Mountains and Rivers 3

I see that a lot of people are having real difficulties with Dogen's Mountains and Rivers/Waters Sutra, as I'm pretty sure the monks he delivered this sutra to in 1240 were bewildered and perplexed. 

There's no consistency to the sutra. It's formless, something like the Void I've mentioned in other Zen postings. Mountains are used as metaphors, but for what exactly? Mountains walking, mountains flying with the clouds, mountains flowing... what does this even mean?

I've tried to rationalize it with experience, but I realize that misses the point of Dogen's vision and message. It's not rational. Not meant to be. It's a knock upside the head, a call to Wake Up! at midnight, and recognize the nature of experience, things, people, mountains and rivers, and how transitory and ultimately false it all is. 

Mountains do walk and fly through the clouds and flow just so. They come and they go and they appear and disappear just as you do. For in the end, there is no difference between what we call "you" and the "mountain." It's all one thing/no thing.

Just so with the lakes and rivers and vast seas. It's all one, and you are part/no part of that one. 

You know, the monks in Zen monasteries become complacent too easily, and knocking them upside the head from time to time is routine. They become attached to routine, to practice on command, to the sounds of the bells and clackers, to the feelings of comfort at meals, washings up, robing and disrobing, to the sensations of tatamis and wooden floor boards and running from hither to yon.

Relieving them of attachments to any of that often takes the form of a shock, a kick in the butt, a push into the mud, an impossible challenge in a koan, a struggle engaged. And an understanding that no matter how close you are to Enlightenment, you're held back by attachment -- like the tail of the ox that won't go through the latticed window (thank you Kozan, 🙏.)

We are attached, all of us are attached to something, someone, all of the time. That is part of our being, and detaching is an elemental part of Buddhism. Which in a sense means self-destructing. Or deconstructing the self.

Dogen lets on that mountains and rivers do it -- so can you. The very green mountains we are so attached to... aren't really there at all. What we see and feel and respond to is an illusion. The mountains we climb aren't actually there. The rivers that flow -- and by the way, rivers that wear down the mountains till they're no longer there -- are as illusory as mist.

Revere the mountain and the river, but don't become attached to them. 

The struggle is not to climb the mountain but to let go of it.

I gave a khata scarf from Nepal to a friend in Santa Fe earlier this year, thinking that he knew what it was and knew what my giving it to him symbolized. He... did. And then he mentioned that his son had gone to Nepal the previous year and circumambulated Annapurna with some friends and how exhilarating it had been for him. 

I said, "Please feel free to pass on the scarf to someone else if you're so inclined."

I don't know whether he has or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gave it either to his wife or his son.

And I've just reached the point in Gary Snyder's epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End" where he is about to begin the circumambulation of Mt. Tamilpias in California. Because he learned the significance of going around mountains in Nepal and India. It's what you do.

You circumambulate as a form of reverence and honor. And when I was in California in October with a friend from Gallup, we had a discussion about what was a "hill" and what was a "mountain," noting that in California they were not the same thing, and what would be considered a mountain somewhere else would be considered little more than a hill in California.

And I considered where I lived a child -- a smallish valley near the coast surrounded by mountains (as I saw them when I was little, but maybe they're only hills now) and considered where I live now, a rather larger valley surrounded by mountains and mesas and ridges, enclosed (and once a glacial lake) on all sides. It's the same. 

And all of it is an illusion. 

On Returning Home to New Mexico After One Last Trip to California

My travel companion and I made it back to New Mexico yesterday, and we've been decompressing and dealing with the altitude ever since. Spending a week near sea level for the first time in years means that when you get up at altitude (6-7000 ft) it takes some getting used to. 

And there's all the recollection of the trip to do. My companion may think of herself as "a simple girl from Gallup" but she's been in the Army serving in Korea, is finishing her Masters at a prestigious East Coast university, is planning on a trip to Europe a week from now (subject to change due to possible upcoming job), and is becoming well known in art and museum circles as a force of nature. She's an artist, a curator, a scholar, and a fine human being. The rest of us could take a lesson or two from people like her.

She toured me around Gallup when we got back. It was good because I was not that familiar with the town, and I certainly didn't know all the hidden pockets and the many stories she could tell of families and squabbles and living rough. Gallup has a notorious reputation, some of which is well-deserved, for racism, drunken Indians and more than its share of violence. But she obviously feels great empathy and high regard for the place and the people. So I was grateful to be taken around, to meet an old friend of hers, and to just consider the kind of life she's led, how it differs from the Standard Model, and how those differences can be an advantage and a curse. And to contemplate the differences between her life now and what it was like when she was "just a simple girl from Gallup."

She's been to California before, but she never experienced the places we went or if she had been to one or more of them (like Monterey) she'd never spent the time we did or explored the corners and intersections we did.

Nor had she seen a buffalo herd or an elephant seal refuge in California. Never stood on a beach watching a sea otter hammer a clam shell on its chest. She'd never seen ostriches running free in California nor had she visited a California mission before. She'd never been to Big Sur, never crossed the Bixby Canyon bridge, been in a redwood grove or late lunched at Nepenthe. Never been on Highway 1 at all that she remembered. 

She'd never seen Hearst's Castle glowing in the sunset light atop La Cuesta Encantada, nor did she know exactly what it was.

She'd never had split pea soup for breakfast, nor, honestly, had I. But I love Andersen's Split Pea Soup, and soon enough, so did she. But these days, it's hard to find, and we left the pea soup restaurant with cans to take home. 

She'd never been to the Cesar Chavez National Monument, nor had I, and we both got choked up remembering or learning the story of the rise and struggle of the United Farm Workers Union. She'd never seen field workers in the numbers we saw on our rural journey through the farms and orchards and vineyards and ranches. She saw how hard they worked and sensed how little they were regarded. 

She'd never been a fan of John Steinbeck, but since she read the opening paragraphs of Cannery Row on a street sign in Monterey, she thinks she'll become one. I gave her the book. 

She's never been a fan of "Ti Jean" Kerouac and never read his books, but she thinks she might become a fan and read his books after experiencing parts of Big Sur and hearing my story of how he drank himself to death after achieving fame for On the Road, c. 1957. I gave her a copy of his creative nonfiction novel Big Sur and asked her to read it after reading Cannery Row.

Returning home to New Mexico. Fall afternoon, sun low in the southwest, almost fruitcake weather. Oh so glad we went. Oh so glad to be home, greeted by a passel of kedies. "Where have you been?!" 

Where I needed to be. And now where I need to be. The Dharma Talks I missed while on the road are now posted online. I'll give myself time to decompress and catch up. Routines will return. Life goes on.

Briefly Back to the Theater

As I say, this trip is in part a pilgrimage, and yesterday we were able to briefly revisit the theater where so much of my life and Ms. Ché's life was centered from 1973 to 1983, and really long after that. 

We arrived unannounced and found an unlocked door and proceeded into the lobby where a startled young woman asked, "Yes?" Indeed.

And I explained that I was an alumnus of the institution and was interested in just looking into the auditorium for a few minutes' nostalgia and memory. Would that be possible? And I've brought a friend so she could see where we spent so much of our youth. Could we?

"No. Well, maybe. The theater is closed for the time being, and we're very short staffed, but... " She was acting confused. Another young lady came from behind a door.

"Yes?" So I explained again, and again I was told about the short staffing and how it might be difficult to find someone to go with us, but she would check, and return shortly. 

A few minutes later a young man, well young to me, came through the lobby and greeted me and my travel companion, and I explained one more time, and he was thrilled and delighted, and he said, "Sure, come along," and off we went on an extended and compelling tour of the theater where literally my life was transformed and saved in a way all those many decades ago. 

It hasn't changed a whole lot. Some of it hasn't changed at all. Those changes that have been made are, so far as I could tell, for the better, much better, and everyone involved I think should be proud. 

We went up and down and all around and at times I felt I was home again. I think this is a big part of why I wanted to go on this trip. It's not just for the memories and nostalgia for les temps perdu. It is the recapture, if only for a moment, of "home" -- wherever and whenever that home was established, and whatever sort of home it might have been.

I've noticed the places we've avoided and though I've lived there, they were never "home." Everywhere we've stopped and spent time has been a home-place of one sort or another, and every time we've had wonderful encounters with extraordinary people who in some ways were always there. Even in Monterey, where I've never lived but have always felt a kinship to, comfortable and in place, we had extraordinary encounters with remarkable people, some strangers, some not, and that's how this trip has gone throughout.

And so it goes. Briefly I was back in the theater that became so much a part of me many decades ago. It was strange that at times we were the only ones there, and my mind's eye was filling it with casts and crews and the swirl of activity that was intrinsic to the operation. Ghosts, if you will, of what once was everyday. Now because of Covid, the work has stopped or been transferred off site or... well, it's complicated. The place could even be called an empty shell of what it once was, and yet for me all that life and life-giving and sharing is deeply, deeply a part of me and a part of that place. The building houses spirit. Those of us who have been through it know that, as did our tour guide, the current production manager, and we... bonded?.. with our shared sense of what was and what could be, despite the generation or more that separated us in age.

Things change, oh yes. But some things stay the same.

And the Zen of all this continues to astonish. Enlightenment? Nah. 

Well, maybe...😉🙏

On Losing Weight

I've lost about 40 pounds in the last few months. I need to lose 10 or 15 pounds more. But at this point, my clothes are mostly too big, I've got to punch more holes in my belts, I have more energy and can perform more tasks, and losing weight has proved to be quite a counter to the persistent fatigue that is a consequence of rheumatoid arthritis. 

I was at one point getting so heavy (at 240+ pounds) that I could barely get around, but sitting still or lying down was very uncomfortable too. I set a goal to lose weight, but even though I changed my diet, nothing seemed to happen for months. Then all of a sudden, weight started coming off, and I've tended to lose about a pound a week ever since -- with several plateaus along the way when nothing came off for a week or two.

I never consciously tried to lose weight in the past. In fact, for most of my life, I was darned skinny, tallish and not very well-built at all. A "rail." I didn't start gaining weight until I stopped smoking in the early '90s, but even then, I didn't weigh much above 180 or so -- which was still 40 pounds more than I'd weighed when I was smoking. Then when I developed rheumatoid arthritis about 6 years ago and was treated with large doses of prednisone, I gained weight at a remarkable clip, and even when I stopped taking prednisone, I kept gaining weight. 

It's only been about a year and a half ago that I set a goal of losing weight, at least 50 pounds, and less than a year since I actually started seeing weight loss. 

I feel better, much better. My rheumatoid arthritis is largely under control. I have not had a flare in several years, medications have been reduced, and overall, I'm well enough to accomplish much or most of what I set out to do. 

There is still so much more that needs doing. 

One of those things, of course, is this One Last Trip to California. I'm looking forward to it, and yet... there is a finality to it, a closing chapter, that I am struggling with. Ms. Ché isn't going, she has other plans (one of which involves taking a very sick cat to the vet) and she believes she is needed more here at home than on the road with me. And I think about how many times she and I made the trip between California and New Mexico on our own -- she often to attend writers' conferences, me to rest and work on the house -- and the times we came here together though we were still living in California. 

As we age, we see things differently, and reminiscence comes to the fore. As elders, we have stories to tell, and Ms. Ché has spent much of her life preparing to tell quite a story. I've been telling mine all along. But she's held back, mulling over the best way to communicate her extraordinary life. She's done it in plays and poems and creative nonfiction, but she's got so much more to add. I think that's part of what she'll be working on while I'm gone.

As for me, it's more like touching elements of the past, touching lightly, remembering positives, and doing a brief Kerouac-ian pilgrimage along Highway 1, Big Sur and Bixby Canyon and all that, just because. More than just that, though. There is a kinship that goes back a long way, and it's a form of honor. I wouldn't be back with Zen, for example, without Ti Jean's inspiration so long ago that came back in a flood. 

So. 

That's a minor update. Nothing more...

On Planning (One Last?) Trip to California

Wow. This has turned into a strange and headache making adventure, if you want to call it an adventure given that it's becoming more like a quest or troubled desire.

You see we still have stuff in storage in California that we weren't able to bring with us when we moved (9 years ago!) and haven't had the opportunity to move out here (or get rid of) since. I know moving is a big task -- especially if you've been in the same place many years as we were in our little house in California -- and sorting stuff and getting rid of stuff you don't need can take forever. Easier just to put it in storage and deal with it "later." But then the years go by, you have other things to do, and voila! The task you set never gets done.

So the time came. The storage unit rental had reached astronomical levels (I thought, anyway) and most of the stuff we have there is stuff I didn't know about because I was busy packing up the last of the house into the van while others were taking odds and ends I never saw to the storage unit in the rental truck.  

Three years ago (or was it four?) we did a quick trip out there to work on clearing out the storage, but we didn't get very far. Ms Che found something she treasured in the storage unit, something she thought had been lost forever, something of her mother's, and that was basically it as far as doing any more work there. We took three or four pick up loads of things that shouldn't have been saved in the first place to the dump, packed the treasure and a few other items (pictures and such, an antique floor lamp with a Downton Abbey shade) into the car and drove home to New Mexico.

That's when we discovered how much oil the car uses! Oh, I didn't know. It's an older Subaru and apparently they have an oil consumption issue I hadn't heard of until the engine ran out of oil just over the New Mexico border from Arizona. Well, we eventually made it home after limping into a truck stop and buying quarts and quarts of oil to put in the engine, and the car seems to have recovered well enough. We figure it can make it to California and back one more time -- so long as we add a quart of oil or so at every gasoline fill up. Details.

So after a year of going nowhere because of the pandemic, we got a terse little note from the storage facility that the automatic monthly charge had been turned down by the bank, and oh, there would be a late charge, and oh the rent is going up again (!) and oh, would I like to take care of it by check or credit card?

Oh, I'd like to get the stuff out of there and save the nearly $300 a month for other things.

Cannery Row

While getting infused with Rituxan the other day, I read John Steinbeck's 1945 novel "Cannery Row," a work I was vaguely familiar with but had never read.

I was familiar with it in part because Steinbeck and Monterey (the setting for "Cannery Row") had been important in my youth, he as a writer who seemed to capture the essence of life and people on California's Central Coast and Monterey as the place where so much life-changing experience occurred when I was 18 or 19.

I knew somehow of Ed Ricketts who was the inspiration for the character of Doc in the novel. It's hard to say how I had any knowledge of Ricketts, but years ago, I spent a day at the Steinbeck Museum in Salinas, and I suspect there was a display that described him and his laboratory in Monterey -- and how it was important to Steinbeck.

I didn't finish reading the novel at the infusion center on Monday, but I took the book with me and finished it while waiting for Ms Ché to have her sonogram at the radiology center yesterday (she's developing edema in her legs, something new and needing monitoring along with various heart checks to see if she's developing congestive heart failure, the cause of her mother's and grandfather's deaths.)

I confess, I shed a little tear at parts of Steinbeck's story of these wayward souls on the margins of society and the edge of the ocean. Oh yes, it was quite a moving tale, and I have no doubt that Steinbeck intended to draw a tear or two from his readers. Tears of recognition, sympathy, empathy.

According to what I've read about it, Steinbeck himself was trying to get back some of the joy he felt when he lived in Pacific Grove, next door to Cannery Row in (New)Monterey during the Depression.

The novel was a way for him to recapture some of the spirit of the time and the place and the people and to bring some joy back to his increasingly complicated life.

Fame and fortune had done so much for him, but it had changed his life in ways he could not have anticipated-- and not entirely for the better.

What I noticed first was the structure of the story. The novel consists of a series of mostly very short chapters which are constructed as stand-alone short--short stories strung together like the firecrackers from Lee Chong's which figure toward the end of the novel. It's quite a trick, not easy to pull off at all, but Steinbeck seems clear about what he wants to do with this story and how he wants to tell the tale. Quick glimpses, vignettes, sketches, some quite elaborate, but others merely outlines and shadows.

I could see a lot of it in my mind's eye, though the image wasn't much like my memories of Monterey. Not at all, really. This was a very different, colder, and surprisingly darker Monterey. In fact, most of the story seems to take place in twilight or darkness. My memories of the place are mostly sunshine and fog, oh my the fog, and the chill that comes with it, even in high summer.

Or especially so.

In Steinbeck's telling, there's little daylight, and no fog at all. Seems impossible. You can't live anywhere on California's Central Coast and not be immersed in morning and evening fog, sometimes all day fog, fog that set the pattern for your days and nights, fog that's sometimes very comforting but sometimes very annoying, too, as the eaves and the trees will drip and drip and drip, and a chill will grab hold of you and penetrate deep into your body. After a warm and sunny day, you may suddenly shiver with that fog-brought chill, wondering how the warmth of the day can vanish so completely and quickly as the sun lowers in the west over the sea, and the fog rolls in flowing over the coastal hills and filling the little valleys where lettuce and strawberries and artichokes are grown.

Sometimes here in New Mexico, high in the mountains, there will be morning fogs like those on California's Central Coast, and for some moments when the fog comes down like that, I'm puzzled about where I am, because here in this little valley in New Mexico's central highlands, I'm often reminded of the little valleys along California's Central Coast. No, there's no ocean here, but there are plenty of evocations, and they say that many long years ago, a "warm shallow sea" penetrated deep into what's now New Mexico, and there might have been fogs from that vanished sea that swathed the region's dinosaurs in dripping mists.

Indeed, our location now was the shore of a lake not that long ago, a lake the size -- and about the elevation -- of Lake Tahoe. Fogs easily could have arisen.

But they don't figure in Steinbeck's tale of Cannery Row in Monterey c. 1938 or 39.

It's not really clear when the story takes place, but it's almost certainly before the War, during the latter portion of the Depression.

The characters are familiar types to me, Mack and Doc and Hazel and Dora and The Girls and Lee Chong, and even the dog Darling. These are roughnecks for the most part, not a refined and high-faluting one among them, though some like Doc and Dora are clearly closer to the ideal of the era than others.

Marginal people at the time, maybe particularly in California, had a rough go of it, and whether they lived or died mattered not at all to their betters, the self-appointed and self assured leading lights of communities and cities and the state itself. California was for the winners. Still is.

So here are the characters of Cannery Row, flotsam washed up on the shores of Monterey, lucky to be there, happy to be there, living out their simple-complicated lives, getting by as best they can with little or no money, stealing, swapping, borrowing or creating what they need from the throwaways and debris around them. There's a lesson for the rest of us if we could learn it, as some have tried  in times past and more are trying now.

These rough people in rough times live lives with more humanity and joy, it seems to me, than many of our well-off modern people can imagine, and they might read the story now and believe it is all fantasy, a never-was fantasy.

But it was more real than they can imagine. I knew these people, some of them. I still do. They were my neighbors when I was growing up in California, and they are my neighbors now in rural New Mexico. There may be more broken down cowboys in these parts, but no one in "Cannery Row" would be out of place in my adopted home.

I'm one of them.

Rituxan In the Morning

Yesterday was another infusion day, so I spent the morning hooked up to an IV drip in a comfy bed at the Infusion Center reading "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck which I had not done before despite my enthusiasm for Steinbeck and his dyspeptic vision of California's Central Coast and its society.

In that regard, I should mention that my (new found) cousin sent me a journal kept by her mother and our aunts that has an extended section  telling tales about their cross country rail expedition from Washington DC (where they were working at the WPA headquarters) to The Coast, where they did and saw everything. They saw all the sights from the Redwoods to San Francisco's Golden Gate and International Exposition at Treasure Island to Hollywood and Beverly Hills where they hob-nobbed with the movie stars and studio honchos. They went out to the beach and sunburned lobster red, they even went to Mexico, briefly, and saw a disgusting bull fight.

This was 1939. They passed through the Salinas Valley on their way to Los Angeles, but I can't imagine they noticed much. Certainly not the wretchedness and waves of travelers up from Mexico and still crossing the country from Oklahoma. What they reported and what they saw was the idealized tourist vision of California. There was always some truth to it, but it never told the whole story. Not by a long shot.

Steinbeck fills in some of the blanks, but he was hated for it in and around Salinas. His stories of his home place and the people there were stories you weren't supposed to tell. I grew up in other parts of California being socialized to that same notion. There are simply things you do not mention. If you're smart, you won't even look into them.

For example, I spent years studying the Gold Rush and the people who made their way to California between 1849 and about 1855. I reviewed all kinds of original documents kept at the California State Library and other places, and scoured the Gold Country for remaining clues to what was going on in those days.

The picture that emerged was nothing like the glorified and romantic image of the Gold Rush we were taught in school -- and I guess is still widely believed. For many who made the trek, it was horrible. Many died along the way or shortly after arrival. It cost a fortune to make the trip, and the chance of finding gold or even surviving more than a few months was slim to none.

And yet they kept coming. By the hundred thousands and ultimately by the millions they kept coming. My mother and her mother and stepfather among them. Most of my father's siblings -- but not himself -- came and settled in California, too.

Ms Ché and I left, though. She was born in California, and I lived there almost all my life, and the two of us could hardly wait to move to New Mexico.

Where I think we've never been happier -- health issues for both of us aside.

And so it goes.

Yes, there are plenty of challenges in front of us, and many memories left behind (along with a storage unit full of... stuff, including some of those memories...)

Perseverance, yes. But ultimately relaxation and freedom, too.

More to come.

"Zoot Suit"

The current revival of Luis Valdez's "Zoot Suit" in Los Angeles has turned into quite a phenomenon, as if something has been brought back from the dead, still a little musty maybe, but thrilling as heck to see and hear, reanimated, again. ¡Que Viva!



The video is a high school production in Monterey, CA in 2008. I'll have more to say about it later.

I had to brush up my 'Chuco slang (Caló) because I didn't think I remembered much, but I was surprised in the end at how much I did remember, including being called a bolillo or even a weddo once or twice. Well, I'm white, tending toward unnaturally pale sometimes. What can I do?

I grew up -- at least until I was ten years old -- among Chicanos, Filipinos, African Americans, immigrants from Europe, Asia, Latin America, some Natives mixed in -- some of whom were Pachucos or would be 'Chucos --  and I've always felt a kinship to the people and the culture. It's not mine, and I make no claim to it, but it is a comfort nonetheless.

El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista was a big thing when I started working in theater in Central California in the early '70s, and there was plenty of farm worker resistance and agitation throughout the state. It was difficult at the time, however, to integrate the campesino back-of-the-truck morality and experimental plays Luis Valdez and his troupe were doing primarily for the farm workers (anybody could attend, though) with the Shakespeare and standard musical theatre offerings we were churning out by the great-gross, with the occasional Chekhov and Ibsen and Strindberg and whatnot for "diversity." (Seems so funny now...) So while we knew about Teatro Campesino, and some of us had seen their works, we couldn't do them in our repertory.

That changed (somewhat) when Luis was commissioned by the Mark Taper Forum (Center Theatre Group?) in Los Angeles to create a Hispanic play for a broad audience. I think it was in 1976 or 77. Hispanic was considered exotic as heck. Luis didn't disappoint. The result was "Zoot Suit," a ground breaking theatrical exploration of Pachuco culture during WWII, the Sleepy Hollow murder and subsequent trial and conviction of numerous Chicano youth and the "Zoot Suit Riots" that followed.

"Zoot Suit" exposed the deep seated prejudice against Mexicans in California and throughout the Southwest, and it demonstrated the "cool" and the strength of Pachuco culture even as it was being violently suppressed during World War Two.

I remember zoot suits and 'chucos and all that from my childhood, but just how I knew about them, I can't say anymore. In Los Angeles, some of our neighbors were Mexican or Mexican-American, and my mother's closest friend was a woman named Ignacia who lived in Chavez Ravine until they were thrown out so the City Fathers could build Dodger Stadium. Were they the source of my memories? I don't know. Maybe.

I don't recall whether I saw "Zoot Suit" onstage. It wouldn't have been at the Mark Taper. I only saw a few things in Los Angeles in the Seventies (one I do recall was the "Rocky Horror Show," featuring Tim Curry at the Roxy on Sunset Blvd.) But I may have seen it later in either San Juan Bautista or in San Francisco. I know I have met Luis at least twice in my wanderings, in Sacramento and San Juan.

The video above of the high school production in Monterey evokes many memories for me, so I feel I must have seen the stage version of "Zoot Suit" but where and when, I can't remember. The  production is rough, of course, but it's high school students, and it's remarkable for what they were able to accomplish. Luis Valdez apparently advised on the project and thought highly of it. This story in the Monterey Herald gives a fuller picture about the production than I can here. Some of the commentary on the YouTube video is harsh -- because the play isn't like the movie (no, no it isn't; the play is different, sheesh) or because the actors aren't all raza (no, they aren't; but they don't have to be, and some of them probably shouldn't be, eh esé?)

When Ms Ché was young, she said she was forbidden to use terms like "pachuco" and such -- probably because they were dangerous. Prejudice was strong in California -- in many areas it still is -- and it wasn't considered worth the trouble to get the Anglos upset. Well, not until César Chavez and the Farm Workers Movement overturned many long-standing California discriminatory practices. As we got to know more Chicano artists and writers, "'chuco" lost its taint.
Dolores Huerta was honored Saturday at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. She's a survivor from the campesino days, no doubt about that, and she is a magnificent presence, an abulelita you don't mess with. She talked of what's been gained and what still needs to be gained. (Oh so much.) During the presentation that I heard on the radio while stuck in traffic over Sedillo Hill on Saturday (there were snow flurries, oh my!) music from "Zoot Suit" was played (sounded like both live and recorded pieces.) That's part of what brought all this to mind. They didn't identify the music as from "Zoot Suit" -- but I recognized it. So my memory isn't completely shot. Not yet!

Que rico.

¡Que viva!

Deleted guero (weddo) zoot suit dance scene from 1943 movie, "I Dood It" featuring Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra.



The Zoot Suit Riots were in the summer of 1943. Thus the deletion of this number from the movie.

[Note: the necessary and continuing farmworker struggle is another topic for another day.]

Oroville

The dam and spillway situation at Lake Oroville in Northern California are apparently severe enough to cause the evacuation of around 200,000 residents of the City of Oroville and towns downstream on the Feather River. Flooding is either happening right now or is expected throughout the Sacramento Valley thanks to heavy rains, saturated soils, and rivers and streams overflowing their banks.

The problems with Lake Oroville are on top of an already difficult situation.

I'm paying attention to this rather more than I might otherwise do because the region under flood warning and evacuation is part of my old stomping grounds in California. I lived mostly in and near Sacramento, but I traveled all over the Valley, particularly north of Sacramento, and my work often took me to the area under evacuation and flood warning. I got to know many people there and I still have friends in the area. So many people have been evacuated, and there is still risk to many more. It's a horrible situation for many whose peace of mind has been shattered and whose world is overturned. My sympathies are with them, though there's little I can do from out here in the Central New Mexican wilderness.

For now, it seems the situation has at least partially stabilized. The lake level is down enough (a/o Monday morning, c.. 3:00 am) that water is no longer flowing over the auxiliary spillway and the immediate danger of spillway erosion and collapse is mitigated. Releases are apparently continuing from the damaged main spillway, lowering the lake level enough to allow more runoff and snowmelt to enter. More rain is predicted for later in the week, and depending on how much their is, the situation could return to critical very quickly.

The problem with the auxiliary spillway as I understand it is that erosion of the upper part of the spillway has been severe due to the over-top releases yesterday and the day before; authorities are afraid that the erosion will compromise the integrity of the spillway and lead to collapse of that section of the lake-wall (not the dam itself). If that were to happen, an immense flood of lake water would be sent down the Feather River, almost as if the dam had broken, and people in the path of the flood would be at severe risk.

Because that risk is somewhat less now than it was yesterday afternoon, I'm sure people who have evacuated are fuming, thinking perhaps they shouldn't have been told to move so suddenly.

From the views I saw of the spillway yesterday, however, it was clear that the situation was developing fast and there was no certainty at all that the lip of the spillway would hold. Given the flood situation throughout the Valley already, it was reasonable to declare a precautionary emergency and to get people out of the path of any potential Lake-flood.

In the meantime, as chaos spreads, it's well to remember that flooding (though not this kind of threat) is relatively frequent in the area, and most residents are able to cope one way or another.

News is available at the Sacramento Bee, KCRA, and KNVN. There are other news outlets in the area as well, but these some of the main ones.

In the Matter of Junipero Serra (Saint)

Oh fer gawdsake. I mean really. This man has been proclaimed a saint? Why?

For God's Sake, why?

Please understand, I grew up in California, and in 4th Grade California History class the story of Father Serra was told with such a romantic glow that it would be a wonder if he weren't eventually sainted and venerated and made holy, holy, holy by the Pope in Rome. The picture we were given of Father Serra and the California Missions was one of intrepid bravery and steadfastness in the face of untold perils and fear.


I attended 4th Grade at San Jose Elementary School in the San Gabriel Valley about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. Our class visited the San Gabriel Mission on a field trip, and later on a friend and I discovered a mano  and  metate while digging in the schoolyard one day. The archaeologists who came from Cal Poly to assess our finds declared that we had found artifacts remaining from a now long gone Gabrieleno Indian village that had no doubt once been affiliated with the San Gabriel Mission.

One of our class projects was to construct miniature versions of the California Missions. Many of the students made generic missions out of sugar cubes, cardboard and construction paper, but my friend and I chose to make miniature adobe bricks and build a version of the unique and iconic San Gabriel Mission we had recently visited.

Mission San Gabriel via Wikimedia

Well, it was quite a hit. We even had little bells in the belfry, and there were balsa wood doors that opened to reveal a painted interior.

San Gabriel Mission was founded by Father Serra, and it along with the eight or nine others he founded became the centers of mission life in California for the next sixty years or so.

According the the stories we were told, California history began with Father Serra and the Missions. Before that was... nothing, I guess.

Well, there were Indians, of course, but they didn't read or write. They were little more than naked savages foraging and suffering in barbarous ignorance. Until the arrival of the White Men from Spain what could one expect, no?

One thing we added to our mission model were Indian huts made out of sticks and grass. For the missions in their splendor -- and they tended to be rather splendid given the fact that they were built on the wild frontier -- couldn't exist without the labor of the Indians whose souls Father Serra set out to save.

In exchange for their salvation and various trinkets and hoo-hah the Spaniards brought with them, the Indians were required to work for their new -- kindly, we were told -- overlords. So they did.

The Mission system we were told about was a remarkable, indeed an amazing thing. Enormous plantation like ranches were attached to the missions, and each mission was not only expected to be self-sufficient unto its needs, it was expected to produce a surplus to trade and provide for the needs of civilian colonizers who came from Spain and Mexico -- and later from other regions of the world.

Each mission was actually a huge enterprise, and Father Serra was the CEO if you will.

We were told the Indians came to the missions voluntarily, submitting to the authority of the Spanish Crown and the Heavenly Father proclaimed by our hero, Junipero Serra (Saint.)

The bells. They came because of the bells. I heard that story often.

And when the missions were dissolved after Mexico gained independence, the Indians were turned loose to fend for themselves. Tragically, many did not survive.

What we were not told is that by the time the missions were dissolved in the 1830's there were very few Indians left. Many tens of thousands had already died, and very few were born to replace them. We were not told of Father Serra's cruelties toward the Indians -- "Nah, he was always kindly toward them...." We were not told of the shackles and the floggings and the executions, the disease and almost complete social and cultural destruction in the wake of the Spanish and the blessed Franciscan Fathers -- Serra, Lausen and Crespi.

No, we were not told, and I didn't find out for many years. I've been to most of the missions, San Diego and Mission Dolores in San Francisco being exceptions. Most of them have graveyards beside the churches, and many of those graveyards have simple wooden plaques that state that so many thousands of Indians are buried therein. Thousands and thousands of dead Christian Indians... wait. The Mission system was only in operation from the 1760s to the mid 1830s. How could thousands of Indians be buried in each mission graveyard? I found out.

They died primarily of imported diseases: smallpox, measles, cholera, typhus, syphilis and the like. But many were worked to death. Some were executed for rebellion or disrespect of the Glory of God. Some died of despair when their voluntary service at the mission became a life sentence of imprisonment. Some were killed in conflict that could not really be called battles with the soldiers who protected the priests.

Father Serra delighted in every baptized Indian's death for it meant yet another resident of Heaven.

I learned that Father Serra administered some of the punishment to rebellious or recalcitrant Indians himself, wielding whip or club or whatever was at hand to chastise the rebellious savages.

He also mortified his own flesh, so it's not as if the punishment of the Indians was all that much different from what a prideful priest might have to endure. Not all that much different at all.

The California mission system didn't last very long but it wrecked havoc on the California Indian societies it touched, and some were completely wiped out. Others never recovered.

Things only got worse for California Natives when the Anglos took over after the Mexican American War and the discovery of gold in them thar hills. Much worse indeed.

The Anglos didn't even try to mask their genocidal tendencies with clever references to the salvation of souls. They just came, stole, and killed.

I came to understand that Father Serra was not necessarily a kindly missionary to the benighted savages, though he may have been somewhat kinder than the hidalgos and grandees and caballeros who came to California in his wake. Serra was an arrogant Spaniard, primarily a politician intent on expanding and securing the power and territory of his king and country -- and saving a soul or two along the way.

So when I learned earlier this year that Junipero Serra was to be declared a saint by Pope Francis, I was perplexed. What was the Pope thinking? But then he also proclaimed John Paul II a saint, and John XXIII. What could he possibly thinking?

Many have pointed out that there are others much more worthy of sainthood than Serra, so why him?

As I listened to parts of the ceremony of sainthood at the cathedral in Washington, it became somewhat clearer. Serra was seen by the Pope as a heroic Hispanic figure in the Western Hemisphere. Apparently Serra is highly regarded elsewhere in Latin America and has long been considered an example of the best that Spain sent to the New World during the period of discovery and conquest.

His legend is known far and wide.

He was a Franciscan as well.

The Pope apparently had the notion to elevate Serra to sainthood in order to...

Well, I don't rightly know, but it seems that his goals include solidifying the Catholic Church's position among Hispanics in Latin America and the North.  By making Serra a saint, apparently, Hispanics who have felt abandoned by the Church (it's a long story) will be inclined to return...

Maybe.

Meanwhile, the descendants of the survivors of the California Mission period are less than amused by this fairly overt political maneuvering. One even suggested that Cesar Chavez was far more worthy of sainthood than was the founder of the California Missions.

I would agree. The political problem for the Church, though, would have been greater had Pope Francis chosen Chavez for elevation (which he might-could do... later) rather than Father Serra. Even some Hispanics, and certainly nearly all the Anglo ranchers and farmers in California and much of the West, despise Chavez and would no doubt bitch to the Heavens above were the Holy See to confer sainthood on someone who made their lives so miserable by shame and long-suffering and truthtelling.

Serra, on the other hand, is such a romanticized historical and cultural figure, the "Founder of Modern California" and all that, that few besides the Indians would dispute his saintly reward. Few indeed have any idea what the Mission period was really like and how so much of California's deepest culture -- at least in Southern California -- is still rooted in the efforts of Serra, Lausen and Crespi to evangelize and proselytize among the California Indians of the late 18th Century.

What I Learned This Year: Part The First

I have to start with how much I learned about my ancestry that I never knew before.

For example, I now know my mother's father's full name, where and when he was born, how, where and when he died, some of the highlights (well, low lights) of his career as a (petty?) criminal, how many children he fathered with how many women, and quite a bit about his family.

My mother told me she had few memories of her father because he died when she was five years old, and she had very few memories before she and her mother and stepfather moved to California from Indianapolis when she was six. I suspect she had no memories of her biological father at all. He was arrested for burglarizing a drug store in Indianapolis when she was six months old in May of 1912. He appeared in court a week later, and his case was given to the grand jury. In August, my mother's mother sued him for divorce. From that point, he disappears from Indianapolis.

Next time he turns up in the records, he's in St. Louis, working on the railroad. In 1914, his 'wife' in St. Louis (whether they are legally married or not, I don't know) gives birth to a daughter. And in December of 1916, he's killed in a horrible railyard accident. His death certificate lists the manner of his death as "Body cut in two."

In 1917, my mother's mother married again in Santa Ana, California, to a man who was a neighbor and possibly a friend and colleague of my mother's biological father.

My mother had been told that her father died in a streetcar accident in Indianapolis, but that wasn't so. She'd been told he was a streetcar conductor in Indianapolis, which he was at the time he met her mother, apparently. But he was living in St. Louis when he died; he was working as a railway switchman. His older brother was a Linotype operator for the St. Louis Globe newspaper at the time and had been living in St. Louis since about 1890.

At some point, Harold -- my mother's father's older brother in St. Louis -- seems to have married my mother's father's first wife Maud who had divorced my mother's father sometime before 1910. Or maybe he didn't marry her. They were living together as husband and wife, but who knows whether they were married? I don't.

I haven't been able to figure out whether my mother's biological father was legally married to anyone but Maud, as there seems to be no record of any other legal wife but her. But in those days, I've found, common law marriages were routine, and it's quite possible that his other wives were common law.

The problem is that my mother was sure there was a scandal when he died and it was discovered he had another family "at the other end of the line," as both wives and daughters appeared at his funeral. My understanding was that all this happened in Indianapolis, but it couldn't have. He died and is buried  in St. Louis. The only way it could have happened is if my mother (then a five year old girl) and her mother traveled to St. Louis for the funeral. I suspect that's what actually took place.

My mother was convinced her father was a bigamist because of the wife and daughter "at the other end of the line." But that may not be true. He may not have been a bigamist in the legal sense. I found no record that he was legally married or divorced from my mother's mother, for example, nor were there any indications in the records that my mother's mother and father ever lived together as husband and wife. Instead my mother's mother is listed as living with her mother and aunts in Indianapolis, even after my mother was born, until they moved to California in 1917 -- almost a year after my mother's father's death in St. Louis.

That story still holds some mysteries, but the story I was told, that my mother's father was a streetcar conductor who had died in a streetcar accident in Indianapolis when she was five wasn't quite accurate, and I'm pretty sure it's what my mother was told and passed on to me without any particular knowledge of her own about it. She said she remembered the little girl -- the two year old daughter of her father's other wife -- and she felt sorry for her. If that's true, then more than likely that meeting took place in St. Louis. But she never mentioned St. Louis in her tellings of the stories. I doubt she remembered where she was at the time.

My mother's father is buried in Friedens Cemetery in North St. Louis (actually in Bellfonatine Neighbors). This is about a mile from Calvary Cemetery where Dred Scott is buried, and about two miles from St. John's Cemetery where Mike Brown is buried.

In the early '80's I lived and worked for a time in St. Louis -- well, it was actually in Webster Groves -- but I had no idea that my mother's father ever lived or was buried there. Instead, I used some of my free time to go to Iowa where I was born and where my father had lived and died. I didn't check out his grave -- which I've never seen in person, though I have seen pictures -- but I did check out his house, and recapture some of my earlier memories of the town.

If I had known my mother's father had connections to St. Louis, I would have made a kind of pilgrimage to various sites I know about now, but had no knowledge of then. For example, the railyard where he died is still there by the Mississippi River. It looks like a Superfund site, but the tracks and much of the other infrastructure that existed in 1916 is still in place. The homes where he was listed as living are no longer there because they were torn down to build the freeways, but his older brother's place in Baden (north of St. Louis) still stands.

Baden, I found out this year, has an interesting connection with my father's family, too. In that case, though, the Baden is in Germany where my father's mother's parents were from. I'd been told they were Germans, but exactly where they were from was somewhat murky. Frankfurt, Prussia, Bavaria, Munich were all mentioned, but not Baden, interestingly. Apparently, from what I was able to find out, my father's mother's parents were from a little village called Weibstadt that has been absorbed by Heidelberg and therefore no longer exists. There may have been travels and sojourns elsewhere in Germany ("Germany" didn't exist at the time, either), but if so, it would have been when they were children. Both my father's mother's parents emigrated to America when they were 15 years old in 1855.

I was told that the family was "probably originally Jewish," but I have yet to see any proof of it. It's possible as there are Jewish families in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands with the same last name, but I haven't found any direct connection between them. At any rate, the family had long been Catholic by the time they came to America.

In researching the Irish side of my father's roots, I found there was a good deal of confusion and not a little Blarney. My father was convinced that we were descended from a prominent American Revolutionary family with deep roots in Maryland. Well... no. Not the way I found the line, at any rate. I will say it is possible that my father's Irish ancestors and the Maryland family he claimed descent from were related distantly, in Ireland, but there is no connection between them and my father's ancestors after 1700 or so. They may not even be branches of the same family as several independent and unrelated families use the same last name.

There was confusion, however, because apparently two brothers emigrated to America with their families at two different times and settled in the same places, first in Ohio and then in Iowa. Edward emigrated with his family in 1842 and settled near Springfield, Ohio; his brother Alexander emigrated with his family in 1850 and settled nearby. Both brothers and most of their families then moved to Iowa in 1857, where they appear to have taken up a number of farmsteads in the general vicinity of Davenport.  Edward and Alexander's families and descendants are so intertwined and they use many of the same given names so it's difficult to sort out just who was who. There are similar problems sorting out who the mothers were, as there were at least four different women married to Edward and Alexander, and indications are that two of them were sisters, and one may have been traded between the brothers, first married to one and then to the other.

I have not been able to unravel who is actually related to whom and how beyond my father's father's generation where it's pretty straightforward and clear. Earlier, however, it's very confused and confusing.

Again, this kind of informality of marriage and relationships was not uncommon in the 19th century. It seemed in fact to be a feature not a bug of the Westward Expansion. Today we might think it's very odd -- I certainly do -- but apparently it wasn't in those days, and people took it quite naturally.

We have a notion of Victorian patriarchy, prudishness and propriety that doesn't quite match the reality. 

My mother and her mother were part of matriarchies, for example, in which men were at best useful accessories and often enough were little more than despised interlopers. "Sperm donors."

From the research I did this year, I found that my mother's mother's mother, Ida, had been widowed in 1904. She set up a household for her mother, herself, her sisters (all widows themselves) and their children (two boys and a girl) in Indianapolis. Ida apparently inherited a lot of property from her husband -- who I found she hadn't lived with for years before he died as he had moved back to his parent's house to take care of his own mother who was apparently an invalid. Ida was left well off for the rest of her life, however, though her sisters were apparently not so well fixed after their husbands died.

My mother's mother, Edna -- Ida's daughter -- worked as a telephone operator at an Indianapolis bank managed by my mother's father's younger brother, George. I suspect that any memories my mother said she had of her biological father were actually of George, who would have been her uncle, but I don't know that for certain. All I'm sure of is that her father left Indianapolis sometime between mid-1912 and mid-1913 (when my mother was not even two years old)  whereas Edna and my mother stayed in Indianapolis until 1917 -- when they moved to California with Leo who became my mother's step-father.

I learned much more about other characters among my ancestors this year, people I'd only heard about previously. Many were long dead, but others were still alive when I was young though I didn't meet or know them.

One was my father's older brother Vincent. He was accused of and tried for the murder of his wife, Garla a couple of years before I was born. He and his wife cared for -- essentially they adopted -- my half-brother Terry after my father's first wife Ted (nickname for Thelma) died in childbirth.  Vincent's alibi was that he was with his mistress in town when Garla died, and he said he discovered her body at the foot of the stairs when he returned home the next morning. The prosecutor claimed that Vincent had beaten her to death as she had numerous bruises on her body. The cause of death was a brain hemorrhage.

My half-brother was apparently the only witness, but he could not testify due to his condition -- now called autism. He was 11 or 12 years old at the time.

Vincent was tried for murder twice. The first jury hung; the second acquitted him. I didn't know about the first trial until this year. My father had been one of his defense attorneys -- the only time he tried a criminal case in court -- and he kept voluminous records and wrote a newsletter for the rest of the family describing what was going on, but the records I've seen and the story he told didn't mention the first trial and the hung jury, just the second trial and the acquittal. That story included the fact of my half-brother's testimony to the judge in chambers, but not what his testimony was. My father's story was that the judge then directed a verdict of "not-guilty."

I didn't know what happened to Vincent until this year. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1947 with his mistress from Iowa and they were married. He died in 1962, in Santa Barbara. I had no idea he was there. From 1949 to 1953, I lived 50 miles north of Santa Barbara, and from 1953 to 1959, I lived in Los Angeles, a few hours south on Highway 101 from Santa Barbara. The only thing I knew about Vincent at that time was that he'd left town after he was acquitted and his whereabouts were "unknown."

Whether anybody (for example, my parents) knew where he was and just didn't want to say, I don't know, but I was surprised as heck to learn he was in Santa Barbara until his death, as I had no idea until I saw records this year.

There were many more things I learned this year about my ancestors and their relatives. I'm still attempting to process all of it. I've started to novelize some of the story as that seems to be the best way for me to understand what I've learned.

In some ways, I wish I'd known these things before now,  but in other ways, I'm not convinced it would make any difference. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was born, and the stories I heard about "my people" when I was young were not that far from true. I'm far from convinced the records I've seen this year are necessarily true themselves -- especially Census records, which are notoriously untrue.

People make up stories about their own past as well as that of their ancestors.

Maybe next year, I'll be able to fictionalize what I've learned this year...

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, Samhain 2014

Today is All Souls Day...

Yesterday marked this year's Day of the Dead, which we noted with some interest here in New Mexico. We don't actually celebrate  Dia de los Muertos, at least not in the way many of the locals do, in part because November 1 is our wedding anniversary. This year's anniversary is our 45th since we were married. We've been together for 47 (or is it 48?) years.

While I was getting our drinking water jug refilled yesterday, a couple of cowboys were at the other spigot waiting for their jug to fill, listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio in their truck, yocking and laughing up a storm. I nodded and smiled. Over in the park across the street, a wedding couple was having their pictures taken in the bandstand, children were running and playing, and I thought, "Oh how wonderful! This is where we live..."

So someone else chose Day of the Dead to get married, too. Our wedding anniversary is typically the main focus of our celebratory interest on November 1, as was the case this year. We don't let those who have passed be forgotten, however.

We have what amounts to a year-round ofrenda -- several of them come to think of it -- in the house. The Christmas tree is always up and always lit, for example, and that's for "Gramma," Ms. Ché's mother, who passed on in 2009. She loved Christmas; she loved the tree and the decorations. It just seemed right to put up a tree here and leave it up year round.

Above it on the left, actually above the doorway that leads to the section of the house where the library and the Jesus Room are, there's a shelf and on it are various objects that relate to Gramma and to the Honored Cat Mao. The two of them were, late in their lives, inseparable. They communed and communicated with one another on as deep and intimate a level as I think it's possible. They told one another stories, and they comforted one another as their lives were beginning to ebb away. The shelf -- along with the Christmas tree, which Mao loved, too -- is our version of a year-round ofrenda.

But we have what amounts to an altar on the other side of the room too, a bookstand on which various items, holy and profane, are placed for contemplation and honor. Father Roca figures prominently, and I think he'd smile, maybe he'd laugh out loud, if he saw it. There's a "Kitty Angel" that is the representative of all the feral  felines who've passed on since we've been here. There's an Indian Warrior statuette that represents the Indian warriors who've passed through and passed on. There's Holy Water and Holy Dirt from Chimayo near Father Roca's picture and the program from his celebration of 70 years in the priesthood. There's a tambourine for musical interludes and various items for holiday cheer, including -- for now -- a glitter covered pumpkin, a pair of skeleton gloves and a ghoulish luminaria can. Nor should we forget the ceramic chicken. There's even an anniversary clock spinning merrily away, a reminder that "time passes." Profound!

Above this mini-altar/shrine is a painting by Charles Curtis Blackwell of a Mississippi farmer plowing the red Mississippi dirt, a painting I call "Git on up, Mule" which is a line from the poetry-play by Blackwell called "Is, the Color of Mississippi Mud" that we produced years ago, and that Blackwell created the large painting for. Above that are a couple of landscape paintings, one of an indeterminate farming area near a mountain range (not unlike where we are, but the barns around here aren't red...) and another titled "Jack Tone Road" which is a scene in the San Joaquin Valley of California, an area which is as surely imprinted in us as is this part of New Mexico. That area of Jack Tone Road is mostly orchard country -- or at least it was, the orchards may have been torn out by now, thanks to the drought and economics -- but the painting appears to depict old eucalyptus trees along the road which were planted as windbreaks back in the teens or twenties, trees which have also probably been cut down and disposed of by now. The image in the painting, therefore, is a memory of something that once was but may not be any more. 


It's not exactly an ofrenda but it's not not one, either. Similarly, the bench/shelves in the entry hall hold a lot of items that elicit memories, too. There's a large Chinese vase full of (artificial) flowers that evokes memories of our California home(s) where often things that originated in China were collected and/or displayed. Some parts of California are tied to China much more closely than they are tied to Mexico and having something from China as it used to be is simply par for the course. Chinese things are considered somewhat exotic here in New Mexico, though, and some of the swells like to decorate their places with Chinese antiques and what have you rather than the far more typical Pueblo Indian pottery and Navajo rugs and so forth. The Chinese vase by the front door, however, is a nod to Things Chinese we recall from California rather than an emblem of rejection of Things Indian that are so common in New Mexico.

Next to the Chinese vase is a ceramic model of the Santa Clara Mission in California. I've never visited it -- one of the few California Missions I've not been to -- but Santa Clara (Saint Clare) was St. Francis's close spiritual companion in Assisi, and the mission model is a way of recalling and honoring her. Santa Clara, California, of course, is the heart of the Silicon Valley where such socially, economically and politically transformative things go on these days... and so in a backhanded way, the model of the Santa Clara Mission is a nod to that aspect of contemporary living as well.

There are photos which someone took on their European tour in a multi-picture frame behind the Mission model. I picked them up in a thrift store and thought they were interesting and charming. Every European tour seems to be the same, but here the pictures are somewhat different: A misty castle (or perhaps hotel) set on a crag viewed through an opening in the trees; a canal perhaps in Amsterdam though I can't be sure. There's a water-bird skimming the surface. It's quite elegant in its own way. The next picture appears to be a river-side scene, the river barely visible through the trees. There is a clearing in the foreground where one might picnic should one care to. The final picture is of a canal in Venice, tourists being squired about in gondolas. It's charming for its utter banality...

The colors in these photos are muted and somewhat faded. The pictures themselves are probably twenty five or thirty years old, maybe older, it's hard to say, for the images are timeless. These sights don't change, do they? Castles are always on their crags along the Rhine, the canals of Amsterdam are perpetual. Riversides in some parts of  Europe have been nature preserves for centuries. The canals of Venice are living museums. These pictures could have been taken yesterday, and nothing much would have changed. That's part of the social and cultural context of Euro-America. Once set, a thing or a place deemed Historic is "forever." It never changes. Or it's never supposed to change.

Next to those pictures is an old Seth Thomas mantel clock. The works were pretty well shot, so I replaced them with chiming battery powered works that revivified this beat up old clock such that it seems quite festive and cheery now. Of course it's not authentic, but so what? It works and keeps good time. Not so before.

On top of the clock are varied things: a wooden sculpture by Stephen Wall that vaguely evokes something Native American, a old map of New Mexico in a frame that probably dates to the 1920s, a couple of skulls -- one ivory, one turquoise -- for the season. There are a number of other seasonal things including a nice crow scattered about below.

On the other side of the clock is an Adrian Wall sculpture called 'The Beauty.' An Indian maiden, wouldn't you know, only in this case, I was told the model was Adrian's wife, and it's a charming piece in its somewhat quirky delineation. I like it. She has a Mona Lisa smile and wears a squash-blossom necklace. There are some old and battered Shakespeare books, some game sets in wooden cases, an alabaster lamp with a scenic shade that we turn on when we'll be away after dark. "We'll leave the light on."

The wall above is covered with paintings, photos and prints. The central picture is a black and white photograph of a room at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The photographer is from San Ildefonso Pueblo, and I bought the picture at Indian Market in Santa Fe a couple of years ago, first because it appealed to me, and second because this particular room was where Ms Ché and I had a kind of epiphany regarding the place and what it had been when it was occupied. Ms. Ché has had many epiphanies when she's been at Chaco, but this was one we shared, right there in that room, and the photo captures a sense of the mood and the moment. When I told the photographer of our experience there, he was intrigued. His own experience has been different, he said. There are times when the place speaks to him, but other times, he said, it's been silent, and he's captured what he sees as images of that silence. We had a lot of photos from Chaco that I stored online; unfortunately they were all deleted when that photo storage service shut down a few years ago, so I have very few photos we took at Chaco. This one takes the place of many of those that were lost.

There are many other items of memory and interest in the entrance hall. It was quite crowded with furnishings and objects at one time, but much of it was moved out as part of a more general clean-up project getting ready for the "New (half) Year."

October 31-November 1, you see, is also Samhain, the traditional Irish half-year festival, when winter sets in. In our tradition, we carry over only certain things from one (half) year to the next, and there's a good deal of clean up and disposal of whatever isn't going to be carried over. We made a lot of adjustments in the house getting ready. Several rooms were rearranged. Some of the paintings were re-framed, and others were replaced. Rugs were taken out or replaced. Cobwebs that had been collecting all year were taken down. (We're not adverse to most spiders, but their webbage can get to be extreme!) The point was to make modest but necessary changes before the onset of winter.

A lot of things that I might have done this year were delayed or abandoned because of the sciatic attack I suffered in January. Here it is November, and I've only partially recovered. I still have quite a limp, but worse for me is the loss of endurance. There's only so much I can do before I have to stop and rest, and it bothers me a great deal. It seems much more difficult for me to get around any more. Though I don't have to use a cane regularly, if I'm going to be out and about for more than an hour or so, I'll have one with me and use it as necessary. Stairs have become a challenge. There are other ambulatory challenges as well, some of which I'm still adapting to and getting used to.

Age. Yes, getting older. Recognizing my own mortality. Slowing down.

In some ways it's frustrating; in many other ways, though, it's a relief.

So as we pass into the next half-year, we honor those who we admire, who have gone before us, whose memories we treasure, and we look to tomorrow as well.

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, Samhain... a time for reflection, a time for memory.

Well. They Didn't Mention Sister Maya Except In A Rude Way...

Escabosa, NM, July, 1940, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Yesterday included a lot of driving time, a lot of sitting time, some chatting time, a lot of listening time. Interesting.

Maya Angelou was mentioned, as it turns out, but not politely.

No, Sister Maya was mentioned by one of the poets at the José Montoya event in Albuquerque, by one of the more incendiary poets, who said something to the effect that there were more accomplished and dedicated female poets in the room last night, each of them of a higher caliber than Maya Angelou, but none of them would ever be on "Opal", and none of them would ever have the honors and recognition that Maya Angelou had -- because each of them was Chicana, and in America Chicana doesn't count.

We were exhorted to mount a protest at Bookworks because of it.

Well, now, that's just wrong, but in some ways, it's not. Chicanas do count, but they don't, too. How can things be two opposite things at the same time? That was an underlying theme for the discussion at Santa Fe's Museum of Contemporary Native Art in the afternoon with artist Shan Goshorn, scientist Jennifer Dunne, and former CIA operative Valerie Plame. The panel never mentioned Maya Angleou (I wonder why not?) but they did get into the contradictions between things that simultaneously are and are not what they appear to be, things that have and have not the linear qualities Anglos come to expect, and how one's conditioning to those expectations differs... and what to make of it.

Maya Angleou was lucky, and she knew it. She was in the right place at the right time -- and she was the right color for the time. She took absolutely full advantage of it, shamelessly, without qualm or hesitation. She was brilliant. And she rose. But she knew it wouldn't have happened if things outside herself, things that she could not control, had not conspired with her own will to make it so.

So, in some ways, was it with mi hermano José Montoya, who was honored last night at the National Hispanic Cultural Center by a stellar gathering of Chicano/a poets (many of them poets laureate) from throughout the Southwest and California. And there was music. Oh, la musica!  Baile!

What a time it was.

Jose, it turns out -- and I didn't know this -- was born in Escabosa, NM, just down the road from our place. Well. I say that with such confidence, but in fact, I'm not sure exactly where it is, or rather was. There is an Escabosa loop road between Chilili and Tijeras, but whether that's where Jose's Escabosa was, I don't know. There is no sign of a town there at any rate. No sign that a town ever was there, either. If there are ruins, they have so melted back into the earth, you'd never know, much like some of the Indian pueblos in the vicinity.

There's another Escabosa indicated somewhat north of Edgewood, however, on the way from the Walmart to the foot of South Mountain. There's no town there, either, but there is a school and some dirt tracks that indicate there might have once been a town there of sorts.

Which one was where Jose Montoya was born, I don't know, and the truth is, I kind of doubt he would know for sure either. It wouldn't really matter all that much, as he and his family decamped from Escabosa, New Mexico when he was very young and set out for the hard path of field work in California's Central Valley.

Of course, why not? At least it was green there. There were crops that could be harvested. Not so much in New Mexico, in Escabosa and round about, where a decade long drought had shriveled everything and dust blew high in the air. The economy -- such as it was in the New Mexican backwater-lackwater -- had collapsed. Families left for greener pastures in their multitudes, joining the Joad jalopies on the Mother Road, the road to Needles, Bakersfield, Sanger, Fowler, Fresno, Modesto, Merced, Stockton and Sac-a-ra-men-to.

Oh god I have traveled that road so many eff-ing times. So many! Well, not exactly on the road that the Joads and the Montoyas and the Escobars and the Trinidads traveled. I was on that road perhaps only once, when I was driven in the backseat of a 1942 Packard Clipper, hell bent for leather, from Iowa to California when I was barely 9 months old, passing through New Mexico, perhaps stopping for the night, but I certainly can't remember that trip. Or can I? There are time I really think I do remember, a body memory perhaps, or maybe something else...

In California/Califa, Jose grew up to be bad, to be a 'Chuco -- Pachuco -- the Devil Mexican as far as the Anglos were concerned, and he liked taunting Anglos like a Pachuco for the rest of his life. And why not? The Anglos had stolen everything they could get their hands on and forced the people they had stolen from to work in the Anglo fields stooped over in the blazing Central Valley sun for next to nothing -- but at least it was something, some of the time.

Farm work in California was tough, still is. It was crippling. It was necessary. It would kill you. Or it would make you strong.

Jose and his family worked the fields up and down the Central Valley, and finally, when Jose was old enough, he went into the Army and survived. When he came out, he took advantage of the GI Bill, and behold! He became a professor of Chicano Studies (well, not instantly, but eventually) at the new state college set up in Sacramento -- where my sister would go, too, and get her masters (eventually, not immediately) -- but I refused to go there on principle. That's another story for another day, but I will say here that there was no escape from Sac State (whether college or university) in Sacramento, and in due time, there would be no escaping Professor José Montoya, nor the art collective he created, the "Rebel Chicano Art Front," re-dubbed "The Royal Chicano Air Force" when some newspaper reporter got the initials (RCAF) wrong.

I knew mi hermano José but I did not know him well. He was a presence, a force of nature (much like Sister Maya, come to think of it), but I was not his student, did not work with him, had little close contact with him over the years. I had friends who were much closer to him than I was. I considered him a friend of mine in a very casual way, an acquaintance. No, intimacy was much more a factor of my working and social relations with other RCAF members such as Juanishi Orosco, Armando Cid, Juan Carrillo, and of course Joe Serna. Many other relationships I don't care to go into here constituted the threads of a web of relationships, some of which are still active, many of which are now broken, in part because there have been so many deaths along the way. We don't last forever, do we? No. We die.

And we also move. The Montoyas moved from whichever Escabosa it was to the fields of California's Central Valley, and we, the Chés, for our part, have moved from the Central Valley to somewhere east of the East Mountains of New Mexico, not far from whichever Escabosa José and his family departed from so many years ago now.

The future for them was in California. The future for us has been in New Mexico.

Go figure. Somehow there is a pattern there. One that could be identified if our eyes were clearer and we had the means to see. There are many uncharted webs of relations come to think about it.

José never moved back to New Mexico. I have no idea if he ever wanted to. He came back many times, and he was a major influence on the development of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque where we attended the Poets Conclave in his honor last night. In other words, he never cut his ties to New Mexico, though he never returned to live here. Family relations are still here. His daughter, Gina, who lives in Los Angeles, pointed out that he'd bought a "little plot of ground" in New Mexico, and the family fully intended to do "something" there. In time. In due time. So. We can look forward to a 'Chuco center near the center of New Mexico... no? That would be wonderful.

LATINOPIA WORD JOSE MONTOYA "PACHUCO PORTFOLIO" from Latinopia.com on Vimeo.

When I was a kid living in one of the few racially mixed neighborhoods in Los Angeles at the time (a neighborhood that has become almost entirely Hispanicized -- is that a word? -- since then) 'Chucos were talked about in somewhat hushed tones at my neighbor's house. The Vegas. They were terrific people, very influential in my childhood, and I will never forget their warmth and their many kindnesses and the hot, fresh tortillas I had for lunch at their house on many a day, sometimes dipped in enchilada sauce, sometimes rolled up with meat and onions and chile. Or just plain with a little butter...

They would mention 'Chucos and the zoot suits and the riots in LA. During the War.

The War was the center of history, and LA was the center of the world. And so many things happened in the War and in LA to destroy Chicanismo. My neighbors, the Vegas, dared not speak Spanish in public, even then years after the War and the Riots, they only spoke English, because if they spoke Spanish they were afraid they would be deported or worse, because that's what happened to "greasers" and "beaners" in California back in the day. They were rounded up, put on trains and sent "back" to Mexico, whether or not they had any connection with the place. They were beat up, they were shot, they were denounced, they were marginalized. That's what Anglo Angelinos did to Mexicans, without a qualm.

So the Vegas were careful, never deviating from Anglo demands and expectations, except in their own home when they felt they were safe. And even then, they were careful.

I thought it was wrong, I thought it was cruel. There was no reason for them not to speak Spanish if they wanted to. At least I didn't think there was. There was no reason for them to hide their Catholic saints behind the lace at their windows, no reason for them not to pray and laugh and grow roses the way their ancestors had.

No reason at all.

It hurt no one for them to be Chicanos, a word they would never use.

José gave them something back. Whether they knew it or took it or no.

So we sat last night at the National Hispanic Cultural Center hearing poet after poet after poet laureate honor Jose Montoya and his legacy and his memory, and it was wonderful and warm and moving and almost giddy at times.

Jimmy Santiago Baca mentioned Sister Maya last night, but only in a rude way. I thought that was sad, that he could only see her rudely, for I think what she did helped enable what José did and both together did more for the poets laureate that have proliferated around the country ever since than perhaps even Jimmy Santiago Baca can realize.

It was a good day and night, filled with connections and insights and brilliance.

Viva.

Mark Morford Explains It All For You

Doing something about Climate Change has been the terrestrial general directive for decades. From time to time, something is done, but it's never-ever enough, not even close. The atmosphere continues to fill with carbon dioxide, the global temperatures and sea levels continus to rise, and crippling droughts, destructive storms, ice and snow, and heat waves beyond measure bombard us relentlessly.

I understand this is the third year of crippling drought in parts of California (after quite a few years of higher and higher rain and snowfall in many other areas). The situation is perilous for the farming areas, not much better in the cities.

Mark Morford has been writing an often hilarious and biting column at the San Francisco Chronicle for quite a few years now, while teaching yoga and other flexible body arts on the side. He's offered a commentary on the drought situation in California, and I'll just excerpt the following:

Which is to say: dramatic climate change is no longer even remotely preventable. It’s here. It will be here for centuries. And yes, most of what’s happening is very much our fault. It’s now only a question of severity, adaptation and survival.

Indeed.

That's where we are. There's no preventing any more, no going back. The open question is how bad it will get, what sort of adaptations will be necessary, and who among us will survive.

Welcome to the Future. 

Carry Me Back: Memories of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks and a Christmas Show Last Night

Dan Hicks says he has always had a thing for Christmas as far back as he can remember, and when you get up in years like we are, that's no easy task. Remembering, that is.

We haven't seen Dan for quite a long time, maybe ten or fifteen years or so. The last time I remember seeing him was at an outdoor gig in a park somewhere in or near Sacramento, but I can't remember exactly where or when, though I can recall taking pictures and even possibly a few short videos at the event. But I don't remember where they are. Memory gets complicated.

I remember him performing Kollege of Musical Knowledge at Harlow's in Sacramento, but I'm almost certain I didn't attend. Did see Asleep at the Wheel there, and remember Dan was either going to be there or had recently been, but I can't remember actually being there for his performance.

Then there was the all too brief bookstore appearance (was it a bookstore?) somewhere out in the Sacramento suburbs, before or after the park performance, where we got a bunch of CDs signed. But where or when it was exactly, I can't recall.

Back in the 70's, when we were living in San Francisco, we'd routinely go over the Golden Gate Bridge to Mill Valley and see Dan and the band at Sweetwater and/or the Old Mill Tavern. I'm pretty sure we saw them at both venues. They'd also play in San Francisco at a small venue off of Pine or Polk Street, but I don't remember the name of it. It was within walking distance of our place, though, so that was cool. We also saw them on occasion at a tiny venue on Haight St, the name of which escapes me. We saw them at Winterland and the Fillmore in San Francisco, and at the Palms in Davis as well.

Connections -- and Cake

Wayne Thiebaud Boston Cremes 1962, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento CA, via Meandering Moodys

Bear with me as I go through some of these somewhat loose connections.

As I incessantly post, we now live in New Mexico's central Estancia Valley. We are out in the country, more or less equidistant from Santa Fe's and Albuquerque's original plazas, and we visit both cities relatively often. The last couple of months we've been going to one city or the other almost daily, and sometimes to both in one day, due to a plethora of fall events we've we've learned of, signed up for, know someone involved with, or have wanted to attend for ages but never did for one reason or another. Our calendar is chock-a-block at least through November. Then maybe we'll get to slow down a bit when the snows come! (Assuming they do.)

Central and Northern New Mexico where we are and its landscape -- its cities and little towns and expansive open spaces and its mountains and highways, even its interstate freeways -- strongly remind me of parts of California where I lived through most of my life. That's not to suggest they are the same; they are not.

The deserts are quite different. The air is different. The sky and the light are incomparably different. Of course here in New Mexico, we're always at a high elevation, whereas in California, you really had to climb up into the mountains from the low or very low elevations where most people lived. Few people in California live in the mountains to this day. In New Mexico, practically everyone lives at high -- or very high -- elevation. You have little choice in the matter.

Yesterday, we were up in Santa Fe for a Museum event we'd scheduled, and afterwards we decided to stop in at the Museum of International Folk Art, a destination we'd never visited before. We knew it was there, having been to the neighboring Museum of Indian Arts and Culture many times, but for whatever reason the Folk Art Museum had not been on our list of places to go to on a balmy afternoon.

Well, silly us. We should have gone long ago. It's wonderful.

Americans Haven't Quite Reached This Spot Again...Not Yet

 

Florence Owens Thompson and children, March 1936

Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of Florence Thompson and three of her children will, it seems, forever be imprinted on the psyches of Americans as an image of untellable suffering in this Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Most people will have little or no idea what was going on or who these people were or even where or when this picture was taken. It is the most singular icon of the Dust Bowl Era/Great Depression, without doubt or dispute. There are other photos from the era that resonate to be sure, but nothing like this one.

First off, I think it is of some note that this picture was taken in 1936, when the Depression, or at least its worst aspects of mass suffering, was perceived to be mostly over. FDR, the New Deal and all that.

It was taken on California's Central Coast, not Dust Bowl Oklahoma, and though Florence and her older children (not these -- her younger children were born in California) were from Oklahoma, they had been in California mostly working in the fields up and down the state since 1931. They were not Dust Bowl refugees -- at least not any more. They were migrant laborers in the fields of California, like tens of thousands of others did then -- and still do.

 Of course in those days, many of the California field hands were white. Nowadays, not so much. Nearly all of the field hands today are Hispanic, mostly from Mexico, though many are from Central America, and not a few were born and raised in California of Mexican or Central American parents.

For a time, and even in Thompson's time, it seemed to be possible to go from the fields in California to a fairly comfortable, fairly middle class lifestyle in one or at most two generations. That passage seems far from certain now. In this country today, if you're born poor, you'll most likely stay poor the rest of your life. Same for any children you might have. There is less social and economic mobility in the United States today than perhaps at any time in its history, less mobility in fact than in most other places in the developed world.

Florence and her children were poor to be sure, but they were not truly destitute at the time of the photo, though that's how they were portrayed by Lange and the press, a press which glommed onto the photo immediately and presented it as a portrait of despair and destitution of unparalleled magnitude in this land of plenty, and this after three years, three years!, of the New Deal.

According to the story Florence told later, what happened was that the family -- which included Jim Hill, her (common-law?) husband at the time, her older children and these younger ones -- were traveling from fields they'd been working in the Imperial Valley toward Watsonville near Salinas, where they hoped to find more work, but the timing chain on their Hudson broke and they coasted into a large ad hoc migrant camp (that held at that time maybe 2,000 or 3,000 hopeful workers) in Nipomo. (I'm very familiar with all these places, having lived and worked in or near California's agricultural areas most of my life. There are also other connections which may come up in other posts.)

The workers were there because they'd heard there was field work to be done picking peas, but when they got there, a freezing rain had ruined the crop and there was no work.

Many of the migrants in the camp were destitute and starving, but Florence's family were not. Comparatively speaking, they were doing OK.

Florence and her children were laying over in the camp while Jim Hill and the older boys were in town getting the car fixed so they could continue their journey north toward Watsonville. While in the camp, Florence said they subsisted on frozen peas they collected from the fields and the few birds the children were able to kill for the cooking pot. Hungry children came by and asked if they could please have a bite. Once the car was fixed, they moved on.

That they had a car and were used to the migrant labor life in California was to their advantage. While they had advantages that many others didn't, their life in the fields could not have been pleasant.

California's field hands were and are terribly exploited, often wretchedly housed and provided for, and frequently treated with feudal levels of abuse. Migrant field workers in California were and are beneath the level of an oppressed underclass; they were frequently seen and treated as disposable slaves by their employers.

Eventually, the Florence and family moved to California's Central Valley, still doing mostly farm labor, but apparently settling down near or in Modesto,  where Florence would meet and marry George Thompson, a hospital administrator, and from 1945 onwards, the family would live in modest financial security.

Florence claimed to be a full-blood Cherokee, born ("in a teepee") and raised outside of Tahlequah, OK. Her blood father was a Christie, and so could have been full-blood Cherokee, but he abandoned Florence's mother (of the Cobb family, and thus likely not full-blood Cherokee) before she was born. Her mother then married Charles Akman, of Choctaw descent. (All this, according to the Wiki...)

The other day, I was in the company of a genealogist out of Tahlequah who is a Christie descendant on his mother's side, and he said he'd been trying to trace Florence's Cherokee ancestry and was coming up short. Of course Cherokee lineages can be complicated. Just ask anyone who's tried to demonstrate their blood quantum to the satisfaction of the authorities of the Cherokee Nation. It can be quite a complex and drawn out process, even for full-bloods.

Of course Florence, even if a full-blood Cherokee (which is unlikely in any case), would not have been born "in a teepee" as teepees were not used by Cherokee people (nor by Choctaw) at any time.  But then, people tell tales...

The Cherokee Christies were and are based around Wauhillau, OK, not far from Tahlequah, and Florence's biological father was said to be Jackson Christie, who appears on the Dawes Rolls from Wauhillau as a full-blood. Her mother, a Cobb, however, is the more problematical ancestor, as there is no Mary Jane Cobb listed on the Dawes Rolls, and the only Mary Cobbs listed are of 1/4th and less Cherokee blood quantum. Of course, there were plenty of Cherokee of all blood quantums who were never listed on the rolls, so nothing conclusive can be said about Florence's mother's Cherokee ancestry -- or lack thereof.

That a Cherokee genealogist cannot trace her with any certainty is interesting but not unusual, given the fact that Florence's biological father (apparently a full-blood Cherokee) ran off before she was born, and she was raised by a (supposed) Choctaw adoptive father. Well, in Indian culture, she wouldn't have been raised by either father but instead would have been brought up in her mother's matrilineal household, with slight contact with "fathers." But if Florence's mother was a Cobb (there's no reason to doubt it), it's quite possible she was less culturally Cherokee, and so she might not have raised her daughter in the culture. On the other hand, she just as well might have.

Florence kept company with several men and (officially) married two of them though both died before she did. She had six or seven children, all of whom seem to have had great admiration for her. She appears to have engaged in field work in California for as long as she had to and was physically able to, but when the opportunity arose, she left the fields to work in hospitals, and by 1945 she had settled down in Modesto with her last husband, a hospital administrator -- which no doubt relieved her of any obligation to work the fields of California again.

When Dorothea Lange took that iconic picture, Florence's situation was not as dire as it was made out to be in the press, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it was somehow "good" just because she and her children weren't actually stranded and starving, and she hadn't actually sold the tires on her car to buy food. The family's car would be repaired, and they would move on. But that didn't mean their situation was much better than miserable.

The status of the thousands of others at the Nipomo camp really was dire, though, and some actually were starving. The "Migrant Mother" picture of Florence and her younger kids led to the transport of tens of thousands of pounds of food to the camp to help succor those still trapped there. The fact that Americans could still be in such appalling circumstances, years after the advent of the New Deal under Roosevelt, came as a shock to many who had convinced themselves the New Deal had eliminated this level of destitution and desperation.

It did not. It wasn't until the 1960s and the Great Society programs of the Johnson Era that "Freedom from Want" was actually made a social and political principle in this country, a principle that we may note is being dismantled as our governing representatives seek ways to cut benefits for the masses, including Social Security and food stamps, while continuing to increase rewards and benefits for the highest of the mighty.

This is why the National Surveillance/Security State has become so essential to those few who are accumulating such remarkable rewards during a period of such economic decline and hardship for so many. As we see the identity of "terrorist" re-defined over and over and over again to include more and more individuals and groups that might one day prove problematical to the rule by the very few and the unfettered exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, we see the true nature of the Security fetish of Our Rulers. We see the "why" being answered with action.

We are all, ultimately, potential suspects and thus we all must be surveilled. This is essential for the survival and continued prosperity of Our Betters. Uppitiness must be channeled and controlled, revolt must be suppressed.

I find it interesting that some people who point out that this is the way it has been for a long time are being denounced as "Obots" and whatnot, when they are trying to get across the notion that some people have been yelling about the Surveillance State and the Security Fetish of the Ruling Class for many years and have generally been ignored or shushed, on the fictional basis that it's not really happening, or if it is, it isn't really all that worrisome, or if it is worrisome, it's better to keep quiet about it. Instead of taking it seriously when something might have been done about it, too many of those with prominent platforms in the media and on the internet were either silent or extra cautious, fearing that if too much was said or made of it, or if objections actually led to action, the Stasi would be on their tails like white on rice.

Now, interestingly, they aren't afraid, nor do they hesitate to accuse those who were calling for action years ago of being tacit supporters of universal surveillance and the security state all along. It is very much a through-the-looking-glass and down-the-rabbit-hole situation, by no means the first in these realms.

Now it's an all-important issue, but what's to be done about it -- apart from arguing and debating in endless circles?

In 1936, Americans discovered to their shock and horror that the New Deal hadn't really accomplished what they thought it had set out to do, and many millions of Americans, symbolized by Dorothea Lange's portrait of Florence Thompson, were still suffering severely. They would be reminded again in the 1960s with exposés of economic and social hardships  all over the country. In those days, Americans and their representatives in Congress assembled were empowered to and capable of doing something to alleviate that suffering.

Now? Not so much. No, let's be honest: not at all. Our Rulers are actively instituting programs of impoverishment and suffering for the masses, and the public is advised to acquiesce quietly or be subjected to the tender ministrations of or brutal suppression by the bloated National Security State -- as has been demonstrated against various groups and individuals for years. We are well past the point where the People might have intervened to halt or reverse our collective disempowerment.

Now the options for reversing what's been under way for so many years are highly constrained. Lawsuits are among the options available. But when the courts are part of the problem...

Congressional agitation is potentially useful, but when congress itself is part of the problem...

Popular outrage is hard to sustain when the Ruling Classes really don't give a shit about what the People want any more...

It's another fine mess we've got ourselves into...