Swinging southeast, State 3 winds around the slopes of low hills that are cultivated to their very summits. On every hand is evidence of the stability of agriculture in this region: except for an occasional splash of yellow-blooming mustard, the fields are almost free of weeds; houses, barns, and outbuildings are neat and substantial; fence posts are erect and securely set and the strands of barbed wire are taut; new automobiles and trucks are seen very frequently.

Washington: A Guide to the Evergreen State (1941)

McCoy, Washington, is a spot on Highway 271 (formerly State 3) between Oakesdale and Rosalia in Whitman County. The hills are still cultivated to their very summits, but the machine agriculture that dominates the Palouse has all but obviated the need for barns, outbuildings, fence posts, and barbed wire. 

Looming over the hills on Naff Ridge, just to the south of 271, are the swirling blades and austere white towers of the Palouse Hills Wind Project. The wind is converted into electricity that’s sold elsewhere; the local grid is still mostly powered by hydro-power from the Snake and Columbia rivers.

At McCoy, the tall, boxy, aluminum-clad 1940’s-era grain elevator stands within sight of the new McCoy Grain Terminal. Grain from all over the Palouse is trucked to the Terminal, where it is then dumped into 110-car unit grain trains destined for Portland, Longview, Kalama, Tacoma, and other Northwest ports. There, the crop is transfered to the holds of ships bound for Asia. Their work thus exported, the locals stock their pantries with food grown elsewhere down at Crossett’s Food Market in Oakesdale.

For Adam and Cat, and Toby and Jenny. The peace of the Lord be with you. 

Barn and tractor near Kamiak Butte, Whitman County, Washington. Early October, 2013.

Belmont, Whitman County, Washington. Late October, 2013.

From Jason Diamond in The Paris Review:

“Marquee Moon,” the fourth song, and last track on the first side, is all the proof you need to make a lot of overblown claims for the album’s legacy. Verlaine and Lloyd are unrelenting as they duel, leading up to a bridge whose huge solo is made even larger by the tiny twinkling of a piano key. And again, we have Verlaine spinning a decadent Lower East Side fairytale, filtered through the mind of somebody influenced by too much French poetry. This all goes on for a few minutes, and then there’s this gap where the band really does get into Grateful Dead territory, just messing around with their instruments, keeping the beat going, finally building it to a crescendo that leads them back to where they started, reciting the poetry I would rip off nearly twenty years later…

“One thing have I desired of Yahweh,” sings David, “That I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Yahweh, and to inquire in his temple.”

Sounds like three things to me. Then again, this is the Bible we’re talking about, and it has a way of doing things with ones and threes.

David wants to dwell in the house of Yahweh; houses are built by fathers for sons.

David wants to behold the beauty of Yahweh; John later writes to us of what we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon.

David wants to inquire in his temple; the Spirit searches all things, the deep things of God.

One thing, and three things, David wants of Yahweh, all of which are God himself.

Andrew Bacevich on Taking Action in Syria | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com →

Essential watching/listening (or reading… here’s the transcript) for anyone interested in Syria and President Obama’s threats to get involved in that civil war.

Hailstorm, Walla Walla, Washington, late June 2012.

Wallowa County Grain Growers, Enterprise, OR, August 31, 2013.

Joel P. King. My friend went and left us.

Rosalia, Whitman County, WA, August 2013.