Read...and feel warmer

Tom Russell has a fine piece on his blog about a road trip from El Paso - here. When it's so cold here in the UK it's good to feel some desert heat vicariously. And to learn a new word - kachinas, Hopi indian dolls. I really must get out to there sometime soon and, in the meantime, find a way of dropping kachina into a British winter conversation...

For anyone who doesn't know Tom's music: you should. Classic, strong, country-inflected songwriting and a fine voice - last year's Blood and Candle Smoke 

or the earlier Borderland are good places to start.