Two states, one day, things read on the way

Gary Snyder has a book/epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End," an opus that draws on all his Beat Poet/Zen/Nature crazy wisdom. I thought of that title today, rolling across Utah and Nevada with their respective mountains and deserts and highways (rivers not always evident), without end. Many of the parts of Nevada and Utah that the 80 traverses are the hardest bitten ones: great swatches of possibly inhabitable land. Colorless, hot and dry, they've the look of being filled with snakes, barbed wire, abandoned buildings or ...explosive devises (we read such a warning in the Mojave last week). We crested a hill and saw two white military dirigibles hovering over some treeless ridges. Again: WTF? Thank the advent of Smartphones that you can Google "military blimp" in the middle of seemingly nowhere and find out that these floating behemoths are used to mount radar and are being tested in Utah. Hmmm... All that highway calls for much reading, aloud as to entertain the driver, including facts about the towns we're cruising through. Who knew Rock Springs had such an oppressive and violent past? Likewise a recent New Yorker provided additional information for review of such humans-behaving-badly matters. If you want to get more up to speed on the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling Shelby v. Holder do read A Critic at Large: The Color of Law, by Louis Menand. Voting rights and the Southern way of life. http://nyr.kr/14AVbO8 



NOW.  It is a chilling review of the horrific obstacles the civil-rights workers endured en route to securing voting rights for African Americans in the 1960s and the very real and troubling politics that are in play today.

On a more positive note, we pit-stopped in Salt Lake City and enjoyed an evening stroll through the 80-acre Liberty Park, so named as its fountains, lake, picnic areas, aviary, tennis courts, trees and lawns were intended for all to enjoy, and indeed a large cross section of the city was happily doing just that on a warm summer evening.

Listening Via @nprmusic: The Mix: Songs Inspired By The Civil Rights Movement http://n.pr/12LEvRg

Vegas, Retreat, Love

Las Vegas, as it turns out, is not a bad place for a mini artist retreat. Especially if you don't really drink, gamble or go in for showgirls. I didn't know this when I decided to go along for a weekend of my husband's week-long work trip in the "entertainment capital". Having watched the documentary of its creation, our main off-hours agenda was to catch the fabulous Cirque du Soleil's Beatles show "Love."
I hadn't thought the rest through very well. We got off the plane Friday night and stepped into 93 degree heat and a huge taxi line filled with future casino workers, twenty-something partiers, and senior-age gamblers to wait for a taxi. The air-conditioned vehicle, in turn, deposited us into another line to check at our hotel.

After one walk through of the casino and a look out of our 21st floor room onto the desert valley, I opted to stay above the fray for the majority of my time in the city.  There of course is a whole other Vegas besides the Strip but I didn't rent a car for such a short stay. Turns out, however, you can do a lot of reading and writing by a pool. I tore through "Wild" the memoir of hiking The Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, filled a notebook with my own scribbles,  and got a new tan to boot. And "Love" was fantastic: beautiful sets, breathtaking movements, great audio and The Beatles catalog only seems to get better with time.

Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows (Love version)

Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream
It is not dying, it is not dying

We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth, then it's far too late, when they pass away
We were talking about the love we all could share
When we find it, to try our best to hold it there with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew

Try to realise it's all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you

                         — John Lennon, Paul McCartney & George Harrison