Wednesday, March 15, 2006

State Writes: A Meme

Matt Weiner tagged me with a meme--my first! Mercifully, it's a pretty cool meme: write a sentence about each state you've visited.

[Update: *cough* That should be a one-sentence anecdote about one's experiences in that state. Please feel free to follow Weiner's example rather than mine.]

_____
California: While it's easy to talk to anybody there, it's difficult to move beyond talk.

Nevada: The casinos are only touristic fronts for a beautiful landscape and an eccentric and unpredictable people.

Oregon: It's possible to be a Mormon fundamentalist in the Portland suburbs.

Washington: The driftwood on the foggy, deserted beaches were soothing when I contemplated my great-aunt's isolation.

Arizona: A strange mixture of senior-citizen compounds and devil-may-care desert-rat towns, Arizona is a beautiful place where I'd never live.

Utah: Southern Utah has all the natural beauty and the anarchic weirdness; Northern Utah has all the pragmatic discipline.

Colorado: Despite the truly magnificent landscape, the fascinating political divide, and the familial ties, I don't think I could ever live there because it's so damned white.

Massachusetts: So cute, so green, so rural (even when it isn't), so bloody boring: still, it was where I first saw snow in a domestic setting.

New Jersey: What visitor can presume to understand the soul of New Jersey?

Hawaii: More than anything else, I remember my plan for escaping with the car when the rest of my family were consumed by the volcano.

Alaska: "Okay, like, sure, Dad, it's pretty and all that, but, like, what the hell do people do around here because, like, if you have to take a plane to get out of town and this is all the town I see, I really do not understand what people are doing for fun."

New York: The state that contains the pragmatic city that overthrew all of my unconscious, engrained ideas about race still runs its politics as though ethnic-identifications were sacrocant.
______

When I earn more money, I really do plan to travel more within the US.

Okay, I get to tag three people, eh? I'll tag Liberal Japonicus, Charles Bird, and hilzoy.

8 Comments:

Blogger apostropher:

Your tag links need a little remedial attention.

3/15/2006 11:28:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous:

The next meme I'm going to spread is "record a concept album for every state you've visited."

Anyway, don't worry, if you stick with academia you'll probably get to see a lot of states too. Visiting assistant professorships, yay!

3/15/2006 12:31:00 PM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

I keep hearing that the new Sufjan Stevens album is really good.

Those links are really embarrassing, aren't they? I should really do something about that.

3/15/2006 03:04:00 PM  
Blogger The Modesto Kid:

Cool -- my streak of not being tagged with memes continues uninterrupted. I think, however, that I will tag m'self, and write a sentence about every state I can remember visiting.

3/19/2006 07:16:00 AM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

I tag you! I tag you! I call an extra-tagging capacity.

3/19/2006 07:43:00 PM  
Blogger Marilee Scott:

Waitaminute. You keep changing names on me. The Modesto Kid=Anacreon, right?

You're still tagged, of course.

3/19/2006 09:47:00 PM  
Blogger The Modesto Kid:

Thanks for the tardy tag, JM! The Modesto Kid goes by Anacreon on Blogger. Throw 'em off the scent, you know.

3/20/2006 09:51:00 AM  
Blogger The Modesto Kid:

Oh and: You can read about states I have visited here. Plus I finally got off my ass and added you to my blogroll, along with several other Mineshaft regulars.

3/20/2006 09:53:00 AM  

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