I won’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Steve Piper. I hadn’t either, but here’s the point; Steve is a journeyman singer-songwriter I heard last month while traveling in Western Massachusetts, and in this life, when you’ve been around for a while, you begin to appreciate how much talent there is – in your neighborhood, in your city, maybe even in your own family. I’ve been saying this for a long time, but it hard registered last month when I heard Steve play one night in Stockbridge.
This is our coffee table last week just before we left for Boston. Messy, but it gives you an idea of how I’m coping with the present and thinking about the future.
It’s taken me 18 months to begin to come to terms with the election of 2016. I wasn’t a fan of Hillary’s, though I knew I could live with her policy decisions. She wasn’t the person I’d have chosen to lead the country but I voted for her because she was the safer choice and thought she would make reasonable decisions in the national interest until someone more visionary came along.
In the midst of today’s political turmoil it’s natural to cast about for reasons. How did we get here? In a post-truth environment have we seen the last of civil discourse, reasoned debate, and bipartisan compromise? Are American values outdated? Partisan politics has created dueling parties where tribal nationalism is at war with liberal globalism. Can our constitutional infrastructure withstand the pressure of a president’s autocratic impulses? Is America too big and too diverse to be governed democratically? Do we have an underlying unifying principle?
On our recent Grand Tour of Texas, just upstream from this spot there was a boatman offering to row us across the Rio Grande so we could have our passports stamped in Mexico. It’s a novelty, of course, but the Boquillas Border Crossing is one of the 48 official crossing points on the US-Mexican border.
I didn’t bite on the boat ride or buy a handmade trinket from the young Mexican sitting in the shade of a spindly tree along the trail, but it felt surreal to be there on the dusty edge of the Chihuahuan desert peering into the mouth of Boquillas Canyon while hearing in my head the mean-spirited chatter about rapists, drug dealers, and other criminals swarming toward the US border determined to steal our jobs and destroy our heritage.
This is Confluence Park, a public/private enterprise, at the juncture of San Pedro Creek and the San Antonio River near downtown San Antonio. Designed by Ted Flato of Lake/Flato Architects, the park is designed to teach students and neighbors about the water and native plants of the area in addition to giving them respite from the residential density surrounding the park. More about that and Ted Flato later, but this was one of the many surprises of our Grand Tour of Texas.
When we left Seattle, we thought the Austin music scene could be a highlight of The Tour. As luck and timing would have it we didn’t hear a lick in Austin, but that’s the thing about Texas; it’s so big and there are so many things to see, hear, and do that they can’t all be done on a three-week road trip. Instead of 12 Bar Blues, our highlights were the surprising three A’s – Astronomy, Architecture, and Art. I wrote about astronomy and “dark energy” last week and Donald Judd’s art in Marfa the week before. Today I want to share what M and I learned in our up close and personal course on Texas architecture.
