Road Trip America

I went into Dan's and my old roadtrip blog, just to see how we'd made the banner (I improved upon that method, I think), and had a moment of major nostalgia. That was such a fantastic trip. I wish I could repeat it. Whenever I end up changing jobs/careers/life, I am going to make sure to take some serious time off and travel around the country for a while. I keep talking to people who say that about the world -- they want to buy one of those worldwide tickets and backpack everywhere. And that sounds fun, but I still don't feel like I understand my own country. I want to travel the rest of the world, but I also want to go to the Deep South and back to New Orleans and out to the coast of Maine and finally actually see Yellowstone and Seattle and De Smet, South Dakota. I feel like we have such a great heritage here, and sometimes I forget about it, about the people who built up this country (yeah, I realize they also slaughtered the native population, but forgive me my moment of historical inaccuracy/ignorance/willful nostalgia), who traveled across it on horse and on foot. I like that we have such a large scope, that we are so big, and that our land is so diverse, and I think sometimes we forget that because we're too busy bitching about George Bush and evangelicals and SUVs.

Cities everywhere

This is old, but my roommate had e-mailed it to me and I hadn't gotten to it until now. It's a little short feature from the Times about, basically, how communities and cities in the U.S. look the same everywhere. It makes me think of when my grandma spent some time taking pictures up and down Whittier Boulevard. I wonder sometimes if, pulled out of context, these ugly towns and streets and storefronts could be kind of pretty in a way (like Victoria does with random spots in San Francisco, which I have seen before and never thought of as pretty, but sometimes she makes them so). But for the most part, they aren't, and this video is correct, they look the same everywhere. In a way, it's sort of good ol' Americana, and in another way it's sad because of the lonesomeness of the landscapes (it makes me think of Ghost World, actually, which takes place in LA but which could have been anywhere, and which is a movie about lonesomeness if there ever was one), and in another way it's sad because these places are ugly, and in other way it's sad because of the lack of community. It makes me very happy that I live on a street full of people who care about the street. Anyway, it just make me think.