In Liptak's case, the landscape is the vast quantity of work that the Supreme Court tackles in a given year, only a small portion of which is ultimately reported to the public. In an interview today with Dave Davies on Fresh Air, Liptak lamented that as a reporter -- this is his first year working for the Times -- the one thing he wishes he could do better is to give readers a more complete sense of the spectrum of the Court's work.
Although Liptak's problem seems common to all reporters -- more news than you have space to report it (or than your readers are that interested in) -- his comment struck me tonight as I was driving home from dinner here in Lubbock. The sun was just about to drop below the horizon, the car windows were wide open thanks to the cool (79-degree) weather, and the sky was vaaaaast over the flat highway. And dammit, I thought, there's really just no good way for me to convey how impressive this is.
(Below is one attempt that I found on Flickr. Not bad, but 1024 x 628 pixels still just doesn't do the scene justice. No Supreme Court pun intended, I swear.)
One thing I do find helps give a sense of scale out here is the miles and miles and miles of wind farms that I drove by this afternoon as I traveled from Abilene to Lubbock.
At this point, we've probably all driven by a few of the large wind turbines that show up in bunches along the PA Turnpike or alone at the back of a farm. But have you ever seen miles and miles of them in a row, with one row behind another behind another? For a solid 30 minutes, driving at 80 MPH, all I could see were wind farms. There must have been hundreds of turbines.
(Sorry the photos above and below are pretty crappy, but a) I was driving and b) I was driving really fast and c) It was kinda rainy out. Photo improves if you click to expand it.)
In fact, my friend Ken reports that depending on which farm I was near, there were up to 250 turbines. Ken works for Gamesa, the Spanish wind energy company that built many of the farms out here in west Texas. (Interestingly, Gamesa houses its major U.S. operations in old U.S. Steel factories, just north of Philadelphia.) In a txt to me, Ken said, "When I go on [wind farm] site, all I hear is a low basal whoosh."
Here are a few pieces of turbine lying on their side just off the road in Sweetwater, TX. They look like pieces of the space shuttle, both in size and form.
Imagine that the Texas landscape fits miles and miles of these wind farms, yet the sky is still a vast un-interrupted space. Perhaps that helps give a sense of the scale out here.
On a sidenote, NPR and PBS have been running a series called Generation Next, about 18- to 25-year-olds trying to start their lives in a crappy economy. A few weeks ago, Judy Woodruff reported a great piece about one man's decision to work in wind energy vs. working in oil in Oklahoma. It's definitely worth 7 mins of your time -- check it out here. This is the guy the Judy reported on, Quentin Johnson.
(Credit: Jory Burson for NPR / Original caption: "Johnson says he doesn't want to climb wind turbines forever. He hopes to one day be a wind farm manager.")
One last item on the topic of wind: scenes from a great little museum that I visited in Abilene. The Grace Museum houses an exhibit by James Surls, called From the Heartland. At first I thought his work resembled flowers, but now I'm thinking Gamesa.
Credit: MT @ James Surls exhibit in The Grace Museum
Credit: James Surls, http://www.jamessurls.com/Tomorrow I head to the American Wind Power Center here in Lubbock.
