Dakota

The meaning of the West

Today I am in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I’m sitting in a renovated municipal building called the Town Hall Inn, in the city of Lead. I’ve already been to Mount Rushmore and I will travel through the state until Sunday. It has been a bracing experience.

The effect I have been searching for is already evident in my thinking, which is to consider at length the nature of the effect of city living on our character and skillset. To that end I am re-reading Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose and also Comanches by T. R. Fehrenbach. I have had the opportunity to be awestruck at the mighty Missouri River having travelled hundreds of miles across South Dakota on Highway 90.

I will be giving a panel talk next month on artificial intelligence and I aim to be instructive on what it is without being a frightening scold. But it must be said that I intend to remind people of their vulnerability to the capability of all digital technology to render decisions about the digitized aspects of our lives, which now includes our language. So how much we are actually leveraged by what we commit to the interwebz is of critical importance on a going forward basis. There is enough compute power to, as I’ve mentioned before, calculate every credit card purchase you’ve ever made in a fraction of a second. But is that your soul? No. Have you made it your passport into a good American life? Maybe.

Even trying to remember the name of Horace Mann, I am reminded of how much I depend on computers to remember things for me. Yet this wild country and the individuals I am meeting here remind me of my human dimension. And of course visiting the national monument here reminded me of the content of our national character. How will the next generation measure that? With AI? With social media? I remind us of Horace Mann here:

Jason sold me a pipe and a custom mix of tobacco. He has been working the store in Deadwood for about a year now. Although the name of the famous tobacconist owner escapes me, it was very pleasant to chat with Jason as he advised me. My grandfather smoke pipes. I want to walk in his shoes. Jason also told me a story about a caucasian midget who did 10 years in Folsom, grew up in Watts and was a leader of the Bloods.

Ambrose reminds me of the leverage American slavery had on both sides of the master / slave relationship owing to the traditions of Virginia plantation life and the inefficiencies of tobacco farming.

Kevin is a one-eyed comic who also plays the accordion. He’s a wonder with French and Scottish accents, and his schtick worked very well on me. He grew up in California and Wyoming, and busks with his partner who plays a sort of guitar I don’t quite recognize. Somehow Kevin reminds me of Ismo. He told me that the winters get so cold that they have their own special character - with 24 inches of snow every month from November to March. 30 below.

I did something I never did before which was shared a table with complete strangers in a hotel casino on the main drag of Deadwood. Tim and his wife drove 1600 kilometers from somewhere north of Edmonton Alberta to visit. We talked about the pathetic state of ambulance service response times and the intricacies of hip replacement surgery. I had a bleu cheese & ribeye salad plus Jack & Coke.

The lady in the elevator at my first hotel was from Hampton, Virginia. She sounded British to me. I can’t remember what we chatted about but it was rather remarkable to see a woman in a long flower patterned sun dress. None of these people, from the moment I got on the last leg in Denver are on TV, except at parody in Schmigadoon. The redhead pilot told everybody a joke and then said we’d be delayed because we were waiting for two passengers whose connection was late. We still landed at FSD on time. A quiet airport with ten foot ceilings and flights that go everywhere.

When I first flew into Sioux Falls, everything seemed rightsized. The speed limit is 80 mph and there are enough lanes for all of the traffic. The houses in the suburbs are not too close together. There aren’t young people walking around in hoodies afraid to show their faces. It’s another part of America that seems not pregnant with impossibilities, but with ample space for sustainable activities. I feel close enough to the realness of the land not to get carried away with excitable and trivial novelties that scale virally. That there is a large expensive piece of farm equipment. Deal with it.

Just after I got gobsmacked by the fact that large body of water is not a lake but the Missouri River, I stopped at a gas station / sportman’s convenience store. I was even too shook up to take in the huge variety of birdshot and buckshot in the third aisle. I hadn’t even gotten over the fact that I couldn’t identify all of the lures on the second aisle. I want to hunt and fish. I may never. I feel that missing from my life. I ate at Taco Bell the previous evening in Rapid City. But it was 10pm and I had been driving all afternoon and evening. Maybe this is the right mix of modernity.

After I do some boozing and smoking this evening in Deadwood, and sleep in one of these two queen beds, I’m going to Spearfish and do a bit of hiking then come down out of the Black Hills and head back to the prairie. I’ll stop at Wall for some good old touristy shopping. But I’ll also slow down when I get to Munro. This is where my nephew has been working with the fencing company that employs him. He says I’ll be able to see his work from the road, keeping the cattle in place.

Then I’ll head back to the Southeast to the family compound in Wakonda. I’ll hang out with my mother, my niece and my nephew. Then I’ll check out another view of the Missouri. Maybe baptize my toe in the water.