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Jun. 1st, 2003 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbOn the front page of the New York Times today is the first of a series of articles commemorating (approximately) the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.Today's installment looks at life along the Missouri River--less and less of it, as people have drawn away from the river, toward the suburbs and toward the costs.. There's some sentimentality, but also some realism. An interesting section deals with the Army Corps of Engineers, charged with keeping the river in check, and occasionally just letting it have its way. And there's this:
The travel section covers some related ground with four short pieces on "drives with a view" in Arizona, Washington, Virginia, and Vermont:
And there's an article by cultural correspondent John Rockwell and his fourteen-year-old daughter about last year's cross-country RV vacation. Sasha on discovering Mount Rushmore is "just a tourist site":
... And reasons to have reservations. The horrible thing about the racist, gay-hating, alleged cop-killer and terrorist arrested yesterday isn't that there was some nut who thought setting off bombs was a good way to resolve disagreements. It's that he got away with it for years thanks to sympathetic locals. Locals like Crystal Davis:
On the 200th anniversary of the year France gave up on middle America, many European travelers have discovered the old territory.
"I said to a group of Germans the other day, this river must be really boring to you," said Mr. Smith on a spring day fit for a Huck Finn daydream. "They said, `No, you have something we don't have in Europe - wild, undeveloped land.' "
The travel section covers some related ground with four short pieces on "drives with a view" in Arizona, Washington, Virginia, and Vermont:
Much of the appeal of this valley drive is that you're never confined to a single route. The two states are stitched together by more than a dozen bridges, which allows for ample improvisation. One moment you might be in the mood for the crunchy-granola atmosphere of Vermont, and an hour later develop an appetite for the vinegary Live Free or Die flavor of New Hampshire. Every intersection, every bridge, brings an opportunity: look left, look right, then choose and go. I've done this drive maybe a dozen times over two decades, and have never taken the same route twice.
And there's an article by cultural correspondent John Rockwell and his fourteen-year-old daughter about last year's cross-country RV vacation. Sasha on discovering Mount Rushmore is "just a tourist site":
I think it was then that I realized that it wasn't Mount Rushmore or any other big tourist attraction that was going to turn me on. What was going to fascinate me were purple flowers on the side of the road in Wisconsin that screamed out, "There are colors that you thought were only made up by painters." It was the little things that made me feel how lucky I was to be out in what I had once called nowhere.Today's Times is full of reasons to love America.
... And reasons to have reservations. The horrible thing about the racist, gay-hating, alleged cop-killer and terrorist arrested yesterday isn't that there was some nut who thought setting off bombs was a good way to resolve disagreements. It's that he got away with it for years thanks to sympathetic locals. Locals like Crystal Davis:
"Rudolph's a Christian and I'm a Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion," said Crystal Davis, 25, a mother of four. "Those are our values. These are our woods. I don't see what he did as a terrorist act."Eric Rudolph, wanted for two murders and numerous injuries, was brought in for dumpster diving by a 21-year-old rookie cop; the FBI, which has been looking for him for five years, wasn't notified until other officers recognized him at the station.
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Date: 2003-06-01 09:03 pm (UTC)Anyway.
B: My favorite author, John McPhee, wrote a wonderful book called "The Control Of Nature" and one third of it is about the lower Mississippi and the Army Corps Of Engineers. It's a great book.
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Date: 2003-06-01 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-02 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-02 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-02 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-02 01:26 am (UTC)I can't help singing "he's a Christian, she's a Christian...wouldn't you like to be a Christian, too?" etc. to the old (?) Dr. Pepper jingle. Does that make me a bad person?
I'm a Christian, too.
Date: 2003-06-29 02:25 am (UTC)john mcphee
Date: 2003-06-02 02:57 pm (UTC)E.R. Rudolph
Date: 2003-06-29 02:28 am (UTC)Re: E.R. Rudolph
Date: 2003-06-29 09:06 am (UTC)