The Streets and The Screens
Notes on crossing the CA-US border
Good day all!
Thank you for your reception of the first two video interviews on the Substack feed. It means the world to me. We launched with a book review of Toward Prosperity: The Transformation of Atlantic Canada’s Economy, with the authors, Don Mills and David Campbell (both fellow Stackers I might add).
We talked about things like Nova Scotia’s wind opportunity, optimism in Mexico, and the challenges, and blessings, that come from economic development via population growth (the jist is we need the people gains AND the productivity gains to be sustainable).
I’m working on a longer project based on Chris Arnade’s How to Build the Perfect City and let me tell you it’s going to take words. Several words. In the thousands of words, and more than one issue, because my intuition tells me that you want to read shorter posts that successfully get to the point. I can often hear you thinking - please God let him land this plane soon, I have a 2 o’clock with finance.
And so get to the point I shall! But first, a story of crossing borders - and the, at times surreal, modern juxtaposition between the streets and the screens.
“People need community like fish need water, and they need to feel they belong to something greater than themselves.” - Chris Arnade
Physically Crossing Borders is Really Good
Like my young friends in Mexico, I’m an optimist. You wouldn’t travel if you weren’t. Travel is - in and of itself - an optimistic thing to do. You believe there is something to be learned out there on the long road, and in the long history. So you set forth on a quest of some kind that isn’t staying at home, and hopefully you learn some things along the way.
After enough of these excursions, some principles are injected (not always by your choosing) into your psyche (or body), often to the realization that the most trite wisdom is the most true. You wouldn’t think a healthy dose of East African parasites would bring back fond memories (memories that don’t seem to go away) but they do. Latin American robberies are not entirely pleasant, but, as my grandfather might say, they do put hair on your chest. You get the point.
You meet people, you learn things, you make decisions, you collaborate, and you learn about yourself and how the world really works in the process. Being closely connected to the reality of your (our) predicament is probably a reasonably good synonym for mental health.
Indeed, in the streets I’m an optimist - it’s the screens that are the problem. They just are. It’s the screens. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard - even really hard to accept - but that’s what it is and I’m now almost certain of it. It’s one of the things I disagree with Tyler Cowen on, and I love Tyler Cowen.
Those who don’t think it’s the screens (either because they have a vested interest in a screen based product or they’re too scared that blue-light hell is as bad as it might be) usually make the case that all the screens do is bring out more of us. Like alcohol, they amplify what is already there - simmering beneath the surface. That if we weren’t yelling about politics and our disagreements on the screens, we’d be doing it in the streets. No. This is not true. It can’t be true.
My wife and I stepped away from work recently to spend two weeks in the summer-sun-bosom of Chamcook Lake, just outside of St. Andrews by-the-Sea. We enjoyed the walking, talking, biking, sipping, sunning, and eating so much that I even wrote a bikers guide to what has become my favourite East Coast town (yes, I know that I wrote it on a screen - alas I am of the modern world just like you and there ain’t no stopping this train).
As is self-evident to me, but never more than when in St. Andrews, Atlantic Canada - where I come from - is a socio-economic extension of New England (Don Mills thinks it’s an underrated relationship).
Atlantica is split by a river border (the St. Croix) that separates Maine, to the South, and New Brunswick, to the North. When the Canadian dollar wasn’t in a right state, our Mothers and Grandmothers would cross the border to do Christmas and grocery shopping. Although that is no longer the case, we still take full advantage of the fantastic winter skiing conditions of Franklin County and the incredible natural resources of Acadia National Park.
Cross-border travel has slowed as of late, given the news of the day, and I think that’s a mistake. I understand it, but I don’t intend to join the party. Naturally, relationships and lives are formed on both sides of border towns that look absolutely nothing like you’ll see on the nightly, mainstream news - like El Paso and Juarez. That’s a different scale to our humble crossing at St. Stephen-Calais, but the principle still holds.
If CNN, CBC, and Fox News had their way, they’d have you believe that Canadians and Americans are in a relationship death spiral, never to be repaired. This simply isn’t the case and now I know for sure what was once just a hunch.
While we were in St. Andrews, I went to see my food producing friends in Calais, Maine - at C&E Feeds and Tide Mill Farms. I go because the Americans (and everyone else in the G7 except Canada) get to enjoy raw, whole dairy. The vintage from Tide Mill Farms is absurdly good - and I don’t drink pasteurized dairy. Not because of any moral reason other than it doesn’t taste good, and I don’t like it. It’s been reduced to lactose water. The stuff from Tide Mill is in it’s full, untampered-with glory, and makes for a powerful, hydrating beverage.
I enjoyed chatting again with the good folks running the small country market, and it crystallized to me what I’ve always known to be true. That the majority of the world - if you’ve used your passport - isn’t political - and that most interactions, if started with a smile, usually end well. Perhaps even really well - as is the infinitely giving nature of most humans on earth. Yes, I’ve been robbed on the road more than once - but I was careless, naive, and pretending like I knew how to be in that place before I did, so fair play to the current captors of my favourite camera strap (and I’m sorry for losing everything valuable you owned Robin).
That regular people talk about regular things, and that unless you have the modern luxury of having too much time on your hands (small business owners do not for example) you typically live your day as best you can and the endless bickering of the elites doesn’t make it’s way to you.
At C&E we talked about the news of the day, if less packages than they’re used to are being ordered and retrieved by Canadians (it’s a stuff depot), how the farms are doing in Maine, how their children are enjoying the summer break, and how milk sales are. There was none of the expected animosity that our political class would have you believe, and I was very happy to see them and hear that they are doing well.
On my return, I knew the question would no doubt be asked “Wow, I wouldn’t go over there. How was your crossing?”
Pleasant, in every way. The American border agent laughed at my coming down solely to retrieve milk, so we chatted briefly about how Canada hasn’t made a market - and simply won’t allow - the sale and enjoyment of raw, whole dairy.
The return trip?
Equally so. My Canadian brother was equally chuffed at my returning with a receipt for $46 USD and several gallons of Maine gold, before welcoming me home.
I had no problems whatsoever, and I received the great gift of supporting a small business that I love - hard working, normal people, producing really wonderful, regenerative nutrition. I don’t take lightly those who have not had a good border crossing experience, but that wasn’t my experience and so I can’t speak to it.
If you want to read about a truly adorable border crossing experience (and certainly the longest of my life) you can read about the time that my friends Hussain, Mohammed, and I packed into my RAV-4, bound for a summer weekend in Boston and New York City. Hussain had come from Saudi Arabia to settle in Canada, and his family had already travelled home, where they would re-settle once again. Mohammed had come to Canada as a refugee, was born in Somalia, and had grown up in Cuba. You couldn’t write a better border crossing and it’s a bottom-less pit of possible stories. In the vein of John McPhee for the New Yorker.
To me, my border crossing this summer is evidence of the most insidious aspect of mainstream and social media - that they would have you believe (try to convince you even!) that you have a problem with average, normal, every day people. You don’t. We certainly have problems at the margin, but our enemies are not those who are just trying to string together a good, wholesome life.
I’m not naive to the reality of just how important the economic and political elites are. As Chris Arnade has pointed out many times - those folks literally build culture and so they ‘…matter immensely.’ But while our federal administrations may have sincere disagreements, and there are deals that are not being done in good faith given the relative absurdity of the character at the helm of the current American administration, the divide between myself and the good folks at C&E Feeds or Tide Mill Farms is exactly 0.
It takes physically crossing a border to learn that, and I hope you will do so.
It’s a great gift to hold the Canadian or American passport, and I don’t recommend that we let that opportunity slip between our politically divided fingers. This is a moment - moment’s end. Don’t let your life in the streets become that of the screens.
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All we need is a point of view, a set of tools, and a lot of time.
See you on the road.
“A corollary of this is that happiness, fulfillment, and human flourishing are inseparable from the social, and the current challenge for most of the world’s political class is understanding that.” - Chris Arnade
