DRAWING THE LINE

    The recent nationalist struggle of Crimea in the Ukraine made me think about how people relate to each other, or not. Vladimir Putin's argument for takeover of that region was that the majority of people living in Crimea were of Russian heritage and Russian speaking. So does that mean that in a few years Southern California should be returned to Mexico? I don't think that's going to happen.

    The creation of borders throughout the world has long been a very troubled process. In reading a 1992 book, "Why in the World, Adventures in Geography" by George Demko, I became aware of the argument that the world would have had substantially less conflicts if the borders had been established in the first place based on grouping of peoples who had common bonds, such as customs, religions, or living in a certain type of geographical region.

American Plains

Pacific Islands

South American highlands

    Instead, during the colonial eras, land was arbitrarily divided up to the advantages of those in power, and with really no other considerations other than rewarding allies with a chunk of land which would be plundered of resources.

    It is a miracle that the United States, covering the breadth of a continent, still remains intact as one nation. Recent estimates are that around 720,000 human beings perished in the war over secession and slavery.

    Texas on occasion threatens to exit the union, and in sprawling California there is always talk of splitting the state into several smaller regional states. The north and south, the east and western portions of the state have a hard time relating to each other and aren't necessarily happy about having to share resources.
    We think of diversity as a positive thing, but can all these regions and cultures really just "get along", as the late Rodney King pleaded?
    Can the city dwellers

Apartment mural Chinatown

    relate to the desert dwellers?

Ocotillo Gold by Erin Hanson

    Can the mountain dwellers

Lone Pine by Karen Winters

    relate to the seaside culture?

Surfers by Kevin A. Short

    Does life in a challenged community

Oscar Grant by the Trust Your Struggle Collective

    compute with those in a privileged community?

Crab Cooker, Newport Beach by Frank Dalton

    How does life in the woods

    find comparison with that in the suburbs?

Freeway with Evening Shadows by Theresa Fernald

    We share the same West: the Hispanics

Bride and Groom by Ken Twitchell

    the Asians

Downtown San Francisco by Donald Maier

    the Native Americans

San Diego weaver Eva Salazar

    the flatlanders

Sacramento Delta by Wayne Thiebaud

    and the highlanders.

Cloudburst Lake Tahoe by Ed Terpening

    I sometimes wonder if we are expecting too much of human nature when we dream of us all bonding and working together. 
    The world's cultures are still somehow diverse even as technology makes us feel as if the planet is shrinking. In an ideal world each group/culture would respect the differences of the others, but clearly the reality is that power and money are still the destructive motivators of humankind, and no slowing of that course is apparent.