Travels with AI

January 22, 2026
In my self-appointed role as the American Cartaphilus, I will soon (two weeks from now) be embarking on a journey of observation and discovery. My mission will be to see into the heart of my beloved country. I will go expecting to uncover the well-springs of both joy and tragedy, but hoping to find more of the former than the latter. Some people call me an optimist!
I intend to travel north, so I will of course start by going south. Going south from this, my starting point, I will encounter the mysterious and near-impenetrable Everglades, the lands where people went when they did not want to be found, the lands of the renegade Seminoles and the Swamp people known as Crackers.
When I do turn back north, I will soon find myself in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor along the East Coast. It will be hard for me to see these first two legs of my journey as anything other than tragedy, but I will try. The Gullah peoples of West Africa, for instance, were highly skilled in irrigation and rice cultivation, which is why they were targeted and sought out by slavers.
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