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Canyons in Crawford? Ri-i-i-iight.
The following paragraph appeared in the LA Times, concerning Bush's and Colin Powell's recent trip to the coffee shop in Crawford, Texas (via Hullabaloo):
Unlike Washington, this is an environment Bush knows and loves, from the canyons on his ranch to the patrons of The Coffee Station. And, here, far away from the partisan capital, the warm feelings are mutual.And here's my response to that nonsense, originally posted in the Hullabaloo comments, which I am personally qualified to make having lived several years in the county where Crawford is located (McLennan) and still having kin nearby:
To anyone who knows that part of the country well, "ranch" is a stretch, and "canyons"--no way. The words evoke the extreme terrain in the western part of Texas, but the center and east are much more like the American South. The countryside around Waco--where Bush bought his property--is mostly rolling hills and farmland (cotton, oats, sorghum). To find drier, rockier, thornier "cattle country" you have to go further west. There is a line down the center of the state where the ecology begins to change dramatically to a "Southwestern" climate and terrain, but Crawford is east of that line. This is not to say there aren't cows in eastern/central Texas, but it's hardly the rough open range of the cattle drives. Bush may have stream beds or gullies on his property, but not canyons (a Texas source tells me he has a limestone sinkhole, but that doesn't count). The real canyons are even further west, in the Panhandle (Palo Duro Canyon) or Big Bend National Park. Pictures of the not-very-rugged terrain around Crawford can be seen here, in case you're looking for a nice "ranch" in the half-million range.So what's the point of all this? That the property in McLennan County isn't really a "ranch," even though the press keeps saying it is over and over. It's just ordinary "rural land," purchased within the last three or four years and called a "ranch" to give the President a hardy "western" image. Bush's people are banking on press ignorance of Texas ecology and terrain, and so far it's working.
Wandering around Hell's Kitchen, my old hood, today, I noticed a sickening thing: a 20 story residential building going up at 55th and 9th, where the A&P used to be. A complete eyesore, all out of scale to the neighborhood. In the past, Clinton neighborhood groups had been vigilant about the incursions of greasy developers: what happened this time? Midtown continues its inexorable march west, bye bye funky old neighborhood.
An inspiring sight at Barnes and Noble at Broadway and 67th: three kids camped on the carpeted floor of the graphic novel section, completely lost in the big manga comics they were reading. All were sitting, the two boys with backs resting against the shelves (right where I was looking for something, of course) and the girl with arms and legs twisted in a tight pretzel of total concentration in the middle of the floor. An airplane could have hit the street outside the building and not pried their eyes away from those books. This is the sort of behavior that would have made my own mother question my mental health back in the day, so I silently saluted them.
Lastly, two movies worth seeing: Buffalo Soldiers and Dirty Pretty Things. Regarding the first, which was delayed in release several times, I think we can handle a black comedy the message of which is (1) the military is stupid and wasteful, and (2) recruiting volunteer soldiers as an alternative to prison results in violence whether there's a war or not. This was true in 1989, when the movie was set, and it's still true. In a "terror war" who needs a friggin' permanent Army, anyway? New kind of war, new kind of defense response: having an army and bases all over the world without an actual, tangible, global military enemy (like the good ol' USSR) just encourages adventuring, such as we've seen in Iraq. And please don't talk to me about "Islamofascism," or "Islamic Nihilism," as Christopher Hitchens now likes to call it. Nothing's going to change, though, till the twisted, paranoid generation of the Cold War dies off (including, unfortunately, young fogeys like Bush).