Bill Burleson & John Brinckerhoff Jackson: New Mexico Vernacular

J.B. Jackson wrote extensively about the New Mexico landscape, often focusing on what he called the vernacular, mostly built, landscape. From THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE: 

"Of all the states New Mexico contains perhaps the most extraordinary variety of house types--that is, types of dwelling. There are Pueblo Indian, Spanish-American, and Navajo houses...Some house types are 800 or 900 years old....there are also house types like the trailer or mobile home that are new and still evolving."

(All images © JW Burleson 2013)

1979 Ford F-100 Custom. Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia

Sandy Cove NS (44.48 N)is on the Digby Neck, almost due east of Brooklin ME(44.33)

Trucking in Kyrgyzstan

from Guido Goluke: 
"I think this truck was seen in Karakol, at the eastern tip of Lake Issyk Kol. Could have been photographed anywhere, they are that common."

Near Cobourg, Ontario: F-1 Ford; Flxible Western Flyer bus; Flxible Clipper bus; 1955 Cadillac Coupe de Ville

1977 Ford F-150 Ranger

Our man on the prairies, Alex Emond, found this very clean F-150 Ranger in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, not far from the Cypress Hills. I like everything about it except the wheels and those whitewalls. Looks to be the same (factory?) orange as Clementine, a 1971 F 250 whose Montana-to-Massachuseets roadtrip was posted on AL last year.

Marfa Lights

2 by John Wall Barger

2 poems by John Wall Barger

Greyhound Fables

                                  What’re ya reading?

A bio of Samuel Beckett. What’s yer favorite part?

Where he gets knifed by a pimp. What

is going on with yar nose there? It’s bleeding.

Why?

          I stand, wobbly, rummage in my luggage

for vestiges of rum.

                               I wake in the small hours

inside a bus adrift across Ontario,

my cheek flat upon the broad shoal

of a neck, Hilda’s, a nurse with Confucian eyes

who journeys to Thunder Bay

to lay her murdered daughter underground.

                               A crow spotlit in dusty headlights

arches its wings,

dies. Mr Beckett didn’t die,

but he did die.

           Sings the bus, Trochee, trochee . . .

 Satellite dishes query

 the dawn. Children wave, 

 hurl rocks. A mother on a trailer porch

 cradles her newborn,

 her head cocked as if the baby

 whispered a fable about

 the dark lake across the road,

 as if she herself

 were being held.

Beckett, stilt straight, visited

the gaoled Pandarus

to ask why. Iron bars between them

moist as hardwood trunks.

I ask Hilda, Why?

Monsieur, said the pimp, je n’ai aucune idée.

A Start

Waste the morning. Squander money

on tickets going nowhere. Curse the internet.

Swallow the bile. Down a fourth

mug of coffee. Sit thunderbolt upright.

There. A new personal record. Two hours awake

to hit bottom.

          Now, light a cigar.

Climb on the scooter. Gun it uphill

the unknown way, up the winding mountain path

away from the city. Say

nothing. Do not even scream. At each fork,

take the strange road through palm trees & orange groves

till you’re off the map. Then go further

uphill, past the big black dog wailing for blood,

till the pass is impassable,

                                         till the past is beneath you,

a green ravine slashed by the nails of the world.