archives

Kriston Capps at The American Prospect:

In 1970, artist Robert Smithson rejected the gleaming white gallery spaces and "canonical" minimalism of the New York art scene in search of an entirely different setting for his sculpture. After several exploratory trips, he selected a spot more than 2,000 miles from the Big Apple: Utah's Great Salt Lake. Rozel Point, on the northeast end of the lake's Gunnison Bay, would become the home of his most important piece of sculpture: Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, 6,650-ton coil of black basalt rock and mounded earth extending counterclockwise into the pinkish water of the lake. The site was remote but not virgin territory. Oil seeped from the ground, and scattered around the lake were the derelict instruments from prior efforts to extract that oil. [...]

[Nancy] Holt, Smithson's widow, first got word that Spiral Jetty was in danger from Lynn DeFreitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, an organization primarily charged with safeguarding the lake's watershed. On Jan. 7, 2008, Pearl Exploration and Production Ltd., a Canadian oil and gas company, applied for permission to establish two exploratory wells on its land leases in Gunnison Bay, some five miles southwest from Rozel Point's shore.

[...] Smithson's writings, even when he was at his most mercurial, don't suggest that

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Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report says the DNC likely won't bring up McCain's age (72), but many voters have concerns about it:

Way back in February 2007, a WaPo/ABC poll asked Americans: "I'm going to read a few attributes that might be found in a candidate for president. Please tell me if each would make you more likely to vote for that candidate for president, or less likely to vote for that candidate, or if it wouldn't matter." No specific candidate names were mentioned. When it came to attributes like race, gender, religion, and marital status, poll respondents generally didn't care at all. When the poll mentioned a 72-year-old candidate, 58% said they would be "less likely" to vote for such a candidate — more than the totals for a woman, African American, and/or Mormon combined.

Reagan was 69 when he was elected in 1980. McCain, at 72, would be the oldest person ever elected president.