 740 feet. Population 7,500. For recreation you have boating, fishing, camping, hiking, biking, sailing, bowling, golf, swimming, picnicking, just to name a few.

     2:05pm  Ryan hooked me up with a cigarette after that grumpy old man wouldn't give me one. I appreciate it, brother. Everybody gets credit, thanks.

                   I'm back at the onramp giving people the thumb. Every time a logger drives by I give him the finger. One of them got all pissed off. He gave me two fingers back. Haha. That's funny.

     2:39pm  Rick pulled over and he's going to give me a ride! How far are you going?

     3:28pm  Rick just told me he's going to take me all the way to Williams! That's awesome! I'm going to go visit Nate and Vivian!

     3:34pm  Rick just gave me four cigarettes! I appreciate it, brother.

     4:18pm  Rick and I are on 199 already. Headed towards Grants Pass.

     4:43pm  I forgot to tell you. I just got dropped off. On Ingalls Lane. See, Rick didn't realize exactly how far Williams was. He changed his mind and dropped me off. He said, "This looks like a good spot." There's nothing around here. At least he could've taken me to a gas station.

                   I have to limp to a gas station now. I'll stick my thumb out and maybe somebody will pick me up.

     5:00pm  Lawrence pulled over and picked me up! I appreciate it, Lawrence. He's going to take me to Cave Junction.

     5:21pm  I just got dropped off. Lawrence didn't take me all the way to O'Brien. He was going to. He dropped me off in front of some lumber yard. Krauss Lane. I guess I'm going to limp to O'Brien. He said it was only like a mile or two.

     5:32pm  At first I was going to go to Williams. I said screw it, I'm going to O'Brien. I was going to go to Williams just to ask them if Fawn was in O'Brien. I'll go find out for myself.

     5:33pm  There's a big sign that says Entering Rough and Ready Botanical Wayside.

     5:37pm  I've been limping for a while. Mile marker 34.

     5:38pm  Please Love, grant me a ride. I'm limping here.

     6:02pm  Badass, somebody just honked. They were going the other way. They pulled over.

     6:03pm  Jason pulled over and he's going to take me to O'Brien!

     6:08pm  I'm in O'Brien already! He dropped me off at the four corners at Lone Mountain Road. I'm going to go to the gas station here and smoke a cigarette. I'll try and score some food.

     6:10pm  I came inside the store and asked them, "Hey, is there anything I can get to eat for a quarter?" The guy told me, "I'll give you a hotdog for a quarter." I appreciate it, Gary. Everybody gets credit, thanks.

                   He even let me keep the quarter. Awesome.

     6:25pm  I was all, "Damnit, I have to walk all the way down Lone Mountain Road and my feet are all sore." Just then this guy came out of the store and smiled at me. I asked him, "Hey, think you can give me a ride down Lone Mountain? Not that far. Like a mile." Chris is hooking me up with a ride. Thanks, brother. Everybody gets credit.

     6:30pm  I told Chris my platform. I blew his mind. I told him the spirit's part too and pointed out how he was taking me to the exact medicine camp I was talking about. He gave me a ride to 1760 Lone Mountain Road.  

                   Our Mountain.  

     6:45pm  I have an update to make. Man, this guy gave me a ride all the way into Shadow's place. Shadow  

 came out and I immediately asked him, "Is she here?" He says, "Oh, well how have you been doing?" I told him, "I'm doing great. How are you?" I asked him again and he said, "Yeah, she's right over there."

                   I am just elated. I had no idea she was going to be here. She was in Saskatchewan last time I checked. I'm going to go find her and surprise her.

     6:50pm  Oh man, this is just too perfect. I walk in front of these travel trailers and I see Fawn behind it. She peers out and says, "Is that who I think it is?" I can't believe she's here! Oh, and she's about to leave again in a week! I lucked out! She just told me right now, "You were guided."

                   Oh man, I can't wait to sit down and talk with her.

                   She already showed me where I'm going to sleep. In the healing lodge.

     7:15pm  I'm here in my little room. This healing lodge I get to sleep in. There's a bed with a thin mattress and everything. I'll take a picture of it in the morning. I need to rest my feet. They're sore.

     8:32pm  I'm going to lay down and go to bed. It's already dark. Man, I am so excited. I can't wait to talk to Fawn in the morning.

Next day..