That map was stolen from NPR. It depicts the journey of cotton to China and back,
made into a shirt that is finally to be resold in Africa.
population 201,000
nickname: Hub City
selling point: You're just 15 minutes from everything!
Lubbock is a decidedly Christian town, an oasis of people surviving in a vast expanse of cotton fields. Though I wouldn't ever choose to come here, one can enjoy the place if equipped with a good supply of creative imagination.
Coffee: Lubbock is gifted with many coffee shops. J&B (26th and Boston) is a warm, orange spot where you might chance to meet a woman with a parrot on her shoulder; Sugar Brown's (50th between Quaker and Slide) is a hip little place where you can catch poetry or live music at night. If you're bored of those two, there's also Daybreak Coffee, Aroma's, and Koffee Haus.
Food: Well Body Natural Foods is the best place to find sustenance; they have a natural market and an extensive salad / hot bar buffet. The Manila Cafe (34th between Slide and Quaker) is an authentic Filipino joint, Abuelo's (82nd and Quaker) is a fancy-looking but reasonably priced Mexican restaurant with good salads. Maharaja (83rd just east of Slide) and the Delhi Palace (Aberdeen and 54th) are good Indian places. La Diosa Cellars, on 17th near Buddy Holly, has wine, tapas, and Italian espresso; charming in that bourgeoise way. And at the Hub City Brewery, in the Depot District (19th and Buddy Holly), you can find locally brewed (and very strong) beer, decent food, live music, and "the liberal element of Lubbock."
Nature: There's the Lubbock Lake Landmark-- but don't be fooled, there's no lake there, and if you want to walk the nature trail, be sure to sign in or they call the cops. Lubbock's biggest park is MacKenzie Park, which is okay if you like your nature with an industrial edge or if you're an anonymous old man looking to hook up with other anonymous old men. There's a prairie dog town, and a windmill museum (costs $5). If you want something more, try hiking around Ransom Canyon, 20 mins. out of town-- just follow the drive all the way around the lake to the cul-de-sac, park, and hike through the bush to find a nature trail. Or take the 2 hr drive up to Palo Duro canyon...
Other Things to Do: goose-watching (seasonal), cloud-watching, thrift-store shopping, pecan-picking (also seasonal), kite-building. Church, of course. Dancing at Club Heaven, the gay bar, where the staff is friendly even if the music isn't great. There are some wineries around, too.
Nearby: There's nothing nearby.
Lubbock Links:
For a brief video introduction to Lubbock, watch Lubbock or Leave It.
Hub stuff is Lubbock's most perplexing site.
Visit this site to see a slide show of Lubbock in a dust storm.
photoessay: King Cotton
The dominant feature of the landscape here is cotton.
This is evident from the airplane, where we circle above an endless mosaic of brown fields. One can discern a lot about a place from the air. For instance, I knew Florida was trouble because one could see the scrapes and scars from rock mining from the air; Phoenix from a mile high is also revealed to be the blight it is. Minneapolis, on the other hand, is remarkably green; the curlicuing dead-ends of the suburbs also reveal themselves. The place's character inscribed on the land, for all to see-- if you're into reading geographical patterns, that is.
Man to woman in row behind me: Does it snow here?
--No.
--But I see white on the bales down there...
--That's cotton.
(I thought that was precious: the naivete, a note of wonder, the unfamiliarity, the way the woman was patient towards the man for not already knowing the substance on which this land is based...)
By "this land," I mean the hundreds of miles around Lubbock, Texas: towns like Spur, Bronco, Happy. New Deal. Old Glory. Bledsoe. Cee Vee, Lariat, Ogg, Progress, Needmore.
Cotton accumulates on the roadsides; the front yards of the houses in town wear clumps of cotton. The cotton drifts down the streets in the wind. Near the cotton gins, it is thicker; the entire landscape has the appearance of a dryer's lint filter that needs to be cleaned.
Here, let's look at a few pictures.
That map was stolen from NPR. It depicts the journey of cotton to China and back,
made into a shirt that is finally to be resold in Africa.
How much cotton do you eat a day?
Cotton is two crops, the fiber and the seed. Cottonseed oil can be found in all kinds of processed foods, especially salad dressings, baked goods, margarines... Ever heard of Crisco? That's Crystallized Cottonseed oil. The oil can also be found in soaps and pharmaceuticals... the seeds are also a huge source of livestock feed. The "linters", which are the little fibers that stick to the seeds, are found in fingernail polish, book bindings, envelope windows, furniture, mattress stuffings, automobile seats, photgraphic film, explosives. "Cotton, the fabric of our lives."
Fabulous that so much of a plant is used! Of course, since most cotton is sprayed 8-10 times a crop with pesticides... well, these toxins get around.
I won't even get into water usage, or the Aral Sea, or any of that; we've done that already. There's the whole fair-trade thing, too; cotton gets $1 billion a year in subidies; or how monoculture affects the soil... no, we won't go there; where will we go? I want most of all to convey a landscape. How a totally mediated landscape, for hundreds of miles (can you tell I've done 1,000 miles in the cotton-landscape in the past few days)-- how this totally mediated landscape makes an impact on the psyche, how the fiber of these towns is spun.
It's flat, brown-white-and-blue, devoted. There's a story behind it that reaches across the globe. Soon it will be dust, as these petrol-supported large-scale farms become unprofitable due to rising oil prices... okay, we've been there, too. Just think of this white fluffy substance, giant bread-loaves of it lying like complacent sheep along Farm Road 1210 and County Road YY, during cold winter days under the muted sun... and the dress or underwear or towel you're wearing, which has touched this landscape too...
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