Go West Old Man

My Book Tour of New Mexico and Montana

I was on the road from February 13th to March 3rd, a rare occurrence for me. I don’t like flying, I don’t like hanging out alone in hotel rooms, and often after a week or so I am pining for the comforts and routine of home. This is not a great quality for someone whose career involves analyzing global politics. But I have gotten by in part by interviewing foreign analysts when they are in New York or Washington, connecting with veterans and diplomats who have been deployed overseas, going to international weapons shows like the Paris Air Show, reading obscure government and corporate documents, going to side meetings at relevant UN gatherings, and more.

This trip was different. I enjoyed it, and I met all kinds of regular folks who don’t work on foreign policy, or necessarily see it as important to their daily lives. There was also some vacation worked in, and the places we went – Albuquerque and Santa Fe in New Mexico, and Whitefish (a stop on the way to Glacier National Park) and Missoula in Montana.

My wife Audrey and I started with vacation before I got into my speaking gigs, which centered on Ben Freeman and my book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine.

In Albuquerque we spent a few days in a renovated Adobe house on the edge of Old Town, a cluster of restaurants, craft stores, and bookstores, with something for everyone, from costly high end art to well made trinkets that are totally affordable. I went for the trinkets, although many of them were of higher quality than the term trinket would imply. But one of the most compelling experiences we had in New Mexico was the museums.

Our first foray was to the Albuquerque Museum on a Sunday morning, which to our good fortune was the free period for museum visitors. The key exhibit was “Elena Montoya: Activating Chicana Resistance.” The exhibit had an awesome sweep, with sections on everything from female boxers to portrayals of the routes immigrants take from Mexico into U.S. border states. The exhibit ended with an action room where you could write a note to an immigrant in detention or get literature on how to fight back against ICE and support the people that agency is pursuing. I had never heard of Delilah Montoya or seen her work, so stumbling onto it was both a pleasant surprise and privilege.

We went to the Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe (of course we did!), and they wouldn’t take our money because they claimed we were members. It ends up we were, sort of, because they have a reciprocity arrangement with the wonderful Studio Museum in Harlem, which we are members of. We also went out of the city to see where Georgia O’Keefe lived, stopping at the small outpost of Abiqu and going to Ghost Ranch, which has a retreat complex as well as one of O’Keeffe’s homes, which has a spectacular view of the valley and the mountains. It was a windy day, with plenty of dust and tumbleweed, and the house wasn’t open for touring, but the majesty of the view on the way there and the chance to see the environment she created her art in was well worth the trip.

I can’t recount all the museums we went to, but I must mention the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, which tells the story of indigenous people in New Mexico from their point of view. It was a revelation to me because much of that story involves approaches I am trying to take at this late date, as a 70-year old policy analyst who has finally learned that statistics and policy proposals alone don’t necessarily change minds or foster major changes. There were exhibits on storytelling, song, the crafting of objects that are both beautiful and useful, the need to respect the land, and more. Things I aspire to take in that have been part of Native American culture for centuries.

There’s much more to be told about the trip, including the talks I gave to the World Affairs Council of Albuquerque and the World Affairs Forum of Santa Fe (which is not an affiliate of the national World Affairs Council, and my comedy fundraiser for Nukewatch New Mexico and the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, led by my longtime friends and colleagues Jay Coghlan and Susan Gordon. The fundraiser involved some jokes about nuclear weapons (not the whole show, thankfully!) and was billed as “no comedian wants to bomb). There were skeptics present. How could a nuclear policy expert be funny, and funny about the grim topic of nuclear weapons to boot? But the show was well received. I didn’t raise the roof but there was steady laughter and a good time was had.

In my next entry I will talk about some of the surprising political experiences I had on my trip. I’ll recount one as a teaser. One night I found myself watching a sort of alt-country band at the Great Northern bar in Whitefish, Montana (well, okay, I didn’t literally just find myself there, I went on purpose). I didn’t know anyone so I was sitting by myself on a bar stool near the back of the venue. I went to get a glass of water and when I came back the young man next to me said “hydrating, eh,” or words to that effect. I told him I was there to speak about nuclear non-proliferation to a group of 500 high school students gathered for the annual Wordquest quiz bowl, which involved answering 100 questions about all things global. I figured he would just find this a peculiar job, but the first thing he said was “do we really need those things?” and we had a long talk about who has nuclear weapons, how powerful they are, efforts to reduce or eliminate them, or more. It wasn’t the only time on my trip when random encounters sparked substantive discussions, which I viewed as a good thing.

More in the next installment, including how my talk to the high school students changed when Israel and the United States bombed Iran and sparked a Middle East wide war between the time I got to Montana on a Wednesday and the time I addressed the students on Sunday.