By a Solari team member
My husband and I recently drove through eight northeastern U.S. states to take a bona fide vacation—our first recreational trip since 2019. Traveling by car offered unique opportunities for taking the pulse of the different places we passed through or stayed. Through my ingrained Solari prism, I could not help assessing where Americans are at during this deceptively peaceful interlude between Covid and whatever Mr. Global has in store for us next (Catherine has been referring to the next likely go-round as “Putin-19”). What follow are a few of my observations.
It’s a Big Country, But…
As someone raised on the West Coast who now lives on the East Coast, I have long appreciated the United States’ vastness. Even so, driving 1,000 miles (one way) tends to heighten one’s awe for our nation’s size and geographic diversity. At the same time, though, passing through tiny towns with populations of hundreds or a few thousand, I was struck by the magnitude of the 2020 p(l)andemic coup—how did Mr. Global manage to extend his lockdown tentacles into so many tiny communities, not just across the U.S. but the world? I reluctantly have to “doff my hat” (to use a term favored by Dr. Farrell) at this remarkable technocratic achievement.
At the outset of our trip, we had made a vow not to use GPS and to stick to maps and road atlases. This worked fairly well, except that we noticed that signage is not what it used to be. In a few instances when we could not find our destination and stopped to ask directions, the queried individual’s automatic response was, “Look it up on your phone” (alternatively, they would look it up on their phone on our behalf). This was the case everywhere from urban settings to the most remote hiking trails.
In one small coastal town, we stopped to ask directions at a café; it was closed for business, but the door was open. The very congenial owner, who was originally from Vietnam but had lived in that community (population: 4,865) for 25 years, told us that he was trying to hire a manager to revive the live music that had been a core feature of the café for years. The prior owners had shut all music down during Covid—despite community members begging them not to do so—and then had sold the place. Our Vietnamese interlocutor was trying to reinstate the venue as a vibrant community institution.
Math-Illiterate Youth
One of the most shocking phenomena we encountered was young people’s almost complete inability to do basic math. As “foodies,” we make it a habit when we travel to stop at obscure farm stores and farmers markets every chance we get. Encouragingly, many of the farmers we saw at farmers markets were young, but discouragingly, they relied on their phones to tally up sales. One young farming couple needed their phone to add up $4 plus $4 plus $6. When I asked if they could do the math in their head, the woman answered “no” and the man said he could do it “a little.”
At a rural farm store, a sweet young girl who looked to be high-school age rang up our purchases. An older woman also worked there (she appreciated my Solari “Make Cash Great Again” hat); she told me that she tries to teach the young people how to count back customers’ change, but she isn’t having much luck. Our young cashier said, “I used to get straight As, but then I got my phone. Now I can’t do math anymore, and my grades aren’t as good.” When I gently suggested that she try doing without her phone now and then, she essentially indicated that she couldn’t imagine doing so.
A recently retired math teacher in my home community told me that schools start children on calculators in 4th grade. She says that kids don’t know their times tables anymore and are, for all intents and purposes, math-illiterate. Her own son and daughter-in-law recently pulled their kids out of school, disgusted with this state of affairs, and began homeschooling.
What was saddest to me in our travels was not only young people’s frank admission that they’d be lost without their phones but their utter lack of confidence in their own abilities—and, even worse, their lack of concern about outsourcing their brain to the machine.
Plans for a Cashless Society Evident
At a Visitor’s Center where we went to purchase a pass for National Park access, the federal Park Service employee who handled the transaction was rather put out when I paid in cash. (It had to be the exact amount; she said she could not provide change.) She informed us, with every appearance of smugness, that by next year, we would not be able to pay with cash at all. At another Visitor’s Center in the same area, we wanted to pay cash for a map, but all purchases were credit-card-only (using an iPad “cash register”).
Some highways are now collecting tolls electronically, having eliminated actual toll booths. (Whenever we passed through a toll booth with actual toll collectors, I made a point of being very friendly to them, and they were quite friendly in return—three cheers for human connection!) Parking meters, we found, could still be fed using quarters, but for all-day parking, the only option was to use an electronic kiosk.
I wore my “Make Cash Great Again” cap everywhere. At a farmers market, it prompted a delightful conversation with a farmer originally from Poland. When I sketched out the implications of a cashless world, she immediately grasped the dangers—far more so than most Americans I talked to. She also understood how little of our food dollars go to farmers.
Virtue Signaling vs. Nature
Our travel month being June—the time of “Pride Month” and “Juneteenth”—and our travel region being the Northeast, we saw rainbow flags, “We welcome everyone” signs, and Black Lives Matter posters everywhere. A friend recently informed me that the rainbow flag has been updated to include a new yellow section with a purple circle, which apparently means it is “intersex-inclusive.” (Planned Parenthood describes intersex as “an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male/female binary” and says there are “lots of ways someone can be intersex.”)
Fortunately, we spent most of our time outside in nature, where a rock is still a rock, a stream is still a stream, and one is moved to appreciate God’s wonders without politicization. Psalm 104:24 helps us celebrate the true diversity of creation: “Oh LORD, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.”
Still a Great Country
Although spatial awareness, math skills, and cash may feel like they are going the way of the dodo bird, our travels reinforced my love of America’s spirit. Despite the beating Americans have taken over the past three years, in particular, my fellow citizens’ resilience, energy, creativity, community-mindedness, and zest for life—and also their stubbornness and persistence—give me hope that we can resurrect individual and national sovereignty and rebuild a place that is once again a beacon for the rest of the world.
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