Decade(nce)

      I try not to think of myself as a garbage disposal, but sometimes I wonder.  Despite trying to stay healthy by eating the right things, up comes a wedding or a friend's party and all bets are off.  Out come the Oreos and the cream puffs, the fried whatever and the soft chunk of cheese that looks a bit like a wedge of Crisco.  But at the time, it is all so delicious, sort of like that first bite of a corn dog at the state fair (remember those?) or opening that warm $7 bag of unshelled peanuts at the ballpark.  It's the cruise or the vacation, a time when you're ready to break routine and eat like royalty before returning to life as a commoner.  And so what if you can't finish it all?  You paid for it so who cares?  You've had your fill and are ready for the leftovers to be whisked away.  Thus the disposal.  And I kept hearing the words of author Hayley Campbell: I kept thinking about what a waste death is.  A body that has spent years growing, repairing itself, retaining knowledge of viruses and diseases and immunity, is just buried or burned.  It's often said that our garbage disposals tend to "eat" better than many Americans.  And nowhere did this seem more true than in Las Vegas...

    Yes, we were back.  It had been nearly four years and we wanted to not only take a break for a few days (which is plenty) but also to see what had changed.  After all, our memories were of times spent with our moms, the two of them loving the "escape" far more than we did.  But this would also be a chance for my wife and I to see all the new machines and lights and perhaps take home a "big" win of $25 or so (nobody in our families are big gamblers in any form).  And indeed much had changed, at least inside the buildings.  Covid had come and somewhat gone (masks were virtually nonexistent) but with it went most of the amenities in the rooms, at least where we were staying at the downtown Golden Nugget: the hair dryers, the coffeemakers, even the daily housekeeping and the buffet.  But perhaps the biggest disappointment was noticing that the slot machines were pretty much the same no matter where we went, their large curved screens and bright graphics tilting and twirling in mesmerizing patterns, along with new starting prices of 75 or 88 cents for the "penny" machines (indeed the quarter and dollar machines seemed to represent less than 5% of slot machines now on the floor).  But despite or perhaps because of their large size there were now far fewer machines overall, as in what appeared to be about 30% fewer.  

     Of course with Vegas being Vegas, none of this deterred the crowds, the slower older crowds of the earlier hours giving way to the masses of younger folk once evening arrived.  This is also when the "entertainment" arrived, the outdoors scantily-clad men and women hanging around for pictures, the light shows dazzling viewers above, the smells of hidden marijuana easily mixing in with that of cigarettes (while the smoke wasn't visible, your clothes came back smelling as if it was).  As a review of the history of cigarettes by Sarah Milov said in LRB, the cigarette in the 1920s was both "a symptom of and cure for modern times."  The isolated smoker, shamed into skulking on the edge of the righteous community, embodied 'choice, agency, performance, desire.'  There was no need to explain his behavior by invoking social circumstance: like everyone else, he was responsible for his own choices.  Autonomy reigned.  Now, 100 years later, Milov wrote: We are now in a world where 'the smoker stands alone on a street corner and the farmer stands alone... (as impressionist Gordie Brown sang about Willie Nelson: To all the plants I've smoked before; three quarters of a field or more.)  Hidden but there, the pot vaper now stood alone; the Marlboro man of old had given way (pot smoking is legal in Nevada but not in public).

     Of course Las Vegas has always been about fantasy and escape, whether it's by the dreams of winning a big jackpot or by the drowning of your inhibitions with alcohol or drugs.  These areas (Downtown & The Strip) are the New Orleans of the West, places where you can let it all go (to a point) and still feel safe since security is everywhere (cameras, undercover police, visible police on bikes).  On the day that we arrived the local news broadcast blurry videos of a robber who had hit several casinos the old fashioned way, approaching the cashier cage and passing a note.  He was captured before the next evening broadcast.  The lesson: Vegas wants your money and has a "safe" reputation to uphold.  And there is a lot of money going down here.  When I asked security at several places, why so many of the machines were the same, I was told, "if they don't make money, they're out of here."  Hmm, what did that tell you about your odds of winning (or in playing those same machines).  But it's not only the machines that are quickly hustled off but also the homeless...as with most cities, the homeless are visible in the main promenade only in the very early pre-dawn hours.  As I picked up my coffee I also bought a breakfast to go, adding the leftover sliders from our evening dinner to give to the rather young girl sitting quietly in the chilly air.  She was gracious, unexpecting, and not seeking any sort of handout, keeping to herself and perhaps used to being told by security that she had only a short time left before having to move on.  A sign for the high-end restaurant Oscars still stood out in the background (a steak dinner in one of the restaurants in the newly-opened Circa runs $150).  "Why is it so hard to believe in other people's suffering?" asked WIRED.  In the unusual quest of Americans to feel no guilt, many of us are quick to forcefully repel claims of pain.  We don't only have doubt, as Scarry's axiom has it; we cultivate that doubt and extend it to the suffering of others...dismissing as somehow less than real the pain of others while elevating our own.  Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten once wrote: Our city streets are thronged with an unseen people, who flit about us, jostling us in thick crowds; and in our silent chambers, our secret closets. 

     But as with the robber or the homeless woman, Las Vegas doesn't want you to see that.  It is a land of glitz and glitter, a place to dream big, eat big, drink big; your chance to pretend for a day or two that the harsher world of reality can change or disappear just like that.  But then thinking of The Strip or Downtown as "Vegas" is the real trick since these transient sections represent only a small portion of the actual city.  Think of other cities --San Francisco, New York City, Paris-- and your mind likely conjures up similar limited visions and versions, hiding the hidden millions that dodge the bridge or skyscraper or tower yet who make up the majority of the city.  And of course, those people have to work, and eat, and poop and drink water...but like Hawaii, they depend on tourism for much of their revenue (Nevada imposes no state income tax on its residents).  So how to keep it all going?  How much recycling goes on, from plastic to glass to water?  To read industry reports, all of those recycling efforts sound great, the returning of waste water for credit, the new plastic recycling plant by Republic, even the efforts of hotels to sort materials on back docks (In 2020, Caesars’ eight resorts on the Las Vegas Strip recycled close to 40 million pounds of materials).  Said one article in The Las Vegas Sun newspaper: “People don’t get it because Las Vegas is a place of excess,” Dominguez said (Eric Dominguez, senior vice president for engineering and asset management at Caesars). “In (Nevada), we’re approaching 30% of all of our energy use being renewable energy.  We have more LEED buildings on the Strip than maybe anywhere else in the world.” (LEED is an environmental rating system used for buildings)...Caesars, like Wynn Resorts, has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050.  MGM has set a 2025 target for a 45% reduction in carbon emissions per square foot compared to 2007.  

    But hey, this was Vegas so why care about what happens since tossing items (food, plastic water bottles, cocktail glasses, etc.) is not much different than putting everything into your recycle bin at home, all in the knowledge that such things will indeed be recycled.  But new studies and a report from NPR show that 95% of those recyclables, most notably the plastics, heads to the landfill or the incinerator or the ocean or, gulp, into our bodies.  Said part of the article: They wanted to put their strawberry containers, bags, yogurt cups and all manner of plastic trash in their recycling bin.  "We had to re-educate individuals that a great deal of that material is ending up in a landfill," Carpenter said (Trent Carpenter, general manager of Southern Oregon Sanitation). "It's not going to a recycling facility and being recycled.  It's going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can't do anything with that material."  The sad truth is that recycling companies that used to make money from recycling now often lose money, paying to have much of the unusable material trucked off to landfills.  Making new plastic is simply far cheaper than recycling old plastic; and since plastic --from cling wrap to chewing gum, sweatshirts to toothpaste tubes-- is a petroleum product, big players such as Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, DuPont, Dow Chemical, and Proctor & Gamble see a new market.  Said an article in Fortune: Demand for plastics has doubled since 2000 and could double again by 2050...plastics will pick up the slack in oil-and-gas industry growth, according to the International Energy Agency.  It estimates that petrochemical feedstocks, much of which go to make plastics, could rise from 12% of total global demand today to 22% in 2040.  Then came the bad news...The durability that makes plastic so appealing, it turns out, also makes it an environmental time bomb.  An estimated 90.5% of all the plastic produced since 1950 is still in existence...(and with) 8 million tons of plastic disgorged into the oceans every year...The UN Environment Program estimates that by 2050, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish.  The human toll is equally worrying.  According to a study commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, the average American consumes at least a teaspoon's worth of plastic a week through food --roughly the amount in a credit card-- with unforeseeable health consequences.  Heck, we're finding it difficult to even recycle those blades from wind turbines (some 8000 blades were landfilled last year alone, said a piece in Chemical & Engineering News).

     Which brings us to the issue of power.  Vegas needs a lot of it and surprisingly, most of it comes from natural gas and not the nearby Hoover Dam and Lake Mead (which generates less than 1/10 of the power the natural gas plants provide).  In the land of casinos and blazing all-night lights (not to mention heating and cooling since this is a desert), power is king.  But open up one of those elaborate slot machines and it insides are basically empty.  When I talked with a software tech whose cart was loaded with circuit boards (and a row of slot machines whose bottoms were open), I told him how surprised I was at how little was in the machines.  "Nothing inside but a printer, a validator, and a motherboard," he told me (the hotel shut power to one section during their remodel and when the power came back on, several of the circuits no longer worked).  "Likely the batteries," he said.  "We have guys that do nothing but check these out and replace what's needed," he added, pointing to where the new computer chips would be placed when the new boards went in.  Those "spinning" wheels that used a bunch of gears and clicked to a stop when you pulled a lever...long gone (today's machines simply "fool" your eyes but nothing really spins, much as the circle "loading" on your laptop).  Maybe you'd find a few at Circus Circus down on The Strip, the last hotel to dedicate a section to the old coin-operated (and coin-dispensing) machines of old (I had to ask where the heck all the old Batman and Wizard of Oz machines went, those once-elaborate machines just a few years old but now gone from any casino nearby; the picture of the Wicked Witch machine is an entirely new design and available in only one hotel as a test).

My typical winnings...

     But let's back up and dispel the notion that I'm somehow riding on a high horse.  No, I was right there with those patrons, taking advantage of happy hours and hitting those buttons albeit not as frequently as most (I was desperately searching for a "bargain" machine of just $.30 per play since my luck tends to reinforce the axion of "scared money never wins").  I was there with my wife and another couple who used our two days to good effect, me eating more eggs than I have in several months, and pancakes which proves to be my annual treat (both were delicious).  The three people I was with either broke even or made money while I again "donated" back to the house.  But it was fun.  I felt confident that those glasses and water bottles would be recycled, even as I watched the amount of trash and cigarette butts fill the bins and yet be quickly whisked away as at Disneyland.  Huge fans above, as in most airport smoking lounges, sucked the smoke outwards and upwards, the machines seeming to sparkle (or was it my eager eyes?).  In the end, I was no different than anyone else there, a person on vacation and trading what few worries I had for temporary apathy.  But behind the scenes, I watched the workers: the people behind the counters, the servers walking the floors, the hawkers, the street performers, the people whose jobs here among the façades and glitter were just that, jobs; the people who went home exhausted and likely with little in their pocket.  Downtown was changing, the display above in the nightly Fremont Experience newly decorated with even more lights and a better sound system.  I could feel its "tractor beam" pulling me into its tempting lure, even as its opening song was Radioactive and saying "this is it, the apocalyse" (the last operating uranium mine sits nearby in Moab, as does the National Atomic Testing Museum).  It was as if I were back in Stephen King's novel, The Stand, facing the final tug between good and evil (okay, that may have been the martini talking since I was quite mesmerized by it all; but do read the book and don't watch the series; as King himself described it: The land of Mordor ("where the shadows lie, according to Tolkien) was played by Las Vegas.)

 

     So amidst all of that, we went and we're back...and we had fun.  But more than that entire experience were the words from Jennifer Sahn, editor of High Country News: We are officially entering what I call the season of food.  Which is not to say that other seasons aren’t times for thinking about food, or eating it.  Eat, we must, day after day, no matter when or how.  But now is the time of harvests, bounties, cornucopias, pumpkin spice.  Planning holiday meals, putting up food for winter, baking cookies and pies. It’s a time of celebration, as families come together to observe various holidays in different ways.  And despite all the struggles of our time, we have many reasons to celebrate.  Start with the fact that what we drink, breathe and eat becomes what we are.  The cells that our bodies make --and that we are made of-- are themselves made from what we eat, drink and breathe. The plants that we eat --and that the animals that we eat also eat-- are made from the soil in which they grow and the water that falls on fields and mountains and valleys and collects in streams and rivers and aquifers — and in that way, we are connected to the land in the most fundamental kind of web.  Some call it the web of life.  But unless you are living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, there is also a social ecosystem associated with what you eat.  Your food was grown, harvested and likely packed, transported, unpacked and sold by a person, or several people, or assemblages of people, known variously as co-ops, corporations or conglomerates.  Most of us depend on these workers to do their jobs, and do them with care.  We should not forget to celebrate them, too.  In fact, farm fields and ranchlands and the working conditions of farmworkers and the living conditions of farm animals are all components of the interconnectedness of life — and of justice, which is achieved when every being in the web has clean air and water and sustenance in the form of healthy food.  Justice is what any thoughtful, caring person should want to work toward and wish for when they say grace in whatever form that takes.

     So during this holiday of giving thanks, this time of excess and celebration, I close with a Kenyan prayer: From the cowardice that dare not face new truth, from the laziness that is contented with half truth, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, good Lord, deliver us.  To the readers all, my wishes for your Happy THANKSgiving...

Photo of wind turbine maintenance worker: Smithsonian Magazine, Block Island

In the last post I omitted author Ben Sherman's comments about veterans keeping stories to themselves, largely due to space.  Here is how he wrote about it in his book, Medic: Most of the war stories you've heard, especially the really exciting ones, have likely come from the vivid imaginations of rear-echelon guys who never saw a firefight, never spent a day in the jungle, never slept in a rice paddy, never had their stomach turn over as they gawked at the open wound of a guy who bummed a smoke the minute before.  Those who witness the raw hysterics of war up close tend to remain very quiet about it forever.  They think about it, you can be sure, but the words can't get around the clog in their chest.  There's a code.  If you've really been in it, you don't talk about it.  Maybe that hasn't always been such a good idea.  We don't talk to each other.  We don't talk to loved ones.  It stays in the bottle, corked tight...My story says little about courage under fire, brilliant strategies, right vs. wrong, glory, regrets, or political necessities.  It's mostly a story about a kid who got drafter and refused to kill anybody.  A fellow vet I once worked with had a T-shirt that read: SOUTHEAST ASIA GAMES, 1963-1975, SECOND PLACE.  His wit replaced the flesh he had left on Vietnam soil for a cause he still couldn't articulate.  Poorly stitched scars ran from his belly to his neck, then around his shoulders.  Field scars.  Deep, ugly raised skin ridges that were hard to look at twice.  There had been no time in a field hospital to make them pretty.  When I told him I wanted to write it down, he told me that everything had already been said.  We agreed it had been hammered to death in one way or another.  Scratching gently at his shoulder, he said, "Just let it go."  I couldn't.