Memory

Joseph Bottum discussed good 'ol South Dakota, America, and the "Fall of Memory: American Childhood and the American Memory."  Excerpt:

WHEN I LONG FOR ESCAPE, I dream of the prairie. The last time I was out west, visiting my childhood home in Pierre, South Dakota, I drove up to one of the river hills on the edge of town. Why is the sun so much bigger out on those plains than it is back east? Sitting on the warm hood of the car to watch the huge orange sunset beyond the Missouri, I thought: Here is where I ought to be, here is where I should stay.

Back east, out west, up north, down south: Our geographical prepositions have come adrift. Some memory of their grandparents' arrival in the Dakotas, some last lingering sense of the westward course of history since Columbus, made my parents insist we say "back east" and "out west." Back was civilization, the old country, the origin. Out was the frontier, the undiscovered country, the goal.