12/01/08
Turn Around or Merry-Go-'round?
We've been on this raising-Kids ride for so long it's hard to tell if we're actually getting anywhere or not.
Oldest kid continues to be dong just fine, youngest, though still in her, "I gotta be me!" stage replete with blue hair, random tattoos, ear plugs and septum piercing, the latter always makes her look like she has a booger hanging out of her nose, has, at least, been sober for sixty plus days......and counting. Time will tell if this can be sustained.
Middle kid is either "getting it" or has risen to a new level of subtle and sophisticated con. Her tendency is to become addicted to whatever is available from Meth to sugar to her laptop. She protests that she has "insight" but we await developments in this quarter.
But! Our lives are no longer being consumed by these people......our kids. Impinged upon yes, but taken over, no.
At last, NO!
Instead we, like millions the World over, are riding on a wave of hopeful enthusiasm over the election of President "O"........economy be damned, as it may well be, "Happy Days are Here Again....." the old liberal/progressive theme has once again become a song of celebration rather than an ironic and wistful blues. There's joy in Mudville, our Casey didn't strike out this time and has knocked it out of the park and politics is once again a game that will be inclusive on the World's playing field.
There's really not enough bad news to pull the rug out from under this
celebration, we believe again; that's enough to get us through any dark
time.
11/22/08
Hopeless?
Years ago, I'd guess more than thirty, I came across a Gehan Wilson cartoon that, as a therapist, I thought was right on the mark and hilarious. It has a disheveled looking guy standing on a ledge outside a window of a tall building. He looks grim and determined. Next to him is a priest looking forlorn and next to him a little old lady clutching a purse, clearly the "mother" looking hopeless. Behind this trio a cop is about to climb out of another window to affect a rescue and the cop behind him says; "For God sake Clancy, don't let him convince you!"
As usual, Mr. Wilson got it right. Trying to convince a person who has given up hope to regain it is a next to impossible task. After all, they have already won all the internal arguments. Defeated all the Knights of Hope.
I ran into a woman the other night, a short, feisty type, who had come in to the bar where I was having a "showing" of my photography. She asked me what my motivation was for taking so many shots of light and shadow and I said; "I suppose some of these are reflections of my own investment in the idea of 'hope'".
She responded by saying; "Oh, I gave up hope a long time ago." Cue my "therapist". I immediately went into some rap about how hope should be the last thing to go, etc., etc.
She defeated me in due course. In fact, I was bothered for a couple of days by my ineffectiveness at being able to convey the importance of hope to her at all. Until I remembered Wilson's cartoon truth.
The dis-ease of hopelessness is easy to catch. Easier than the flu and just as powerful a downer. It doesn't take three weeks to recover from an infectious contact but it does take some time and, key to the come back, you must remember that you felt better when filled with hope than without it. There is no archeology required, no ripping apart of possible self-deceits or rationalizations. The investment in feeling better is dose enough to fend off infection.
The last resort is always the Garrison Keillor philosophy: "Look
reality in the eye and deny it!" (Now and then we must resort to emergency
measures.) Best of all, we are now entering an age of recovery from insanity
so we will discover that the reverse is also true; Hope, now at last a national
cause celebre, is also catching. It has moved beyond noun status
and into its full-fledged verb-ness. Bolstered by what has happened
in our country we can now swim with the tide into a flowing stream of hope-full
ness, and not be bogged down in the endless dark, swirling eddies promoted
by little feisty ladies who hang out in bars where swimming in endless circles
of despair provides the illusion of getting somewhere.
1105/08
The (Wonderful!) Legacy of G.W.
Now that we are emerging from the dark age of the neo-con, free-market, socially-conservative feudalism of the past eight years.now that America, perhaps for the first time in her history is on the doorstep of becoming a beacon of freedom again, we can thank G.W. and his wrecking gang for having pushed the fabled "Pendulum" so far to the extreme Right that more Americans than ever before mobbed the polls in powerful protest. If this had not occurred voter malaise and hopelessness would have continued to rule and America would not have moved a single step forward as a result of this election. But we have awakened from the trance of the nightmare. We have changed the present and the future of our country and the World, we have proven ourselves to ourselves and have embarked upon the road to being, by over sixty-three million votes, the country only a few of our "Founding Fathers" thought we might one day become.
The election of this man, this product of what used to be an illegal relationship, this son who represents what we kept pretending we were, a melting pot of a nation, has brought it all into reality.
We have emerged, some of us kicking and screaming, from a time of Dark Age and we are stepping into the light again. We hoped for this when JKF came into power, but his personal "addictions" and the times were blocks to the potential. LBJ might have moved the country forward if it weren't for the curse of shortsightedness that kept us mired in Vietnam. The Clinton years held more promise, but too many compromises of principle undercut the risks that needed to be taken to make it all happen. The slip back into darkness began with the Reagan years and became an inexorable downward spiral when Cheney/Bush took control. In case anyone has forgotten, that's when we began to give up on our country. That's when our Flag and our Patriotism were subverted and used to ends most of us have come to regret and our country's reputation has been ruined here at home and all over the globe. So much so that many of us could not see our national emblems as anything but symbols of unlimited oppression.
One brief shaft of light showed as a result of 9/11 and most of the World embraced us then in our time of sorrow. But it was all squandered by arrogance and dishonesty utilized by a corrupt and self-serving administration bent on having things "their way" and to hell with what anyone else in the World thought or felt.
We have been living with the results of this for eight long and dreadful years.
Some fear that since there is no "filibuster-proof" majority in Congress that progress will be blocked by the tattered left overs from the old regime. But faced with the tsunami they have just experienced, they would not dare to oppose the tide lest they be swept away in the next election cycle. The Goldwater extremists are done for, this is why the manipulative Palin ploy didn't work.
This time, we have the right leader and that Pendulum has swung.
This time, We, the People, have soundly defeated the ideologues who wrapped themselves in the flag to excuse their excremental behavior and who sullied our symbols. Now we will be able to wear "flag pins" in our lapels and be proud to be Americans once more.
Of course this President has yet to prove his mettle, but there is no
denying the fact that for the first time in our history we have escaped
the prison of racism and we as one Nation of all races, are free to be what
we were meant to be......at last!
The "What-ifs" and the "If onlys"
"She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been"
Paul Simon's lyrics from "Slip Sliden' Away" tell the story of the real "vampires" that can steal our life blood. I've had a battle with these demons for some time, maybe most of my life. In fact, as screw ups led to debacles over the years my list of "what ifs" and "if onlys" grew and grew until there was no room to make a list of joys.
Fears and regrets tend to pile on as time goes by and after age sixty intrusive themes of, "Yikes! Here-comes-Death!" loom and trump the agenda. I finally snapped out of this spiral a few weeks ago when I heard myself tell a client that they had to stop obsessing over who to blame about the past and get on with daily living.
In the instant I made my statement I said to myself, "This is one of those 'we teach best what we must learn' things'." It's time to get back to the good ol' Here-and-Now thinking.
I keep remembering the day I went up on top of the Franklin Mountains above El Paso, Texas with a girlfriend of mine who was terrified of heights. This didn't come to the surface until we had to make a crossing of about thirty yards along the knife edge of a ridge with a five hundred foot drop on each side. To keep her focused on moving ahead I told her to run the here-and-now mantra till she got across and it worked to hold her fears at bay. I kept that lesson for myself for a long time but then, once my own life settled down, once I was in a healthy relationship which didn't require my full attention to daily maintenance, like walking that ridge, I began a habit of reflection over the past, and a lot of self blame and regret began to fill my thinkingVoila! the "if onlys" had moved in. Then when I passed the sixty five mark the "how-much-longer-do-I-have(s)" joined the chorus and the "what ifs" piled on.
These things are very subtle, stimulated by any random event from a bird smacking into a window and dying right in front of me thus bringing on a flurry of, "what ifs", to having a glass of wine at night and remembering when I refused to have a drink with my dad and, inside, criticized him for having one himself (it was during one of my "abstinence" periods) thus creating an opportunity for a full range of "if onlys".
Damn! It has taken me way too long to awaken from this habit (a "if only") and I've got to start celebrating the RIGHT NOW! right now.
These are hard habits to catch let alone break. There's a seductive quality to reminiscing and nothing wrong with it until it bleeds into a "If only.....I hadn't done that terrible thing-said that-believed that-avoided that-loved her-drove-drank-etc.-etc.-etc......in the blink of an eye I've been captured by that dead end journey and I've begun to feel sad, bad, etc.
The "what ifs" are just as sticky. I catch myself making sure that all the "loose ends" are tied up so that if I keel over in the next hour Elizabeth won't have anything she will have to do that I haven't done. Then I begin to feel sad that she will be alone and miss me, then.......etc.
Today another message sent from the "Universe". I pulled up next to a car upon which the owner had mounted a bible verse on the rear window....Mathew 6 v 34, it's that one about "take no thought for the morrow......" (you can look it up). Couple this with the message I received yesterday, a notice from the V.A. that my doc wanted to see me.
Oh, Oh. All the usual fears raced through my brain of course. I'd seen him just two weeks ago and got blood work done...."and the only reason he'd be calling me back would be that he was (greatly) concerned about what he had seen there......and was it the PSA score (prostate stuff) or the stratospheric cholesterol reading or some kind of (strange and alarming) esoteric blood result......?"
etc.
I went in and discovered that it was a problem all right. A computer problem! "You're blood work looks great." is basically what he said.
"Take no thought for the morrow......" I got it.
I GET it!
Dodging Ivan
I flee from fiction for the most part, unless it's the "historical" type. Truth is good enough, I feel, and I don't make much time for fancy. This is not altogether true of course, but it is a kind of pledge to myself that I will not waste my time engrossed in a book unless it has a reasonable connection with reality.
Then there's Ivan Doig.
To cut to the chase, Ivan Doig writes books using the kind of prose poetry which I can only manage for a scrappy line or two. His genius for turning the unexpected phrase into the perfect fit is unparalleled. There are a few writers around today who have similar talent, and of course I can't pull even one of their names out of my memory hat.
Irrelevant. It is enough to read Ivan.
I just remembered how I first got hooked, a friend of mine loaned me "This House of Sky" saying "You've got to read this guy." I was reluctant, the title reminded me of "Giants in the Earth" which I read in undergrad daysand, admittedly, liked a great deal. But I felt I was done with stories of ethic homesteaders in the ol' West and didn't have a need to re-enter that story line.
But I was captured by "House" immediately. And that's what Doig does, quick capture, and then you're on for the ride. I'd read another of his novels, a nice detective story, another gene' I never read; "Bucking the Sun" but after finishing it I felt I needed a break from prose-poetry and didn't pick up another Doig work until last week when I came across "The Whistling Season" at the library. I thought I'd just give it a quick perusal and then move on to the Halversham sports collection to see what he had to say about the NFL and baseball. I finished Halversham in a couple of nights and cracked open Doig to come across this on the first page: "When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long a time, littlest things jump up first. The oilcloth, tiny blue windmills on white squares, worn to colorless smears at our four places at the kitchen table. Our father's pungent coffee, so strong it was almost ambulatory, which he gulped down from suppertime until bedtime and then slept serenely as a sphinx."
.and on the story goes from there with little pings of picture like this one of a nasty old Aunt character; "I saw her in her yard the other day and she gave me her annual smile." These little gems aided by his penchant for turning nouns into verbs, notes Elizabeth, make his characters come alive and keep the reader engaged.
Ahh, but I can't really capture Doig in a few scraps torn from his quilt
of a novel. You will have to benefit, as I have, from my friends urging
to me and now mine to you; "You've got to read this guy!"
The Wild Life
One evening a week ago two deer, a young buck and a doe, were nibbling yucca blossoms about fifteen yards from my office window. I caught them both with a telephoto and got some nice shots. A few mornings ago I checked a live trap in our pump house and found the pregnant pack rat that had constructed a very nice nest of insulation materials festooned with decorative juniper branch tips. It was all set to be occupied but no sign of habitation yet. Might have been a "spec" nest. We re-located her about two miles south and she seemed happy to be there.
In between these two events came the discovery of a large meth lab hidden on the BLM land to our north. It was found by a prospective property owner who was inspecting a pending purchase of the forty-acre parcel. In a short time we had State Police, Sheriffs, local gendarmes of all shapes and sizes and, at 1:30 in the morning, the huge "Hazmat" truck came rumbling up our dusty road to collect the chemicals.
Over the years we have had a few criminal events around our place, we live in the wilds after all and that gives bad actors space to play out their dramatic lives. This is not counting our daughters ventures by the way, these other folks were not related to us.
We had the shooting event; that was when some drug dealers decided to assassinate one of their kind over a bad money transaction. They brought him up here, set him loose without shoes and began firing at him as he ran. He made it to our house and Elizabeth finally called the cops to come pick up the bloodied but not seriously hurt victim.
Then we had the vandals who attacked our friendly mine operators equipment and smashed through our electric gate which caused us to have to rebuild it.
Then there were the thieves who made off with all the solar panels and electrical equipment in a nice little cabin on the same property on which the meth-heads subsequently set up business.
There has always been the opportunity to act up and create problems in the wilderness of course, takes a lot longer for law enforcement to get to the scene so all kinds of mayhem can be undertaken without fear of immediate interruption. So along with the "peace and quiet" goes the potential of "wild west" activities. Given that New Mexico didn't even become a state until 1912 and was a "Territory" before then the "Wild West" mentality is still very tangible in every day living here. In one of our counties it is actually illegal NOT to have a gun in your home.
Munch on that one for awhile.
We have "carry" laws too. All you have to do is pass a certification test and prove you are not crazy or have a criminal record (and have not beaten your spouse) and you can start packin'. A gun that is.
For you folks outside the Southwest, you might be surprised that many of us who live in it wear boots.cowboy boots. And it's not a "pose". I, for one have always liked them for fit and comfort and for practicality. We have snakes and cacti out here and I can't tell you how many times I have pulled thorns out of my boots after a workday and been very happy to note that none of them made it to my toes. I've encountered a few snakes here too, though not as many as you might think, but I've felt a bit safer knowing there was some leather between them and me, though a good sized determined snake can cut through standard boot leather, still it's one more layer of protection. Cowboy boots don't signify "wild west" per se, but they do contribute to the general ambiance "stew" that springs from our history out here. Movie stars wearing boots don't count for much on the streets of L.A., but boots are as common here as Nikes are in your neighborhood.
More wild life news; a week ago a large bear, large here is about 250 pounds, attacked and cost the life of a pet lama just down the road from us. The same bear has shown that she, or he, is not afraid of humans by prowling around in daylight to get at garbage and dog food cans. There are traps out but when encountered this one will have to be dispatched. Can't have "friendly" wild life of that size and danger potential wandering around our homes.
On a less threatening note, my pump house trap caught a rabbit yesterday. The mysterious part is that there is no way to get under the house except to tunnel under the foundation. That's about three feet down. Can't figure out why they would even bother, there's nothing to graze on under there. When our air conditioner stopped working in the Subaru I checked under the hood and a critter had gnawed through a ground wire. I set the large animal trap and caught a squirrel, the probable culprit, though juniper debris around the wire hint at a pack rat. Continuing the count from last year, this would be number 26. I relocated him about two miles south. Later I caught a pack rat. Might be the perp.
Just because the teenagers have left the nest doesn't mean it's not filled with other opportunists.
The Guard at the Gate
Last year we applied for Food Stamps for the first time. We were reluctant because we felt we were getting along OK, but the fact was that our income, even for just the two of us, qualified us to receive any where from sixty to one hundred and twenty five dollars worth of assistance with our monthly food costs. At the same time we didn't want to feel that we were taking anything from any one who needed it more than we did. Once we were assured by the caseworker we talked to that this wasn't the case and if we qualified we should apply, we did.
When I went to the Human Services Office four things struck me; first there was the security guard sitting at the desk facing the application counter. Then there was the glass partition between applicants and reception worker. Third, there was the electronically locked door between the reception area and the workers offices and fourth there was the attitude. The receptionist, the first face of the agency, was to ask about what was needed in the way of application forms, to copy paper work, and to set appointments. Far from the friendly "Can-I-help-you?" opening one would expect, what I got bordered on; "Whatta-ya-want-ya-deadbeat!"
I figured that maybe she was having a bad day and blew it off. It was only after my third visit, necessary because of the there's-no-way-to-get-it-right the first or second time, that I saw that the attitude was fixed in place. When I commented on this to the caseworker I saw he acknowledged the problem and said; "Most of the workers here figure that everyone who comes in is lying and trying to beat the system so they have an attitude about it."
After awhile, I understood the security guard and the glass partition too. At first I just figured that they probably got a few crazy people who made outrageous demands and got nasty for no reason so they felt they had to keep things calm and safe from these folks. But after being required to jump through more hoops than a trained dolphin in a Sea World circus and, after a few months, being accused in not so subtle ways, of potential fraud, I got the whole picture. The system is set up and managed so that frustration and anger are the natural fall out because clients are treated as criminals who are ripping off the honest working taxpayers and what the people in the "Human Services" are supposed to do is catch the thieves, not help the indigent.
This is the natural result of Republican propaganda campaigns which have always claimed that all the poor and struggling are "welfare cheats" and "Cadillac mothers" and if any of them had a set of brains they'd be out holding down a job or two instead of milking the system that was set up by soft headed liberals.
Many of the people who work in these offices today are not the Social Workers of old who knew what poverty was about and wanted to do something to help people. Those folks knew what it was about because many of them came from it. They were accessible and understanding. Their primary focus was on helping.
It used to be that folks who were a lot or even a little down on their luck were seen as deserving of help and sympathy, maybe even empathy from those who were being paid to provide services by the State. But no longer. Now these "pubic servants" are nothing more than Gestapo lackeys whose sole preoccupation is to discover those who would conspire to get a leg up now and then, weed them out, threaten, insult, and shame them so that they will never dare to ask for help again.
Meanwhile, up the food chain, our Government, the one supported by all of we tax payers, helps as many oil companies, banks, and teetering corporations as possible as they come whining to the Federal Treasury claiming that enabling some disgraced former CEO to get out of jail free with a hundred million or so will encourage the economy to grow and get more and more folks gainful employment at the local Wal-Mart.
It's no wonder the folks who used to be in the role of helpers and have now been turned into investigators now hide behind electronically locked doors, bullet proof glass and a scowling security guard, who was listening to Limbaugh on talk radio the day I was there. If the supplicants should ever get it into their heads that they were tired of being screwed over by this demeaning set up and would grab pitch forks and torches and the whole lot of these insufferable twits would have to run for their SUVs and take off for their well furnished digs far away from the petulance of the poor. And what would happen to their pay checks, paid sick leave, and accrued vacation time then?
Someone said, Show me how you take care of your elderly, your poor, your children and your sick and I will tell you what kind of society you are. America once was full of heart and help for those who needed it. We were not foolish or easily conned, but we did give a damn and the programs we set up to help those in need, set up by Democrats who came out of the Great Depression, were effective and humane. We've experienced decades of the slow undermining and outright gutting of these programs by the mean spirited, self serving, arrogant bottom line thinkers of the let's-cut-your-taxes-and-get-all-we-can-for-us(and nothing for anyone else) mentality. These twisters of reality and spin masters have created for all of us the "Bad Deal" and it is taking its toll on the poorest Americans. We are now effectively hated by most of the World and our Government is not trusted by most of our own people, at least those who are not profiting by leaps and bounds. In other words, everyone other than the 1% of the richest who continue to rake it in. They too are protected by electronic doors, security guards and "attitudes".
As each day passes in this darkening age, America is looking more and more like Dickens's England or Marie Antoinette's France. Perhaps for us too it is time for a revolution.....in thinking at least. It is just plain outrageous that we, as compassionate a people as most Americans are, have allowed ourselves to be buffaloed by the fear mongers of the Republican Right. Perhaps we can take the country back from their greedy clutches, perhaps we can re-set the course of what was once, "the last, best hope of the World." If not, then we have certainly sold out more cheaply than Manhattan was bought for and the very soul of our Democracy has been lost in the bargain too.
Our Last Dog
All the kids are "launched".that is, they are out of the house. Of course my oldest kids have been underway for decades, but my latest and last crew are mostly fresh navigators of the great sea of life so rescue efforts are still undertaken now and then each needing fewer supplies as time goes on. This leaves just the animals as dependents.
The less said about the cat the better. That we allow him to survive as we battle for space in bed at night about sums up the annoyance factor. He has stopped hunting activities, which is a great relief as far as mop-up is concerned. He never was a champ at reducing the mouse population anyway and this year has been a downer for mice, so no problem. The dog, our last remaining, is another story.
Tie Dye adopted us not long after Wuf did the same. He and Wuf were closer than brothers with Tie Dye being the dependent and support dog. Wuf was the alpha male in our territory. When he died Tie Dye was inconsolable for over a year. In fact, I don't think he ever recovered. Then he lost his next best friend, a huge German Shepard, to a speeding car late last year. More depression. And now, after watching him lose energy way beyond anything we could attribute to his sadness, we discover he has "Cushings disease", a problem which gives rise to diabetes among other symptoms. At first we thought we would have to let him go quickly. We couldn't afford the kind of vet bills treating the Cushing's would entail, about $250 a month in meds alone. But after good advice from a great vet, whose web site is worth a look, we decided to ignore the Cushing's and just treat the diabetes which involves two shots of insulin a day at about $45 to 50 a month. This makes a "dent" in our income of course, but we are willing to do it. If and when the Cushing's progresses to causing an inability to use his back legs, which it can do, then we put him to sleep. We don't know how much time this gives us, but some at least.
I know the range of the caring-about-dogs thing, from "He's just a dog fer crissake!" to "He's my one and only friend." We both fall into the middle ground around this issue and this means that we can't walk a vital, alert and tail-wagging dog to death-at-the-vets until he is none of these.or maybe two out of three are gone. So, learning to give a dog an injection, easier than giving one to a human by the way, and sticking to the twice a day routine, imperative lest his blood sugar drop precipitously, and not being quite as free as we thought we would be after the last kid hit the road, isn't the worst thing that could happen. I guess that day will come when the light must finally fade from Tie Dye's eyes at our hands. That will come when it's the only solution left.
"Last dog"? Probably. And now that the cat has, unaccountably, begun to pee in our guest bathroom, last cat as well.
(Not) Taking it for Granted
Living out here without a well certainly keeps us from taking water for granted. We are very, very conservative when it comes to usage. I haul 500 gallons on a round trip of twenty-six miles about every ten to twelve days to fill up our 1600-gallon storage tank. When we had kids at home it was every five days.
What we do take for granted is when we turn on a faucet water will come out. This turned out not to be true a week ago. Turning on faucets and flushing toilets produced nothing at all. We had experienced three days of very cold weather the week before, but we thought we were covered because we had heat lamps in the pump house where all the piping comes to the surface keeping everything well above freezing, and we had heat at the source of our water storage, the big tank in the form of heat "tape", a wrap around the pipe that comes out of the tank. It's not hot, but it keeps the pipe warm to the touch.
So we thought all was OK. It turned out that the extension to the heat tape had come unplugged and as a result the line had frozen. Usually this just means getting out a hair dryer and heating the line to free up the ice jam. But hours of this produced no result. What happened was that the line wasn't just frozen at the surface but well down into the ground.
We worked on this for five days while getting water from a neighbor who also had frozen lines but also had a storage tank from which we could draw drinking water at least. (We took showers at another neighbors house and flushed our one working toilet by pouring water into the tank.)
On the sixth day we decided on radical action. We called the local "rescue" plumbers and had a 1600-gallon water tank buried next to the house. This is a much bigger deal than these few words of writing can tell, it involved $2400 and an earth mover, along with hours and hours of finding the lines that ran into the house, which were then accidentally dug up and pulled apart by the earth mover causing more hours of searching for the ends that pulled apart..and then there was the time spent reconnecting them into the bottom of the new tank. The freezing cold then caused the new lines to freeze overnight before we could bury them, but this was a minor detail taken care of by a blasting propane heater insulated under a tarp cover, and then quick action to cover everything with dirt. By the seventh day we had water again and the hard time was over.
When we first moved in here we had no water or power for about six weeks and though it was tough, we adjusted. For some reason this seemed harder. Partly because we didn't expect it I suppose, and maybe the sub-freezing temps made it more difficult because we couldn't wash up without heating a teakettle full each time.
I don't imagine most reading this would find burying a water tank a celebratory moment, but now that I can simply back my water hauling trailer up to a tank in the ground and dump 500 gallons into it without having to wrestle with a pull-start water pump each time and perhaps have to deal with a frozen hose which will then block the download, now that all of this is accomplished, I am doubly happy.
It's almost as good as having all the kids out on their own and the house to ourselves. If you've ever had to go through raising teens, you know how good that is.
When these situations come about I always distract myself from major whining by remembering that at least we have water and at least nobody is blowing themselves up on some religious whim at the local Walmart.
We are blessed.
If I Were King, Part ll
About five years ago I wrote a rant about how, if I were elevated to a position of power, I would change everything from what was going on in schools to what was going on in the country. Part of it went like this:
"I believe that the schools ought to be teaching critical thinking. That doesn't mean some abstract course about how we might re-do the Bill of Rights, kids would be bored by that and they want real world stuff to keep them interested. So everything ought to be on the table for a critical thinking discussion, abortion vs. anti abortion, free speech and pornography, minority rights vs. majority rights, unlimited freedom vs. a civil society, the teaching of religious history and ethics vs. the total exclusion of anything that comes close to even talking about the worlds belief systems, etc. I'd say that schools need to get re-focused on a liberal arts curriculum which includes funding for music and arts programs vs. this teach-the-test mentality which teaches nobody anything useful. The vast amounts of money spent on better gyms and football fields thus supporting a handful of kids to be good used car salesmen ought to be used for more school counselors for kids-at-risk. Intramural sports that include everybody should replace the ridiculous escalation of sports into inter-school competitions that put kids on bus trips that begin in early mornings and don't get them back until late at night. What does this have to do with education? Are these programs supposed to be low-level farm clubs for professional sports? If not, what's the point?"
Etc.
Well, a lot has happened since then including, of course, the "war". So here's my new and expanded platform:
One: As soon as I am placed on the Throne I will order the evacuation of all troops from Iraq.
Two: I will issue an apology to the World for the excesses and arrogance of America's foreign policy over the past eight years and commit to a path of using our military to providing humanitarian aid all in need.
Three: I will order the U.N. to be fully funded and meet with all world leaders in order to support it to be the true peace keeping organization it was meant to be.in other words, give it some teeth.
Four: I will order that the U.S. join the World Court and deliver to the Hague any persons accused of "war crimes" or "crimes against humanity" for fair trial, just as we insist other nations must do.
Five: I will order that reparations be paid to every family in Iraq and Viet Nam whose non-combatant members have been killed or wounded by our troops or "contractors".
Six: I will order a full investigation and thorough prosecution of any fraud or price gouging by American companies and contractors in Iraq.
Seven: I will order stopped all overpriced and unnecessary weapons programs currently being funded by our tax dollars.
Eight: I will order fair and equitable tax increases to fund universal health care for all Americans and to repair our failing infrastructure.
Nine: I will raise the minimum wage throughout the U.S. to a standard which enables a family to survive on a single income.
Ten: I will require American companies to keep manufacture of American products here in the U.S. in order to recapture jobs for our workers. The increase in minimum wage will mean that our workers can afford to buy our own products and our high standards for manufactured goods, though they will be more expensive, will keep them competitive on the world markets.
Eleven: I will order that the government will nationalize all oil and coal production in the U.S. and institute price controls thus ending speculation in natural resources which always results in higher prices in order to make profits for the few at the expense of the many.
Twelve: I will order the government take-over of all power plants in the U.S. and price controls on the cost of natural gas and electric power along with full funding of solar and wind power generation to speed up their ability to replace fossil fuel use.
That's my program so far. I await the call.
How Raven (Elizabeth) Believed Her Name....
It began simply enough, I had given Elizabeth the name, "Raven" not long after we met. Both she and my then youngest daughter Winter carried it. Physically there was the black hair of course, but the name fit them because of much more than that, though Elizabeth remained unconvinced. Raven, like "coyote" is the trickster-teacher in the spiritual world and the wise-bird of legend and real life. It is also the one bird that seems to experience being a bird as much more than just a daily effort of hunting and gathering. Watch any raven for awhile and you will see a bird who is having fun while going about the business of living. This bird has a lot to teach.
One day, not long after sunrise, a few people arrived at our place to set up for the "Sun Dance" that was to begin later that day. They parked in our lot and went down to the dance circle site to begin preparations.
About an hour later as they were returning for supplies and I stepped outside to greet them just as a flock of ravens flew overhead. Suddenly one peeled out of the bunch and circled down to land on one of the parked cars. The owner walked to it, opened the door, and the raven hopped across the roof and perched on the door and began preening. The man held his hand open and the raven dropped a feather into it. Right about then I figured there was something out of the ordinary going on.
I ran inside the house and grabbed my camera as Elizabeth walked over to the car and held her left arm out to the bird, which jumped onto it, walked up her arm to her shoulder, nipped her on the left ear, then hopped across her back and nipped the right. Then it hopped down her right arm and flew off into a pine tree nearby.
There are many more details to this story that Elizabeth is prone to add, but these are the bony facts of it. Now I will add all of the "disclaimers" to please the scoffers; thirteen miles away, as the raven flies, there was a raven that hung out in an equipment yard. I don't know how long that bird was there, but it did seem to not be bothered about the proximity of people.
That's it.
So let's consider the odds, it's Sun Dance time and a flock of ravens flies over, what are the odds that one of them might be that people "friendly" raven? There were maybe ten ravens, so perhaps 10-1. What then are the odds that this particular flock would fly over this area? Given all the points of the compass they could choose, let's say, arbitrarily, 360-1. That they would fly over on the morning of a Dance we'd have to add 365 to that so 725-1. And add to this that this particular bird would select to land here and walk up the arm of a woman who sought confirmation of the name "Raven". this is such a long shot that I'd have to give it lottery odds. A million to one shot. And I'm sure a real statistician would add permutations which would add to this number considerably.
I think it would be a much harder sell to convince anyone that all of this was pure chance. I mean, it would at least instill a glimmer of doubt in a professional doubter's structure of belief would it not? But in fact, when I tell this story, and/or the one about the coyote skull (see "A Story") to a committed skeptic I know they think I am telling a story that is primarily a metaphor, or that I am outright lying.
Or maybe that I'm simply a nut case.
If there is a confirmed skeptic reading this I can only say this; these are not manipulative tales told to attempt a conversion. They are not metaphors created to "teach", and lastly, they are not lies. What they do for me is to take me down to the foundations of my own spiritual beliefthey tell me that I don't have to make a great leap-of-faith or put on hold my own reason and logic to believe that there is more to this mystery of life than the marshalling of "odds" can resolve.though the worship of pragmatic explanations can dissolve just about anything that is inexplicable by any other means of understanding.
Besides; I am a skeptic.....and they certainly convinced, and continue to convince, me.
I know that these things did happen.....happened to people who were neither gullible nor innocent of life experience. They were simple occurrences to be sure, no Lazarus raising, no fishes and loaves, but impactful, and quite to the point of what was needed.
So Elizabeth's name is Raven! Of that she is very much assured.
Me too.
A Story
I'm a jazz fan. It's the music that brings me home to my self. If I've been exposed to a day of really bad music, on hold for minutes that seem to be stretching into hours, and it's been Kenny G, or rock ("Classic" or not, I can't take much of it) or the boring and predictable Bam! Bam! Bam! accompanying the rap, hip-hop noise emanating from our 16 year old's room, after a time I need my head and heart cleared and jazz is where I go.
Sometimes I will find myself needing to explore an old piece that has drawn my attention once again and I will play the same track over and over and over, hearing something in it I haven't ever heard before, though I've listened to it a hundred times. Miles Davis and "All Blues" will catch me like this on occasion.
Some poetry is like that for me too and I will re-read a piece again to recapture what caught me the first time, or to hear it afresh to awaken me to what I missed in the first go 'round. "The Road not Taken" is one like that.
I have a story of my own that I re-tell now and then because I think it will help others to hear it, even though some I know have probably heard it ten times over the years. In reality I tell it more for me, because I need to re-visit the emotions that were present when the story was born into my life those many years ago. It's a "touchstone" of sorts, a place to which I return to reawaken faith and hope.
This is the story:
But first.....just a bit of background. This story didn't spring entirely from the moment, there were many "tributaries" that fed into the stream of it. It's often true that a spiritual awakening, or a "miracle" happens when the ground is already prepared for it.
Not always, but mostly.
To be brief I will just say that I had been looking for a way to understand and believe that there was more to life than our just being, as my brother-in-law contended "animated pieces of meat". But I was deep into "proofs" about this. I wanted the facts not just hopeful leaps of faith or assurances from people who burned a lot of incense and meditated all the time. I wanted to be convinced!
I'm still that way about most politics and "Best apple pie!" claims.
I had come north from my apartment near El Paso to the mountains outside of Albuquerque. I'd come to visit friends and to gather some shreds of cedar bark from the trees that grow in the area,. I was using six to eight inch lengths of it to create small smoldering fires for the daily ceremonies I was committed to performing at the request of a medicine man I was working with. This was part of my personal spiritual quest. One of the "tributaries".
He had taught me a little ritual to perform with the trees in order to gather the bark in a "conscious" manner. This was simply a process of taking a pinch of tobacco up to the tree selected and offering a prayer about why I was gathering the bark and that I would be using it for good purpose, and wouldn't be taking much.
This seemed to me to be a nice way of keeping a person aware of conservation which is what I figured it was really all about.
I like to keep things "rationally" based.
Another tributary was this; I had been seeking a name. I wanted some sort of spiritual identity and through a series of very odd events occurring over the preceding months I had come up with "coyote" a name which carries many levels of understanding.....but this is another story.
The events which led me to this name could be considered "magical" by some, but for me, they might have simply been random occurrences and I thought I might be making more of them than they deserved. The real dilemma was that I was the one doing the "interpreting". Since I didn't trust anything I might come up with as coming from "The Source", my interpretations didn't amount to any kind of proof I could consider valid.
So to prove that; the name was real and therefore purposeful, and thus, that there really was a Creator spirit running this show and all of this ceremony and ritual was worth the undertaking, my criteria was this; someone, unbidden, would one day hand me a coyote skull as a gift. That would be the proof I would need.
Kind of a tall order but not unusual for a skeptic.
The scene was set.......and there I was doing my obligatory ceremony with the tree of my choice, one chosen at random from among thousands of possibilities in the Cibola National Forest at the foot of the Sandia mountains.
In the midst of this undertaking I was suddenly struck with this thought; "This isn't the right tree."!
This was a very uncharacteristic response for me because I'm a point-A-to-point-B kind of guy. I don't reflect much on "feelings" about right or wrong trees. I was just doing a ritual after all. But there it was, and the feeling of "wrongness" persisted until I looked around at the forest of cedar trees and picked one that, and this is my memory of it, was "greener" than all the others.
I walked over to it and began my ceremony again, feeling "right" this time.
But midway through something in the branches, deep inside and right up close to the trunk, something glowingly white, caught my attention. I moved some branches aside and stepped inside the shade and saw, hanging in the fork of a main branch, a skull.
A coyote's skull.
All these years later I can still feel what I felt then though time has lessened the impact. Tears flooded my eyes and my legs could not hold me up. I could only cry and say, "My God! It's all real! It's REAL!" My shock at that realization was only equaled by the guilt I felt that I could ever have doubted......and then came the pure joy of the reassurance that this tangible gift represented.
Then I wanted to tell someone, anyone......to reassure them, to spread the news of this experience. But there was no one near to telland, after I sat with all of it for a time, I determined that keeping it all inside seemed important. Letting it permeate every cell to purge the doubts felt like the best use of this miracle. And I had no doubt then, nor do I have now, that that's exactly what this was.
I have chosen to tell this story again now and then but only when I felt the time was right to it revisit that feeling, to bring it back to life in me and share it with those who need it. There have been many other "miracles" since then, but nothing so clear-cut, so out of the "could be explained away" category. And of course, I could, if I worked very hard at statistics, probabilities, and permutations, explain even that one I suppose
Well, considering the odds, maybe not.
Sometimes, when I am feeling unloved, or more accurately, unlovable, I will finally whittle all of those who might possibly love me down to my daughters of whose love I am absolutely sure and then I stare at a picture I have of my wife Elizabeth and, once again captured by her warm soul eyes, I will be brought back to my center. From there I can rebuild to a place of balance.
This coyote story never fails to ebb the tides of doubt which rise as hours of facts begin to overtake my moments of faith. Just as the sure love of my daughters and my life partner, the poetry of jazz and the depth of prose bring me back home to sanity, it reminds my doubting brain and my cautious heart of what I came upon in that forest of cedar. It was not something imagined or dreamed, it was a tangible gift I could, and still do, hold in my hands. A reality that brings me spiritually alive once again and without the specter of doubt to cloud my hope.
And this is also true; I know, that despite my strong intent it is impossible to convey the power of this story to another to instill the same response I had to this experience. How can I paint a sunset so that you can see it or send my experience of deep love to you so that you can feel it? The Bible has never convinced me of virgin birth or resurrection and though Carl Sandberg has told me of the "Wilderness" he cannot take me there, I will have to put on my own hiking shoes for that. And so it is for "miracles". All I hope to do by telling this story is say that it is possible for any human being, searching for something to believe in, to find it.
The method is simple; fight to keep your own mind and heart open to all the potential for magic. But don't wait for it, actively seek it out.just as it has been said: "Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you." It takes work, whether that be doing the ceremonies and rituals or just walking in the woods, to overcome the inertia, but the rewards for those efforts, if you believe in the worth of hope, are priceless.