Signs of Obsession

I'm in a coffeeshop in Berkeley and a headline from a nearby Wall Street Journal caught my attention.

"Southwest Searches for Deals After Loss of Frontier"

My first thought was that Turner had already dealt with that one.

Chalino and Narcocorridos (or Reading About Southwestern Music)

"There are many ways to know a city — through its restaurants or museums, its landmarks or outdoor spaces. But one way to get to a city’s heart is to immerse yourself in its music. You might think that would be impossible to do in Los Angeles, a landscape far too huge, too varied, too dizzying to ever sort out."

From "Music Without Borders" in last Sunday's NYT.

I really need to explore that Arhoolie Records crowd. Things always do seem to wind up back in Berkeley. I've been thinking about a trip south to visit UCLA and USC some time in the next two months. Maybe I'll need to stay longer.

"[E]ven the harshest narcocorridos are merely sweet-sounding polkas if you don’t know the words." So THAT'S why I'll need to learn Spanish; I get it.

Yosemite as Place

I had initially intended this to be a place where I'd post anything and everything that I came across or thought about related to this western business. Then I became wordy and attempted to be thoughtful. That's all fine and well, but let's get to that surfeit of information business.

...

I'm working on this coffee table book on California history where I get to find old pictures and then say something somewhat meaningful about them. Here are two of my favorite pictures of the Valley.


Roger Minick's "Woman with scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park" (1980). (Be sure to check out the rest of his "Sightseer Series.)

I love the visual commodity of Yosemite. Yosemite as nature isn't all that interesting to me compared to Yosemite as pilgrimage spot, Yosemite as Californian product, Yosemite as American ideal of nature. Inspiration Point has been photographed so many times that, in all honesty, I find it hard to imagine what the Valley's like looking west instead of east. The old world has Canterbury and Mecca, we have the National Park System.


Rondal Partridge's "Pave it and Paint it Green" (mid-1960's). Partridge studied with Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

Is that my grandparents' car, fourth row back? They spent a few weeks in the Valley each summer with my dad and uncle and whichever family or friend child tagged along.

Yosemite would mean nothing to us if this didn't happen. Yosemite as possibility. You can live in San Mateo or San Bernardino but Yosemite is just right there, every Labor Day, any weekend, every 4 AM, every lunch at the Ahwanee. If we couldn't visit Yosemite it would mean nothing to us Californians.

...

Thoughts and ramblings again. Really just meant to show off those pictures. I'll get better at this brevity business.