Category: Thinking West
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El Portal is seeking submissions
We want stories and poems about West. West is a bullet-riddled ’85 Grand Marquis, a gleaming spaceship hovering over Roswell, a cowboy paying for latte with his Amex-card, an alien wondering where in the world to get the golden iPhone. West is where it hurts, West is the rattlesnake you didn’t hear, the dust storm…
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Thinking West: The Pineapple Express (Weather)
In December 2014, many Americans watched news coverage of torrential downpours in California. The torrential downpours, still occurring when this post was written, came at a time when California had been in the midst of the worst drought in its history. (Ironically NOAA claimed that California’s drought was not man-made but naturally caused…
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Thinking West: Oregon Founded as Racist Utopia (Gizmodo)
Gizmodo recently featured an interesting article concerning Oregon’s racist past. According to Matt Novak (and historical fact), Oregon was founded as a whites only, racist utopia. Check out the excerpt below: When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from…
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Thinking West: The West in Pictures
Check out the National Archives’ collection of pictures from the American West.
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Thinking West: Hunting West
In the mythic West, game the size of dinosaurs and mastodons roams the sun-parched land. This makes it incredibly difficult for those (new) western settlers from Eastern shores to obtain fresh meat. Thus, new settlers have needed to adapt their hunting techniques by seeking weapons only meant for the likes of Goliath.
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Thinking West: Have Gun — Will Travel (“Ballad of the Paladin”)
CBS’s Have Gun — Will Travel was a classic show about a mythical West, where gunslingers, bandits, and businessmen ruled the frontier–all brought to one’s television in crisp (4:9) black and white. The best part of the show had to be its closing theme music or ballad (“Ballad of the Paladin”) by Johnny Western. The…
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Thinking West: Robo Novels
Technology and science now act as the modern world’s newest frontier. It is a frontier full of excitement, questions, and its share of dangers. The questions brought forth from this nebulous frontier could shape our world and how technological and scientific progress become part and parcel of our daily lives. As we approach the singularity…
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Thinking West: Tortillas in Space
Tortillas are part of the Southwestern diet, displacing the tasteless, crumby sliced bread. You can roll them. You can stuff them. You can use tortillas to clean your plate or shovel morsels of beans and meat into your already stuffed mouth. Tortillas are the Swiss Army knives of food. They’re served in restaurants and sold…
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Thinking West: Sci-Fi Growing Up
What happened to classic sci-fi? What happened to the fiction that spanned the known galaxy, hopping from star system to star system? What happened to the fiction gleaming with technological wonders and an optimistic view of the future? What happened to the fiction that imagined boundless frontiers amongst the stars and those spaces between stars…
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Thinking West: Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
[A]s for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
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Thinking West: Carl Sagan & Wanderers Short Film
Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.– Carl Sagan, Cosmos
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Thinking West: Advertisements for Western Land
Thousands went West believing the hype surrounding those western lands being sold by the nation’s railroads. Railroad companies sold the West as a place of prosperity and plenty. The West was an edenic paradise, where one could grow grapes the size of watermelons and melons the size of wagons–a true land of milk and honey.…
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Thinking West: Henry David Thoreau
Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. Is not…
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Thinking West: The Devil’s Highway (Luís Alberto Urrea)
“The Devil’s Highway” is a name that has set out to illuminate one notion: bad medicine. The first white man known to die in the desert heat here did it on January 18. 1541. Most assuredly, others had died before. As long as there have been people, there have been deaths in the western desert.…
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Thinking West: Long in the Tooth (Idiom)
Idiom: noun. 1. a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., raining cats and dogs, see the light ). 2. a characteristic mode of expression in music or art. The idiom “long in the tooth” might be the weirdest way to say that someone…
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Thinking West: The Bleeding Edge
Bleeding Edge: noun. The forefront of innovation or development, esp. in science or technology, typically when still theoretical or experimental in nature. The most advanced stage of a technology, art, etc., usually experimental and risky. The frontier is often seen as a hardscrabble place. In our imagination, the frontier is located somewhere in the mystical…
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Thinking West: Water-Witch
Water-witch*: noun. One who claims to be able to find underground water by means of a divining rod; a dowser. Finding reliable sources of freshwater is a problem that plagues the American West. People resort to a number of obscure methods for obtaining sources of subterranean water. New homesteaders in the American West might pay…
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Thinking West: The Occident
Occident*: noun, adjective, or verb. 1.) Chiefly used in poetry and literary texts as a noun. The part of the world situated to the west of some recognized region; spec. the countries, civilization, or culture of the West. Originally with reference to Western Christendom or the Western Roman Empire, or to Europe as opposed to…
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