The direction the tub drains depends on where you live. I prefer clockwise.

VANISHING EAST

I received a letter from a journalist. She included several selfpenned poems that wistfully celebrated the mountains, the big sky, and the cowboy. She said she was chronicling the vanishing West.

Humm . . . , I thought, does that mean the East has already vanished?

At what point did it happen, when the Indians sold Manhattan? When Kentucky became a state? When the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles?

And how does something like “the East” vanish? Can it move to Atlanta? Get eaten by locust hordes? Or get covered up like a landfill?

Carrying this thought forward, it is just a short philosophical step from “chronicling the vanishing West” to “saving” it. Except that the ideas rise proportionally to Preposterous, on the lunatic scale. There are those who have proposed depopulating the Great Plains from Colorado to North Dakota and establishing a buffalo common. Others who support draining Lake Powell.

However, saving the West almost always entails eliminating any type of private enterprise, i.e., cattle, timber, mining, and fast-food franchises. According to the advocates, people should only be allowed to live in places like Flagstaff, Missoula, Aspen, and Palm Springs if they can be supplied essentials from elsewhere. Like living in Antarctica or on the moon.

But is it still possible to “save the East”? By definition, that would mean it should be returned to its pre-Pilgrim state.

This would involve removing all commerce from the Chesapeake Bay and Boston Harbor. Eliminate those preying on tourists in Atlantic City and Nantucket. Reintroducing mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears in Gettysburg, Albany, and Washington, D.C., planting endangered species in Lake Ontario, and establishing plover and seagull commons on Long Island. A massive undertaking.

So, has the East really vanished, or should my journalist pen pal retreat to Baltimore to do her chronicling while there is still time? And more important, can we still save the East, or must we be stoic, keep one eye pointed toward the sunset, and march on lest we glance back like Lot’s wife, and turn into a pillar of salt?