Monday, December 3, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
911 Meaculpa County
"Hello, this is nine-one-one, what is the nature of your emergency?"
"Ohmigod, he's killing her!"
"I'm sorry, sir, we are an emergency call center. For matters of faith, please consult your local church, synagogue, temple, channeler, healer, psychic or shaman. I can connect you to the Greater Arizona Faith Resource Center, if you like."
"No! I'm the host as Ruined Bluff Campground, and there is a man here killing his girlfriend."
"I see.... Is this act being committed on National Forest grounds?"
"Yes, you idiot, I said-"
"Sir, verbal abuse of emergency operators is a misdemeanor in the state of Arizona."
"I'm sorry, but this guy is killing a woman on the picnic table!"
"I thought you said it was on the ground, sir."
"No, I said "grounds"... Why could that possibly matter... send HELP!"
"Sir, in order to dispatch an officer from the correct office, I have to have enough information to understand the situation. Is that a National Forest picnic table, or one owned by the City of Mensa?"
"Oh, Lord-! HE'S CUTTING HERE TO PIECES!!!"
"Sir, remain calm. Screaming at me will not help. Now... is he using an axe or knife, or is it a meat saw?"
"WHAT?"
"If he is using a meat saw, that would be practicing as a meat cutter without proper county certification, and we will be right out there to fine him and confiscate his tools."
"Are you insane!?!?"
CLICK!
"Mensa Department of Mental Health, how can I direct your call?"
"I was online with the police-"
"One moment-"
"No, wait-!"
(Muzak)
(Muzak, with intermittent sounds of a chainsaw)
(Dial tone)
"Ohmigod, he's killing her!"
"I'm sorry, sir, we are an emergency call center. For matters of faith, please consult your local church, synagogue, temple, channeler, healer, psychic or shaman. I can connect you to the Greater Arizona Faith Resource Center, if you like."
"No! I'm the host as Ruined Bluff Campground, and there is a man here killing his girlfriend."
"I see.... Is this act being committed on National Forest grounds?"
"Yes, you idiot, I said-"
"Sir, verbal abuse of emergency operators is a misdemeanor in the state of Arizona."
"I'm sorry, but this guy is killing a woman on the picnic table!"
"I thought you said it was on the ground, sir."
"No, I said "grounds"... Why could that possibly matter... send HELP!"
"Sir, in order to dispatch an officer from the correct office, I have to have enough information to understand the situation. Is that a National Forest picnic table, or one owned by the City of Mensa?"
"Oh, Lord-! HE'S CUTTING HERE TO PIECES!!!"
"Sir, remain calm. Screaming at me will not help. Now... is he using an axe or knife, or is it a meat saw?"
"WHAT?"
"If he is using a meat saw, that would be practicing as a meat cutter without proper county certification, and we will be right out there to fine him and confiscate his tools."
"Are you insane!?!?"
CLICK!
"Mensa Department of Mental Health, how can I direct your call?"
"I was online with the police-"
"One moment-"
"No, wait-!"
(Muzak)
(Muzak, with intermittent sounds of a chainsaw)
(Dial tone)
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
A Season in the Desert
Updates from the road.
Tues 10.16.2012
After ten days of climbing, hiking and truck bed camping in North Devils Canyon, with anchors replaced and trails pruned and projects for the future dancing like windblown ropes in our heads, we headed down to the Salt River Basin, just beyond Mesa, AZ, to take our spot as site hosts at the Coon Bluff Recreation area.
The site overlooks the Salt River from a high sandy bluff lined with palo verde and mesquite, acacia and sage. Prarie dogs and skunks, black widow spiders and scorpions, squirrels and ferrets, wild ponies, free-range cows, osprey and bald eagles all call the area their home, along with a healthy population of cactus wrens and doves, and a handful of water snakes and rattlers.
The local crew is a younger group trying to hold together an aging system with smaller and smaller pools of resources. We meet Rocco and Ben and Chad, the field guys, who are swapping picnic tables in anticipation of the influx of campers we will receive after the other, more popular campgrounds of the Tonto National Forest are closed for the season. I help carry a pinic table or two and we exchange some basic background and info about the locale.
Soon after, Kelly, our TNF contact shows, and we fill out paperwork, chat about the changes in the Tonto and AZ in general and where we will camp. I'm suprprised and a little disappointed to learn that, although we had sent in paperwork three weeks before, our background checks still haven't been run. This means another three days of delay before we can start our duties prepping for campers, campers who have already begu to arrive.
It also means I could have stayed in the Canyon another two days and climbed. I think of the sweet, steep pocketed face we had top roped and contemplated bolting, on the Shaman Wall, and the long, shaded lines of the Stormwatch, where Cindy has never climbed and a half-dozen routes are just waiting for bolts.
But funds are now too tight to take the hundred-plus mile drive for two more days of climbing, and I know, too, that the momentum of a week and a half of recall and climbing is long gone. The drive would be no more than an exercise in frustration and futility.
Acceptance of the things we can't change is the path to calm. I take deep breathes and enjoy the views of Red Mountain and the steep walls and cliffs around Saguaro Lake, the wrens catching bugs in acrobatic flight in the purple dusk, the distant chorus of coyotes, as the first star shines through the darkness, and night comes to the desert.
Tues 10.16.2012
After ten days of climbing, hiking and truck bed camping in North Devils Canyon, with anchors replaced and trails pruned and projects for the future dancing like windblown ropes in our heads, we headed down to the Salt River Basin, just beyond Mesa, AZ, to take our spot as site hosts at the Coon Bluff Recreation area.
The site overlooks the Salt River from a high sandy bluff lined with palo verde and mesquite, acacia and sage. Prarie dogs and skunks, black widow spiders and scorpions, squirrels and ferrets, wild ponies, free-range cows, osprey and bald eagles all call the area their home, along with a healthy population of cactus wrens and doves, and a handful of water snakes and rattlers.
The local crew is a younger group trying to hold together an aging system with smaller and smaller pools of resources. We meet Rocco and Ben and Chad, the field guys, who are swapping picnic tables in anticipation of the influx of campers we will receive after the other, more popular campgrounds of the Tonto National Forest are closed for the season. I help carry a pinic table or two and we exchange some basic background and info about the locale.
Soon after, Kelly, our TNF contact shows, and we fill out paperwork, chat about the changes in the Tonto and AZ in general and where we will camp. I'm suprprised and a little disappointed to learn that, although we had sent in paperwork three weeks before, our background checks still haven't been run. This means another three days of delay before we can start our duties prepping for campers, campers who have already begu to arrive.
It also means I could have stayed in the Canyon another two days and climbed. I think of the sweet, steep pocketed face we had top roped and contemplated bolting, on the Shaman Wall, and the long, shaded lines of the Stormwatch, where Cindy has never climbed and a half-dozen routes are just waiting for bolts.
But funds are now too tight to take the hundred-plus mile drive for two more days of climbing, and I know, too, that the momentum of a week and a half of recall and climbing is long gone. The drive would be no more than an exercise in frustration and futility.
Acceptance of the things we can't change is the path to calm. I take deep breathes and enjoy the views of Red Mountain and the steep walls and cliffs around Saguaro Lake, the wrens catching bugs in acrobatic flight in the purple dusk, the distant chorus of coyotes, as the first star shines through the darkness, and night comes to the desert.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Impatient Zen
Watching, as the summer turns to russet and gold, thickening coats on creatures beyond my picture's window, a sudden transformation of the morning dew to diamonds of frost, ferns sculpted in ice across windows and patio table. A waxing moon, setting, promises light for the road, tomorrow, should our journeys commence and end as planned.
As wind shakes the house and Cindy silently turns another page, my mind takes wing, stilling my fingers as my inner eye races south along the Front Range, crosses the Platte and Sangre de Cristos, arrowing through Raton Pass and the lingering burn scars like a raven on the wind, Sante Fe a bright pinata below and far to the southeast as I head west, across Angelfire and then down the Sandias to Albuquerque's jewelled, squalid face, then westward again to the broad plateau beyond Gallup's dusty rodeo circles and midnight trains.
Brown hills and washes, sudden arroyos and rolling dunes, brutal outcrops of volcanic stone, covered in mesquite and ocotillo, palo verde and cholla, saguaro and sage, dotted here and there with kiva and other fading relics, wound with game trails from herds long vanished, crisscrossed with ribbons of pavement and gravel, linking far-flung clusters of homesteads and commerce, huddled against the vast, uncaring blue of an endless sky, in which the sun burns like the fury of a god.
And then south, fleeing the wastelands to reach the folded promise of mountains, shimmering in the heat with the promise of cool water and deep shadows. The Superstitions rear out of the lower desert, beyond the forests and crumbling drop of the Mogollon and Kaibab, rising like a final epitaph of Cochise and his warriors, who once used these sere, forbidding canyons and escarpments to elude the United States government's finest soldiers and trackers. Here, amid mountains born of a violent age millennia past, and canyons carved by the ensuing ageless cycles of rain and snow, freeze and thaw, my winged mind finally came to rest, steeped in shadows of memories so deep and thick as to lose their individuality in an overall sensation of belonging.
Soon.
I wait with impatient Zen, scouting for jobs in the area, looking for part-time work to fill the financial void a volunteer position entails, hiking and cooking with Cindy. We sit like churchmice in this amazing dwelling, still stunned on some level to be made so at home in a strange city.
No matter how much I may run on, words cannot express how grateful I am to my friend Brian for his generosity and hospitality. It is odd but somehow poetically symmetrical that a climber I met casually at the crag, within the last decade, and with whom I had spoken mainly by phone and email and with whom I shared less than four days of conversation, trail work and climbing, would, out of the dozens of people I knew scattered across the continent, become one of our best friends and aid us so selflessly. In the midst of a life that is busy both with work that is important to more than some billionaire's balance, and play at the far end of the performance scale, this tall, quiet engineer has been both host and guide, local reference and consummate toastmaster. Through him we have met a handful of other souls, all searching for the best and preparing for the worst, all facing Life with open eyes and willing hearts; good folks doing hard things, who in turn opened their homes and lives to us.
The desert will be a lot more empty in their absence.
But there are enough good memories to light a candle against the coming winter, til summer sun shines on us all again.
I know this feeling, this stirring of potentials and convergences of fates and destiny. We sort gear as the morning wanders along, the truck in the hands of good local mechanics, in preparation for the trip. Laundry hums and cycles, cold weather clothing is stuffed further into the depths of trunks in anticipation of the Sonoran Desert heat. I file Brian's roughly-used Colorado guide book into the shelf with the rest of his guides and smile at the memories of 11 Mile and Boulder Canyon, of Nederland's hippie democracy, and even at the folly of the Indian Peaks Wilderness fiasco that ended my brief stint as a booth host.
We've worked hard and played hard, and spent time doing absolutely nothing, which is sometimes essential and sometimes indulgence. I'd like to think ours has been a healthy mix of both. A stack of books attests to the catching up we've done between hikes and breaks, climbs and bouldering sessions, dinners and Netflix and early mornings of French-pressed coffee spent in cerebral conversation, a tradition with my wife no matter what the setting. Ropes have been washed, climbing and camping gear sorted, the neighborhood and Colorado Springs in general explored, and our lives are richer for having seen this part of Colorado.
We have drunk deep of Suburbia and I feel no shame in admitting I've enjoyed hot showers, flush toilets, electric lights, internet, and cell phone reception. Those things are technology, neither inherently good nor evil. It is our national, cultural addiction to them, our craving for convenience that brings us low, and isolates us in the midst of our crowded lives and cities. Cindy and I have been here long enough to miss the birdsong in morning's first blush, and the sound of the wind over your head as you fall asleep beneath a sky full of stars.
In the end, an old lesson; the things we want and the things we need are, more often than we'd care to admit, not found in the same list. At least not in the same order.
What do I hope to accomplish in the sharing, in wasting cyberspace with these inanities, these wistful inner wanderings? Nothing more than another stranger, telling his tale here in the light of the electric campfire, offering a glimpse into another humanity, bridging the gaps between the isles of light that are our individual existences.
I look for hope in a season of division and malicious malcontent, when words mean so little, and truth in a world where Truth is a word used by those who know nothing of its essence.
Scratches on slate, a handful of runes in a lost cave, echoes of the sea far from the shore. As the waxing moon, the seasons continue their timeless roll, the tides rise and fall. Outside, unperturbed by the world-shaking events and rumors of war, magpies peer from the bush with bright eyes, and the wind combs restless fingers through the treasures of fall colors still clinging to the trees.
Another bit of the strand is woven, another tale told.
As wind shakes the house and Cindy silently turns another page, my mind takes wing, stilling my fingers as my inner eye races south along the Front Range, crosses the Platte and Sangre de Cristos, arrowing through Raton Pass and the lingering burn scars like a raven on the wind, Sante Fe a bright pinata below and far to the southeast as I head west, across Angelfire and then down the Sandias to Albuquerque's jewelled, squalid face, then westward again to the broad plateau beyond Gallup's dusty rodeo circles and midnight trains.
Brown hills and washes, sudden arroyos and rolling dunes, brutal outcrops of volcanic stone, covered in mesquite and ocotillo, palo verde and cholla, saguaro and sage, dotted here and there with kiva and other fading relics, wound with game trails from herds long vanished, crisscrossed with ribbons of pavement and gravel, linking far-flung clusters of homesteads and commerce, huddled against the vast, uncaring blue of an endless sky, in which the sun burns like the fury of a god.
And then south, fleeing the wastelands to reach the folded promise of mountains, shimmering in the heat with the promise of cool water and deep shadows. The Superstitions rear out of the lower desert, beyond the forests and crumbling drop of the Mogollon and Kaibab, rising like a final epitaph of Cochise and his warriors, who once used these sere, forbidding canyons and escarpments to elude the United States government's finest soldiers and trackers. Here, amid mountains born of a violent age millennia past, and canyons carved by the ensuing ageless cycles of rain and snow, freeze and thaw, my winged mind finally came to rest, steeped in shadows of memories so deep and thick as to lose their individuality in an overall sensation of belonging.
Soon.
I wait with impatient Zen, scouting for jobs in the area, looking for part-time work to fill the financial void a volunteer position entails, hiking and cooking with Cindy. We sit like churchmice in this amazing dwelling, still stunned on some level to be made so at home in a strange city.
No matter how much I may run on, words cannot express how grateful I am to my friend Brian for his generosity and hospitality. It is odd but somehow poetically symmetrical that a climber I met casually at the crag, within the last decade, and with whom I had spoken mainly by phone and email and with whom I shared less than four days of conversation, trail work and climbing, would, out of the dozens of people I knew scattered across the continent, become one of our best friends and aid us so selflessly. In the midst of a life that is busy both with work that is important to more than some billionaire's balance, and play at the far end of the performance scale, this tall, quiet engineer has been both host and guide, local reference and consummate toastmaster. Through him we have met a handful of other souls, all searching for the best and preparing for the worst, all facing Life with open eyes and willing hearts; good folks doing hard things, who in turn opened their homes and lives to us.
The desert will be a lot more empty in their absence.
But there are enough good memories to light a candle against the coming winter, til summer sun shines on us all again.
I know this feeling, this stirring of potentials and convergences of fates and destiny. We sort gear as the morning wanders along, the truck in the hands of good local mechanics, in preparation for the trip. Laundry hums and cycles, cold weather clothing is stuffed further into the depths of trunks in anticipation of the Sonoran Desert heat. I file Brian's roughly-used Colorado guide book into the shelf with the rest of his guides and smile at the memories of 11 Mile and Boulder Canyon, of Nederland's hippie democracy, and even at the folly of the Indian Peaks Wilderness fiasco that ended my brief stint as a booth host.
We've worked hard and played hard, and spent time doing absolutely nothing, which is sometimes essential and sometimes indulgence. I'd like to think ours has been a healthy mix of both. A stack of books attests to the catching up we've done between hikes and breaks, climbs and bouldering sessions, dinners and Netflix and early mornings of French-pressed coffee spent in cerebral conversation, a tradition with my wife no matter what the setting. Ropes have been washed, climbing and camping gear sorted, the neighborhood and Colorado Springs in general explored, and our lives are richer for having seen this part of Colorado.
We have drunk deep of Suburbia and I feel no shame in admitting I've enjoyed hot showers, flush toilets, electric lights, internet, and cell phone reception. Those things are technology, neither inherently good nor evil. It is our national, cultural addiction to them, our craving for convenience that brings us low, and isolates us in the midst of our crowded lives and cities. Cindy and I have been here long enough to miss the birdsong in morning's first blush, and the sound of the wind over your head as you fall asleep beneath a sky full of stars.
In the end, an old lesson; the things we want and the things we need are, more often than we'd care to admit, not found in the same list. At least not in the same order.
What do I hope to accomplish in the sharing, in wasting cyberspace with these inanities, these wistful inner wanderings? Nothing more than another stranger, telling his tale here in the light of the electric campfire, offering a glimpse into another humanity, bridging the gaps between the isles of light that are our individual existences.
I look for hope in a season of division and malicious malcontent, when words mean so little, and truth in a world where Truth is a word used by those who know nothing of its essence.
Scratches on slate, a handful of runes in a lost cave, echoes of the sea far from the shore. As the waxing moon, the seasons continue their timeless roll, the tides rise and fall. Outside, unperturbed by the world-shaking events and rumors of war, magpies peer from the bush with bright eyes, and the wind combs restless fingers through the treasures of fall colors still clinging to the trees.
Another bit of the strand is woven, another tale told.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Colorado Rockin'
We've spent our time well...
While the job and housing market seems filled with false promises and scams, the mountains of Colorado are all that you want, and so much more.
Eight days in Colorado's 11 Mile Canyon, with frosty mornings over steaming mugs of coffee and huevos rancheros, "strolls" that turned into three hour adventures through third, fourth and fifth class terrain, from one canyon rim to the other, crags we couldn't find in the guide book that turned out to be better. Campers and fishermen and tourists came and went around us; some good, some not so good, some ciphers without interpretation.
They were not our focus.
Noisy jaybirds woke us with loud insistent cries every morning at dawn, usually followed by the long burring bark of the squirrels, and the scampering of our personal trio of adolescent chipmunks.
We crawled from warm sleeping bags into the frigid air and struggled outside for rapid walks to the jakes, then coffee and a smoke, wandering through camp, peering at the tracks in the sand, a tale of the night visitors. Coyote, certainly, and fox, and then here, on a high shelf, a single bobcat print. Further up the wash, broad impressions in the grass and fine sand mark the bear's crossing, and a night that he did not wander through our camp.
Out of the eight days and nights we spent in the canyon, we climbed five, usually from mid-morning into hot afternoons broken by the occasional rain or thunderstorm, mostly arriving at camp dry in time to hear the first drops on the tarp.
An unknown 5.9+ "sport" route on Springer Gulch Wall, nicely shaded from the afternoon sun. The line takes the column right to a slightly runout bolt above the roof, with a heady traverse up left to amazing holds right when you need them and anchors.
 |
This is the line left, which felt like 10-. It goes directly up the face on quality rock from an overhanging start on friable holds, then puts you right under a free-floating 4-foot death block, which you can climb directly over without touching (exciting and engaging) or avoid to the left (a bit technical and slick but incredible hands, followed by a cruise all the way to the anchors).
On two of those days, we ignored lowering clouds and even a steady spritzing of rain to climb a wonderful little (100') wall about twenty minutes' hike from camp.
|
On the way back to camp...
 |
...we found a lovely little boulder garden.
|
Of course, after all that, we had to go back.
Never did find out what any of this was called... nothing on any websites or in any guides I've found so far. But it was fun, secluded, beautiful, as challenging or as moderate as you wanted to make it, and a short, easy ramble from camp.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Terms of Force
I have recently been accused of being a fascist and a war-monger.
Let me be clear: I DO NOT advocate violence, or the dissolution of the United States.
Quite the opposite.
What I advocate is a change of dialogue.
We live in a time when the rich get far richer than hard work and honest trade can account for, while the poor get a smaller and smaller share of the pie, bear more and more of the burden, have less than ever to show for years of saving and investment, and pay for ever growing government intrusion into their bedrooms, their business, their bodies, and their minds.
Those who claim to represent us have little or nothing in common with the people who vote, either before or after their tenure in office, and with lifetime pay no matter how dismal their record, no incentive to change the way business is done. Systems of government which once were the hope of the sick and old have been drained of resources, their regulations increased to incomprehensibility and inefficiency by bureaucrats bent on lifetimes of paperwork without actual work, their revenues bled away to the undocumented and the sly by feelgood administrations and loophole lawyers, special interest groups and media manipulation.
We operate on the terms of the interlocking power structures created at the beginning of the Industrial Age, sustained now for over a century and a half and spanning the globe. We are, in truth, in a conflict of the very best of ourselves and the very worst. As usual, there is a dissonance within both sides, a quest to truly define the mission, and the qualities upon which the future should be built. There is an increasingly strident desperation to the voices that seek to shown us differences in the banners under which we are seduced to march.
And the way forward is thronged with obstacles. There are foreign powers whose reaction to our instability is a question mark, whose investment in our future and our very real estate is judged in numbers that mean nothing to a rational human being. Extremists within our own country await any excuse to slam shut the last loopholes of freedom, or to raze the entire concept to the ground and live in anarchy. Philosophers whose answer is a non-violent mysticism set a fine example for daily individual human life, but that philosophy has never altered the course of empire, nor restored a people to the control of their government, not in 7,000 years of recorded human history. It fails to handle the pragmatic concerns of a world in which human numbers burgeon as resources are wasted like party favors, while major religions are moved like chessmen by individuals and groups whose goals encompass nothing of the best for mankind, only higher and higher vistas from a meaningless mountain of gold.
We are fighting an ideological battle on uneven ground.
I have deeply sorrowed over the changes in my country.
I love this land, its forests and hills, its canyons and valleys. I have lived in the very palm of the earth for decades now, moving into a city or a house only when work, necessity, and providence directed me, otherwise, I have traveled, and met the amazing, frustrating, cynical, rapturous, cranky, innocent, cantankerous, generous citizens of this land in the best and worst of times and places.
I have seen strangers reach out their hands in greeting comfort and support, been invited to weddings and barbecues, rock climbing and hot air ballooning and family picnics. I rejoiced with the crowds as fireworks exploded over Washington, mourned as our innocence died on September 11th, wept for our fallen soldiers in senseless wars and stood motionless, struck dumb, alone, before the silent grandeur of El Capitan in Yosemite, in Monument Valley's long shadows, or watching the silent glistening of a thousand lights across the Valley of the Sun, with the dark crown of the Superstitions rising in the distance like a frozen wave of time.
I celebrate the amazing mix of our culture in places where people see no need to accentuate their differences and live as close to the true Dream as possible; a place, a chance to earn their way, and a future in which they can make a difference.
I watched our astronauts soar into space with the heart of a small child, and the wonder of that age did not die when that Age, and the promise of a future beyond this planet, passed. I see our satellites in the sky at night, scan the face of the Earth with their views and the technology they represent. And I know that this access and technology is a fragile web spun across the world, subject to disruption at the first sign of unrest. Although I live a simple life, I enjoy the benefits of commerce and a stable government and the world which technology opens to us all.
I see the many people in this land who benefit from government aid, but I believe that the programs that support that system, and the means by which funds are generated and distributed are all in need of a major overhaul. More opportunities, achieved by LESS law and regulation, would free the elderly and the disabled to explore entirely new markets and venues of earning that could free them from the welfare-poverty cycle.
I love and support our police and firemen, our rescue squad workers and most deeply of all, our soldiers, because I know and have been through some of the best and worst times of my life with just about every group. I think these are some of the most dedicated, giving, HUMAN people on our planet, having stood shoulder to shoulder with them all. Ladies, gentlemen, I thank you all, and wish you nothing but the best.... despite my misgivings of the decisions you face.
No, I am no anarchist, no fascist. I would not tear down the edifice to rid myself and my country of the rats in the halls and the mold in the corners. The basic structure is of stone; sound, ageless, enduring.
But if we cannot speak in honest exchange, if there is no forum in which to weigh and discard ideas that do not benefit us all, how then can we go forward?
The forces which oppose us are founded on strength and thrive on power. The power comes from a common mis-perception of omniscience and omnipotence. It allows the structure supporting that power to define the terms and means of exchange, as well as the basic concepts of winner and loser.
The redefinition of corporations as people created much of the current paradox, in which companies are too big to fail,. but the people who actually comprise the work force are expendable. These new people-corporations can be seen as fanatics equal to any suicide bomber, citizens whose only focus is profit and whose only system is competition and the elimination of all rivals. Corporations arise out of commerce and acquisition, and in commerce expansion of markets ceased at the edge of space and turned inward toward the consumer... and there are new consumers born every second of every day.
Consumers who are allowed, less and less often, to make simple, critical decisions about their own existences, and the differences between want and need.
Again, there is nothing wrong with capitalism, as long as it is balanced by a healthy agrarian economy and a REAL voice for the people, instead of living in a system where the public is viewed in terms of feedback potential and GNP as defined by people who have never looked for a job, gone hungry or done a day's worth of physical labor in their lives.
But the market must be redefined by the consumer. The control of our currency must be in public, not private hands, and the system by which wealth is judged and taxed must be fair and balanced. In the current compromised, big-government state of our nation, this cannot happen. It is only possible if, as a nation, we shake off party affiliations, religious manipulations, media distortions and the definitions other people have imposed on our lives and duties to stand; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, seniors and school children, fire fighters, police personnel, soldiers and teachers, waitresses and cab drivers.
If we are to stand, then, and if we are to hold to hope and begin the work of change, does it not seem prudent, indeed, necessary to do so in full knowledge of our own strength?
The forces that oppose us have shown themselves more than willing and ever so able to enforce their doctrine with the mailed fist. The federal government, no matter which party is in nominal "control", will suspend the founding documents of our nation, and subvert the very definitions of patriotism and security to achieve those ends and remain in control. It already has, and not a single candidate for the Oval Office has announced plans to reverse those executive erasures of our rights.
If we are to ask our brothers and sisters in uniform to stand by their oath instead of the powers who have purchased that birthright with a handful of shining metal, then we must show that we will stand with them, if need be, that we will do more than witness, that we will bleed and die with them, if necessary, to fulfill an oath every one of us took whenever we have saluted a flag, stood for the national anthem, or pledged allegiance to the flag; to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
And to preserve a republic that is one Nation of equally free and responsible citizens, under whichever God or absence thereof you choose to worship peacefully, without regard for or interference in your neighbor's choices or the support of or for any particular political party, with liberty of our own bodies and minds and justice blind to wealth and influence for all.
If we are to free ourselves of a banking system, or a food system, or any other system, we must demonstrate not only our knowledge but our incorporation of that knowledge in our day-to-day lives and continued existence. We must address the pros as well as the cons of all our solutions, and come to terms with the necessary evils of transitions. But we must do so in a unified fashion.
There are many who say we must go forward without violence, and I agree, to a certain point. Our ancestors and other reasonable human beings across the globe have managed to speak to each other on subjects where they deeply differed in opinion for centuries.
But that communication, that congress, was founded on a balance of power born of respect. Our veterans and our retired police are speaking out in their hundreds every day, against the policies and history of the last decade and more.
Sadly, they do not seem to be heard by either the Commander-in-Chief or his potential rivals in the coming elections. And for every voice of reason, there seems some hidden agenda, some background weakness which precludes true belief for any espoused opinion.
We cannot look to our Government for leadership, because the path to those seats is a sewer, and there is truly no way to arrive unstained.
And if we are to move forward in conversation, we must do so in unity. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Whether we win or lose, those who stand aside from the conflict and preach non-violence will judge and condemn us for any action, even if we only defend against a further erosion of the sanctity of our homes and the constancy of our rights. The weakness of the pacifistic view is that it is just as useful to those who would enslave you and keep you compliant as is any act of resistance, and it costs your oppressors nothing but time.
When your enemies are not mortal, but corporations, corrupt governments and dynasties who operate on a scale of decades, you cannot fight a battle on their terms. If non-violence were a viable solution to all problems, Tibet and Nepal would be free, Martin Luther King would still be alive, and Mao would have been supplanted by monks, while Wicca and Buddhism would rule the Earth.
Perhaps defining those who seek to curtail our Rights while taking away our repsonsibilities as "enemies" is an antagonistic view of the world. But it is instinctive for me to reject this philosphy, this mantra of surrendering control and self-worth for convenience and freedom from responsibility, to a system that does not reward innovation and creativity but compliance and allegiance to a creed long ago subverted for profit.
There are many first steps, and there are many ways of communication left before we think of the Way of the Gun. Because I am no blind chauvinistic dreamer. I know it is not all pipes and drums and glorious slow-motion scenes of valor and sacrifice. In all truth, I deeply and personally understand that that way lies destruction and loss, and the death of much that is dear.
And so I pray, every day, to see our nation stand up, to see a unification of all those amazing, determined, silent people, to take back what was good. I watch, and read, and listen, for any sign that there is even a chance for this government to shake off the chains of power and gold that have weighed it down.
I pray, and listen for an answer, despite so many things that I have known since I was a child.
Because the alternative to change by will is only complete domination, or change by force.
I would not go down that Road.
But mine is not the hand that steers this ship.
Let me be clear: I DO NOT advocate violence, or the dissolution of the United States.
Quite the opposite.
What I advocate is a change of dialogue.
We live in a time when the rich get far richer than hard work and honest trade can account for, while the poor get a smaller and smaller share of the pie, bear more and more of the burden, have less than ever to show for years of saving and investment, and pay for ever growing government intrusion into their bedrooms, their business, their bodies, and their minds.
Those who claim to represent us have little or nothing in common with the people who vote, either before or after their tenure in office, and with lifetime pay no matter how dismal their record, no incentive to change the way business is done. Systems of government which once were the hope of the sick and old have been drained of resources, their regulations increased to incomprehensibility and inefficiency by bureaucrats bent on lifetimes of paperwork without actual work, their revenues bled away to the undocumented and the sly by feelgood administrations and loophole lawyers, special interest groups and media manipulation.
We operate on the terms of the interlocking power structures created at the beginning of the Industrial Age, sustained now for over a century and a half and spanning the globe. We are, in truth, in a conflict of the very best of ourselves and the very worst. As usual, there is a dissonance within both sides, a quest to truly define the mission, and the qualities upon which the future should be built. There is an increasingly strident desperation to the voices that seek to shown us differences in the banners under which we are seduced to march.
And the way forward is thronged with obstacles. There are foreign powers whose reaction to our instability is a question mark, whose investment in our future and our very real estate is judged in numbers that mean nothing to a rational human being. Extremists within our own country await any excuse to slam shut the last loopholes of freedom, or to raze the entire concept to the ground and live in anarchy. Philosophers whose answer is a non-violent mysticism set a fine example for daily individual human life, but that philosophy has never altered the course of empire, nor restored a people to the control of their government, not in 7,000 years of recorded human history. It fails to handle the pragmatic concerns of a world in which human numbers burgeon as resources are wasted like party favors, while major religions are moved like chessmen by individuals and groups whose goals encompass nothing of the best for mankind, only higher and higher vistas from a meaningless mountain of gold.
We are fighting an ideological battle on uneven ground.
I have deeply sorrowed over the changes in my country.
I love this land, its forests and hills, its canyons and valleys. I have lived in the very palm of the earth for decades now, moving into a city or a house only when work, necessity, and providence directed me, otherwise, I have traveled, and met the amazing, frustrating, cynical, rapturous, cranky, innocent, cantankerous, generous citizens of this land in the best and worst of times and places.
I have seen strangers reach out their hands in greeting comfort and support, been invited to weddings and barbecues, rock climbing and hot air ballooning and family picnics. I rejoiced with the crowds as fireworks exploded over Washington, mourned as our innocence died on September 11th, wept for our fallen soldiers in senseless wars and stood motionless, struck dumb, alone, before the silent grandeur of El Capitan in Yosemite, in Monument Valley's long shadows, or watching the silent glistening of a thousand lights across the Valley of the Sun, with the dark crown of the Superstitions rising in the distance like a frozen wave of time.
I celebrate the amazing mix of our culture in places where people see no need to accentuate their differences and live as close to the true Dream as possible; a place, a chance to earn their way, and a future in which they can make a difference.
I watched our astronauts soar into space with the heart of a small child, and the wonder of that age did not die when that Age, and the promise of a future beyond this planet, passed. I see our satellites in the sky at night, scan the face of the Earth with their views and the technology they represent. And I know that this access and technology is a fragile web spun across the world, subject to disruption at the first sign of unrest. Although I live a simple life, I enjoy the benefits of commerce and a stable government and the world which technology opens to us all.
I see the many people in this land who benefit from government aid, but I believe that the programs that support that system, and the means by which funds are generated and distributed are all in need of a major overhaul. More opportunities, achieved by LESS law and regulation, would free the elderly and the disabled to explore entirely new markets and venues of earning that could free them from the welfare-poverty cycle.
I love and support our police and firemen, our rescue squad workers and most deeply of all, our soldiers, because I know and have been through some of the best and worst times of my life with just about every group. I think these are some of the most dedicated, giving, HUMAN people on our planet, having stood shoulder to shoulder with them all. Ladies, gentlemen, I thank you all, and wish you nothing but the best.... despite my misgivings of the decisions you face.
No, I am no anarchist, no fascist. I would not tear down the edifice to rid myself and my country of the rats in the halls and the mold in the corners. The basic structure is of stone; sound, ageless, enduring.
But if we cannot speak in honest exchange, if there is no forum in which to weigh and discard ideas that do not benefit us all, how then can we go forward?
The forces which oppose us are founded on strength and thrive on power. The power comes from a common mis-perception of omniscience and omnipotence. It allows the structure supporting that power to define the terms and means of exchange, as well as the basic concepts of winner and loser.
The redefinition of corporations as people created much of the current paradox, in which companies are too big to fail,. but the people who actually comprise the work force are expendable. These new people-corporations can be seen as fanatics equal to any suicide bomber, citizens whose only focus is profit and whose only system is competition and the elimination of all rivals. Corporations arise out of commerce and acquisition, and in commerce expansion of markets ceased at the edge of space and turned inward toward the consumer... and there are new consumers born every second of every day.
Consumers who are allowed, less and less often, to make simple, critical decisions about their own existences, and the differences between want and need.
Again, there is nothing wrong with capitalism, as long as it is balanced by a healthy agrarian economy and a REAL voice for the people, instead of living in a system where the public is viewed in terms of feedback potential and GNP as defined by people who have never looked for a job, gone hungry or done a day's worth of physical labor in their lives.
But the market must be redefined by the consumer. The control of our currency must be in public, not private hands, and the system by which wealth is judged and taxed must be fair and balanced. In the current compromised, big-government state of our nation, this cannot happen. It is only possible if, as a nation, we shake off party affiliations, religious manipulations, media distortions and the definitions other people have imposed on our lives and duties to stand; mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, seniors and school children, fire fighters, police personnel, soldiers and teachers, waitresses and cab drivers.
If we are to stand, then, and if we are to hold to hope and begin the work of change, does it not seem prudent, indeed, necessary to do so in full knowledge of our own strength?
The forces that oppose us have shown themselves more than willing and ever so able to enforce their doctrine with the mailed fist. The federal government, no matter which party is in nominal "control", will suspend the founding documents of our nation, and subvert the very definitions of patriotism and security to achieve those ends and remain in control. It already has, and not a single candidate for the Oval Office has announced plans to reverse those executive erasures of our rights.
If we are to ask our brothers and sisters in uniform to stand by their oath instead of the powers who have purchased that birthright with a handful of shining metal, then we must show that we will stand with them, if need be, that we will do more than witness, that we will bleed and die with them, if necessary, to fulfill an oath every one of us took whenever we have saluted a flag, stood for the national anthem, or pledged allegiance to the flag; to protect the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
And to preserve a republic that is one Nation of equally free and responsible citizens, under whichever God or absence thereof you choose to worship peacefully, without regard for or interference in your neighbor's choices or the support of or for any particular political party, with liberty of our own bodies and minds and justice blind to wealth and influence for all.
If we are to free ourselves of a banking system, or a food system, or any other system, we must demonstrate not only our knowledge but our incorporation of that knowledge in our day-to-day lives and continued existence. We must address the pros as well as the cons of all our solutions, and come to terms with the necessary evils of transitions. But we must do so in a unified fashion.
There are many who say we must go forward without violence, and I agree, to a certain point. Our ancestors and other reasonable human beings across the globe have managed to speak to each other on subjects where they deeply differed in opinion for centuries.
But that communication, that congress, was founded on a balance of power born of respect. Our veterans and our retired police are speaking out in their hundreds every day, against the policies and history of the last decade and more.
Sadly, they do not seem to be heard by either the Commander-in-Chief or his potential rivals in the coming elections. And for every voice of reason, there seems some hidden agenda, some background weakness which precludes true belief for any espoused opinion.
We cannot look to our Government for leadership, because the path to those seats is a sewer, and there is truly no way to arrive unstained.
And if we are to move forward in conversation, we must do so in unity. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Whether we win or lose, those who stand aside from the conflict and preach non-violence will judge and condemn us for any action, even if we only defend against a further erosion of the sanctity of our homes and the constancy of our rights. The weakness of the pacifistic view is that it is just as useful to those who would enslave you and keep you compliant as is any act of resistance, and it costs your oppressors nothing but time.
When your enemies are not mortal, but corporations, corrupt governments and dynasties who operate on a scale of decades, you cannot fight a battle on their terms. If non-violence were a viable solution to all problems, Tibet and Nepal would be free, Martin Luther King would still be alive, and Mao would have been supplanted by monks, while Wicca and Buddhism would rule the Earth.
Perhaps defining those who seek to curtail our Rights while taking away our repsonsibilities as "enemies" is an antagonistic view of the world. But it is instinctive for me to reject this philosphy, this mantra of surrendering control and self-worth for convenience and freedom from responsibility, to a system that does not reward innovation and creativity but compliance and allegiance to a creed long ago subverted for profit.
There are many first steps, and there are many ways of communication left before we think of the Way of the Gun. Because I am no blind chauvinistic dreamer. I know it is not all pipes and drums and glorious slow-motion scenes of valor and sacrifice. In all truth, I deeply and personally understand that that way lies destruction and loss, and the death of much that is dear.
And so I pray, every day, to see our nation stand up, to see a unification of all those amazing, determined, silent people, to take back what was good. I watch, and read, and listen, for any sign that there is even a chance for this government to shake off the chains of power and gold that have weighed it down.
I pray, and listen for an answer, despite so many things that I have known since I was a child.
Because the alternative to change by will is only complete domination, or change by force.
I would not go down that Road.
But mine is not the hand that steers this ship.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Ending, for the Moment...
Birds are singing as a chipmunk scurries to cover, a single black bean from last night's supper snatched from beneath my feet in a blur. The smell of hot pine is already rising in the cool shadows of the forest as I hear the water begin to sing in the kettle; time to fill the French press. Cindy is lounging in the shade, cleaning her pipe and sipping from the previous batch of Joe. Behind her, sleeping bags and liners and blankets sway on their lines, airing before their inevitable compression into the back of little Icy Blue. A dog barks, somewhere, and squirrels scold jays as they scurry through the middle terrace above. A single raven wings heavily across the treetops and the sound of traffic drifts in from the nearby highway.
We spent the last month getting to know this tiny Front Range hamlet and its environs; Nederland, Ward, Rollinsville. This is an amazing place of history and new thought, of challenging weather and conditions, and uplifting people and ideas, of conflict and harmony, community and political polarization. This is one of the only towns in America where there are quite literally NO drug possession laws on the books... Zip, zero, nada. Don't get caught driving all baked up on brownies or dank, though.... that's still DUI and they have no problem citing you for that. And has the presence of cannabis in the park, on the houses and homes, smoked in little bars and outdoor cafes and public parks; has the Killer Weed destroyed this little town, twisting it into a caricature, a Cheech and Chong continuum?
Not really.
Ned is just like a lot of small towns in mountainous settings. There are trailers, ranch houses, tiny huts and sprawling mansions; working class people and white collar types, yuppies in BMWs and hippies in VW vans, crusties with untagged dogs and tie-dyed skirts, scruffy beards and dusty dreadlocks hanging out in the shade of the park, and loud sports fans with bad new tattoos, dressed in school colors, hanging over the rail of the upstairs bar, berating citizens on the sidewalk and proclaiming their idiocy for all the world to see and hear. Tourists wander and point in big hats and sunglasses, snapping pictures and debating on which overpriced eatery or gift shoppe in which to spend their discretionary income. Carpenters and plumbers and roofers drive the streets in beat-up pickup trucks and brand-new company vans. At noon they fill the restaurants and grocery stores with tired, dusty men and women, enjoying a moment's respite from heat or cold and the inevitable wind. They mingle with mountain bikers and triathletes, retirees and soccer moms, military men and prowling cougars. Entrepreneurs looking for new locations eye properties and debate merits at a table beside a traveler with patched jeans and beaten pack, his loyal dog lolling a red tongue in the shade beneath his feet as he slowly chews a sandwich and sips at his water, splashing some into his palm to offer his companion. Children clap and sing along in the library as a bearded man with a guitar smiles and leads them, and three young men practice some form of grappling martial art in the side yard of a tiny painted house as a beautiful girl in a long skirt and sun hat rides by, smiling and humming.
Our time here is ending, for the moment, but, like the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of WV, I have the feeling that our time here has just begun.
We spent the last month getting to know this tiny Front Range hamlet and its environs; Nederland, Ward, Rollinsville. This is an amazing place of history and new thought, of challenging weather and conditions, and uplifting people and ideas, of conflict and harmony, community and political polarization. This is one of the only towns in America where there are quite literally NO drug possession laws on the books... Zip, zero, nada. Don't get caught driving all baked up on brownies or dank, though.... that's still DUI and they have no problem citing you for that. And has the presence of cannabis in the park, on the houses and homes, smoked in little bars and outdoor cafes and public parks; has the Killer Weed destroyed this little town, twisting it into a caricature, a Cheech and Chong continuum?
Not really.
Ned is just like a lot of small towns in mountainous settings. There are trailers, ranch houses, tiny huts and sprawling mansions; working class people and white collar types, yuppies in BMWs and hippies in VW vans, crusties with untagged dogs and tie-dyed skirts, scruffy beards and dusty dreadlocks hanging out in the shade of the park, and loud sports fans with bad new tattoos, dressed in school colors, hanging over the rail of the upstairs bar, berating citizens on the sidewalk and proclaiming their idiocy for all the world to see and hear. Tourists wander and point in big hats and sunglasses, snapping pictures and debating on which overpriced eatery or gift shoppe in which to spend their discretionary income. Carpenters and plumbers and roofers drive the streets in beat-up pickup trucks and brand-new company vans. At noon they fill the restaurants and grocery stores with tired, dusty men and women, enjoying a moment's respite from heat or cold and the inevitable wind. They mingle with mountain bikers and triathletes, retirees and soccer moms, military men and prowling cougars. Entrepreneurs looking for new locations eye properties and debate merits at a table beside a traveler with patched jeans and beaten pack, his loyal dog lolling a red tongue in the shade beneath his feet as he slowly chews a sandwich and sips at his water, splashing some into his palm to offer his companion. Children clap and sing along in the library as a bearded man with a guitar smiles and leads them, and three young men practice some form of grappling martial art in the side yard of a tiny painted house as a beautiful girl in a long skirt and sun hat rides by, smiling and humming.
Our time here is ending, for the moment, but, like the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains of WV, I have the feeling that our time here has just begun.
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