SOME UPDATES: ROADTRIP

Asheville, NC -- Great Smoky Mountains National Park, NC/TN -- Nashville, TN -- Land Between The Lakes, KY -- STL, MO -- Tallgrass Prairie National Monument, KS -- Monument Rocks, KS -- eastern CO

A BETTER WAY OF LIFE

This American Heartland is not totally identical to its obvious geographic manifestation – i.e. the flyover states, the vast, landlocked bulk of the country without its more populated, urbane Atlantic and Pacific coasts. It also a symbolic concept, referring to an essentialist vision of an America where an apple pie is forever cooling on the window-sill. This America is less defined by geography than by nostalgia; a Heartland that is not merely a place, but also a yearning - for a country still defined by pioneering spirit and small-town values.

- Frank Jacobs, Homeland Is Where the Heartland Is

10ROADTRIP: PICTURE PERFECT

The cool Ohio I was talking about.

(More selections here, here, and here.)

A LAMENT FOR THE LAMB IN AMERICA

...
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering
    where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward
    lonesome farms in grand-father night,
...

- Allen Ginsberg, Howl

EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME

Pass days, pass! I'm just too excited!!

Twins game tonight. A bit less excited. But who knows?