I'm on my way to the gig in Las Cruces in New Mexico.... and i'm thinking about radiation.... Do you think it's still out there in the desert where they tested the first atomic bombs? Did the radiation drift anywhere? Did it get into the ground water? Is it in all of the rocks?
Evidently if you go out there-- and my friend, Lee, tells me you can only go twice a year when a shuttle takes tourists out there to visit the site-- you'll find glass in places where the heat transformed the sand. I'm also told that when they did do the tests, people who went out to watch the spectacle took picnics with them.....
Last night I played the Cowgirl in Santa Fe, which i love. Last year, Bill Hearne came out to hear us and sat in with my band, which was fun. It was fun again this time around,too. Nancy Apple, wonderful singer/songwriter from Memphis, whom i met at WoodyFest in Okemah, was out here and she sat in. I got there early for dinner and sat at the bar. Met Jeremiah among others. Jeremiah is a physicist at Los Alamos, (he also does some contract/side work detonating bombs in Afghanistan. And I'm pretty sure we're in good hands there.) When I was asking about Los Alamos-- where the atomic bomb, i guess, was invented-- VanDyke, who was sitting at the bar, said you had to take provisions out there with you when you went, including things like bolts of calico.... which i'm not sure what that meant but i couldn't help but snort some beer out of my nose as that's not a phrase i often hear, at least not since a former lifetime in my days as a pioneer. (Which was something Jeremiah and I agreed on-- reincarnation, that is-- as he says he has an innate understanding of physics which he switched to after being a rodeo star in his college days. I, on the other hand, am afraid even of electricity, which is probably due to my having been electrocuted by a bolt of lighting in a previous life.)