Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

To hear Der Spiegel tell it, Fergus Falls, Minnesota is a very special place these days. The town on Minnesota’s prairie is in a deep forest. A city manager carries a gun. The local high school sports iron doors and metal detectors. Moreover the mouth breathing savages that inhabit this place all voted for Trump. Learn more in Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789.

All Lies

The most noteworthy thing about this story is the fact that it is a complete fabrication. To Der Spiegel’s credit, the magazine is sending a reporter to Fergus Falls.

This time to apologize.

Dark and Dangerous Rural America

Sadly often media lies tell us more truth about biases than their coverage. Especially relevant are the new storylines about the mysterious and the mystical “rural America”. Land of republicans and Trump supporters. Dark and Dangerous. Well spring of public radio’s murder mystery podcasts. Source of the angry and red faced nationalist republican.

Small Town America

Truth is rural America is just as difficult to report on and explain as any urban center. We’ll talk about it in Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789.

Travel Is The Antidote

More importantly, travel is the antidote for the half truths and fairy tales of the media. I have traveled back and forth across this country, east to west, west to east and north to south many times. There are places I have missed but in thousands of miles of travel over the past few years, I have learned a great deal.

The New Nomads

Moreover many people have taken to converted school buses, RV’s and even Ambulances in search of their own version of America. Here’s to them.

Have A Cup Of Joe

In small towns across the US dedicated to ranching, farming, and mining people aren’t just going to walk up to you and tell you their life stories. Simple observation won’t tell you their stories either. Travel takes you through but you have to stop. Have a cup of Joe and talk to people. Get to know them over time.

Sometimes Working Together…Sometimes Not…Just Like The Big Cities

Finally what I’ve found in these places are all kinds of people living and working together. In some places things are better than in others. Reasons for decline or improvement are often elusive, even to the locals. Whether it’s a mining town or a farm town.

Politics Doesn’t Make The Man or The Town

In conclusion, I am sick to death of reporters telling us politics determines whether we are red or blue. These things don’t take the measure of the people who live in a town, large or small.

Coast To Coast and Back Again

Join me for Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789. Hear the sounds of some of the places I have visited over the last few years, from a hound dog in Mendocino, California to the total eclipse in Makanda Illinois, and finally overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the coast highway.

I’ve got a few stories of my own to tell.

Sponsored by Reliafund Payment Processors, John D. Scott Personal Injury Lawyer and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

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Podcast 472

Texas. That’s all you need to say. Texas. We start on the Texas Gulf Coast at Galveston and work our way up to Beaumont, Houston, on through central Texas with an eye toward La Grange, Austin, Waco and finally to Dallas. If you woke up in one of these places, even any of the smaller towns along the way, you would know, you could only be in Texas. Along the way, lots of stories from this Road Trip so far, including the drive up the Gulf Coast through Mississippi and Alabama, and Louisiana, ending in New Orleans on Saturday night, where Mobile Podcast Command was forced to break the law, in service of a cup of chicory coffee and a pastry from Cafe Dumonde. Sadly, New Orleans seems like it is still struggling to overcome the effects of Katrina, which is probably why there are suddenly so many parking restrictions, and the parking authorities so vigilant. So out of character for this ‘anything goes’ town. In Mississippi, you pass the beautiful home of the president of the confederacy Jefferson Davis, and one can only wonder what it must have been like to leave this gorgeous home on the beach, move to a place like Richmond, to ‘run the confederacy’; a really bad decision in the long run. Did he ever make it back? Then the gulf coast, with its brand new ‘towns on stilts’…literally the houses, the stores, the cafes are all built on pylons, to withstand floods and perhaps the intense winds of hurricanes, which come every year. The Bolivar Peninsula, and Galveston where I finally found the deserted coast line I have been looking for. Finally central Texas including Houston and finally Dallas. Both of these cities are juggernauts on their own. When you combine Houston and Dallas with San Antonio, Austin and the western Texas cities, you begin to understand why this state is so important, and why it is unlike any other. Sponsored by Hydrus and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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Podcast 445

The Highway Song. As the media cycle repeats on an endless loop, boredom begins to set in. How many more arguments do you want to hear about Donald Trump being Hitler, or Ted Cruz being Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton and Benghazi? There is a real world waiting to be experienced. Not the make believe world the media’s twenty four hour a day obsession with American politics seems to be showing us. When there’s a new wrinkle, the Bob Davis Podcasts will break in with an update. Meanwhile this podcast asks, is travel an escape from reality or is travel reality and our lives are an escape from travel? A walk and talk through a ‘warm’ early December evening is designed to stir your memories of travel and your wanderlust. Where have you gone? Where would you like to go? Why? When did you first experience a sense of wonder as you traveled to new places? Was it a road trip with the parents? A first flight to some exotic location in the islands? A ski trip in the mountains? A road trip, with college friends, back in the day? What cities have you visited? Where would you like to visit? New York City? Chicago? New Orleans? San Francisco? Las Vegas? For me its all about the road trip. As I prepare for the big Mobile Podcast Command Winter ’16 trip to Iowa for the caucuses, then onto the mid south, and the eastern seaboard through the North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, my mind turns to the things I see and learn through the screen … the windscreen that is. There’s nothing better for the soul. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and X Government Trucks. 

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