La Entrada
photo by Erica Felicella. She took this last fall when a small group of us went out to Marfa for the Chinati Foundation Open House. My family has a little ranch out that way, just south of town. Few things boil my blood quite like La Entrada does. You see, somebody somewhere (cough - NAFTA - cough) thought it would be brilliant to build a super highway through a small West Texas community. All in the name of free trade and distribution of cheap goods whose parent companies externalize the costs of these goods in the name of cheap labor and no health insurance and crappy working conditions - but don't get me started. Meanwhile, back at the ranch (pun fully intended), 800 trucks will potentially rumble by on the highway that runs right in front of our family's ranch entrance.
There go the roads. The charming town of Marfa. The stars. The clean air. The QUIET. What do we get in return? A validation of cheap goods coming from south of the border. A validation of cheap labor. A validation of poverty. Google this stuff. I'm pondering what my part in all this will be. I might be heading west in the next few months, schedule allowing. Maybe I'll have some ideas by then.
