This space has been little-used of late, a shortcoming I take quite personally. I’ve dispatched with one college application and find myself on the eve of a 15-day field operation out in Twentynine Palms, CA. I’ll be in the Mojave (pictured above during my last visit in August 2005) until October 3rd, but I plan on posting my first comprehensive update on the following Friday, October 6th.

I promise things will return to normal around here. Eighteen more days and I’ll officially be on vacation and able to concentrate on more important things.

Take care of yourselves.

Johnny Cash, my all-time favorite recording artist, died the day I turned 21.

I woke up early to read the news before heading to class (I was in training school at this point).  I was stationed out in the middle of the Mojave Desert at the time, and Stan the Mad Russian, who was my roommate, and I kept up with the doings of the world via an Earthlink connection.  I logged on and brought up the morning news, only to read a headline I wasn’t ready to see.

At age 71, The Man in Black had passed on.  Respiratory failure, brought on by diabetes-related complications, had silenced the most iconic of American voices.

Choked up, I called my dad, the man who had introduced me to Johnny Cash as a kid.  We talked about his death, his music, and the emptiness that must have plagued him following the passing of his wife June in the spring.  Saddened as we were, we didn’t mention the big event in our own lives 21 years earlier, and soon I hung up the phone, got dressed, and went to class.

It’s been an empty three years in American music since Johnny Cash left us.  The American V album has compensated a bit, but it’s impossible to fill the void left when that voice, bigger than the sky over Montana, deeper than Lake Superior, and more American than Mt. Rushmore, left when it was silenced early that morning.

I’ll fly a starship across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I’ll be back again, and again and again and again and again

- Johnny Cash’s verse of “Highwayman” by The Highwaymen

Grams, my paternal grandmother, loved San Diego.  When I was growing up, every so often she’d head out there on a vacation or to a food service convention, and when she would come home I always knew she had a blast.

Part of the attraction for her was nostalgia, I think.  She left home (Fountain City, Wisconsin) and a good job with the telephone company to take a vacation to visit my grandfather, who was in the Navy and stationed in San Diego.  They weren’t married at the time, but they were when the time came for Grams to return to Wisconsin and her job.  She didn’t go back until Gramps was discharged a few years later, and in many cases I think Grams viewed San Diego as the place where she came into her own life.

Grams liked San Diego for other reasons, too, reasons I didn’t understand until this last year.  I’ve never cared for Southern California; the congestion on the roads, the self-absorbed population, the too-hot climate all turned me off early on.

Somehow, completely against my line of thinking, San Diego’s managed to carve out a fond place in my heart.  It’s a spectacularly beautiful city, especially at night.  The downtown area’s the one of the best I’ve ever been in, not only in the United States, but in the world, especially if you’re hungry or looking to be entertained.

I’m not going to trumpet the merits of San Diego, however.  I’m just going to link to the beautiful photos I’ve collected and let them do the talking.  If you’ve never visited out here before, don’t waste any more time.  It’s more than worth it.

And that’s coming from a guy that hates Southern California.