It is amazing, and I had completely forgotten the simultaneity of events, that anything was accomplished that July and early August, 1974, since it was the time when the House Judiciary Committee debated (on tv) and voted articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.
I certainly remember watching the late July proceedings of that committee, yet these incredible events had no echo or seeming influence on my journals concerning the House Interior Committee and its consideration of the Grand Canyon bill. The Nixon demise is almost a separate set of memories; for me set in and with the family of Brock Evans, in whose house I stayed during that period. I do remember vividly the commuting exercise necessary to get from that house to the capitol district.
Nor was this the only "distraction" that I failed to record, for I spent a fair amount of time in the National Archives on Pennsylvania Ave--my first Researcher card is dated Oct 1973-- reading through and typing up notes on all the government papers I could find relevant to the (particularly XIXth-century) human history of the Canyon -- maps, Forest Service, Park Service, Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs, et al., the foundation of what I ambitiously hoped might someday become the Canyon's comprehensive political history.
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