Geoff Nicholson's Blog, page 51

WALKING IN EDENS

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mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GZbPJb-cvm..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GZbPJb-cvm..." width="310" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve been re-reading parts of the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Robert Irwin Getty Garden</i>, and discovered this passage in which Irwin, an “artist who isn’t a gardener” describes walking in the garden with Jim Duggan, a “gardener who isn’t an artist” (that's a quotation from the San Diego Union Tribune).</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qL-6qjUTlF..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qL-6qjUTlF..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Irwin says, “Well, one thing that Jim’s been doing as we go through the year (the book was published 2002) is, he lists every single plant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve been walking through the garden together on an average once every two weeks, and he takes notes, giving each plant a rating, like one star, two stars, up to five stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In January, a plant might get one star, then it’s a two star and then it’s a three star and then it’s a four star and then it’s a five star – it stays five stars for whatever, and then it becomes a four and a three and a two and we plan its replacement, and then we take it out.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Muj4mHoH3D..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Muj4mHoH3D..." width="271" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well, what a very singular way of walking through a garden, and what a formidable display of ruthlessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It must make you feel like a god, or perhaps like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, as he appears in the novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You Only Live Twice. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QDjVBL3NTj..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QDjVBL3NTj..." width="407" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I first read it a long time ago, when I was barely a teenager, and I’m really not sure I ever saw the movie, but I gather that book and film resemble each other only in passing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>What has stayed with me from the book for all these years is the Garden of Death, a place in the grounds of a castle on a Japanese island, a place full of deadly plants where people go to commit suicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There’s a pool of piranhas in there too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The whole thing moved my thirteen year old’s heart in ways I don’t understand even now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CRUcDQHY7U..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="626" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CRUcDQHY7U..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So I just reread <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You Only Live Twice</i>, and frankly it’s a bit ropey, Fleming’s eleventh and penultimate novel, written at a time when he was ailing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Bond is in Japan for one reason or another. Blofeld has disguised himself as </span><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, a man internationally praised for his knowledge of plants but the Japanese authorities find his Garden of Death a bit of an embarrassment (which sounds extremely unlike the Japanese, to me) and so Bond’s mission is to disguise himself as a Japanese deaf mute (!?), get inside the castle and kill Shatterhand. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spoiler alert - he succeeds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZISRB0eAz..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZISRB0eAz..." width="392" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">    </span> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Walking in the garden is considered a bit of a liability, but Bond’s Japanese connection, Tiger Tanaka, tells him the garden is full of hiding places.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">    </span>“Thanks very much,” says Bond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>“In one of those poison bushes or up one of those trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I don’t want to blind myself or go mad.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">    </span>“The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ninja </i>clothing will give you complete protection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You will have a black suit for night and a camouflage one for the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You will wear the swimming goggles to protect your eyes.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">    </span>Actually it’s not all that easy to see how deadly this garden is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Sure, Fleming gives us a list of the deadly plants growing there, including castor bean, ipecacuahana, and Mexican wild potato, all of which are certainly dangerous, but it’s not as if a wild potato is going to leap from the ground and force you to eat it, is it now? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It makes you wonder who the gardeners were, and whether they went around giving plants star ratings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I’m guessing not.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LTrvwZGl62..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LTrvwZGl62..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">        </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In recent years</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Aokigahara Forest, also known as Yukai forest “the Sea of Trees,” has been getting a lot of publicity and there are some truly gruesome pictures online. Like Blofeld’s garden, it’s a place where people go to commit suicide; somewhere between 70 and a 100 per year is the accepted number.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">  </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">People walk in and never walk out, and of course they take their fate in their own hands without having to rely on deadly plants or any Bond villain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Hanging is the most frequently used suicide method, followed by poisoning and overdose. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t make up my mind whether this is a good or a bad thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In general, I think people have every right to kill themselves, not that “rights” come into it much. I don’t claim to have any expertise in the matter, but of the friends I’ve known who’ve killed themselves, at least two of them did it while out walking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zlzve02GHI..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zlzve02GHI..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">     </span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are no gardeners in the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Aokigahara Forest as far as I know, </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">though there are volunteer counselors who position themselves in the forest and try to talk potential suicides into changing their mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The photographs above and below are by Pieter ten Hoopen who has documented the place in a less grisly fashion that many.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The picture below shows </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Azusa Hayano, a geologist who has apparently talked hundreds of people out of ending it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Of course he’s also found a certain number of bodies.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L5Xzc3a0-J..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L5Xzc3a0-J..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well there was none of that a few days ago when I went to the James Irvine Japanese Garden </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in downtown LA, one of those places that’s always on lists of “LA’s best kept secrets” thereby ensuring it’s no longer secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>James Irvine, or at least his foundation, was the major sponsor, and it was designed by </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Takeo Uesugi, who for several decades was the go-to guy if you wanted a Japanese garden in southern California: he died in January 2016</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HmCi16hFbg..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HmCi16hFbg..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can see into the garden from the street, just about, but it’s sunk down into the earth and there are locked and forbidding gates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It’s open to the public, but they don’t exactly beckon you in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You have to go into the community center, and confront a stern Japanese woman who will quite literally look you up and down to make sure you’re worthy, and if you are (it seemed touch and go in my own case, but I just made it), then you sign in, and are allowed go down in a elevator, thread your way along corridors between office doors, and there you are in a Japanese garden surrounded on all sides by the skyscrapers of LA..</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WY2FO5uVI_..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WY2FO5uVI_..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not large but it has most of what you want and need in a Japanese garden – </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">there’s a stream, footbridges, some ferns, some redwoods, and a very great number of plants I couldn’t tell you the name of. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t believe any of them were overtly deadly.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There wasn’t a lot going, which is want you want in a Japanese garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A few people came and went while I was there – but for much of the time I was the only one. </span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OTeXX8PFtl..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OTeXX8PFtl..." width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Interestingly there are no benches in the garden, which may have been another attempt to make sure the riffraff don’t linger too long, and it meant that if you wanted to sit you had to find a rock to accommodate your buttocks, or, as in my own choice, you could keep on walking around the paths.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ahRdOqcKdE..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="534" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ahRdOqcKdE..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

LINGER ON THE SIDEWALK ...

When I first arrived in Los Angeles it seemed to me that neon was everywhere. Somehow you feel safe walking at night when there’s neon around, glowing above your head. I’m not sure that you are, but it feels that way.

One Sunday afternoon, in those early LA days, I even visited the Museum of Neon Art which at that point was in a bleak stretch of downtown, on a block where I was the only walker.  The museum closed down not long thereafter.

I tend to think of neon signs being especially used by bars, restaurants and motels, and maybe the auto trade, but the image below shows there was a time when it could be used for just about anything.

Anyway, I settled down in L.A., and then I stopped noticing the neon.  Did it go into decline, or did I just become immured to it?  Both, I think.  But lately I seem to see an increasing amount of neon.


And now the Museum of Neon Art has reopend in shiny new premises in Glendale (so not really LA, if we’re being pedantic).  I’d been meaning to go for a while but finally got there at the weekend.

It wasn’t so very long since I last went to Glendale but boy, it’s changed.  Even a few years back much of Brand Boulevard was a reasonable approximation of a classic main street:

But now it’s rapidly turning into one giant corporate mall.  Arguably this could be said to have made the place more “pedestrian-friendly,” though personally I found it about as friendly as a pit full of komodo dragons. The fact that the temperature in Glendale is generally five to ten degrees F hotter than Los Angeles is no great encouragement to walkers either.
Well the Museum of Neon Art is great, which is to say that the neon exhibits there are great: classic, nostalgic, witty, well-crafted, smart, optimistic. Here are a few of them:




Of course I wanted more, and there is room for the exhibition space to expand, but I wanted much, much more, I wanted to be able to walk among thousands of exhibits arranged over hundreds of acres.   Of course I wanted too much, but it was the museum that put the idea into my head.
I also came out of there with an urge for a drink and some economy meat, although that may not have been entirely because of the neon.
.
 In fact there’s a newish, hipsterish bar that’s opened in my neighbourhood, The Know Where, well within walking distance.  I’d probably have gone there in any case, but it was definitely that neon sign that first drew me in.
 

MYSTERIANS?

Can’t help thinking that the guys involved in replacing the pipes in my street may have lost their way.  Yes, we know it’s all a mystery down there but spraying question marks on the ground looks a bit like admitting defeat.

WALKING WITH SNOW

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p6U27o1CHy..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-p6U27o1CHy..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of writers drink, a lot of writers walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Are there many people who walk and write and drink?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some obviously: Guy Debord, Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Crews, Malcolm Lowry kind of, Jack Kerouac maybe: but I’m not sure how many, and it’s an awfully boyish crowd to be sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>And what about the druggy walker/writers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Once you’ve said De Quincey and Will Self, who else is there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And is sensory derangement good for walking?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I dunno, but I’m working on it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1yBBBLywHg..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="626" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1yBBBLywHg..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the meantime, a small story walking and drinking, and of course writing, from the great Sebastian Snow, author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Rucksack Man, </i>a book which describes his walk from the bottom to the top of South America: Tierra Del Fuego to Panama.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It didn’t kill him, but it’s hard to say (per Nietzsche) that it made him much stronger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He experiences a fair amount of derangement in the book, but most of it isn’t of the alcoholic kind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wa2CgANLun..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wa2CgANLun..." width="412" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Well, I had made it, I’d traversed the continent of South America on food and crossed the Darien Gap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The end was hazardous, ghastly, a grueling nightmare where Death stalked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Only willpower kept me going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Under weight by about five stone, two sprained ankles, both swollen and discoloured, my feet and ankles covered with gore, blood and bites, a mass of suppurating sores, stung by a hornet on the neck, bitten by a scorpion, nipped by a vampire bat, ticks under the skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I looked in the mirror and saw what days in the jungle could do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zkk8CvxEkV..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Zkk8CvxEkV..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Somewhere outside of Pasto, in the south of Columbia, he writes, “I encountered three young Colombian men who told me that they had not a peso between them and had been walking for five days without food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I was very sympathetic.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He gives them money for food, and buys them new shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span>“Although I felt quite quixotic towards their evident plight I could not believe they had been tramping for five long days without a bit to eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It was just not feasible, I thought, especially as all three looked in very good shape.”</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">      </span>They start walking together but they young men aren’t very good walkers, certainly not by Sebastian Snow’s standard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The youngest of them starts complaining about his feet almost immediately, although of course if you believed his story he’d already been walking for 5 days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Snow puts him on a bus and pays for his ticket to Cali.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A day later the second Columbian starts “hobbling badly, in spite of or despite the new shoes I had so stupidly bought him.” I wonder if it’s “because of,” but in any case, he too gets put on a bus.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“The last, Sancho Panza, however, bravely soldiered on but it was not very long before he took to taking buses and meeting me in the evenings at the places I had appointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In the end I reluctantly had to sack him for taking to the bottle in a big way; all, of course, at my expense.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">     </span>Some of us might think the whole episode was something other than quixotic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

WALKING STARS

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mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D0PxLcQrQq..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="344" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D0PxLcQrQq..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Three Olympic cheers for Wang Zhen, </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Liu Hong, and </span>Matej Toth, g</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">old medal winners in Rio for, respectively, the 20 km men’s, 20 km women’s, and 50 km men’s race walking events. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dlk2XZb6IO..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="354" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dlk2XZb6IO..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BxDb-qKg60..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="354" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BxDb-qKg60..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u46Lu1oy3c..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u46Lu1oy3c..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And if you’ve not heard much about them from your Olympic news source I can’t say I’m very surprised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Here in the States it’s been extraordinarily difficult to find coverage of any events that the US isn’t likely to do well in, and there was just one American race walker, John Nunn, who seems to have an interesting enough backstory – he runs a “gourmet cookie” business with his daughter - but he came 43^rd in the final so he isn’t being celebrated as much of a hero.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4YjzTawjel..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4YjzTawjel..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In fact the one person who has been getting some coverage is poor (but heroic) Yohann Diniz of France who had some terrible bowel malfunction during the 50 km race.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Early reports said he “soiled himself,” which would have been bad enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>However, later reports said it wasn’t poop running down his legs, but blood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The current story is that it was both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Still, he sponged himself down and carried on, then he collapsed but he got up and carried on again, finishing the race in 8^th place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Hell that’s what I call walking!!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-weI8LGdAN0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="324" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-weI8LGdAN0..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In fact it seems to have been a punishing race around -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>48 competitors finished, 19 dropped out along the way, and were 13 disqualified.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mqu62686Om..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Mqu62686Om..." width="640" /></a></span> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IGgTeLlEwV..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IGgTeLlEwV..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course one of the main reasons walking doesn’t get much coverage is because people think it looks kind of absurd, which is unfair, but not entirely unjustified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The nature of the sport guarantees a certain inelegance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The heel and toe business, the feet not allowed to get airborne, is part of it, and then there’s the odd rotation of the hips. Most of us rotate our hips about four degrees when we walk, race walkers rotate theirs about 20 degrees, so that the extra rotation gives them longer strides.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EliIp4ZS11..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EliIp4ZS11..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Back in the day, when I was growing up in Sheffield there was an annual twelve mile Star Walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The Star was, and is, the local newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It was one of those events that we used to go out and watch, even if the rest of the year we never gave a thought to race walking.  Some competitors used to take it very seriously:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HHSmQbeTo9..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="430" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HHSmQbeTo9..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Somewhat less so over the years:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rHz7ww8JVo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rHz7ww8JVo..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-inD0JbEjzs..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-inD0JbEjzs..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

CUT, PASTE

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In case you’ve been wondering about terragylphs and how the work is going in my street to replace the ancient water pipes, well, recently various words, numbers and and squiggles have appeared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-yb1KcckZ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-yb1KcckZ..." width="480" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I assume the guys will indeed be cutting in due course, although not yet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Work seems to be progressing slowly but obviously well enough that mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti just held a press conference in the street to celebrate the fine work the lads were doing, here and elsewhere and to announce a new </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">General Manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, David Wright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That’s him on the left, and for out of towners, that’s Garcetti on the right, looking mayoral.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9lBdZC06pg..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9lBdZC06pg..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It wasn’t exactly a media circus but a fair amount of press was in attendance, as well as some political flunkies and people from the LADWP, and of course the guys doing the work.  I think it was also meant to be a great photo op: </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">a large pipe being lowered into a hole, but in the end I think it probably wasn’t as visual as they’d hoped.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-89DBeEO3xR..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-89DBeEO3xR..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JkwvSuy02C..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JkwvSuy02C..." width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As far as I could see there were only about three people there who actually lived in the neighborhood – and being one of them, I found myself being interviewed by a local TV station, I couldn’t tell you which one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>If I’d known, I’d probably have washed my hair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Anyway I think I said all the right things: there had been many leaks, many cracks in the road, the whole area was subject to subterranean movement, the men doing the work were a great bunch of guys and so forth.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Final question from the interviewer, “And do you do any walking in the neighborhood?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Honey, I’m the author a book titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost Art of Walking</i>, and I write a blog ...”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">     I’m not sure she was actually impressed by this, but nevertheless I was then filmed walking down the road trying to look natural.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I kind of hope I never see it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At one point the mayor held up a map, which is always good:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hbDQT82pVM..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hbDQT82pVM..." width="470" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And for a substantial amount of time, he stood next to the LADWP mascot – a man in a foam rubber costume shaped like a drop of water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The magic of Hollywood.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2He2zp-x2h..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2He2zp-x2h..." width="514" /></a></div><br /></div><span id="goog_1148387287"></span><span id="goog_1148387288"></span><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

DEBUGGING THE GARDEN

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mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p {mso-style-priority:99; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Times; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.textexposedshow {mso-style-name:text_exposed_show; mso-style-unhide:no;} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eWx493Xyf2..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eWx493Xyf2..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Everything that Rises: a book of convergences</i></span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">, Lawrence Weschler p</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">osits the idea that there are meaningful connections to be found in images from incredibly diverse sources that somehow resemble each other - </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“uncanny moments of convergence, bizarre associations, eerie rhymes, whispered recollections—sometimes in the weirdest places.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some days this sounds interesting to me, other days it just sounds bleedin’ obvious.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for instance, </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Freddy Alborta’s famous </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">photograph </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Che Guevara’s Death,” from 1967:</span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZoJWZ156Z..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="474" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZoJWZ156Z..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>looks like</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson” from 1632:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8TtAIy9qwQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="492" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8TtAIy9qwQ..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s no denying that the two images do resemble each other, but isn’t it perfectly likely that Alborta had seen “The Anatomy Lesson” and its composition came to mind, consciously or subconsciously, as he took the picture?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But even if it didn’t, what exactly does this resemblance mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>And in what sense is it a “convergence”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>What exactly is coming together?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Other pictures were certainly taken of that scene with Che, some of them rather less Rembrandt-ish:</span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_L0m17keb..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="374" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9_L0m17keb..." width="640" /></a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That may be a discussion for another time and place, but I did just notice (having been familiar with the images for some time) a resemblance, hardly random, and hardly all that surprising, between these two images of Jerry Cornelius (as played by Jon Finch in <i>The Final Programme) </i>and JG Ballard (in Harley Cokliss's 1971 short <i>Crash) </i>walking alongside wrecked cars.  </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IdIL5WFWwE..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IdIL5WFWwE..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CWcvY_YDaQ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="394" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CWcvY_YDaQ..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Both images then reminded me of scenes from Jean Luc Godard’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sympathy for the Devil</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7gxoo_0TSX..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7gxoo_0TSX..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And then I was reminded of a shot from Derek Jarman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jubilee</i>:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_vyZb5C_i..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_vyZb5C_i..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Which in turn reminded me of Wim Wenders’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The American Friend</i> </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z_FvEbntrl..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="398" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z_FvEbntrl..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think you could argue that things here are diverging rather than converging, but that’s OK: free association seems as valid, and as meaningful, as any imagined convergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But hold on there.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not sure that Weschler is, or that JG Ballard was, much of a walker, but I do know that </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Weschler is the author of another book titled, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Robert Irwin Getty Garden </i>about the gardens at the Getty Center in Los Angeles which contains transcripts of conversations Weschler and Irwin (the garden’s designer), had on a series of walks through the garden, discussing the philosophical and practical decisions that went into the design.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a fabulous garden by any standard – and very wild and fanciful in some ways, very formal in others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MCemJRMnNm..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MCemJRMnNm..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t think it’s a garden where people do much serious walking, but there is a pretty great (if obviously unwalkable) cactus garden:</span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GDCd68k1K..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_GDCd68k1K..." width="640" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t know if JG Ballard would have enjoyed the </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; line-height: 200%;">Getty</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> Garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some evidence suggests he wouldn’t. There’s an interview by Graeme Revell that appears in “Re/Search 8/9: J. G. Ballard,” from 1984, in which he discusses the symmetry of the French garden - JGB: - Which I always find nightmarish for some reason, those formal French gardens. One would think all that intense formality would be the absolute opposite of madness. The gardens were obviously designed to enshrine the most formal, rational and sane society to ever exist during the Age of Reason. Why they should immed<span class="textexposedshow">iately fill me with notions of psychosis, I don't know.</span></span></div><div style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Have you ever been to Madingley Hall near Cambridge? It's a big Elizabethan mansion, and a couple of years ago some friends took me out there. Behind this large house, which is used for conferences and academic meetings and the like, were notices everywhere requesting silence. We walked into this large, very formal French garden with beautifully crisp hedges, like great green sculptures, everywhere; very severe, rectangular, rectilinear passways - like diagrams - on the ground. Profoundly enclosed, very silent. I nearly went mad....”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU1GQHmUF8..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eU1GQHmUF8..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As fate would have it, some of us have seen, or at least seen photographs of, JG Ballard’s front garden, images like this one:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MTLn93sDXo..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MTLn93sDXo..." width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not much formality there and not much wildness either. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose if you live in suburbia you do have to worry just a little about what the neighbours think, however much of a wildman you are in your writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You couldn’t have much of a walk in it, obviously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I wonder if Ballard would have been happier walking here, at the VW Slug Bug Ranch in Conway, Texas.  I think I would.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbXcHpFNfc..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VbXcHpFNfc..." width="640" /></a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

WALKING UP AND UNDER

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 147 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Is there any more depressing way of being described than as “Geoff Nicholson, 63”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>(Well yes of course there is, Geoff Nicholson 64, Geoff Nicholson 65, and so on, but you know what I mean).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>That’s how I was described by the Sydney Morning Herald in a rather good piece by Peter Monroe about walking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It can be found below.</span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Shrewd observers and flaneuses will note that the piece is illustrated with images of the winsome Tara Wells, 39, and I’m sure that will be perceived as a bit dubious in some quarters; male gaze and whatnot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But personally I’m prepared to accept that most of the world (me included) would rather look at pictures of her than at pictures of a 63 year old geezer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s a funny thing, when I read my own words after an interview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>They always sound like something I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> have said, but I can never quite remember having said them that way: something to do with the spoken versus the printed word, I’m sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>But in general I’m content to do an interview and find that I don’t come out sounding like a complete dick: this one just about passes the test, IMHO.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">                               *</span></span></div><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;">WALK THIS WAY OR NOT: GOING FOR A STROLL IS ON A DOWNHILL TRAJECTORY</span></b><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LiuSlJ9Zpk..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LiuSlJ9Zpk..." /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Peter Munro<br /><br /><br />At 8pm on a frosty night in autumn, Leonard Mead goes walking. His route runs down silent streets and empty footpaths, past homes lit from within by television screens. It's quiet out – he wears sneakers so as not to startle the neighbourhood dogs. In 10 years of strolling by night and day, tallying thousands of kilometres on his feet, he has never met another person walking.<br /><br />This last, lonely walker was imagined by science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, in a dim future when walking is forbidden and pedestrians are considered criminals. His 1951 short story The Pedestrian depicts a misty evening when Mead is arrested by police for just walking – with no particular purpose or destination in mind. "Walking for air. Walking to see," he says, before being locked inside the sinister-sounding "Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies".<br /><br />Bradbury's story was set in 2053 and seems aeons away from our own time. But already, people who walk are relative curiosities. Less than one in five Australians aged 15 and over walked for exercise in 2013-14 – the latest available ABS figures – down from 24 per cent in 2011-12 (even then, it remained our most popular physical recreation activity). The number of walkers dropped by more than 700,000 over that time – from about 4.2 million to 3.5 million.<br /><br />While we might still walk short distances to the bus stop and train station, the notion of walking for sheer pleasure is emerging as something strange or startling. Committed walkers such as Tara Wells, of Caringbah, in Sydney's south, are increasingly thin on the ground.<br /><br /><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bHpNeV5ApI..." style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bHpNeV5ApI..." width="640" /></a>    Tara Wells spent her honeymoon walking in Sydney. Photo: Peter Rae<br /><br />"People have become disconnected to walking for the sake of it, possibly because of laziness and apathy," she says. "These days, it is easy to go your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned workplace and not even notice what you've been missing because your life is so full otherwise.<br /><br />"When I take the time to get out there at the pace of the walker,  I feel much more connected to myself, the people around me and the world in which we are living."<br /><br />Walking is in decline worldwide. The proportion of young Australians who walk, ride or scoot to school dropped 42 per cent between 1971 and 2013, according to Active Healthy Kids Australia. In the United States, there has been a comparative long-term slide of 35 per cent in school children taking "active transport" – it's similarly down 23 per cent in the United Kingdom and 12 per cent in Canada.<br /><br />Walking has suffered most in countries that are heavily reliant on cars. Passenger vehicle ownership in Australia increased from 153 cars per 1000 people in 1955 to 568 in 2013. Multibillion-dollar road projects such as Sydney's WestConnex and Melbourne's Western Distributor toll road plan, reinforce the sense that cars are the way to go.<br /><br /><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B-g0qfqCI1..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-B-g0qfqCI1..." width="640" /></a>Tara Wells walks whenever she can - it clears her mind, relaxes her and helps connect her with the outside world.  Photo: Peter Rae<br /><br />Witness the queues of cars at school drop-off and pick-up zones, or the traffic jams in suburban streets on Saturday mornings. Walking is regarded as dead or wasted time in an otherwise busy day. Walking is something older people do. Even the word "pedestrian" designates it as dull and uninspired.<br /><br />When we do walk, it's typically to the bus stop, train station or car parking station, often while staring at mobile phone screens. For many of us, the notion of walking for pure pleasure might as well be sci-fi.  <br /><br />Dr Lina Engelen, a research fellow at the Sydney Medical School, within the University of Sydney, recalls regularly walking to school and sporting activities as a child. Parents today are less likely to let children roam free, she says. "We are getting busier and we don't really have time to walk kids to school or to different places," she says.<br /><br />"And that combines with the idea of our society getting less safe, which it isn't. Fear mongering means people don't let their kids walk themselves and will drive them."<br /><br />Active Healthy Kids Australia, a collaboration among researchers in physical activity and health, says children used to enjoy a much larger "roaming radius". The group's 2015 report card on active transport – which gave Australia a middling mark of "C" – cited a UK study that children were failing to venture much further than their front yard. The typical distance that an eight-year-old navigates on their own by foot or bike has declined dramatically: from more than 9.5 kilometres in 1919, to 1.6km in 1950, 800 metres in 1979 and 270m in 2007.<br /><br />The report's authors attributed the growing reliance on cars, in part, to an increase in the distances children travel to school – due to urban sprawl and the preference for private schools over local public schools. But they questioned parents' concerns about stranger danger and road safety – noting that children are more likely to be harmed by someone they know and that rates of pedestrian accidents are low and getting lower.<br /><br />The slow demise of walking goes beyond the schoolyard. Driving is the dominant mode of transport to work or full-time study for the vast majority of Australian adults. The percentage of adults who instead walked fell from 4.4 per cent in 2000 to 3.8 per cent in 2012, according to the ABS. <br /><br />Engelen says while the trend of wearing activity trackers, such as Fitbits, may have increased rates of recreational walking, overall "discretionary" walking has been falling for decades – particularly those incidental, short trips to the supermarket, bank or soccer practice.<br /><br />Many people simply prefer not to walk, she says. "It is seen as just easier and more comfortable to get in the car, especially if it's a rainy or cold day.<br /><br />"And perhaps walking is not considered as cool as other forms of physical activity. People are more keen to say that they do scuba diving or are training for a triathlon – something that would impress people a bit more than saying 'I walk'. Anyone can do it, so you are not so special."<br /><br />'It shouldn't be a big deal that you have gone for a walk'<br /><br />The winter sun is high above Cronulla Beach, in Sydney's south, where even the dogs are blonde. Young mums in bikinis drag double prams across the sand. Leathery men stick mobile phones down their budgie smugglers.<br /><br />Tara Wells walks by in jeans and pink Converse shoes. She's no Leonard Mead – there are plenty of people out walking today but they're mostly dressed in active wear, intent on working up a sweat.<br /><br />Wells, 39, has three children under four and finds scant time to exercise. She prefers "incidental walking" – to train stations, the shops or the library. She spent her honeymoon with husband Ian, who runs Sydney Coast Walks tours, walking most of the way from Manly to Bondi.<br /><br />That's an unusual honeymoon, I say. "Yes," she says.<br /><br />In 2010, after suffering sudden onset rheumatoid arthritis, she could barely walk and recalls standing at the bottom of a busy train station escalator in anger. "All these people had two perfectly good legs and I couldn't understand why they weren't using them," she says. "I think it's laziness and apathy. I knew that once I got my health under control, which it is now, I would never take my legs for granted."<br /><br />She says that walking "recharges" her body and mind. "It gets the blood flowing and I feel more connected to myself and to the world. When I walk I can feel the ground under my feet, I can feel the blood pumping through my veins, I can feel the wind through my hair. And all of that helps me remember who I am, rather than just my role as a mum."<br /><br />Conversations flow better when you're walking, she says. And so we stroll along the foreshore, talking about walking and children and walking with children. We're overtaken by people hurrying by with small dogs – including one in a hi-vis dog jacket.<br /><br />"What's been lost along the way is just walking for the hell of it," Wells says, watching them go. "It shouldn't be a big deal that you have gone for a walk. I think we have forgotten how easy it is and what your legs are there to do, if only we would use them."<br /><br />'A way of sharpening up the senses'<br /><br />Walking is an instinctive process that enhances the body and mind. A Stanford University report in 2014 found walking increases creativity – even when it's on a treadmill. Other studies associate regular walking with a reduced risk of dementia, depression and low self-esteem.  <br /><br />History suggests that an aimless kind of rambling, with no destination or Fitbit tally in mind, seems best for agitating the mind. Poet William Wordsworth is estimated to have walked almost 290,000 kilometres in his life, much of it about England's Lake District. Virginia Woolf sought inspiration while strolling through London's parks. Charles Dickens walked the streets all night, coming home at sunrise.<br /><br />British writer Geoff Nicholson, author of The Lost Art of Walking, says there's something about the pace of walking and the pace of thinking that go together. Wandering about near his home in the Hollywood Hills helps him to compose novels or solve plot twists. "For me and for a lot of people it is a way of sharpening up the senses," he says. "If you drive down the street, you see things running by the windscreen – they're here, they're gone. But walking helps you see what's there with greater clarity."<br /><br />Today, Nicholson, 63, has walked up a hill and down again – taking him about 55 minutes in total. He also likes walking in big cities and discovering "strange little corners and alleyways and detours". "Being alone and not needing a car or bus or any other form of transport other than yourself, makes you self-reliant," he says.<br /><br />Plodding along has some philosophical good, he says. At some point along the long, lonely road, the walker might become the walk – inseparable from the act of putting one foot in front of the other. It's a "zen kind of thing", he says.<br /><br />"Not wishing to sound too spiritual, there is that sense of belonging, of oneness," he says. "Sometimes I am just a guy trudging along and wishing I was home. But at its best, the body, mind, soul and landscape all come together and raise you up in some way."<br />                                                                        *<br /><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Here's the link to the Sydney Morning Herald: </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/why-wa..." target="_blank">http://www.smh.com.au/national/why-wa... </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

IT'S A DRY HEAVE

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Footer Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} span.FooterChar {mso-style-name:"Footer Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Footer;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Life’s like that: A couple of posts back I was writing about the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and now, by serendipity, I discover there’s such a thing as the Snow Chi Minh Trail.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCN5L47Bax..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCN5L47Bax..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not much of a place to go walking, as far as I can see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It’s a mountainous section </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">of Interstate 80, in Wyoming, between Walcott Junction and Laramie, 72 miles of bad road, site of some appalling winter driving conditions and subsequent highway crashes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was opened in the fall of 1970, and although it was lined with the best kind of snow fences then available, they weren’t good enough to deal with the severity of the snow that affected the area. And so the Wyoming Highway Department had to become experts on snow fence technology, which led to the development of the Wyoming Snow Fence. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RMrSABUvCJ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RMrSABUvCJ..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CLUI photo</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“These porous rows of tall wooden fence, rolling across the hills, are not made to block the snow, but to cut the wind, causing wind-borne snow to drop rather than to accumulate in places where it may pile on roads or cause white-out conditions or stream across the road surface forming a persistent layer of ice.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15NZP6r6xC..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15NZP6r6xC..." width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m quoting there from The Lay of the Land (that’s where I discovered the Snow Chi Minh Trail), it’s the newsletter of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, one of LA’s more wonderfully eccentric yet utterly serious enterprises, that (I think it would be fair to say) is concerned with nature and culture, with the ways in which people live on the earth and what they do to it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I picked up the newsletter because I went to an exhibition at the center, titled “Middles of Nowhere: Dry Lakes of the Mojave.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X27DKq2ItW..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X27DKq2ItW..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a fabulously austere exhibition, in a not very well illuminated, windowless space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There are small black and white maps on the walls showing dry lakes, with brief informative notes on each lake; no bells or whistles, nothing for the kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I thought it was just wonderful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The founder of the CLUI is Matthew Coolidge, and I’ve read interviews in which he’s talked about the meanings of “somewhere” and “nowhere,” and how there’s really no such thing as nowhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>When you’re in the middle of nowhere you’re always somewhere, possibly in the middle of a dry lake.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even so, a dry lake is a special category of somewhere, a contradiction in terms maybe, and a place defined by an absence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A lake is a place with water, a dry lake is a place without.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Of course some dry lakes do have water at certain times of the year, but then they shrink and disappear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Their boundaries aren’t fixed and eventually they have no boundaries at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Go pick the symbolism out of that one.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I realized I’ve done a fair amount of walking on or around Californian dry lakes, not as part of any great project, just because I like to wander through the desert in a more or less haphazard way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Here are a few of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is Searle’s Lake, seen from the town of Trona:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AfOc8yaF..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AfOc8yaF..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is Owens Lake, about ten miles south of Lone Pine, generally regarded as the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You definitely don’t want to be there on a windy day:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8TyOQzg3t..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8TyOQzg3t..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And this is Racetrack Playa in Death Valley: I’m not really sure that I understand the difference between a dry lake and a playa, or even if there is one:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H-8q7PjpQJ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H-8q7PjpQJ..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As you can see (I hope), plenty of other people enjoy walking on the Racetrack – which is certainly one of the problems of visiting Death Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It has been reduced to a number of sights and attractions, to a series of “somewheres” where people congregate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>If you’re looking for peace and isolation in Death Valley you have to find a spot between named places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Oh yeah, and do bear in mind that Death Valley is not a valley, it’s a graben, or perhaps a half-graben.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>(How long have you got?)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KNZtEEb59..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KNZtEEb59..." width="630" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These thoughts of dry lakes reminded me that the first dry lake I ever encountered was Lake Ballard, in Australia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I only went there because of the name – because I was a fan of JG Ballard, but it was truly startling, the emptiest, loneliest place I’d ever been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I’ve just had a dig in the archive and I’m pretty sure this photograph was taken at Lake Ballard, though it was a long time ago, and my archive is a mess, so I could be wrong.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FiqguW4Dh0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FiqguW4Dh0..." width="436" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Anyway, I hear that the bed of Lake Ballard is now decked out with 51 sculptures</span><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by Antony Gormley which seem attractive enough, but I suppose they also makes it more of a somewhere, possibly even a tourist destination.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CRblt1wbrT..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CRblt1wbrT..." width="640" /></a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>

IT"S A DRY HEAVE

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Times; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Geneva; panose-1:2 11 5 3 3 4 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:128; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:fixed; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoFooter, li.MsoFooter, div.MsoFooter {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Footer Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.0in right 6.0in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} span.FooterChar {mso-style-name:"Footer Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Footer;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Life’s like that: A couple of posts back I was writing about the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and now, by serendipity, I discover there’s such a thing as the Snow Chi Minh Trail.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCN5L47Bax..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCN5L47Bax..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not much of a place to go walking, as far as I can see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It’s a mountainous section </span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">of Interstate 80, in Wyoming, between Walcott Junction and Laramie, 72 miles of bad road, site of some appalling winter driving conditions and subsequent highway crashes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was opened in the fall of 1970, and although it was lined with the best kind of snow fences then available, they weren’t good enough to deal with the severity of the snow that affected the area. And so the Wyoming Highway Department had to become experts on snow fence technology, which led to the development of the Wyoming Snow Fence. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RMrSABUvCJ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RMrSABUvCJ..." width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CLUI photo</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“These porous rows of tall wooden fence, rolling across the hills, are not made to block the snow, but to cut the wind, causing wind-borne snow to drop rather than to accumulate in places where it may pile on roads or cause white-out conditions or stream across the road surface forming a persistent layer of ice.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15NZP6r6xC..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-15NZP6r6xC..." width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m quoting there from The Lay of the Land (that’s where I discovered the Snow Chi Minh Trail), it’s the newsletter of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, one of LA’s more wonderfully eccentric yet utterly serious enterprises, that (I think it would be fair to say) is concerned with nature and culture, with the ways in which people live on the earth and what they do to it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I picked up the newsletter because I went to an exhibition at the center, titled “Middles of Nowhere: Dry Lakes of the Mojave.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X27DKq2ItW..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X27DKq2ItW..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a fabulously austere exhibition, in a not very well illuminated, windowless space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There are small black and white maps on the walls showing dry lakes, with brief informative notes on each lake; no bells or whistles, nothing for the kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I thought it was just wonderful.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The founder of the CLUI is Matthew Coolidge, and I’ve read interviews in which he’s talked about the meanings of “somewhere” and “nowhere,” and how there’s really no such thing as nowhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>When you’re in the middle of nowhere you’re always somewhere, possibly in the middle of a dry lake.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even so, a dry lake is a special category of somewhere, a contradiction in terms maybe, and a place defined by an absence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>A lake is a place with water, a dry lake is a place without.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Of course some dry lakes do have water at certain times of the year, but then they shrink and disappear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Their boundaries aren’t fixed and eventually they have no boundaries at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Go pick the symbolism out of that one.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I realized I’ve done a fair amount of walking on or around Californian dry lakes, not as part of any great project, just because I like to wander through the desert in a more or less haphazard way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Here are a few of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is Searle’s Lake, seen from the town of Trona:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AfOc8yaF..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z3AfOc8yaF..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is Owens Lake, about ten miles south of Lone Pine, generally regarded as the largest single source of dust pollution in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>You definitely don’t want to be there on a windy day:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8TyOQzg3t..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8TyOQzg3t..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And this is Racetrack Playa in Death Valley: I’m not really sure that I understand the difference between a dry lake and a playa, or even if there is one:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H-8q7PjpQJ..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H-8q7PjpQJ..." width="640" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As you can see (I hope), plenty of other people enjoy walking on the Racetrack – which is certainly one of the problems of visiting Death Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>It has been reduced to a number of sights and attractions, to a series of “somewheres” where people congregate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>If you’re looking for peace and isolation in Death Valley you have to find a spot between named places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Oh yeah, and do bear in mind that Death Valley is not a valley, it’s a graben, or perhaps a half-graben.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>(How long have you got?)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KNZtEEb59..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KNZtEEb59..." width="630" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These thoughts of dry lakes reminded me that the first dry lake I ever encountered was Lake Ballard, in Australia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I only went there because of the name – because I was a fan of JG Ballard, but it was truly startling, the emptiest, loneliest place I’d ever been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>I’ve just had a dig in the archive and I’m pretty sure this photograph was taken at Lake Ballard, though it was a long time ago, and my archive is a mess, so I could be wrong.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FiqguW4Dh0..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FiqguW4Dh0..." width="436" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Anyway, I hear that the bed of Lake Ballard is now decked out with 51 sculptures</span><span style="color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by Antony Gormley which seem attractive enough, but I suppose they also makes it more of a somewhere, possibly even a tourist destination.</span><span style="font-family: "geneva"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CRblt1wbrT..." imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CRblt1wbrT..." width="640" /></a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheHol..." height="1" width="1" alt=""/>