Leaving California

They say travel is enlightening. I got a better understanding of California by being there, however briefly. It has the highest effective poverty rate, the largest gap between rich and poor, the most homeless, the most drug abuse, high crime, poor schools despite one of the highest per pupil expenditures in the nation and diseases not seen in this country for a century are reappearing, mostly diseases carried by lice and fleas like typhus. But seeing it firsthand brings perspective. It’s still a beautiful prosperous state, on or near the coast. The eastern part and the central valley are incredibly poor. Peggy said as we drove through “I feel like we are back in South America”. It feels like Mexico. There are men selling tacos and burritos from carts on the side of the highway, people walking and riding bikes, trash everywhere, abandoned cars and homes. This stands in dramatic contrast to the coastal areas where the ultra rich entertainment industry types and techies live. I think it’s the people in between who are leaving. The family who started the ModVan company we bought from were transferred to Ca. roughly 20 years ago from Atlanta. I asked how they like it, “we like the climate” she replied. I’m reading 1984 on this trip. If the middle class does disappear the state will resemble the dystopia of that book, lots of proles and a smaller class of “the party” with little in between. Here is some of the beauty of California, the Santa Barbara mountains, a straight ridge of snowy mountains rising abruptly above the scrub, semi-desert landscape creating a separate, distinct eco-zone…….