Odds and ends, picked up from the overnight excursion. There’s something about the achingly flat plains of the Permian Basin that wakens a soulful longing in me. Can’t put a finger on it, though.
It’s sense that Midland (Odessa, Permian Basin) is much abused, much maligned and vilified in the press, part of the process. To be sure, the store inside the security band has T-shirts for sale, “This is BUSH Country.” All I could come up with was a play on words, and I decided to avoid that.
It’s also a gateway, of sorts, to the Big Bend. And perhaps a decent halfway point between Dallas and El Paso.
Airport Reading:
From The New Yorker Magazine – “Gone with the surge” (Sept 26, 2005 – page 76)
“My guess is that the President could sense in Biloxi, Gulfport, and other coastal towns something of Midland, Texas, a boom-and-bust oil town that, unlike New Orleans, was forever reinventing itself, with an eye on the next big deal and, more important, a capacity for finding opportunity in misfortune. In Midland, disaster is an oil bust; on the coast, it’s a direct hit from a once-in-a-lifetime storm.”
Overheard:
“I’m not kidding: there was a Pussy-Cat-A-Go-Go” club,” then he gave the address, in what is now downtown Midland.
Alongside airport reading:
I watched as a B-17, I’m guessing, fully restored, lumbered up and into the afternoon sky. Off to its home, I’d guess, after the big show. Next was a pair B-25’s, departing. None of which was anywhere near the size of the AA Puddle Jumpers or SWA’s 737s, waiting to turn around carry us home.
I’ve got to make one of the CAF Air Show things, one time. This last weekend was just very poor planning on my part.
Departure notation:
There’s a sense, like barnstorming days of yore, with the old prop planes, out on the runways, the big commercial jet lumbering off into the sunset.
“Like tall ships under sail – ”
Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen (Act 2, scene 2, line 12)
Headline News:
Border news, from a headline I spotted Sunday morning.
And, in a much lighter vein, Buns of Steel?
Coolest tech toys?
According to someone, it’s a top one hunnert list.
That’s MY excuse:
Mars. Mars is moving, thoroughly, backwards. Not so much that you’d notice it, but somehow, yes, it’s bad. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. (That was a just a little note to myself after the unfortunate incident on the airplane. But never mind that now.)
