September 17, 2005:
We went to Nevada City for the weekend, holed up in a noisy but comfortable bed & breakfast, shopping for Beanie Babies and reading Tolkien to each other.
The people were unfriendly. Why?
Tall man, thin, pony tail, scruffy but friendly-looking. Short woman, young, asian, childlike. When they enter the common room the others become cold. Conversations end, couples wander away.
The people were unfriendly in Williamsburg, too. Why?
Racism? Maybe. Yet it seemed less overt. More that they sensed something more foreign than skin. Perhaps that I held their values in such contempt that there was no ground for contact. More precisely, no ground for compromise.