A traveling journalist can't live on interviews and Diet Coke alone. She needs fortifying music, and today's FM stations are awfully thin soup.

An emporium of Louisiana culture with a sci-fi twist, the UCM Museum is an hour and one giant step from New Orleans. You just crossed over into the Bassigator Zone.

You’d think that the dearth of concrete surfaces on Indian reservations might be a stumbling block for skateboarders. Think again. In the long tradition of making tools and toys out of limited resources, Indian kids have created their own brand of skateboarding.  The National Museum of the American Indian is celebrating this creation with an exhibition, Ramp it Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America.

The skateboarding show, running through September 13 at the Washington D.C. museum,  includes films and photographs of Indian skateboarders. The museum also hosted the 3rd annual All Nations Skate Jam over the July 4 weekend, during which Indian skateboarders from around the country demonstrated their skills on a half pipe installed in the building’s atrium.

Many in Indian country see skateboarding as a healthy alternative to drugs and alcohol.  According to Kevin Gover (Comanche/Pawnee) director of NMAI, “The museum is eager to show how Indian Country has embraced and changed skateboard culture in America. The exhibition honors tribal communities efforts to connect with young people through a positive activity like skateboarding.“

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will review any new roads or projects in roadless areas in the national forests or grasslands. There is, however, no moratorium on new projects. Steve Miller, with the Rapid City Journal, sorts out the confusion stemming from an AP report Thursday that had Vilsack imposing a one-year moratorium on road building on 50 million acres of national forests — reinstating a Clinton-era ban on road building and logging on remote national forests, mostly in the rest. 

Miller explains that there is no moratorium, but that new projects must go through an additional procedural step — approval by the Secretary. "The actual language in this order reserves to the secretary the right to approve road construction or reconstruction and the cutting, sale or removal of timber in inventoried roadless areas," a USDA spokesperson told the South Dakota reporter.

In South Dakota, at least, the new order won't have much effect. There are three roadless areas in the Black Hills National Forest, and they'll remain roadless for the foreseeable future, according to Miller.