March For Science date has been set for April 22

So now we have a dilemma, or at least some of us do. I have already RSVP'd to travel 325 miles to the People's Climate March in D.C. on April 29; yesterday the organizers of the March for Science finally announced that their march date would be one Saturday earlier on April 22, which is a date with a ton of symbolic importance and historic significance, being Earth Day.

I'm not going to be the only one trying to choose between the two (I might be tempted to do the drive on both weekends if I weren't already committed to being in D.C. on May 6th as well). I just put up this quick 24-hour poll on Twitter to get some sense of where other people were leaning:

If you can only travel to D.C. for one, will it be the @ScienceMarchDC on Saturday 4/22 or the @Peoples_Climate March on Saturday 4/29?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) February 2, 2017

Of course, if you live in or near Washington, D.C., you have no excuse not to be at both marches.

So, I did this map thing.

I have two areas I need to address. I need to visit the heart of Dixie and the home of the Mountain West football division, oh, and also Alaska, so I can get a good look at Russia.

Create Your Own Visited States Map

The map is actually more full than I thought it would be when I started this exercise, but some of these blocks were filled in during childhood drives.

"Turn Off, Unplug, Drop Out"

I'd like to present, as a gift to 21st-century youth, the slogan above modeled on Timothy Leary's advice  ("Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out") to those of my generation.



I was on a train this morning where everyone was either looking at or speaking into a phone and I thought once again about how much better the world was before those electronic leashes were invented. People in their teens and twenties today will never know the freedom of traveling for months with no one back in the States expecting any more than an occasional letter or postcard. Then a few minutes ago I stumbled upon this article about a device parents can now install in their teenagers' cars to keep track of them and all of their experiments with speed or other deviations from the norm. The article ends with a warning couched as a simple statement of fact:

"Teens, get used to it. This is America; someone is going to be spying on you for the rest of your life."

It's hard to imagine that some young people (and many of us older people) won't look for at least temporary escapes from corporate, governmental, and familial electronic tethers from time to time, but will we ever see a mass movement to Turn Off, Unplug, and Drop Out? And if that movement develops, will it take place entirely beyond the range of the social media and mass media radar?