Update before introducing the podcast episode.Things have been light on the substack and I apologize for that. I spent two weeks traveling, seeing the country with my two high school aged daughters on a road trip from Waco, to Big Bend, to Marfa Texas, to the Grand Canyon. There at the Grand Canyon, I realized I was old and tired and it was hot and the girls gave it their best shot but sadly, they weren’t being blown away by the scenery, so we decided to then pull the plug a day early and go to Las Vegas. The Vegas trip was always meant to just be a way for me to find an airport for me to fly my youngest back to Waco in time for her camp, but then it turned into three days and two nights on the Strip where I learned you can pay $100 for a hamburger, two cheese steaks, a coke and two water bottles. At which point I told the girls we are going to try a new trick called “intermittent fasting” where none of us eats for the next 48 hours. Psyche! They ate but I did wish I could’ve lugged the Coleman stove and dehydrated beans up from the car at a few points as I had no idea Vegas was that expensive. We did Cirque de Soleil (we saw O which was beautiful). To be honest, the girls hadn’t really ever been out of Texas. I mean they had been on vacations but we usually vacation in Texas — the Hill Country is our special spot, on the rivers. But my heart is for the open road — ever since I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac when I was 16, everything changed for me. I developed a habit of stream of consciousness writing, which I perfected as the years went by on social media, but which made writing the carefully disciplined academic articles much more difficult. And I fell in love with America, and seeing America from behind a steering wheel. And getting to share that with my girls meant the world to me. They’ve beautiful young ladies, 11th and 12th grade, and they wore outfits and we did a lot of pictures in front of the choreographed water fountains, we saw the new massive LED dome, and then the next morning, my daughter flew back, and me and my oldest daughter drove straight to San Francisco, which had always been the destiny. San Francisco. My favorite city in the United States, and one of my favorite in the world. I’d found us a really nice airbnb in the Mission District. My daughter really had no idea what was waiting for her, but I knew that if I could just get us there, and if we could just walk the streets together, moving between neighborhoods and commercial areas, that it would affect her. And it did. She was like me deeply moved by the beauty of the city. Another book that had a major impact on my development was Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and all I really wanted was my daughter to feel a great American city with her feet and eyes, moving down the streets, navigating the BART. I gave her the job of getting us everywhere we needed to go so that she could master the public transportation system; I sensed that that was all that she needed to really feel her self esteem lift. Navigating public transportation involves going to depots, putting money on a card, going through turn styles, watching the people, getting on the train, reading maps, sit in a seat as a train moves through the dark — all experiences someone who has never had has conjured up feelings that really are new. And we don’t have that in Waco. I doubt my daughter have ever taken a bus in Waco, as Texas is an automobile centered place. So she did, and it was empowering just like I thought it would be. She said all she wanted to do was go to thrift stores, so we did. We went to Haight and for an entire day, all we did was go from thrift and vintage stores, one after another. I got some great Sam Smith Adidas for only $10. Couldn’t believe they fit. And I got a bunch of other things that looked great until I brought them home and then they didn’t, but she found the most beautiful sweater and pants. And I saw my daug