Central Oregon to Bend

 Rainbows to the very little town of Prairie City for being the place we could finally (since entering the U.S.) get rid of our glass and other recycling! Montana doesn't take glass and forget it for recycling in any rural part of Idaho. We blew across Central Oregon like the clouds, stopping only to shop the Farmers Market in the town of John Day and take in the John Day Fossil Beds. The canyon shown here is a basalt extrusion...an old hotspot, like what is under Yellowstone.

 Imagine creatures 40-50 million years ago on the vast savannah of Central Oregon. After being lit with the ideas of the ancient nature of the predator/prey relationship we wandered into a film last night in Bend-- Beasts of the Wild South. It rang a bell of urgency and hope-- a confusing film with a visceral impact about marginal living, survival, self-sufficiency and identity as much as about catastrophic environmental changes.

 When we got to Bend Michael headed off to watch the Packers game and I hit the bookstores as well as listened to our home-girls (MaMuse) win the Prairie Home Companion duets competition in the truck sitting by the tamed Deschutes River. Inner City Bend felt just fine but out at the shinier REI area (Old Mill yup) I started to have one of my waking civilization nightmares although I appreciated the garbage art in the REI entrance to remind people what is floating in our waterways.

 It was walking around that got me... This is the Victoria Secrets display-- taking the baby pink, the breast cancer awareness month and the Trayvon Martin tragedy and turning them into one twisted compressed sales pitch... oh my dear sisters in Code Pink... I wish for another color!

We are in the Whole Foods Store, surrounded by beer six packs, recyclable shopping bags, Halloween kitsch, with pumpkins and snowy skies outside...insistent, loud music in our ears. Bend, our biggest city stop... It's time to leave thee.