American Glossary – County Highway

Editorial

America by the Numbers

By The Editors

39 million — Total number of hunting permits, licenses, and stamps issued in the US in 2021 100 — Approximate number of hunting-related fatalities in the US in 2021 30 — Number of hunting fatalities reported in Texas in 1970 1 — Number of hunting fatalities in Texas in 2023 0 — Estimated number of hunting fatalities in Colorado in the decade after hunters were required to wear orange 1,299 — Number of injuries reported at US amusement parks in 2019 64 — Number of recorded deaths at Disney World 1964-2024 29 — Number of recorded deaths at Disneyland 1955-2024 10 — Number of people who have died inside the White House over the past 200 years 8 — Number of Presidents who have died in office 4 — Number of Presidents who have died in office of natural causes 1.5 — Average length in years of Stage 5 Alzheimer’s disease, i.e. “moderate dementia,” before decline becomes severe, which often involves hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and forgetting the names of close friends and family …

Profile

An American Song

A Visit with The Great Jimmy Webb

Songwriting master unveils the mysteries of ‘Wichita Lineman’

God spoke to him and then he fucked up the rhyme

By David Samuels

Great artists talk directly to God. Sometimes, more often than not, they do it only once. Maybe a handful of times, at best. Why God chooses some people to talk to and not others is a mystery that other artists love to savor and ponder and get jealous about, which is a solid reason to prefer the company of normal people instead. The truth is that real artists tend to be as mysterious to themselves as they are to everyone else. If you ask why God chose them, the honest ones will tell you that they don’t have a clue. Some artists lead careful lives, shrewdly calculating their chances at earthly prizes, while others love to smoke and drink and fuck and drive fast cars. My own guess is that the kind of giftedness that I am describing is one of God’s typical little jokes, which tend to emphasize, affectionately or not, that man is a species of dust. The joke, as always, is on us. And as they put it in Hollywood, everyone in the room gets credit for the joke. Jimmy Webb is one of the most …