My first impressions on returning to the United States–

• I’m still hearing Portuguese chatter even when people aren’t speaking it.
• Three obese passengers requested “extenders” on the plane so they could buckle their seatbelts.
• I had a discussion with a guitarist named Mary in the Dallas – Fort Worth airport about political, economic, and social problems in the United States:
• Medical care disappearing
• Education system failing
• Corporate control of media
• Cost of taxpayers of wars — corporate lobbying and profiteering
• Effect on cost of travel abroad
• Intense effects on workers of corporate welfare capitalism — multiple jobs, long commutes, no time for political awareness or participation
• Concentration of increasingly immense portion of all wealth in decreasing proportion of the population
• Time to buy land abroad?
• Bloated faces of U.S. pod people 😉
• People don’t touch each other as much in non-sexual contexts