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Cranbrook, Kent

How to describe the boxed area of Southeast England, with London and the Thames on the north and the sea on the other sides? It’s often referred to as the garden of England, but here’s a more emblematic analogy: The Shire. Yes, from J.R.R. Tolkein’s tale of hobbits, dwarves, elves and others. The hobbits live in The Shire, a bucolic farmland of hard-working, fun-loving little people with hearts of gold, endless appetites, and steel spines. The Shire represents a pre-industrial idyll of England, standing athwart the grime and poverty of the coming industrial revolution.

Cranbrook is a small town that fancies itself the capital of the Weald, an Old English term referring to this vast woodland area. It’s a teeny capital: just a few streets, only one real intersection, not even a stop sign, less a traffic light. We’re staying on High Street (American translation: Main Street), about a block from the all the action, that is, the intersection. There is a fine collection of pubs and restaurants, all terribly quaint, a grocery co-op immediately behind the house, and walking trails and nature reserves galore.

First Alicante, then Madrid, then London, now (wait for it) . . . Cranbrook? One of these things is not like the others, as they used to sing on Sesame Street. What are we doing here? Last year, I promised my dear wife we would get a dog sometime during the year. As the year wore on, and we looked at our travel plans (including the near-future ones), Judy came to the conclusion we simply couldn’t get a dog right now. We’re traveling a lot, because we still can, but soon a day will come when we can’t (travel, that is). So she forwent her immediate dog fancy.

In exchange, she countered with a novel idea: perhaps we could rent a dog. Not literally, but figuratively. We joined an international house-sitting website which matches people wiling to take care of other’s pets in exchange for staying in the owner’s home, free. No money exchanges hands, but the owner gets a vacation free of worry about their pet and the pet-sitter gets to “live in” rather than just visit a new place. I readily agreed, as long as we could fit it into our existing plans.

Judy started applying for “sits” in the UK in June, as we had plans for Alicante already set, and we just held off on scheduling our return flight, which we were using points to fly on Virgin Airways, Heathrow to Los Angeles. But we were planning months early, and many people don’t even post their requests until a few weeks out. We had no nibbles, and were going to go ahead and close out the idea, when we saw a sit in lovely rural Cranbrook, Kent. Not only that, it was two weeks long (longer than most, which are a week-to-ten days) and gave us just enough time to visit Madrid and London on the way from Alicante. Best of all, the dogs we would be sitting were Vizslas, the breed we owned for almost thirty years! This was a dog-fix extraordinare for Judy! We applied, were interviewed online, and finally got the sit, partly because we were so darn enthusiastic about just sitting the dogs. The owners were telling us all about the charm of the area (selling us), and we were “that’s nice, we just want to be with your dogs!”

Our “rental” Vizslas, demonstrating one of their two modes: indoor inactive

So here we are in the Shire with Toffee and Treacle! Treacle is thirteen years old, so she’s limited to shorter walks around the local nature reserve, or up the High Street to the Church and back. Toffee is only six, and she’s the type of dog, if you tied a treat on a string hanging from a stick in front of her snout, she could walk the Camino de Santiago, in a week. Probably need a few extra treats.

Things are very quiet here during the week. We have adapted easily to the laid back pace, which revolves around the dogs’ eating and exercise schedule. On the weekend, things get pretty busy, as tourists and big city types abscond from London in search of the pretty English countryside, which is what the Weald offers in abundance. Better still, it’s bloom season, and everybody seems to have roses or other perennials adorning the outside of their cottages.

The heat wave which chased us from London moved on, and we moved out to cooler climes, so outside of a hot sun in the middle of the afternoon, the climate is very comfortable. We have the windows full open all night, which sometimes necessitates a duvet on the bed. Remember, I told you the English haven’t discovered air conditioning yet! Perhaps with global warming this newfangled technology will become a local fashion.

Inside the pub at The George for our 44th anniversary brunch

Weekends require a longer walk with Toffee, who seems to know her way around the local forests quite well. I was navigating using AllTrails, an app I have found most useful for such things while traveling, while Toffee kept stopping at various crossings, indicating which way I should go. She may be a local, but I had GPS. Between us, we navigated several miles of dense woodland and returned safely.

Things we noticed during this Spain & England visit? England is way more expensive. I expected it in London, but even out here in the countryside, groceries, pints at the pub, and restaurant meals are $$$$. I spent £33 on a glorified chicken sandwich and fries the other day at a local pub, and yes, that’s almost US $45! The Tube in London is still cheap, there are good free museums, and you can shop around and find less expensive meals, but England in general is much more expensive than Spain, or even the US.

You have to love the English trail system. Every forest, every reserve, and even the farmlands have public rights-of-way that allow you to stay off the roads and wander from town to town. Which is a good thing, because the local roads are narrow, people drive fast, and they always seem to be on the wrong side (sorry, couldn’t resist. It’s my response to being told I ‘had an American accent.’). The trails themselves vary between trodden dirt paths in the forest to paved and maintained paths in some meadows. Whatever their condition, they are a true delight and a national resource one must enjoy when out and about.

The Spanish appeared younger, happier and healthier than the English we met. It’s a gross generalization (is there any other kind?) but an accurate one for our experiences this trip. Perhaps it’s just an artifact of where we visited and stayed, but maybe not. Almost nobody engaged us in political discussions, with the exception of our dog-sit host: the husband and I had a long talk about the Trump phenomenon and Sir Keir’s problems at #10 Downing Street, and it was all quite pleasant. I have always found Europeans to be quite happy to talk about their own politics when they meet an American who shows interest. Certainly everybody we met was welcoming.

As we walked the dogs in the nature reserve trail the other day, Judy said she was “ready to go home” and I agree. The cruise, the time in Spain, Madrid & London, and the Shire have each been very enjoyable, but we’re ready to get back to Mexico, where the locals assure me the rainy season just started with a big thunderstorm!

London calling

You may have heard rumors of travel nightmares in Europe because of the roll out of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES). It’s a biometric system designed to replace stamping passports, so it is a form of progress, if done right. Sadly, this is the EU, so it’s not been done right. Right would be capturing your fingerprints and face scan either online or once at an entry point, then speeding you through automated gates every time hence. Instead, the EU is sending all non-Schengen passengers through the same entry point, which is causing long delays, so long, that passengers are missing their flights, whether they had previously enrolled or not.

The title? Just an excuse to link to The Clash

Forewarned, we arrived at Madrid Barajas airport four hours early for our early evening flight to London Heathrow. First problem, British Airways wouldn’t allow us to check our bag until less than three hours before the flight. Unable to check our bag, we couldn’t head through security, let alone customs and immigration. At the designated time we dropped off the bag and quickly passed through the security lines into the secure area. Thinking we were in the clear, since we were at departure gates, we started looking for a lounge to while away the time, when it occurred to me (perhaps those years working the US DHS), “we went through security, but not customs and immigration!” How?

Barajas international airport segregates non-Schengen passengers at a remote terminal, and by remote, I mean a five-minute, high-speed rail-line remote! We arrived at that terminal to find the promised chaos: a massive number of automated checkpoints, only a few people explaining in Spanish, and a mad mix of foreigners trying and being turned away. Luckily, we had enrolled in the EES when we disembarked our transatlantic cruise, so we made our way to an empty kiosk, read in our passports and got our faces confirmed, and moved on. But very many other people were left cycling through different kiosks, unsure of what was happening.

We found an excellent lounge to kill the extra time, and just as things started looking up, British Airways snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. First a forty-five minute take-off delay, then another forty-five minutes after we boarded, because they couldn’t properly load a pallet of non-luggage cargo. Now our early evening arrival was a mid-evening arrival. Okay, at least the sub-two hour flight to Heathrow was uneventful, until the pilot aborted the landing at one hundred meters altitude. For those unfamiliar, that’s about the height of the upper deck at your local stadium. Seems he came in too fast, and this being Heathrow, we were now at the back of the landing queue, costing another thirty minutes. And even then, with a different runway, we made a very fast and hard landing. Safe still beats late, though. We taxied to an empty area and our entire Boeing 777 disembarked to . . . busses. A large, international arrival at a major European hub, on the national airline, and . . . busses? Hmmmm.

The UK created its own new pre-arrival entry system last year, and we enrolled, so we whisked through immigration, but once again many Americans (and others) were caught up in “do you have an ETA?” discussions. Of course our bag was nearly last off the plane, so we dashed to the Heathrow Express and arrived at Paddington station fifteen minutes later, around eleven pm.

We have been visiting London and staying near Paddington for decades. There are several small neighborhoods there where rows of former townhouses have been repurposed into boutique hotels, at about half the going rate for American-style hotels in London. You’ll get a quirky room (our bathroom is up several stairs), no air conditioning, and a full English breakie. And walkable to Paddington, which connects everywhere in London.

You may have rushed past that “no air conditioning” comment. It’s not common in London, and since our time in sunny Spain was a little cooler than anticipated, we were more worried about layers when we emerged from the Tube. Alas, a heat dome settled over the area just in time for our arrival, including the warmest May temperature on record (35 Celsius, 95 Fahrenheit). And London has long records. We had to recall all our travel survival tips, remembering the joy of frequent cold showers, pub stops, and visiting a (outrageously expensive at twenty English pounds-per-person) little cinema for air conditioning (Hint: The Sheep Detectives is great fun!). We made it through the first day of the heat wave that way, but the inability to get any airflow or cooling at night sent me back to find another hotel in the same area, this time with a/c.

And we were lucky, since we have already seen and done all the tourist must-sees/dos. We narrowed our agenda down to evening hours, or added in all those breaks and stops. For example, we took in an evening performance of a new Sherlock! production at the Regents Park open air theater, which would have been dreadful for the matinee.

We planned a picnic in Kensington Gardens, but instead of building it ourselves, we simply strolled into a Marks & Spencer and picked up all the necessaries in a few well-organized minutes. Pro-tip: we always travel with small, packable rain coats, which make an expedient picnic blanket. Add in a great public park with much shade, and Bob’s your uncle!

Sunday we trekked to Marylebone to visit Saint James Catholic church at Spanish Place, a Gothic structure with a lot of history. The church survived because it was bequeathed to the Spanish government and gained immunity from the back-and-forth persecutions of the English Reformation. We just enjoyed hearing a Mass in English for a change.

A short walk away we reserved our first Sunday Roast at a pub called The Prince Regent. It’s an English tradition to serve roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast vegetables, and a sticky toffee pudding for Sunday brunch. Somehow we had heretofore missed out on it, and it was delicious.

We arranged mid-morning tickets to the special exhibition of works by Francisco de Zurbarán at the National Gallery. Having seen some of the Spanish master’s work at the Prado, it was great to find a more complete collection spanning all his work in London.

This final painting is quite unique: it features a pensive Virgin Mary looking on at Jesus as a young man who has cut his finger on a crown of thorns he wove. Jesus seems more curious than pained, but Mary clearly suffers a premonition.

Right next door, we had lunch in the crypt cafe under St. Martins-in-the-fields, a favorite of ours whenever we’re in London. There’s something a touch unsettling at the floor tombstones, but a memento mori is always a good thing.

Most of this trip was replaying favorites from past visits: the picnic, a walk along the “little Venice” canals behind Paddington station, riding the Tube, going to the open air theater, pub visits, the National Gallery, St. Martin’s. We got a roast (first time), fish and chips, and very good Lebanese food. We suffered for my (not air-conditioned) sins. We’ve not grown tired of London yet, as Samuel Johnson observed, for there’s still more to see and do.

Admiral Nelson still stands his watch toward the Elizabeth tower, which contains Big Ben (but you already knew Big Ben was the bell, not the clock)

Madrid, Villa y Corte

We’ve transited through Madrid before, but never stayed, so this trip we gave ourselves a little stopover of four days/three nights to hit some of the high points. Madrid, the capital of Spain, is literally the central city. The evidence for settlement here goes back to the Celts, who built a fort near a ford here in the Fifth Century BCE. At least one of the prominent theories for the derivation of Madrid is from the Celtic word for ford. Madrileños (people from Madrid) prefer the nickname gatos (yes, cats) because they see themselves as stylish and nocturnal: I can confirm both allegations.

Madrid would be just another small fort-city on the Spanish meseta (plain) if not for Phillip II, who chose it as the royal seat in 1561, precisely because it was in the geographic middle of the peninsula. Oh, that and it was surrounded by forests, which satisfied his passion for hunting. And to please his wife, Elisabeth, who hated the cramped, cold, fortified city of Toledo and longed for anywhere else (reverse Spanish Green Acres?). Phillip’s choice turned the sleepy village into the seat of the great Spanish Hapsburg empire, and eventually the world-class city it is today, although its long-standing nickname remains Villa y Corte, or “town & court.”

The Plaza Mayor is the central square of Madrid, lined with cafes but free of any central shade, lest you get close to the statue of Felipe III. We stayed just around the corner, and the Plaza was a pleasant place to stroll through or take in an aperol spritz and watch everybody else strolling by. The cafes are a mix of the good, bad, and ugly (Pizza Hut?), so do your homework or else walk a few blocks away where numerous excellent restaurants await.

We ate at two centenarios, restaurants that have been operating as such for at least one-hundred years. The first was Sobrino de Botín, which proudly displays its Guinness world record as the oldest continuously-operating restaurant (since 1725). And the legend holds that their oven has been continuously burning for 300 years. We staked out the opening for lunch and scored one of the few walk-in, outdoor tables. Botín’s pride and joy is cochinillo asado, or roast suckling pig. We enjoyed the prix fixe menu, but were not wowed by the piggys. But that chef was certainly moving them from shelf to plate!

The other was Restaurante Los Galayos, which impressed us in every way. Here we tried another must-eat local dish named Cocido Madrileño. This is a hearty stew served in multiple stages. All the ingredients are cooked together, but then the meat and vegetables are removed from the broth. Thin, angel-hair like pasta is added back in, and the broth is served as a first course. Then the pot with the sausages, chicken, pork, carrots, potatoes, and artichokes arrives, which you place back into your remaining broth. Add in a pitcher of tinto verano (a wine and soda mix popular among locals; they leave the sangria for the tourists) and you have a quintessential Madrid lunch feast.

Stuffed doesn’t begin to describe the aftermath

We also had a delightful tapas lunch in the Mercado de San Miguel, a fashionable “gastro” experience that–while admittedly touristy–was nonetheless tasty. Get here early (before two in the afternoon) and take turns holding down a place at the cafe benches while munching on everything from seafood tapas to jamón ibérico to sushi to meatballs to pastries.

Of course you must visit the Prado, Madrid’s world-beating art museum. Sorry if I have no pictures to share, as they have a “no photos” policy. But here are some tips: get a reserved, timed ticket. You don’t want to join the throngs standing in the hot sun to get in. But when you go online to get that ticket, skip the “sponsored results” section on Google and make sure you are on the actual Prado website (here it is) and not a fake site like this one. Or you’ll end up paying twice, or arguing endlessly with your credit card company.* You can buy the audio guide, but don’t use its built-in tour, which is haphazard at best. Plan what you want to see beforehand and make your own way, stopping to marvel at the other surprises along the way. Finally, pay no attention to any of the helpful information signs painted on the walls. Apparently they reorganized some time ago but left the old signs up, which will send you on an endless doom-loop in search of a bathroom (by the way, aseo, not baño, in España).

The Palacio Real is the Spanish royal family’s official residence, and the largest royal palace in Europe. It is a magnificent baroque structure, full of the art and the wealthy trappings one would ascribe to Spain at the peak of its worldly power in the 17th century. A self-guided tour is sufficient, even if the audio guide is somewhat erratic in its presentation. Be sure not to miss the royal armory, recently reopened, for an extensive review of medieval weapons and armor.

Next to the royal palace is, yes, another (bloody) church (abc). What’s different about this Cathedral is it’s fairly new, only being completed in 1993. Formally named the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Royal of the Almudena, it was started in 1883 but left uncompleted by the Spanish Civil War, and only finished much later, after the fall of the Franco dictatorship. It’s a neo-Gothic structure, with baroque additions, but much of the art work is modern. Take a look:

From modern to ancient: a short walk from the royal palace through the parks surrounding it rewards you with an incongruous site: the ancient Egyptian Temple of Debod. Seems when Egypt was building the Aswan High dam, several ancient temple complexes were scheduled to be flooded. Spain donated to save the temples, and Egypt rewarded them by deconstructing one and moving it to Spain. It now sits in a park with an overlook of the parklands of the royal estate, Madrid’s suburbs, and sunset every evening.

We know we only scratched the surface of Madrid’s offerings. There’s shopping on the Gran Via, matches for Real Madrid, and so much more art, architecture, and culture. We’ll certainly look to visit again, as it is a convenient hub for travel in Spain. One final note: even in May, the daytime sun was quickly pushing the “unbearable” level, so hats, sunscreen, and extra hydration are a must. Or just plain your visit cafe-to-cafe, alternating between cañas (small beers) and Aquarius electrolyte water!

* Yes, I know better. It turns out, I finally figured out how I was duped. I had long ago gone to the fake website, realized it and backed out. When the day came to buy my tickets, Google helpfully highlighted the result because I had been there before, so I mistook it for the real website. Not helpful, but a learning experience.

Affordability, part three

In parts one and two, we addressed the feeling that the American dream is unaffordable, while demonstrating the data doesn’t support that feeling. So what gives? Hidden in that data are some points which illuminate the challenge. First, everyone is better off over the last fifty years, but some groups are “mo-better” as they say than others. While the data are conflicted whether there are some more poor or lower income people, all data agree that the rise in the upper-income or rich tier is much greater than the rise in poor or lower income one. Both come at a cost to the size of the middle class.

Now take that data and compare it to the population and the economic environment. Younger people are blissfully unaware of the economic challenges other generations faced, just as they are unaware of history in general. When confronted with the inflation, unemployment, or Treasury rates I witnessed when I was their age, they simply stare: it doesn’t compute. Setting aside whose fault that is, the fact remains: they feel cheated, and also feel distinctly put upon by “the system.”

What younger cohorts are aware of is the life-styles of the rich & famous or at least the influencers. Consider this: Back when I was growing up, if anybody bought something expensive or showed-off with something ostentatious, my mother would refer to them as “wanna-be Rockefellers” or just “Rockefellers” after the famously rich and famous New York clan. She had no experience with the Rockefellers and probably couldn’t name one of them; she just knew “about them” and viewed them as the epitome of rich people who no longer needed to care about money. It was a useful, if envious, metaphor.

Today, every young person has social media providing a nonstop drip of addictive examples of the lifestyles of everyone who has more than they do. And social media only highlights the more and better. And given most young people are just starting out, while the largest generation of baby-boomers is atop the population pyramid (with more time, more resources, just more), that’s just about everyone. Everyone is doing better than you are, with the subtext of “what’s wrong with you?”

Which is not to say everything is rosy. Gas prices really are high . . . but just as high as they were four years ago. Rents are high, but only in the most sought-after neighborhoods. Mortgage rates are up above the last decade, but about where they were in 2008. There have been spikes in gas, dairy, meat, chicken, coffee, but there have always been such spikes, and nothing today is different about that. What accounts for the fatalism among the younger generations?

“I thought getting a college degree was the answer to everything,” said Lucy Kinyanjui, 22, a senior at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. From a NY Times article on the bleak job prospects for college graduates.

One thing that is different is student loan debt. Nobody ever graduated with multiple decades of student loan debt payments back in the day, except doctors or lawyers; others were happy to finance them, and they were willing to pay. There weren’t too many defaults by those groups. Now it is common, and includes graduates with no useful skills. America rushed to push people into college, because college graduates earned more than non-college graduates, so if more people attended and graduated, everyone would be better off, right? No, because what made college graduates more financially successful was not the certificate, but the education. As universities competed to enroll this increasing stream of admissions, they (1) raised their tuition to astronomical rates (showing that even people with no formal economic education understand supply and demand), and (2) catered to their students with bespoke curricula that allowed them to avoid challenging knowledge in favor of comfortable pablum. The result was a sheepskin not worth the cost of a good wool sweater, and a ton of debt service.

But that’s only a small, if very vocal, part of the electorate. What about the vast majority who didn’t go to college, didn’t rack up debt, but still feels precarious? They feel precarious because they are. Part of the reason is the continued movement of blue-collar (and now white-collar) jobs out of the country to other places where they can be done just as well but at much less cost. It came for the auto workers first, but it’s after the paralegals now too. Add in advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and even more info-tech jobs are precarious! The trend is not necessarily fewer jobs, but different types of jobs. The introduction of the calculator didn’t do away with jobs requiring calculation, it made them more productive; the introduction of the car certainly spelled doom for buggy-whip manufacturers. This trend is obvious across multiple industries and professions: foreign competition and automation in general tend to create winners (who get very rich) and losers (who lose their jobs), and it’s rarely clear who will be who. That’s real uncertainty. But we’ve been through this before, with the sure-thing of a college degree, a Masters in Business, Law as a profession, coding, etc. And there are jobs and growth potential in health care, but that doesn’t interest younger generations. I don’t blame them: nursing the aging, entitled baby-boomers wouldn’t be my cup of tea, either.

This is why the AEI data in my last blog post was so revealing: there you see the growth in the rich and upper income groups, which grew faster than others, while the Treasury data shows they also accumulated more wealth (not just income) at the same time. Does the fact that Elon Musk exists, and controls a bazillion (technical term) dollars do anything to you? No. Perhaps it irritates you, or did once his politics changed. He didn’t inherit his wealth, didn’t extort it, didn’t win the lottery. He quit a PhD program to found an early internet company, making him rich when he sold that company for US $22 million at age 27 in 1999. His politics aside, he revolutionized how we launch satellites, took on and beat NASA, and is in the process of changing how we access the internet, anytime, anywhere. Maybe he is overvalued as they say in the stock market. But maybe he just did some remarkable things and monetized them. His wealth has no effect on you, though. Unless you want to compare yourself to him. Musk and others like him are that thin, light blue line on top of the AEI wealth chart. How much can they make? If they keep innovating, it is practically unlimited. How little can The Biggest Loser make? Zero. The difference only grows.

How does all this play out in the upcoming elections? Poorly for all sides. I contend President Trump won re-election because the electorate–especially low information people who vote infrequently–got fed up with the Biden administration’s wild economic policies (an Inflation Reduction Act that increases prices?) and decided to give Trump another try despite his well-known downsides. Team Harris did trot out some wild ideas to address the cost of living (remember the minority set-aside for black men to sell legal marijuana?), but there was no there, there. Trump and his team promised to reduce prices with no explanation. Promises beat incoherence.

Trump’s agenda-less approach to high prices has been ineffective and made those key swing voters very upset. If nothing changes in the next few months, they will swing once again in the mid-terms, giving the Democrats the House and perhaps the Senate. Promises beat incoherence again. Before liberals and progressives raise a cup of cheer, two cautions. First, whatever majorities they achieve will be small, and neither filibuster- nor veto-proof. Leaving them with the burden of addressing their promised fixes to affordability by either compromising with Trump (fat-chance) or simply performing legislative protest (my, how they do love chanting and singing). Neither is a good start to the 2028 Presidential campaign. But what if the Democrats put forward a progressive Abundance agenda? That’s the second caution. They don’t have one. Even after Abundance (the book) came out last year, it caused as much conflict as excitement on the left. The only thing that unites the left is hatred for Trump, which will be enough for the legislative elections, but bodes ill for presidential politics.

Which is a shame, as parts of the progressive abundance agenda could resolve some issues (like housing and energy production/distribution). I don’t see any quick or easy national solutions to “affordability.” More likely, the problem will ease over time. First, because younger generations realize the complaints aren’t having an effect. Second, people become inured to higher prices over time. I’ll always think a new car should cost US $2000 because I remember the VW Bug ads at $1999. I don’t like it, but I don’t expect to find new cars at that price anymore. Third, individuals will take matters into their own hands, by moving to less expensive areas, accepting longer commutes, taking less-exciting, more stable jobs. Fourth, believe it or not Millennials, the Boomers will die off, creating the largest wealth transfer in human history. Behave yourselves, and there might be a pot o’ gold at the end of their rainbows. Just don’t expect Uncle Sam to fix it in the next election cycle. Oh, and beware estate taxes. If you support them as a way to soak the rich, you just might find you taxed away your pot!

Affordability, part two

In part one, I focused on personal data and experience to address the main complaint of other generations in America today: the American dream is unaffordable. My thesis was that the problem may feel real to younger people, but the problem is one of perception and desire, not economics. In part two, let’s zoom out and look at nation-wide data to sharpen the point. In this post. I’ll rely on research by two distinguished, nonpartisan institutions: The Pew Research Center (hereafter Pew) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). I’ll point out the challenges to their data and interpretation, where pertinent.

Pew has been tracking the movement of people between the various income classes (lower, middle, upper) since 1970, using large, representative data samples. You can see their full report here. What they have found is the American middle class is shrinking! Both the lower and upper tiers have grown, but the upper income has grown the fastest. Note that no matter how you slice it, more Americans are better off than ever before. This does not mean everyone has done better; there are winners and losers hidden inside the data. An “upper income” person could have made disastrous financial decisions and ended up in the lower income tier, or a middle income person might have lost a job and done the same. But the overall trend is toward fewer people in the middle class, slightly more in the lower tier, many more in the upper tier. The Pew data also shows (in other charts) that the upper income tier is growing faster than the other two (I’ll come back to that).

One concern about this trend is that the erosion of the middle class removes a traditional “stepping stone,” eventually leaving just rich and poor, although the data only supports a 16% drop over fifty years, which is not exactly dramatic. One concern about the Pew data stems from their methodology and definitions. They use income as the measuring stick (which is fine), but they define middle income as income that is two-thirds to double that of the U.S. median household income, after incomes have been adjusted for household size. Lower income is the amount below that, upper income the amount above that.

That sounds–and is–reasonable. Here’s the problem, illustrated with a hypothetical: if tomorrow Bernie Sanders shook his magic money tree and rained dollars on every American, such that they doubled their income, the Pew data would remain unchanged. But the poor would not be poor, the middle class no longer middle. Thus if everybody gets equally richer, the Pew data still shows no improvement, because its definitions are relative. And one thing that is not in doubt is that Americans in general have more than ever before.

This explains so much . . . and ain’t AI fun?

AEI has done similar research starting from a 1979 baseline and using five tiers. Their full report is here. AEI’s critics point out it uses an absolute standard to determine its tiers, meaning it treats an income in New York City as equivalent to one in Newburgh, New York, when clearly they afford different levels of economic activity. Also, such a standard allows the highest levels to”pull up” the standard, making everyone seem better off when in fact the rich are doing the best.

AEI’s data also shows a hollowing out of the middle class, but clarifies that it is primarily as a result of movement up, not down. If you look at the “all-blue” chart (below), the lower-middle and poor/near-poor are both shrinking, while an all-new category of “rich” appears and is growing.

Finally the venerable Federal Reserve reported that wealth (not just income, but the sum total of all valuable things one owns) is growing across all the income tiers, but that the wealthiest have grown the fastest! This is very important data, as I believe it explains the differences between what the economic data shows, and how people feel about affordability.

From the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve

The dollars referenced in this final chart are constant ones, meaning they account for inflation (and thus the price rises that accompany it). What they show is that everybody has much more wealth than they did back in 2010, but a group of the super-wealthy (top .1%) and wealthy (top 1%) have done the best.

These three data sources do not make the argument that all is well with the wealth distribution in the United States. But they do demolish the notion that there is an affordability crisis reflected in the oft-repeated meme “the American dream in unaffordable.”

What accounts for the difference? I’ll address that in part three!

Affordability, part one

If you aren’t sick of the word “Affordability,” 2026 will give you a reason to be so. The issue of the cost-of-living is number one in voters’ minds in nearly every poll. The Democrats believe this is an issue which will guarantee them victory in this year’s mid-term elections and later in the 2028 Presidential contest. The Trump administration has varied between calling it a hoax and suggesting things aren’t as bad as they seem. I recently read an interesting New York Times investigation about why young adults in America today think life is unaffordable. I would quote directly from the headline, but in case you don’t know, online headlines change, regularly. So here’s the article, and I insist you give it a quick read. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

The article failed to convince me. Not that the young people who were featured believe life is unaffordable; that much is manifestly clear. I don’t believe their feelings are factually correct. Here’s why.

In 1982, when I was released from the institution (some say graduated from the Academy, whatever), I had a steady job lined up with annual pay and allowances of US $17,000 (and I still have the 1040 to prove it). Yes, I did have free medical care, which was worth exactly what we paid for it. If you want to translate all that to today in constant dollars, it would come in right around US $100,000. So back then I was in a similar situation to the youngsters in the Times bemoaning today’s affordability.

What was different was my spouse was still attending college (a course here and there at first, due to our finances), and we had two children in the first three years of our marriage. No child-care dilemma there! So that “I’m waiting until I can afford to get married or have kids” refrain leaves me cold. Marriage or raising children is almost never a financially advantageous move, nor should it be measured that way. It reminds me of the cranky old man who says he doesn’t go to see a doctor because there are so many sick people there. Misses the point entirely.

What else was different back then? Inflation was coming down from 12.5% in 1980 and 8.9% in 1981. It would bottom out just around 4% for the next several years due to a good, old-fashioned recession. You know, the kind with an unemployment rate of over 10%! Compare that to today’s 3% inflation and 4% unemployment. Oh, and the federal funds rate (which drives mortgages and credit card rates) was over 10%, double today’s approximate 5%. Anybody who says the average young person’s economic outlook is worse today is either accessing medical cannabis, or didn’t learn any recent history.

So what causes today’s young adults to feel so aggrieved? Times are tough, and there is great uncertainty. But to believe life is so bad you have to move in with your parents? You can’t get married? You can’t afford to have children? What gives?

Housing

First, housing prices have skyrocketed, making that initial move into a home much more difficult. Not impossible, but certainly more difficult. Owning your own home puts you on the plus-side of the investment ledger, starting you on the way to financial independence. But you have to get that starter home, first. There are many starter home options available. But they’re not where today’s young adults want to live. In the Times article, one young single-man from Atlanta observes he can’t afford to live in his parent’s neighborhood, and the places he could afford to buy would involve a ninety minute commute and “he does not want to live that way.”

This is the essence of the home ownership challenge: you don’t start with the place you want, you start with the one you can afford. We started renting outside the beltway near Washington DC. Since we had one car, I took an hour-long commuter bus to/from the Pentagon each day. The only good thing to come from that was I learned how to get on a bus, fall asleep, then wake at my designated stop. To this day I don’t know how I did that. When we decided to buy, we had to settle for a fixer-upper townhouse even further out. We spent weekends painting and repairing the place, with our young children in one room with toys to keep occupied. They didn’t want to move there when we finished getting it ready, as they envisioned living there being just like those locked-in-a-room weekends!

It was far from ideal, but it got us started in a series of moves which eventually got us the nice suburban homestead with a big yard, then a smaller, closer-in townhouse appropriate for empty-nesting, and finally a very close-in concierge apartment for aspiring expats. Sometimes we made money on the house exchanges, sometimes we didn’t. But we had great places to live, which changed and improved over time. You don’t get to start next door to where you want to finish.

Adding to this is the desire to live in urban areas, which are more exciting and far more expensive. This is a lifestyle choice that hampers all others. Especially with the possibility of remote work (an option only available on scifi shows in the 1980s), living in a suburb or even a distant small town is a practical possibility. But it won’t be exciting. Cities in general have done a lousy job creating additional housing or rental properties in their urban centers, and there is little evidence that is about to change (Mayor Mamdani/the abundance agenda or not).

Social Media

Second, today’s young adults are force-fed unrealistic expectations in their social media diet. It’s rare for any influencer or even “friend” to cover how bad their job is, how crappy their relationships are, or how desperately poor they really are. Nope, on social media, everything is avocado-toast-on-the-way-to-hot-yoga-before-scoring-those-Taylor-Swift-tickets-while-planning-that-Caribbean-adventure-tour. Perhaps when meeting ftf (face-to-face) you might get more honesty from real friends, but who has time for that?

Those non-stop positive vibes online create a great FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) which encourages young adults to chase ephemeral experiences as a means of alleviating the sadness at not being able to achieve the more important, longer lasting ones (owning a house, getting married, having kids). As the young Atlantan interviewed in the Times put it, “There’s a sense of futility at this point. I’m not going to rough it for five years to save for a house I’ll never be able to afford. So why not live my life the way I want to?” The Times even mentions a University of Chicago study which finds that such house-despondent young adults are more likely to spend money on leisure pursuits or risky investments. Which is another way of saying they are making conscious choices which preclude them from obtaining the things they really want to get. Funny how it sounds both judgmental and accurate when you put it that way.

Options

Third, most people would agree that having more options is good. But it can be bad. If your options constantly expand, they can change from options to requirements. Perhaps you’ve heard it put “needs versus wants.” Back in Reagan World, cable television had only a few channels (cable news, sports, music videos being the most popular) and cost about US $10 a month. This in itself was an increase in options over the 1960s three over-the-air broadcast networks and some part-time local public station. We were forced to watch a limited variety of “hit” shows like Dallas or M*A*S*H, which only aired once a week, with a season that started in September and ended in April. And if you missed a show, reruns weren’t available until Summer! Somehow, an entire nation survived.

Today, there is an unlimited supply of televised material, mostly dreck. There are apps to help consumers understand when they might have multiple subscriptions to the same service, or zombie subscriptions they simply never cancelled. Needless to say, almost everybody is spending more than the US$33 (in constant dollars) equivalent to the 1980 cable cost. We have options to the point we can no longer rationally choose among them. Now you hear about a hot new show, subscribe to the service, binge-watch it, then move on to the next recommendation, show, and subscription.

And here I have only touched on televised material as an example. Want on-demand music? Check. Want on-demand meals from different restaurants delivered at the same time? Check. Want robo-drones flying your latest Amazon package to your door within the hour? Check. The problem with these options is that the convenience becomes addictive. What once was a cool, occasional option now becomes a way of life, and the costs add up.

Finally, I question the reality portrayed by the youth in the Times article for one more reason: my anecdotes, or as I like to call them, my grown daughters. They are slightly beyond the young adult stage described by the Times, but as leading-edge Millennials they matured through many of the same conditions. They followed very different paths, but got married and had kids quickly by today’s standards. One did the stay-at-home Mom routine evolving into part-time office work, the other followed a professional career path. They and their spouses economized, made rational (not exciting) choices on where to live and work, and had purchased homes before they were each thirty. They somehow eluded all the angst and bad choices which were haunting the Times’ subjects. They stand as stark counter-examples to all those who say it just can’t be done anymore.

To which I would respond, “it can’t be done easily today, and it never could.” The important things in life (a loving spouse, kids, a home of your own) are both costly and priceless. You either recognize that and sacrifice to achieve them, or you don’t achieve them. If you choose the latter option, it’s not on the generation ahead of you, the economy, or bad luck. It’s on you.

Alicante: Roman & Medieval

Touring around the town, as one can do during an extended stay, you get the opportunity to dig a little deeper into the local history and culture. Here are some gems we uncovered while doing so in Alicante.

Settlement in the region goes back to the fifth century BCE (before the Christian Era). The climate, sea access, and fertile soils made it a natural place to settle. As was often the case around the Mediterranean Sea, things really took off once the Romans arrived. The original Roman town, called Lucentum lies stop a hill just a couple kilometers north of the current town. Oddly, it lies smack in the middle of a sprawling suburban village, setting up the juxtaposition of ancient ruins surrounded by modern villas and giant housing complexes.

The site today; the same dichotomy of modern and ancient extends 360 degrees

The government has done a fine job preserving the outlines of the entire original Roman settlement, and even explaining how the remaining outlines of the buildings indicate they were used. All the critical pillars of Roman society are present: the gates, the fortifications, the street layout, the forum, the baths, the sewer and fresh water collection systems.

I’m not sure if I ever saw this before: they color coded the gravel in each building to indicate what they think that structure was used for

Remains of Roman baths. Note the bricks which supported an elevated, heated floor

Roman towers in the distance, where farmers could head if a slave-rading party approached

The site had a small (three Euro) entrance fee, was well signed in Spanish, Valencian (a relative of Catalan), and English. It was an easy walk from the local tram station, and of course there were bars nearby to rehydrate with a caña or aperol!

On another sunny day, we decided to trek to the top of Mount Benacantil, the rocky top upon which Santa Barbara castle sits. Last year, we took an interior elevator to the top, so this year we thought we might chance hiking up, if we left mid-morning. We got lucky in that it was an overcast day, but the hike still stretched us.

We started down there, and this is half way up!

The castle is as imposing as ever:

I couldn’t help but notice the artillery pieces still held a perfect gunsight on the port:

They added some new features, including a video display of the history of the city, as well as some additional info on the siege of 1708-09. The latter makes a great story. During the war of the Spanish Succession, England & Austria took sides against France & Spain. The English occupied Alicante, until a French force landed and forced them to retreat up to the redoubts of Santa Barbara castle, which were impregnable to bombardment. The French Commander informed his English counterpart that his forces had dug a mine, and were going to ignite it and blow up the keep protecting the castle. The English commander decided it was a ruse, and refused to send a representative (under a flag of truce) to inspect the threatened mine. Instead he began digging down (from the castle) a counter-mine, to intersect the French effort and destroy it. On the designated ultimatum date, the English commander held a soiree at his headquarters, designed to show his complete confidence that the French effort could not succeed.

Note the two dark eyes and nose; the lost section of the castle is to the right

The French set off their explosives, but instead of damaging the exterior wall, it took down a significant chunk of the mountain top, killing most of the English officers and raining down chunks of rock, destroying over 400 homes in the city below. The surviving English garrison surrendered. Best of all, the explosion permanently changed the features of the rocky mountaintop, creating an image in stone called the face of “the Moor” (note: the castle was originally constructed by Moors when they controlled southern Spain).

Finally, I had noted in my research a teeny museum in the city center, the museo de belenes (Nativity Scene Museum). Free to access, but open only a few hours on a few days per week, this city government museum displays the artwork characteristic of Nativity scenes in Europe, and some from around the world. The tradition of Nativity scenes, marking the birth of Jesus, was probably started by St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th Century. It grew as a devotion across the continent and spread worldwide, involving both live recreations and small home displays of figurines. This museum features the latter, along with the characteristic artwork which evolved to cover other religious and secular historical scenes.

The Holy Family looking for the inn, set in the square outside Alicante. The church in the background is the Monastery of the Santa Faz we visited during a recent pilgrimage, and instantly recognizable to all locals.

Looking at the displays, I was reminded of the complaint some raise that Christians “white-wash” the semitic origins of their faith. That is, the characters are often depicted as white, even northern European figures. First off, it’s not true, as some of these figurines display. But the larger point is that everywhere that the evangelists spread the Gospel, they depicted the Lord (or the Virgin, or the Saints) in ways that make them relevant to the local population. When Christianity spread to Europe, that meant making the figures “look” that way, and even set Biblical scenes in modern (for each age) setting, indicating Christ’s story is eternally relevant. When European missionaries went to the New World and Asia, they did the same thing, not to mention how many different ways the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared in local guise. Sometimes people confuse being culturally relevant with cultural appropriation.

None of these excursions would be “must-see” visits, but they were all easy, informative, and enjoyable. Best of all, we could drop them into our daily routine when we wanted, so we never felt rushed, nor did we think “is this how I want to spend my limited time?” Just another example of the benefits of slow travel.

Caminar & Comer

When we travel, we try to check out local news sources to find out what the locals are up to. Sometimes it’s a dry well, other times we strike gold. This past week was the latter here in Alicante.

Beginning the procession from inside the Co-cathedral

First, Judy saw mention of a local fiesta about the “Santa Faz.” The Holy Face? So I looked it up, and sure enough, there is a monastery of the Holy Face in the greater Alicante area, dating back to the 15th Century. According to local lore, in that period, a monk from Rome smuggled part of the Veil of Veronica to Alicante to spare it from whomever was sacking Rome at that time. The Veil of Veronica? A Catholic legend that a woman named Veronica wiped Jesus’ face (as he walked the cross up to Golgotha), thereby receiving an image of his passion on the veil.

Mel Gibson’s take on the story

There’s no contiguous evidence for Veronica’s story, and some theologians believe even her name is simply a mistranslation referring to the veil (Vera icon = true image in Latin/Greek). But veils purporting to be the true image have been around since the 6th Century, and at one point the Vatican collected up the many versions to try to establish some sort of registry. Unfortunately, before the work was done, the accounting was lost, so no one knows which was which. They subsequently found paths to different places like Alicante, where they continued to be venerated. The Church has approved worship of the Holy Face (as an icon of Christ’s passion) without going any further toward validating any of the individual veils.

Locals in Alicante believe the veil has miraculous qualities, and they honor it annually with a procession from the Co-Cathedral in the city back to the monastery. The images you see in my photos/videos is NOT the veil itself. Too many people tried to touch or grab it over the centuries, and it suffered from public exposure. So the religious authorities constructed a tableau to put it in for further public exposition. The procession happens every year on the second Thursday after Easter. It starts inside the Cathedral, with prayers and a welcome from the alcalde (mayor), as the event is well-coordinated with the local authorities. The pilgrims carry cane poles with sprigs of rosemary signifying their status. It then winds through the narrow streets of the old town until reaching a major modern highway, one-side of which closed. About halfway (5 kilometers) to the monastery, local businesses set up booths offering snacks, wine, and freebies (note the many orange baseball caps, for example).

Arriving at the monastery , there is a full-scale fiesta with booths, carnival rides, etc. We inched our way closer to the main door, and found an outdoor Mass, and the chance to receive Holy Communion. We didn’t stay for the tour inside the monastery, and instead found one of the special public busses set up to take us back to the city center. As we rode home, we could still see families on the early stages of the walk! The government estimates about 330,000 people processed this year!

This adventure was the Caminar (walking) portion of the week; now for the Comer (eating).

Around the same time, the Alicante city government also sponsored “Alacroqueta,” a competition to see which local restaurant serves the best croquettes. Alicante views itself as a national leader in croqueta cuisine. Croqueta began as a solution to leftovers: take whatever didn’t get eaten, form it up into little balls (maybe add a little sauce), dip in batter, fry it up, and serve it again. Over time, they became a go-to form of tapas, the little snacks served alongside drinks in Spanish bars.

As a form of marketing mixed with self-promotion, the city sponsored a public snack-off. Fourteen finalists (after a first round competition earlier in the year) were selected to sell their best croqueta creation at this event. If you bought even one, you got a QR code to vote for best croqueta. The competition went on for four days, and we visited early on Saturday before the lunch rush.

Among the competitors we tried ones filled with kimchi, jamon iberico/mushroom/truffles, and Spanish chorizo. Each croqeuta cost two euros, and drinks were three or four (very inexpensive). We only lasted two rounds of tasting, because while the croquetas are small, they are very rich and fried, thus very filling. A tapas crawl (similar to a bar crawl) here comprises walking from bar to bar, trying their signature tapa with a caña (small beer) or small glass of wine while standing in the bar, then moving on to the next bar. For the locals, the standing and walking and waiting while chatting with friends is part of the experience, while tourists are easy to spot for ordering many different tapas while staying in the same bar.

In both cases (the caminar and the comer) it was fun to join locals enjoying their town.

The President, the Pope, and pfffftt!

You might have heard the President and the Pope were openly feuding recently. Let’s observe factually what happened, then how it was covered. The main points?

The United States and Israel engaged in offensive military operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Pope gave his “Urbi et Orbi” speech.
The President made several comments on TruthSocial disputing the Pope.
The Pope responded to press questions about the President’s remarks.
The President and Vice President made several more comments about the Pope’s comments.
Several American Cardinals defended the Pope and further criticized the American administration.

These are simple statements of fact, without editorial comment. How they played out, and how they were played by the media, are more like a remake of Mean Girls. For reasons we shall see, the facts are important, because they show how the truth was distorted for various political perspectives.

From the top, the US and Israel engaged in offensive military operations against Iran. While they achieved surprise, it was neither a surprise attack nor the beginning of the war, which as I detailed in an earlier blog post, has been going on for forty-seven years. The fact the US never responded to Iranian provocations is the reason they were so surprised this time. Whether the war is just, and whether it is wise, are questions which can be debated.

Around Christmas and Easter every year, the Pope gives his state-of-the-world speech, entitled “Urbi et Orbi” (Latin for “to the city and the world”). The speech is actually a blessing, and the tradition goes back to the 13th century. In the modern era, Popes generally highlight the need for peace, as there are almost always some form of warfare afoot. Recent Popes even took to listing each and every conflict, specifically condemning such violence.

In a different take this year (you can read the whole message here, it’s quite short), Pope Leo XIV decried war in general without naming conflicts. Pointedly, he said, “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace!” and “We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people.” There is nothing in this statement that directly attacks the administration, and it is not political. In fact, by the standard of such messages, it was quite plain.

Interestingly, just after the Pope issued his message, a news story broke that the Undersecretary of War (a Catholic) had summoned the Papal Nuncio (the Pope’s Ambassador to the United States) back in January and threatened him to “get on board” with American foreign policy. I’ll skip detailing the reasons I called this one fake immediately, and sure enough, the participants quickly and totally demolished the “controversy.” Both the administration and the Vatican have termed the report “highly distorted” and a “fabrication.” Yes, they met, and yes, they argued. They even had a frank-and-earnest exchange as they say in diplomatic terms. This story died a quick death, but we’ll return to it later.

On April 7th, President Trump issued his infamous “a whole civilization will die tonight” text; the Pope responded the next day, calling the threat “truly unacceptable.” Once again, President Trump ignored the dictates of wisdom and decorum in issuing such a statement. It was unwise because it was flippant, and a leader should be unmistakably clear when issuing threats. For example, Truman and Churchill issued the Potsdam declaration in 1945, explaining what “unconditional surrender” the allies demanded of the Imperial Japanese regime, and they ended it with this statement: “The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” In a historical note, Truman knew the atomic bomb had been successfully tested days earlier; this was no idle threat on his part. Nor is a threat a war crime, but that’s a blog for another day.

The Pope was of course correct in criticizing the President’s language, and the matter should have stopped there, as a ceasefire was shortly thereafter announced. But the Pope had also called for a Peace Vigil on April 11th, and there he sharpened his criticism, but still without naming President Trump or the United States. He did say, “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!” and “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death” adding that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” Press and some Vatican sources highlighted that these last statements were directly targeted at comments from War Secretary Hegseth.

Never one to take a deescalatory ramp on social media, President Trump vented in full fury, first saying the Pope was “weak on crime” and “terrible” and suggesting Leo is only the Pope because Trump is the President. As if to move from the sublime to the ridiculous, Trump posed an AI-generated comic depicting himself in a pose eerily reminiscent of the Risen Lord, healing the sick and giving hope to all. After massive criticism from Christians of all stripes (including MAGA), he deleted it without apology, and said he thought it depicted him as a doctor (spawning even more great memes).

Not to be left out, Vice President Vance took up station as Trump’s “Catholic” wing-man, suggesting the Pope needed to be careful in talking about theology and should focus on morality rather than political strategy. All those involved would be wise to be careful in their pronouncements here, friend, but sadly that’s not the case. And all political strategy is eventually about morality, dontchano? And as if to prove both points, the three most-prominent American Catholic Cardinals suddenly appeared on 60 Minutes, defending the Pope and rebuking the US President and Vice President. But they couldn’t stop there, as Cardinal McElroy went on to declare the US action against Iran is “not a just war.”

Phew. And those are just the facts, with a few observations of my own thrown in. What are we to make of it? First off, all press coverage of the Vatican is highly suspect. Most of the media view religion as some sort of weird throwback, and they don’t even have the language to describe what is happening when they cover it. If you watch the press cover a Papal conclave, they treat it like a political convention, which is just odd. Second, the timing coincidence of the Pope’s messages, the manufactured story about a Pentagon confrontation, and the 60 Minutes follow-up are at the very least suspicious (I’ll explain). Finally, one would think political leaders would have learned by now it is unwise to mess with the Pope.

The Press. Media love confrontation, and they rushed back and forth between the Pope and President figuratively asking “did you hear what she said about you?” If you believe Pope Francis said “who am I to judge” about a homosexual priest, you probably fell for one of the media’s biggest mis-characterizations. Yet they continue to repeat it. They fanned this latest controversy and made it worse than it ever was. They are the ones reporting “Vatican sources” explaining what the Pope meant, when the Pope said what he said. You need only note that when things got really touchy, the Pope said he “never attacked the President” and “doesn’t do politics,” just “proclaims the Gospel.” Period. End of sentence. The Holy Spirit doesn’t need spin.

The Coincidences. It’s probably not a true conspiracy, but I would love for an investigative journalist to pull on these threads. The FREEP (Free Press) story about the Pentagon confrontation happened in January, but suddenly broke public right after the Pope’s Urbi et Orbi message at Easter. The story was flogged nationally by Christopher Hale, a proud Democratic National Committee member and former candidate for Congress with zero Vatican expertise, who nonetheless writes a blog entitled “Letters from Leo.” Oh, and those “Vatican sources” made sure and point out that the Pope had just met with David Axelrod, Obama’s eminence gris, before this current back-n-forth. It is not a secret there are those in the Curia (the Vatican permanent bureaucracy) and even the US church hierarchy who detest President Trump. It is not at all outlandish to suggest some of these coincidences were not, well, coincidental.

Which is not to say the Pope and the President don’t have real, serious differences of opinion. The Pope has remained non-specific, sticking to the Gospel, and avoiding direct criticism of the President or the specific US military activity. How do I know that? If the Pope had indeed determined the US action in Iran was an unjust war, he would be duty-bound to declare it as such. He would not be beating around the bush or speaking elliptically: prophets (ie., people who see and tell the truth) must do so. The Almighty does not take kindly to prophets who don’t do their job, Jonah! And that would entail the twenty-five percent of the US armed forces who are Catholic–including even more of the senior military and intelligence ranks–having to choose whether to refuse orders or violate their faith. It’s the theological equivalent of the nuclear option, and not only does the Pope solely wield it, he is required to use it. And he hasn’t.

Meanwhile, the press continues to beat the confrontation drum. Legacy media headlines (NYT: ‘Woe to Those Who Manipulate Religion,’ Pope Says Amid Standoff With Trump, Washington Post: Pope Leo decries ‘tyrants’ ravaging world, days after insults from Trump) highlight a few lines from an address the Pope gave to a war-ravaged area in Cameroon which has somehow found a way to make peace among neighbors. Again, he never mentions Trump or the US war in Iran. It’s another off-ramp, even if the press would prefer it was a crash test. Trump may take this off-ramp: today he said “I’m not fighting with him” about the Pope, while claiming he (Trump) is “all about the Gospel, I’m about it as much as anyone can be.” I guess that’s a Trumpian step in the correct direction.

Finally, the Apology. Back in Ye Good Ole Days, Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV got in a feud with Pope Gregory VII about who got to appoint bishops (Pope or King). Gregory excommunicated Henry (threatening his legitimacy and thus his crown), then made him wait in the snow barefoot for three days before pardoning him. In our era, asked whether he might do something for Catholics in the Soviet Union as a sop to the Pope, Josef Stalin asked, “The Pope? How many (military) divisions does he have?” Decades later, Pope (St.) John Paul II metaphorically answered the question by helping liberate Poland with nary a soldier, beginning the process that dissolved that “Soviet Union.” When Popes speak, they often do so gently, but that doesn’t mean they are “WEAK.” The Pope may speak softly, but he carries a big . . . cross.

channeling Crockadile Dundee: “That’s not a cross, this is a cross!”

I agree with Bishop Robert Barron, who said Trump owes the Pope an apology. I doubt it will ever happen. But that’s all there is to this in the end. The President thinks he’s ending a fifty year nuclear threat. The Pope wants all to live in peace, not war. Some people who don’t like Trump will do anything to poison the well, and some on the MAGA side would just as soon worship Trump as Jesus. The press loves a good fight. Are you not entertained?

Just another dia

Marriage (and life in general) is a series of compromises. My dear wife would prefer to be at home, living her routine, every day, for the rest of our days. That works great for us during college football season (September-January), as I too like to be where I don’t have to search to see where games might be televised. I can access the Firestick, pull up YouTube TV, and select four games to watch simultaneously. Three times each Saturday. And some people think there is no God!

But starting in February, I get the travel itch. That’s not quite true. Starting in February I get the travel itch for next year, as by February all this year’s travel is planned, paid for, and ready to go. Judy is game for the annual exodus, but because we’re traveling, I get a chance to compromise. For example, we try to avoid those “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” type trips, endlessly hauling luggage up-n-down European stairwells because the Romans didn’t invent the elevator. We try to stay longer when we go somewhere. We try to avoid jet-lag. and most importantly, we try to live wherever we land within our home, expat schedule.

“What’s the point of traveling if you’re going to live like you’re at home,” you might ask. Why, that’s the point of this blog post!

Living by your typical schedule gives you a sense of normalcy in unfamiliar places. Life on the road, even a planned, extended trip, can quickly become unsettling. A rail strike in Italy, which doesn’t even get covered by the local press anymore, can mean a missed airline flight. A grabby cabbie can lunge at your fistful of dollars in Istanbul, because you don’t have enough Lira (true story). Worst of all, you might get sick. Anyone who has been sick far away from home knows the feeling: what do I do now? Visiting Oxford many years ago for an executive seminar (thanks, US taxpayers!), I got a terrible head cold. I mean snot running out my nose in a torrent. I asked the professor of my seminar where I could get some pseudoephedrine to address the symptoms. She looked at me like I was trying to score some crack. Turns out it was a controlled substance back then in the UK (now too in the US). She said Brits just go to the local apothecary, which I then did. Where, it turns out, they offered me an herbal tea and some smelly thing for a chest rub. Luckily, my wife was arriving from the States, and she smuggled in a box of extra-strength Sudafed.

But setting aside the things that go terribly or mostly wrong, just small things can add up. The coffee is not quite right, or the dining hours off, or the microwave controls appear to be from the Soyuz system. People stay up late partying next door, or don’t form a queue at the bakery, or have a trash and recycling system more complicated than voting in the States. Eventually you can figure these things out, and life sets into a slightly-different routine. But not if you don’t settle in place, first. So we try to keep our home schedule, with nice local excursions to that schedule. What’s that look like here in Alicante, Spain?

I still get up between 6-6:30 am. You can’t get up before the dawn for forty years and not establish a pattern. So that’s my quiet time, to pray, to fix some coffee, to start my daily reading. I wake Judy at 7:30, with a cup of fresh brew and a song. Always the same song. I tried to change it once and never got a verse done before she asked what I was doing. I return to my reading (and another cup) while she has her prayer and quiet time. Around 8-8:30 she makes breakfast. Here’s where small changes come in. We have a minimal kitchen here, and plentiful Spanish foods, so we generally have eggs with jamon iberico (in its many forms), toast with olive oil and salmorejo ( a cold garlicky soup the locals also pour onto the breakfast bread). Judy has the same with what I call her “nuts and twigs”: cottage cheese or yogurt with chia seeds and powdered bat-wing, eye of newt, and grass from the plaza next door. I may be wrong about the last few ingredients. Maybe. I don’t want to ask.

My breakfast, this time with black beans, too

Between 9-9:30, at home we would head to the gym we built in our basement. Here, we joined a local gym for the two months of our stay, €30 per person per month, no sign-up fee and no long-term commitment. We go six days a week, with a schedule that includes daily stretching and cardio, and weights with rest days in between. I have to say that we see the same set of twenty-something gym-bros and -bras there everyday, so I have no idea what they all do for a living. We’ll be at the gym until 11:30-noon, then back to the apartment.

Lunch presents the first real choice of the day: do we eat out or will Judy cook it? Remember, we only eat breakfast and lunch, so cooking our big meal of the day is no small commitment. Judy usually plans a day or two out in advance, so sometimes there is a chicken breast or pork filet that needs eating, other times not. Fresh Broccoli, or seasonal vegetables: right now it’s asparagus and artichoke season, so they’re fresh, inexpensive, and in every tienda. I’ll have a few restaurant options to choose from if that’s what we lean toward this day. Not all of them will be tapas, croquetas, or even Spanish cuisine; we just hit a pizzeria because it advertised real Napolitano pizza, and sure enough, the chef was from Naples. There are sushi, Thai, Poke, Argentine, Chinese, and Arab restaurants within blocks.

After lunch, we usually go do our grocery shopping. When in Europe, shop like the Europeans: go to the store every day and get fresh bread, veggies, milk, etc. Carry them home in a little trolley. Yes, they do have giant all-in-one stores like Costco, but most people shop in the store down the street. The crazy thing is, everything in there will be fresh. When you walk into a 7-11, you expect processed and frozen food; you don’t eat the prepared stuff unless you have a death-wish. Here, even the prepared foods were made this morning, and usually by someone who really took pride in making that little ensalada rusa. And they’re good, and not expensive.

Because it’s close to the apartment and we shop for a only a few things, it’s a quick trip. We often take a short walk around town after meals. Between 1:00 and 2:00 we face a second choice: is there some place or event we want to visit? Via walking or the tram, we can get anywhere in town in under ten minutes, so we can pop over to a museum, a store, a display and be back before siesta time. Or we can always go another day, and siesta time beckons sooner. Siesta is real thing, but it doesn’t always involve sleeping in the middle of the day. Well, it does for us, but in general in Mediterranean cultures, it’s the hottest part of the afternoon, when it is best not to go out, or if you must, to run a few errands before returning to work. In Mexico the school day is a half day, so parents go home to greet their children coming home or to send the second shift off to school. Here in Spain, many more stores stay open as a convenience, but some banks and government offices close. In the Spring it seems a luxury, but in Summer, it’s a necessity.

Judy can easily put in two hours of siesta, falling asleep to her True Crime podcasts. How anybody can fall asleep to the creepy voice of the narrator saying, “he looked normal, but that machete he was sharpening had a well-worn blade” I will never understand. I take my patented Pentagon nap. Back in the day, when I was still in uniform and worked on the Joint Staff in an extremely stressful job supporting the nuclear arms talks, we all used to work insane hours. My bosses didn’t care how long we spent at the POAC: the Pentagon Officers (and civilians) Athletic Club. On really bad days, I would head down there, switch into my swim trunks, shower next to the pool, then sit down in one of the pool-side lounge chairs (yes, they really had these, although the pool was underground!) and close my eyes. Forty-five minutes later (without a smartwatch, timer, or alarm clock), I would sit up, shower and get back in uniform, and “resume the suckage” as we used to say. Thus is my siesta today.

I’ll wake Judy between 4:30 and 5:00 pm so we can indulge a guilty pleasure: watching the ABC evening news and The Five on Fox. Depending on what time zone we’re in, these shows may be live, taped, or even from the previous day (most often the case in Europe). It’s strictly to see what the legacy media is saying, and if you haven’t ever watched The Five, I recommend it to you. The panelists (mostly regulars) genuinely like each other, so the banter is spontaneous and authentic. They really do mix it up, and there are genuine representatives of different viewpoints: MAGA, trad GOP, libertarian, liberal/progressive, and comic. But there’s clearly a right-leaning take.

In the early evening, we may go for another walk. I’ll do some writing, either for this blog or for a book. We both review social media, but try to limit it by setting a time to “watch our shows” normally at 8:00 pm. At that time, we pull up some new or interesting series on Britbox, Acorn, Netflix, Amazon Prime, or other streaming services, watching however many episodes fit in before 10:00 pm and bed.

Go to sleep, rinse and repeat.

The one major difference is Sunday, where we skip the gym and instead go to church. Oh, and Monday, when we cut into siesta by getting a massage at the Thai parlor down the street.

Last week, I reported on the afternoon and late evening processions we attended, which throw this schedule off, but are of course part of the reason for travelling in the first place. This week, there’s another pilgrimage and a croquetas competition, so those will find a place on the schedule. The nice thing is we don’t have to feel rushed. It started to sprinkle today as we left church, and we hesitated: do we skip the archaeology museum for another day? We chanced it, and the threatened rain didn’t materialize. And we got that amazing pizza afterward.

We were never going to be comfortable adopting the Spanish eating schedule. As I write this, I’m watching the families out in the plaza across from our balcony apartment, and they’re sitting in the square, talking and playing games, working up an appetite for dinner, because it’s only 8:00 pm and it’s still quite light outside. They’ll be out until 10:00 pm, kids included. Works for them; would make both of us sick. But other aspects are easier to adopt. Doing small loads of laundry (we’re lucky our apartment has both a small washer and dryer), shopping daily, walking everywhere.

So any given day may seem a lot like home, with some more Spanish flavor (as in the meals) or be as different as attending a pilgrimage walk of several miles with several hundred thousand of our closest co-religionists (coming soon to a blog near you). Not overwhelming, but also different from staying at an all-inclusive or doing group tours. We probably wouldn’t be able to pull this off without our functional Spanish-language capabilities, although a tourist city like Alicante has plenty of English speakers and businesses with little Union Jack flags in the windows (English-friendly). But signing up for a gym, or shopping for clothes, or asking the museum ticket office for a special combination ticket? All that’s en español.

So that’s our approach to slow travel, and it works for us. If you have your own way to approach travel, share it in the comments!