PENNSYLVANIA
Real Quiet

We ended up waiting for the bus home from Reading in New Hunan chatting up a pony-tailed Fujianese over stir-fried tofu. Central Pennsylvania is an interesting place to observe the trees and silent twisting roads and spend time with friends for a weekend. We went to bed early and slept late, ate well and laughed a lot.

It seems as though this is McCain and Palin country. Experience matters and if not that then a friendly “you guys are neat” or “ain’t that cool” from a high-energy evangelical will fill the pews or the stereo speakers. A man named Reiff with an excellent comb-over told us at the Evangelical Free church that God is unchangeable, and that we should all vote on November 4. A man named Doug told me that he isn’t a rascist. “If there was a black boxer from Pennsylvania fighting a white man from Ohio I would root for the black man – ‘cause I have more in common with him,” he said. The same would be true if both the white and black man were from PA he added, he would vote for the white man because he has more in common with him.

This afternoon after church and some perfectly baked pizza Jennifer and I and Gene and Amy went for a hike through some fantastic rock formations on a ridge overlooking rolling Appalachia in browns and oranges and reds. We dodged black-bumper Mennonites and tried not to step on velvety green moss and I poked Jennifer a lot just for fun. New York seems a lot farther than 3 hours away up there in the woods with Jennifer scrambling over rocks, aiming low to be safe. When we were upstairs in Gene and Amy’s house brushing the spinach out of our teeth, she whispered, “I like to think of this as our country adventure!”