Tuesday, November 04, 2008

And my mom recommends....

I'm not going to write anything about politics. I'll wait until I see what happens with Obama. I was reading this book called Bad Land by Jonathan Raban. It's interesting so far - a story about the people who settled the western USA. I'd say you can safely include the people who settled in Western Canada at around the same time. And it fascinated me to think it was all happening only a hundred years ago.
There are some incredible lines about photographers during that time who were close to artists, but also close to hardware store owner, or even a doctor. People had to send pictures of the new homestead to their families in England, Germany, Russia or whatever.... Fascinating.

But this little part struck me as quite lovely:

.... and with the character of it's landscape, where nothing got in the way of the newcomer's eye or put a drag on his ambitious imagination. I'd felt it myself. No sooner had I set foot on the prairie than I was having designs on it and thinking big. It was dangerously elating to be able to see so very far under a sky so very clear.

Do I sound much like my mom?

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