Shoshoni, Wyoming--there's a kind of beauty to downtown Shoshoni, the kind artists and documentarians like to walk around in, not only to feel what the past must have felt like to those living in it but also to feel what the future might become. The buildings themselves are beautiful, walked away from by those who once owned them, boarded up, windows broken, stuffed to their ceilings by everything left behind-old furniture, cash registers, display cases, hat racks, bubblegum machines–almost all the old rag dolls of capitalism a person could possibly imagine.

Shoshoni is where Lea Ann and I will soon come to watch the great solar eclipse of 2017. Just outside of town is supposed to be one of the best places in the world to see the moon cover up the sun for a few minutes.

Downtown, Shoshoni, Wyoming, population 649, August 10, 2017.