As the Road Trip enters its final days, I’m paying homage to the band whose name I ripped off for my blog. One of the greatest bluegrass bands ever, which only lasted from 1973-74 and included Jerry Garcia on banjo, David Grisman on mandolin and Vassar Clements on fiddle. Doesn’t get much better than that. …
“It’s As If We Were Country Bumpkins Who Didn’t Appreciate Art”: The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Installation with Dale Chihuly glass work I remember clearly the brouhaha in Philadelphia over heiress Alice Walton’s attempt to purchase Eakins’s The Gross Clinic for the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Behind the claims that the painting was part of Philadelphia’s patrimony, were the barely veiled sneers about the painting being displayed in northwest …
Standin’ on the Corner: Route 66 and travel nostalgia
Ok, sometimes you just gotta do the tourist shot Every self-respecting road trip across the Southwest should at least acknowledge Route 66. Even if you don’t organize your road trip around the “the Mother Road”, the vestiges of the 1926 highway appear at crossroads, on road signs, in souvenir shops, at truck stops, or in …
Continue reading "Standin’ on the Corner: Route 66 and travel nostalgia"
Death Valley: Zabriskie Point
I admit that I humored Pete when he said he wanted the Road Trip to stop in Death Valley. He had grown up in California and had never seen it. I imagined a boring, flat, scorching, dusty wasteland hardly worth the detour. Boy, was I wrong. Death Valley is dazzling, in the way only an …