After they've gone

This is an adaptation of an email I sent to a friend who spent several years living in the UK, who had given a cogent analysis of the Leave victory. It was the most coherent I've been about it in days.

I was saddened but not surprised by the Brexit outcome, because it was clear that the scare tactics and inherent ethnocentrism of English people (and I'm using the word English carefully) were going to outweigh anything else. I'm married to an economist, who is friends with a number of the signers of a letter to the Times urging people to vote Remain in
order to prevent financial chaos, so I have my own biases, and of course we spend a lot of time in London. When we're not in London, we're often hiking, so we aren't chatting to people in villages much, but I am acquainted with bellringers on each side. One posted on a chat list that he didn't want to be associated with the Leave campaign, he just wanted to leave. Another was mostly trying to get rid of Cameron (success there). He claimed that Farage won't be the successor. We'll see.
Economists and Londoners aside, I felt the writing was on the wall, and expected that the majority would be swayed by the Us vs Them element over preserving the claimed "5th largest economy in the world." (which started being untrue on Friday morning, and will probably never be true again). In our little time in the countryside recently, my friend pointed out that we had seen many Leave signs in people's yards, and not much in the way of Remain.
Despite having the negative expectation, I've been a little surprised by my emotional reaction. Arthur has many academic connections in London (one of his niche specialties is centered at UCL), and I sometimes go with him, so our presumption is that we'll always be back. At the time I flew away on June 8th, I had left 15 pounds on my Oyster card (a tap card for public transportation), I'd said to a London ringer "See you next year," and so forth. But right now I don't care if I ever go back - my feeling is that I'm done. If I want anti-immigrant hate speech, I can stay home and save the money. I hate it when people try to have their cake and eat it too. A writer from the Economist pointed out on Charlie Rose that Sutherland was a good example of this (he didn't mention cake). The vote there was heavily to leave, but apparently the people who work at the automotive plant there expect to have the same level of exports to Europe that they have been. In reality, it could be a safe bet that that factory will close soon, although I suppose that if Britain puts big import taxes on European cars, British-made cars might be a good buy and the factory will be fine. A friend and I have a vague plan to go to Wool Week in Shetland at some point in the future, but one expects that Scotland will be a separate nation soon. Scotland's first minister is working to set up another independence referendum. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Gibraltar all voted overwhelmingly to Remain. Spain has already started working on getting Gibraltar back. I'm imagining the famous macaque monkeys packing their bags so they can stay in the EU. I have seen no photographic evidence of that ;-)
Arthur has a Belgian (specifically Flemish?) friend who is quite concerned that if the EU falls apart, all the old warring alliances will start up again and the hard-won peace and prosperity will go away. As an economist, he expects bad financial results, but emotionally, he's worried about future wars.

Centennial of NPS, running tourism

There are national parks that are more than a hundred years old, but the National Park Service started in 1916. I keep thinking that we should visit a national park somewhere to celebrate, other than the Minuteman national historic park down the street from us (covering part of the Battle road and some restored colonial buildings). Amazingly, we've never been to Acadia, so maybe that should be it, but last-minute planning might not work for somewhere so popular. I found a 20-mile race in October that crosses two national military parks in Virginia, retracing the goofy ambulance wagon ride that the wounded Stonewall Jackson took after he was shot by his own men after the Battle of Chancellorsville. (goofy in the sense that he might have been better off with field treatment than bleeding across many miles, jouncing in a wagon). I don't know that all the organization required for that trip would be worth it to be in the parks for an hour or two.
Similarly (but not related to national parks), I am sort of planning to do a race at Epcot/Disney in February. Some people take a very long time, because they stop for pictures with people in character costumes. Would that be fun or irritating? Does a theme park count as a scenic location?