The Leering Sphere or The Bomb in New Mexico

Today July 16, 2018, is the 73rd anniversary of the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site in New Mexico.

Santa Fe Opera interpretation of The Gadget -- "Dr. Atomic" 2018 Season

This titanium sphere -- or was it stainless steel? -- hung menacingly over the entire production of Peter Sellars' and John Adams's "Dr. Atomic" which opened at Santa Fe Opera last night [July 14], shortly before the 73rd anniversary of the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range (then the  Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range.)

The Gadget as it was called, memories of The Gadget, the enormity of what was created at Los Alamos -- a bare 25 miles from the semi-outdoor Opera House ("the audience can see Los Alamos from their seats" quoth librettist and director Peter Sellars in one of the talks we heard before the performance), and the aftermath of the atomic bomb test at Trinity Site, July 16, 1945, some 200 miles south of Los Alamos resonate profoundly in New Mexico, in some ways more profoundly than anywhere else in the world except Japan.

There were far more US nuclear tests outside Las Vegas, NV, and in the Pacific than in New Mexico (just one -- the first one --that we know of in our backyard) but ultimately the atmospheric tests elsewhere became a kind of twisted Cold War entertainment - "whoa, wouldja lookit that!" -- that was sometimes shown to school kids before their Duck and Cover exercises to scare the  shit out of them (how well I remember.)

"Dr. Atomic" deals with the tragic story of Dr. J, Robert Oppenheimer ("Oppie") at Los Alamos and Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the hours leading up to the first atomic bomb test and its echoes through time to today. 

It's a complex story that doesn't exist in linear time, and apparently the complexity and non-linearity as well as the often jarring contemporary musical score can be off-putting to some opera-goers though it wasn't apparent opening night. It was a full house. The audience's attention was as intense as the music and performances. The response was enthusiastic.

I overheard one rather fancy looking woman talking during intermission: "My friend told me I wouldn't like it. Well, I rather think I do," she said. Indeed.

I can't say I "liked" it, no. But I will say I was quite taken with it and had no problem staying for its 3 hours and 20 minute length (with intermission) and the interminable after performance getting-out-of the-parking-lot minuet. (I said to one of the parking boys, "At this rate, we'll be here all night." He grinned and said, "That's only because my co-workers are incompetent. Have a safe trip home!!" Chuckle,)

We got home at 2:45 am tired but moved.

We've been semi-immersed in the story of nuclear weapons and the struggle against them in New Mexico for as long as we've been here, for almost as long as we've been coming here (more than 35 years now). I've written several pieces about it, about visiting Trinity site, about going to Los Alamos, about duck and cover, and so on and so forth. No one of my generation escaped fear of the looming mushroom cloud. It was the defining image of the post WWII era, one that seems to have been largely forgotten now or set aside by the younger generations. Thoughts of nuclear annihilation, instant incineration, barely reach consciousness except under the most extraordinary circumstances these days. And then the images seem to be off the mark.

Hardly anyone seems to understand what a nuclear weapon is or does anymore. And maybe that's a good thing.

Peter Sellars said he tried to maintain the classical tragic unities of time and place, and he tried to tell the story of the tragedy of what happened not just to Oppenheimer but for many of those who worked on developing The Bomb and of course for the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who died as a result of its use.

It's pointed out during the opera that many more Japanese civilians died during the firebombings of Tokyo and Yokahama that preceded the use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To say, then, an atom bomb is a unique horror is something of a stretch, no? No, it's not a stretch at all when one bomb can cause in an instant more destruction than thousands dropped over a period of hours or days.

The scientists at Los Alamos agonized over the use of nuclear weapons, and hundreds tried to convince Washington authorities not to use the creation of their laboratories on populations -- ever, if possible. Of course, then and now, there was a contrary faction who dearly wanted to use nuclear weapons, not just for effect, either.

Particularly torn by his creation was J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. A point is made that he is driven mad by what he has created. He never fully recovers, and in a sense, his creation kills him -- as well as many, many more.

Sellars reconceived the production for Santa Fe. For one thing, the production takes place within sight of Los Alamos (if you look hard!), and within hailing distance of Trinity. Those of us who live here and have paid attention know these places and these stories rather well. Earlier productions (we have a DVD of one, I believe it was in Amsterdam) focused more on the story telling than on its meaning, and they were visualized much more completely. The DVD production uses a close replica of The Gadget that is brought out at a particular time to be hoisted onto the tower, whereas in Santa Fe the Sphere that represents The Gadget and much else is never not there; its presence looming -- and leering -- throughout.

Sellars said the shiny Sphere was meant to reflect the audience, but it doesn't really do that (at least not from where we were sitting in cheap seats toward the back of the orchestra section.) What it reflected instead were the lights on stage which had the effect of creating many different facial expressions, from evil and bloodthirsty to almost benign. It was remarkable and mesmerizing. The picture above was taken by your correspondent some time before the beginning of the performance, and it is one of the many instances when the "eyes" of the Sphere gazed impassively on the scene before it.

In this production, too, Sellars made a conscious and mostly successful effort to include Native Americans on stage and integrated into the story in somewhat the same way they were part of the story of the creation of the Bomb. This is Indian Country, the events happened in Indian Country, and the effects are still felt throughout Indian Country -- particularly on the uranium miners in Navajoland and at Laguna Pueblo. That deadly effect is not dealt with directly in the opera. Sellars was asked by a Diné gentleman at one of the talks whether he'd included the miners, and he wouldn't answer directly. He said something about the "effects on everyone then and now" are included, but that isn't what he was asked. In fact, there is no mention of miners at all. There is only passing mention of Downwinders -- people who were unwittingly affected by the fallout from the Trinity test,. But at least they are there -- actual Downwinders on stage -- along with dancers from the Tesuque, Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos. They performed a ceremonial corn dance prior to the performance of the opera -- as a healing gesture -- and then returned in the second act as a Presence, representing the Original Peoples upon whom and among whom but not by whom this monstrosity of war was created and perpetrated.

The presence of the Indians helped to ground the production but I felt they were not integrated into it the way  they might have been -- and that that was probably their choice. It's not their story, and they're not telling. They could and one day probably will tell their own story, though, and it will be quite different.

As we were making our way to the parking lot before the performance, there were sheriffs deputies along the road, signs saying "Ticket holders only beyond this point" and at the entrance to the parking lot a young man asked to see our tickets. He said there were protests expected, and they had to check. Hm. As we were making our way from the parking lot to the Opera House, a young man in the high priced parking area near the venue asked that we take some literature  from the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition protesting the production and the proposed increase in nuclear weapons development in New Mexico. This was intended, said the literature, to make New Mexico the sole production site for "plutonium pits" -- something I'd never heard of -- that were the essential cores of nuclear bombs.

They were protesting the production because they saw it as a celebration of nuclear weapons and war.

Uh. No. It's not. Far from it. That's the thing about tragedy. It doesn't celebrate.





So Come Up To The Lab

Completely OT: During the summer of 1973, one of the designers for the theater where we were working brought in the London cast album of "The Rocky Horror Show," and we played it incessantly backstage. Wore. It Out. The next summer, the show itself was brought from London to the Roxy in Hollywood, and a bunch of us got tickets and headed forth to see it. We were shocked to find that most of the audience was suburbanites from Van Nuys and such -- we knew because of all the white belts, polyester shirts and pant suits, and the many station wagons being valet parked. But the show was amazing. Tim Curry was amazing. The whole cast was amazing. We cheered and whooped and carried on as if we'd seen some sort of miracle. Frankenfurter's entrance, though similar to that in the movie -- in that it involved an elevator and platform heels (and Tim Curry in a cape)  was a complete show stopper. The place went wild. And recall, the Roxy was -- and is -- quite a small facility, set up like a supper club, not a theater. The show took place all around and within the audience. It was extraordinary.

"So come up to the lab
See what's on the slab...."
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So today (actually, yesterday, now, as I was diverted by other things before I could finish this post) was our day to hie ourselves up to Los Alamos. We didn't go to the lab as it were -- I wasn't even sure where the labs were until after I checked the map again when we got home. The labs are on a ridge across a ravine south of the town. There's one way in, and you have to have a pass.

I'm sure it's grand. The folks we know who are connected with the place are... well, unique, let's put it that way.

We would not have made it at all if I hadn't taken the Red Van in for a major service call the day before. We knew something was wrong when we could barely get up Sedillo Hill on the way back from Albuquerque on Thursday. I thought it might be the dust clogging the air filter, but no, it was time for a tune up, and time to stanch some of the leaks, too...

At any rate, while I was waiting outside the shop for the repairs to be finished and signed off, I was watching the sky in the north and east. There were storm clouds gathering, lighting flashing, but it was still quite warm, and the air was strangely still. Despite all the lightning, there was no thunder, which I took as a sign that there wouldn't be any rain either. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a brownish cloud moving in from the northwest. It looked fairly small at first, but it grew and grew, seemingly moving from west to east, but later I would learn it was actually moving in from the north and west, and I was seeing its looming height as it got closer.

It was a haboob. The first one I've ever seen or experienced.

I don't recommend it.

The dust cloud kept growing in height as it moved south toward the shop.  Drew, the man working on the van, said he was going to drive it around the block to make sure everything was good, and I watched him turn onto the street as the dust cloud reached it. The wind picked up strongly, whistling through the portal under which I stood. The dust and grit in the air felt like sandpaper as it hit my face, and I turned away. The sky turned brown, and then it seemed like we were enveloped in a brown fog. I'd say visibility dropped to no more than 25 feet.

The wind was howling, but we were completely wrapped in brown fog. It was an image right out of the Dust Bowl of the '30s.

After a while, the air seemed to clear a bit, and I saw the Red Van coming back. Drew acted like nothing had happened as he an an assistant checked a few more things under the hood before handing me the key and sending me on my way. I drove maybe half a mile to the east, to the post office to pick up my mail, and as I did, the brown fog enveloped everything again, and the wind was blowing so hard that limbs were breaking off trees and flying through the murky air and landing in the street. Great. I couldn't see more than twenty feet or so ahead, and limbs were crashing in the streets. Needless to say, I proceeded at a crawl.

When I got to the post office, another car pulled up, and the woman driving just sat there. I went in the post office, turning away from the wind and the dust and holding on to my hat, just as another man went in the other door. He said to me, "LOVELY weather we're having, isn't it?" I said, "Couldn't get much worse." "Just wait," he said.

He was right. By the time I got the mail and headed back out to the Van, I could barely find it. I had to keep my head down, which made things difficult, but the combination of the wind and the dust made visibility practically zero, something like a white-out -- only it was brown and the air was warm and the grit cut like little razors.

I sat in the Van for a few minutes while I waited for the air to clear enough to at least see whether I was backing into another car or not.

It didn't take too long. But by the time I got back on the street, the brown fog was back, and the other drivers and I drove no faster than if we had been caught in a winter ice fog (which I have been, as I'm sure most other drivers around here have been.) Finally, when I got close to home, the air started clearing and the wind started dying down. I could smell the pungent aroma of the dust through the a/c vents in the Van. By the time I turned into our driveway, there were even a few rain drops and almost no sign of the dust cloud any more.

The whole episode had lasted perhaps fifteen minutes. It was not pleasant at all.

Old timers say they haven't seen anything like it since the '50's -- or maybe even the '30's.

Later, I talked to a friend who lives on a spread about three or four miles north, and she said she'd heard the wind, but didn't see the dust cloud. She said the wind was so loud she thought someone was outside rolling her garbage can around. When I described the dust cloud, she couldn't believe it. A haboob. Like they have in Phoenix. She's lived in this area off and on for about 20 years, and she'd never seen anything of that magnitude. Mostly, she said, she's seen dust devils, some of them quite large resembling tornadoes, but never a huge wall cloud like I described.

The dust cloud came in from the north west, feeding on the drought-parched open fields, some of which have been plowed recently but not planted. Some of the local farmers have planted several times, only to dig up the stunted crops due to lack of rain. We may have had a wild time with the dust cloud the other day, but the amount of rain that followed it could be counted by individual drops. People are putting on a brave face, but realistically, it's frightening. Two towns -- Magdalena and Cloudcroft -- so far have run out of water when their wells ran dry, and they say that the reservoirs serving Santa Fe will dry up shortly. The Rio Grande is running nothing but sand and dust south of Elephant Butte. As bad as it is, there are still a surprising number of cattle out grazing on the next-to-nothing grasslands.

And yesterday, on the way up to Los Alamos, we saw pronghorn again grazing in their own fields.

The drive up was very scenic -- except for the smoke. Like last year and the year before, there are a number of large forest fires burning and when wind and weather conditions are just right, the whole region fills with smoke blocking views and making it difficult for people like me to breathe. I've been told I have mild emphysema from all those years I was a heavy smoker. These days, even fireplace smoke in the air will bother me. Forest fire smoke can get me into coughing fits.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

When we climbed up the last few winding miles of cliff-clinging roadway to get into Los Alamos proper, I said it was something like the climb into Tahoe, and in fact, but for the absence of the Lake, the effect and the visuals are very similar.

Los Alamos and the labs are located on the ridges formed of volcanic tuff and lava flows by the Valles Caldera just to the west. For its part, the Valles Caldera is one of the largest and most recently active volcanic calderas in the country. It's said to have last erupted around 40,000 years ago, and it is still considered active. To see and realize just how extensive the volcanic formations around the caldera are -- mile after mile after mile, very thick, is to be reminded -- if a reminder was necessary -- just how impotent we puny humans are in the face of such enormous natural forces. The burned over Jemez Mountains just outside of town made clear what the presence of the volcanic formations might not have.

It seemed particularly appropriate to have that reminder in Los Alamos given what went on there and still goes on there.

This is a view of the Las Conchas Fire in 2011 taken from Placitas (the pic is from the WikiPedia). This fire burned into Los Alamos, threatening the labs and burning dozens of homes. It also destroyed important watershed, leaving the region highly vulnerable to flash flooding.

Most of the chatter among the the folks we were with in Los Alamos was about the drought and the increasingly harsh water restrictions people are living under and what can be done about it -- which isn't much. I'm still puzzled by the lack of cloud seeding in the area -- for there are clouds most days, and some are obvious rain clouds that drop nothing -- but there are unresolved issues with the process and much dispute over its environmental effects and effectiveness, so it's not being done to my knowledge at all. Part of the problem has been that the air is so dry, in many cases rain evaporates before it reaches the ground. Even seeded clouds would face the same atmospheric conditions.

So, in New Mexico, we suffer with drought and dust and wildfires while much of the rest of the country has way too much rainfall and massive tornadoes and other storms causing immense havoc. People are highly adaptable to changing weather conditions, but still...

Los Alamos is worth a return trip, not so much for touristy things (please) as for the diversity of insights we've found among people there. It really is a "thinking" place, and not all of the thinking is dedicated to blowing shit up with nuclear weapons -- as important as that seems to be among some members of the community. No, there are other things to think about. And many in Los Alamos do so.

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Meanwhile, having seen the show live all those many years ago, the movie of "The Rocky Horror Show" was a real let down when it came out. I know it's got cult status now, and we've been to a few of the audience participation presentations -- which at least re-energize it. Of course we never considered producing the stage version when we were in that line of endeavor... While "Rocky Horror" not quite as time-bound as "Hair", it's still something of a period piece... in a manner of speaking.