The Magic Of The Street Is The

Las Vegas Suggests That The Thirst For Places, For Cities And Gardens And Wilderness, Is Unslaked, That People Will Still Seek Out The Experience Of Wandering About In The Open Air To Examine The Architecture, The Spectacles, And The Stuff For Sale, Will Still Hanker After Surprises And Strangers. That The City As A Whole Is One Of The Most Pedestrian-unfriendly Places In The World Suggests Something Of The Problems To Be Faced, But That Its Attraction Is A Pedestrian Oasis Suggests The Possibility Of Recovering The Spaces In Which Walking Is Viable.

Books Are Solitudes In Which We Meet.

What Gets Called 'the Sixties' Left A Mixed Legacy And A Lot Of Divides. But It Opened Everything To Question, And What Seems The Most Fundamental And Most Pervasive In All The Ensuing Changes Is The Loss Of Faith In Authority: The Authority Of Government, Of Science, Of Patriarchy, Of Progress, Of Capitalism, Of Violence, Of Whiteness.

I Grew Up With Landscape As A Recourse, With The Possibility Of Exiting The Horizontal Realm Of Social Relations For A Vertical Alignment With Earth And Sky, Matter And Spirit. Vast Open Spaces Speak Best To This Craving, The Spaces I Myself First Found In The Desert And Then In The Western Grasslands.

The Fight For Free Space-for Wilderness And For Public Space-must Be Accompanied By A Fight For Free Time To Spend Wandering In That Space. Otherwise The Individual Imagination Will Be Bulldozed Over For The Chain-store Outlets Of Consumer Appetite, True-crime Titillations, And Celebrity Crises.