The Lay of the Land
Spring 2010, #33
The works of artists and the didactic demonstrations of scientists and engineers combine to do more than show the sights. They alter, each in a characteristic mode, the way in which individuals perceive both their past and future experiences, and they make people aware of aspects of their surroundings that they have either learned to ignore or never been shown how to see. - Frank Oppenheimer
Editors Note: On the Horizon
Welcome to The Lay of the Land #33. If this issue is a bit easier to read, it is not due to diminished viscosity of prose, but simply a larger font size. After 16 years of the newsletter, our instinct for economy and compression has finally given way to ease of use (by one point of type, at least). Most people will read the newsletter online, where you can adjust the size of the text as you like, and the images are in color (and check out our new website design!) But we still feel, as you apparently do too since you are holding this in your hands, that there is a place for the printed word in this world, so we will continue to generate a physical copy of the newsletter to those who want it until we are all fully dissolved into substanceless electro-intelligence plasmoids fueled by the sun.
This issue reflects upon New Mexico, a state we examined loosely fifteen years ago, and which in many ways still holds the keys to the universe, it seems. This issue also wrings out the last of our oil projects of 2009, the sort-of sesquicentennial year of the industry. Two too-long articles recount CLUI tours into these respective terrains. Since the tours are available to so few to experience directly, we give them a disproportionate amount of space here. It is also conceptually satisfying to couple their obsessive minutiae with our otherwise macrocosmic national scope. A telescope narrows the field when viewed in one direction, and widens the field when viewed in the other, as it were. Another theme reflected in this issue of the newsletter is photography, and the way it is changing, and changing us, as we move into the digital future.
On the Horizon? We are focusing on the future in 2010, especially our database and photo archive, as well as the American Land Museum. Of course we’ll keep you posted. And, as always, thanks for being there!
- Lay of the Land Editors