Listener Mail, Travel Pile, & DAPL Hippies

We often get emails from listeners, whether they email directly or comment on Facebook posts. Everyone’s opinion deserves to be heard, so we read those messages here on the show. Today we have comments from Dean, Susan, Bunjosh, and Sarah.

Then, since I am traveling by plane to Tacoma myself this week, we do a travel pile, including stories from a woman who departed the plane via the emergency exit and jumping off the wing before the plane had even made it to the gate. We have travel facts about how people behave on plane trips, and how often people fly.

And, as the DAPL Pipeline protests are still ongoing, Natives there have notices a rather odd trend. The reports of protester violence and verbal abuse toward the police does seem to be true, but it doesn’t appear to be perpetrated by Natives. It seems white people – hippies to be specific, have been moving in and co-opting the camp and making it their own. They have no regard for following established rules, including eating all the food but not helping to clean anything up. They are bringing drums, guitars, smoking a lot of weed, and essentially seem to be converting the protest into a music festival. True water protectors have overheard many of them openly comparing DAPL to Burning Man and the Rainbow Gathering. Natives do hope that the cold weather and harsh South Dakota winter will drive the riff raff out, leaving only the truly committed behind. Bottom line, Hippies suck.