Shooting at Midnight Screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado Leaves 12 Dead, 50 Injured

Although initial stories reported 14 dead, WNYC's The Takeaway and ABC News are saying that the death toll has been revised down to 12, with at least 50 injured.

I was struck by how routine such stories have become on local news. WBAL spent a few minutes on the shooting, then went back to the "Big Story": a political fight over the Maryland Dream Act. One of my daughters lives in Colorado, not that close to Aurora, but not that far, either, so perhaps that makes it more personal. I'll feel better when I hear from her. [Read more]

I got another Keystone XL (KXL) email this morning, but it wasn't from Duncan Meisel or Bill McKibben: [Read more]

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing.  President Obama has heard from many Americans concerning the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project, and we appreciate hearing from you.

The President is committed to creating the most open and transparent Government in American history, and values your input.  Given your interest in this matter, you may be interested in reading a recent official White House response to a petition on this issue.  To learn more, please visit: www.WhiteHouse.gov/Energy.

Thank you, again, for writing.

Sincerely,

The White House

One of the distinctive cultural attributes of the Southwest is the profusion of shrines to those lost in accidents.  You see them on the sides of roads throughout our region.  As a photographer, I had long wanted to study and present them.  Finally, last year, I mounted a show of photography consisting in half of studies of the roadside shrines throughout the Southwest.  For a long time, I've wanted to share some of my photography here.  This post presents many of the roadside shrine images from my 2010 show.  The first is from near Cameron, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation.

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I like Alaska a lot.  This is my fourth trip up, and I remember each of them, and their details, very well.  How the bald eagles looked circling the rocky beach at Homer in the dusky 12:30 in the morning light.  The moose that staggered out into the road in Kenai and just stood there.  Suicide moose.  The purple flowers in the waist-high grass in the cliffside Russian cemetery, at Ninilchik.  What I like about Alaska, though, is the sense of place Alaskans give it.  The way they create the concept of Alaska by living there, and cherishing the place.  This piece is a brief tour of place, written in the middle of the night in the sky with the moon off the wing. [Read more]

If you haven't been to Hoover Dam, you should go.  If you made up a definitive outdoor museum of American history in your head and stocked it right, the Dam would be toward the front, right after you walked in.  It's quintessentially American, both vitally important to how the western United States became what they are, and a symbol of what America has been since the New Deal.  This month, Arizona and Nevada dedicated a massive, gorgeous bypass bridge one thousand feet over the Colorado River, adding nicely to the Dam's story, providing a postscript so 2010, just as the dam is so 1935.  If you haven't been to the Dam, or haven't given it much [Read more]

The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words.  Or Rod Stewart says that every picture tells a story.  Well, now it can be told:  This Orlando Motel is located on old Route 66 in northern Arizona, on the segment that runs north of Interstate 40 between Seligman and Kingman.  I'm doing a photo project about old Route 66, and while driving this segment a few weeks ago, saw this particular ruin while driving out of a small town.  I couldn't pass up the chance to take this seedy motel (even seedy kind of understates it) and send the result to O, which I have since done. [Read more]