The Man in the White Hoodie
Bob Dylan wows them in Nashville.
Does he even know where he is?
A long black cloud is coming down.
No one can rightly claim to have much of a clue as to what goes on inside Bob Dylan’s head these days. The man is 85 years old, and somehow still going strong on whatever old bluesman concoction they feed him — likely a mixture of potlikker, microgreens, ginger root, and pussy juice — before setting off for the next stop on his Never Ending Tour. But is he ever really here? One imagines that the world outside his windows exists mostly in counterpoint to the umbilical safety of his tour bus, where he listens to scratchy old country and blues records until showtime. Maybe he hears a high ghostly sound that might illuminate the mystery. Or maybe he walks around Nashville and eats hot chicken. No one really has a clue what he does, which is the way he likes to keep things.
A white hoodie shadows Dylan’s face such that only his mouth and his chin take a definite form. He looks like a …
I Tell, U Ride
The Telluride Bluegrass Festival is Finger-Pickin’ Good
Who are all these strangers gathering to hear my mountain music?
Lord have mercy, y’all
I’ve been in Telluride, Colorado, for twenty minutes when I meet a man named Dean at the entrance to Town Park, the town’s 36-acre festival and recreation grounds. Staring blankly toward Ingram Falls at the east end of the box canyon, I imagine the earth moving. Shadows linger beneath the aspen groves; snowmelt in the San Miguel River makes a soft murmuring; the rugged San Juan Mountains pierce the low-hanging sky. A fearsome, ecstatic landscape. It’s almost too much for me.
“Hey,” Dean asks. “Are you alright?” He’s in his fifties, dressed in a blue button-up, khaki shorts, and brown leather flip flops. He wears an expression of mild concern. “Yeah,” I say, “I think so.”
Since I am a first-timer in Telluride, and since the Town Park campground has been full for nearly five days always, Dean offers to help make sure I’m squared away. I am a suspicious Southern type, but something in his …
America’s Tour de Corn
Just a Girl on a Bike, peddling through Iowa.
Isn’t Iowa supposed to be flat?
RAGBRAI isn’t the least bit Scottish.
On days like this, they say “the air is close.” We had been biking since 5:30 AM. To begin riding any later would have been suicidal, as the midday heat bordered 100 degrees and headwinds blew air of 70 percent humidity from the sweating Iowa corn.
All day long, ambulances sirened by us in the passing lane as my fellow cyclists succumbed to the infernal afternoon, battling against 57 miles with 3,600 feet of elevation gain. But I found it hard to stop pedaling. Without the lick of breeze created by my pace, my own burning sweat would flood my eyes. When finally, at 2:30 PM, we got to the middle-school sports field that was to be our campground, we dumped our bags in the shadeless grass and deferred setting up our tents to a darker, cooler hour. Tomorrow promised much of the same.
Even with AC, the scene inside the middle school was alarmingly dismal. Bodies strewn about the hallways …
