Between Minneapolis and Omaha

DSC_0006, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

Young voters registered yesterday – 13,569
Miles traveled today – 378

8:04 p.m. CDT – Between Minneapolis and Omaha

This is far too beautiful a country to let it all go to hell. Even on an overcast day, tearing through the swampland in southern Minnesota, you can’t help but to stare at a dilapidated barn on the side of the road or a long prairie vista. Try though it might, photography can’t capture the wonder of traveling through the open vistas of America.

Photography taken behind the bug-encrusted front windshield of the bus can’t even come close.

We are in the American heartland now, but it is a rapidly changing heartland. Apple pie, family farmsteads, and rows of corn are competing with sushi, wind farms, and cornrows. And speaking of newer hairstyles: we are dashing towards Omaha for a concert with Murs (http://www.myspace.com/murs) tomorrow.

To those who haven’t spent much time in, and I use the term lovingly, the fly-over states, it may seem that ‘Rock’ is as out-of-place in Omaha as a cruise ship would be. Not so. My family is from Omaha and my cousin still lives here, happily drumming away in a metal band. The youth in the midwest scream for music and politics as much as anywhere. Nor is that necessarily a recent development. Speaking of the 1930′s Kansas City, another midwestern hub, biographer David McCullough writes:

“Forty dance halls and more than a hundred nightclubs were in operation offering… some of the best blues and jazz to be heard anywhere in America… This, too, was heartland America, no less than the old-fashioned, country-town peace and quiet…”

Not that we are here to engage in anything so reckless or debauched as blues or jazz. I merely point out that New York and LA, the traditional homes of Rock, ought not to be allowed exclusive claim to the unrest that spawns music and political activism.

No, this is far too beautiful a country to let it all go to hell and young midwesterners realize that as well as anyone.

–Nick Brown

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

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