Posted in The Southwest, tagged California, gold rush, Langston Hughes, Salton City, Salton Sea on July 29, 2008 | 2 Comments »
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-Langston Hughes
Viewed from CA-86, the Salton Sea was a jewel; an immense, glassy mirror reflecting [...]
Posted in The Southwest, tagged American Indians, Arizona, dancing, Gallup, Indian reservation, Leupp, medicinal herbs, Navajo Nation, New Mexico, powwow on July 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Not far out of Albuquerque on I-40 we hit the Laguna Pueblo Indian reservation. The casinos sprouted up almost immediately along the highway. Their names—Sky City Casino, Dancing Eagle Casino—were spelled out in bulbs atop towering poles. Their facades were loud with color and exclamations. When we stopped for gas, I noticed that the entire [...]
Posted in The Southwest, tagged Albuquerque, change, John McCain, Old Town Albuquerque, politics, slump, urban sprawl, Walgreens on July 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Albuquerque took a toll on us.
We had originally planned to drive directly from Santa Fe westward toward Gallup, where we would stop at a hotel halfway to our next destination in Arizona that Rachel’s cousin had recommended. But at the last minute we heard that John McCain was going to be giving a talk in [...]
Posted in The Southwest, tagged Balmorhea, diet, diners, Fort Davis, fried food, Jared Fogle, nutrition, Pecos, Subway on July 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
We left Marfa going northwest on US-17 across the softly undulating prairie and through the occasional canyon, whose high walls would appear out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. We passed through a number of small towns, some of which we had had seen the previous afternoon on a day trip. One was called [...]
Posted in The Southwest, tagged artist colony, Donald Judd, Marfa, minimalism, perspective, Texas, U.S. map on July 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The map of the United States has always looked to me like something I might have drawn when I was nine years old. I would plan in my head an intricate design and give myself a broad canvas on which to realize it. But my imagination would inevitably exceed my patience, and the finished product [...]
Posted in The Southwest, tagged Austin, carnival, Fourth of July, hill country, Independence Day, Schertz, Texas on July 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Rachel and I share a birthday, and we chose Austin as our host. We avoided the interstate as best we could, sticking to state highways that bordered fields of cotton and wheat and the first ranches we had seen. Near a municipal jail we saw a billboard advertising the services of a bail bondsman offering [...]
Posted in The Southeast, The Southwest, tagged Cajun food, Clay, Houston, Lafayette on July 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
After two nights in my brother’s house, we disappointed the scores of microorganisms that had begun colonizing our bodies by leaving New Orleans in search of hot showers. We found them at a Days Inn in Lafayette, where we saved about 40 percent on a room with a coupon book Ben had grabbed at the [...]
Posted in The Southeast, tagged Allison, Amzie Adams, French Quarter, Hurricane Katrina, James, New Orleans on July 7, 2008 | 2 Comments »
On I-55 near Hammond, at Louisiana’s instep, everything around us began to change. The low pine forests of western Mississippi fell away, replaced by starving tree stalks. They were drowning in a swampscape made even more dismal by a gray, wet sky, which met the swamp at the horizon. Out of this comingling of saturated [...]
Posted in The Southeast, tagged Cactus plantation, Mississippi on July 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Later, as we neared Jackson, we pulled off impulsively at a sign for “the world’s only cactus plantation.” Further signs brought us to increasingly narrow, canopied roads, the last of which was unpaved and pooled to a dead end in front of a shaded wooden home and a series of greenhouses, with a garden separating [...]
Posted in The Southeast, tagged Bob Dylan, crop-dusting, double-cropping, Highway 61, Mississippi, Onward, Teddy Bear on July 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
After two days in Clarksdale, we headed down Highway 61 listening to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, the opportunity to do which had been our reason for going to Clarksdale to begin with.
It was a sunny and hot, and the sky was blue except for columns of smoke that rose every so often from [...]
