By PATRIC M. VERRONE Special to the Palisadian-Post Some people drive to see the sights along the way. Some do it to relax. Some even do it to get somewhere. In July and August of 2010, my family drove just to see if we could.   We drove through all 48 contiguous states, book-ended by flights to Alaska and Hawaii. Fifty states, 25 days, five Verrones.   When planning a drive like this, you quickly develop a proficiency at Google Maps, a Stockholm Syndrome affection for hotels.com, and a patriotic loyalty to AAA (though I never had the nerve to tell any single Trip-Tiker about the whole drive for fear they would revoke my membership).   Then there was the small matter of convincing the rest of my family to give up a month of their lives to sit in a minivan for an average of six hours a day. My wife Maiya was an early convert (though she would have preferred we do it as retirees), our older son Patric bought in once it was clear he could Facebook from anywhere in America, our daughter Marianne sensed the tide rushing against her and relented, but our brave 10-year-old Teddy held out. But an iPad on his birthday and, on July 27, we were off to Anchorage.   The sheer size and scope of Alaska was enough to persuade the kids to stay there for a month, but we still had 49 states remaining, so we took in a few glaciers and a single midnight sunset and set some individual goals: I would collect a refrigerator magnet from every state, Maiya wanted a postcard, Patric would buy a pen, Teddy a stuffed animal and Marianne’well, she didn’t want to feel obliged to buy something. Smart girl. We also intended to take a photo of all of us holding the state flag in every state.   We flew to Seattle, met up with my sister Phyllis (a Florida schoolteacher who became known as Aunt Tripod for taking the next 38 flag photos), rented the van and the game was afoot! A foot applied directly to an accelerator pedal for over 172 hours.   How do you drive through 48 states? Well, starting in the Pacific Northwest, you go east on the I-90 for nine days, make a right turn at the Atlantic, work your way down the I-95, take consecutive rights at the Gulf of Mexico (first at Pensacola, then New Orleans), and then hang a hard left at St. Louis, westward towards Las Vegas. There are a few detours to pick up stragglers like North Dakota, West Virginia, Kentucky and two of the Four Corners states, but that’s the basic route. The real challenge of driving 21 days doesn’t fully hit home until you pull into the rental car return lane at the Vegas airport and the attendant says, ‘You drove 9,154 miles. Your contract allowed for … unlimited mileage. Have a nice day.’   The 21st-century road trip is nothing like the days of staring at cornfields and Burma Shave signs. The information superhighway runs parallel to the interstate. We frequently smelled burning plastic caused by overloading three cigarette lighters with the many adapters charging my Droid telephone (supplying us with wireless Internet), my Sony Vaio laptop, our Magellan GPS, three iPhones (one connected to the radio to broadcast ballgames and music), and four MacBooks’to watch DVDs and play two simultaneous versions of Sims 3. Also, there was our blog, which we updated nearly daily. It’s still available at http://pverrone.wordpress.com/.   There are certain things that kids growing up in the Pacific Palisades learn when they see the rest of America. They see that people most everywhere else eat too much. They realize that cornfields are ubiquitous. They learn words like ubiquitous.   I learned some things, too. There is a lot of road construction in the summer up north. There are many more Su’bway restaurants than there are subway stations (by an order of magnitude). Don’t speed in Texas.   As for our personal goals, we learned early in the trip that some state borders don’t have welcome centers; welcome centers don’t stay open very late during fiscally challenging times like these; even when welcome centers are open, many don’t have gift shops; and not all gift shops carry postcards, magnets, stuffed animals and pens.   There is so much more to report, including crossing paths with President Obama’s motorcade (we did!), falling into Niagara Falls (we didn’t!) and the bounty of American cuisine from the original Starbucks to Roy Rogers to McDonald’s; from Alaska caribou burgers to Maine lobsters; from chocolate-coated potato chips in Fargo to sugar-coated beignets in New Orleans; from thirty flavors of cheesecake in Manhattan to 60 varieties of Coke in Atlanta; from a two-gallon ice cream sundae in Boston to a 72-ounce steak in Amarillo.   Our final reward was four days on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. All told, we clocked 18,677 miles by plane, car and even boat. Maiya collected a full complement of postcards and Teddy found 49 stuffed animals (missing only one from Kansas, which he was able to later order on eBay). I gathered 48 magnets (of which I have also now have a full set), Patric got 26 pens and we took 50 state flag photos (out of over 1,200 photos overall). We arrived home at 5 a.m. on August 24, eliciting sighs of relief and a few groans when I announced, ‘We’ll have even more fun next year when we do it in reverse!’ (Patric M. Verrone is a television writer/producer whose current credit is ‘Futurama.’ He was president of the Writers Guild of America West from 2005 to 2009. Maiya Williams Verrone is a novelist and TV writer whose latest book is ‘The Fizzy Whiz Kid.’ Patric C.W. Verrone is a sophomore at Harvard-Westlake where he is involved in theater. Marianne Verrone is an eighth grader at Corpus Christi School and captain of the academic decathlon team. Teddy Verrone is a fifth grader at Corpus Christi and now wants an iPad 2.)

Pacific Palisades resident Jean Rosenfeld, Ph.D., and colleagues will discuss ‘Terrorism and Political Violence in the Contemporary Era’ on Thursday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore.   Rosenfeld is an academic researcher and historian at the UCLA Center for the Study of Religion and works with a group of social scientists focused on the nexus of religion and violence. Her talk will highlight themes of domestic terrorism in a book by former white supremacist Kerry Noble, ‘Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism,’ a case study which ‘stands in my estimation as one of the classic accounts by a white supremacist of his journey into darkness and out of darkness,’ Rosenfeld says. It is ‘one of the most important, readable, and gripping true narratives of our time.’   Noble was a propaganda expert for a Christian survivalist commune in the Ozark Mountains when federal and state police converged on the site in 1985. Noble, who had begun to question the religious group’s beliefs, worked in partnership with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to defuse the standoff, which could have devolved into a tragedy like Jonestown or Waco. His book tells the inside story of how religious movements can turn to terrorism.   In addition to crafting the introduction to the newest edition of Noble’s book, Rosenfeld has edited a collection of 15 scholarly papers on global political terrorism and violence, titled ‘Terrorism, Identity and Legitimacy: The Four Waves Theory and Political Violence.’ The papers include work by Jeffrey D. Simon, a former Rand Corporation analyst and current president of the Political Risk Assessment Company in Santa Monica, and David C. Rapoport, a professor emeritus of UCLA’s Department of Political Science and a lifelong scholar of both ancient and modern terrorism and its causes. Rapoport is described by Rosenfeld as ‘the grand old man of terrorist studies.’   Simon and Rapoport are expected to join Rosenfeld and offer insights on their latest theories in the field, including the advent of lone-wolf operators, like Major Nidal Hasan of the Ft. Hood mass shooting, and the fourth historical wave of terrorism, based in religion.   ’Before we can effectively eradicate or mitigate terrorism, we must understand it,’ Rosenfeld says. She hopes that ‘anyone who’s serious about terrorism’ will attend. Information: (310) 454-4063.

The Los Angeles Conservancy will open its Last Remaining Seats series on May 25, celebrating a quarter-century of classic films and live entertainment in historic theaters. Tickets, typically in high demand, go on sale to members March 30 and to the public April 13.   The series will run Wednesdays at 8 p.m. through June 29 in the Broadway Historic Theatre District of downtown Los Angeles.   ’Rear Window’ (1954) will open the series at the Orpheum Theatre (1926). The Alfred Hitchcock thriller, starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly and Thelma Ritter, will be hosted by film critic and historian Leonard Maltin. A pre-show performance by Robert York on the Orpheum’s original Mighty Wurlitzer organ will be featured at the beautifully restored theater.   On June 1, the hit musical ‘The Music Man’ (1962) will be screened at the Los Angeles Theatre (1931). The Technicolor version stars Robert Preston as con man Harold Hill. Special guest and co-star Susan Luckey will be featured at this last and grandest movie palace built on Broadway.   This season will include a bonus seventh show: two screenings (matinee and evening) of the 1950 classic ‘Sunset Boulevard’ at the Palace Theatre on Sunday, June 26, a century to the day after the theatre opened.   The full schedule, available at laconservancy.org and subject to change, currently includes ‘Captain Blood,’ starring Errol Flynn; the original ‘King Kong,’ starring Fay Wray; ‘Zoot Suit’ which tells the story of the Sleepy Lagoon murder and Zoot Suit riots in 1940s Los Angeles; and ‘Safety Last!’ starring silent comedian Harold Lloyd.   Last Remaining Seats began in 1987 as a way to draw attention to Los Angeles’ historic theatres. Thousands of people come to experience classic films as they were meant to be seen’in beautiful, single-screen theatres, filled with fellow fans and accompanied by vintage short films, onstage interviews and live performances.   For tickets ($16-$20), call (213) 430-4219 or visit laconservancy.org.

Grammy-winning violinist Sara Parkins will perform as one of three guest artists at the Chamber Music Palisades concert on Tuesday, March 29 at 8 p.m. in St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 1031 Bienveneda. Guest clarinetist Don Foster and cellist John Walz will also join Susan Greenberg on flute and Delores Stevens on piano for a program that showcases three compelling works by contemporary Japanese composer Yuko Uebayashi, including the rhythmic and virtuosic chamber piece Suite for Flute and Cello. Uebayashi, who was born in Kyoto in 1975 and has lived in Paris since 1998, has created music that has been described as ‘lyrical’ and ‘surprising.’ Haydn’s captivating Trio in C for Violin, Cello and Piano and Brahms’ thought-provoking Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in A Minor will provide the evening’s musical bridge between Asia and Europe. The piano trio by Haydn is considered one of the era’s best. The Brahms work’s third movement combines a Viennese waltz and Austrian L’ndler, complete with yodeling clarinet. Parkins won a Grammy playing with the Angeles String Quartet for the Best Chamber Music Performance of 2001. She currently holds the principal second violin position in the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra. Palisadians Greenberg and Stevens, co-founders of Chamber Music Palisades, draw guest artists from talented colleagues in the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Los Angeles Opera, as well as other leading instrumentalists in the U.S. and Europe. For tickets ($30 at the door), call (310) 463-4388 or visit cmpalisades.org.