As I've mentioned in the games forum, I'm visiting Austin, Texas with Dearsweet, who is attending the MLA's annual conference, leaving me the working hours to explore.

Carping up the available diem, I drove today from Austin to San Antonio to visit the Alamo. It appeared, as Dearsweet counseled, tiny, almost incidental. Much of the battle site now lies under Federal and commercial office buildings. As I'd read before, which was largely repeated on site, its importance was not in itself, but as the symbol of Texan defense of what is now the city of San Antonio, which was strategically important to that part of the Mexican Republic. Its defense and the valor of its defenders seem less unreasonable when placed in the context of a Mexican civil war.

What also impressed me was the similarity between I-35, and the Nile river. Both are a thread running North/South through very lightly populated land edged with one half to a mile of human settlements. This is not to equate the land around I-35 to that around the Nile - far from it. The Texas I drove through today is, in contrast to the unirrigated parts of Egypt I've seen, a green and fertile land. Still, those similarities between these two "navigable paths" is striking. I'm confident some academic has already visited this notion, but I thought I'd share my impression.

__________________
Eudaimonia