And Another Thing: The Migration Crisis

Well, we're told that's a Crisis... again. It's come around again after fading a bit during the pandemic's worst days -- which we're supposedly actually still living through despite vaccines and such. But we're told people are on the move, all over Europe and forgathering in Latin America for more "caravans" to the USofA.

And I've pondered some of this in the context of my own migration to New Mexico from California, as well as in the context of my German, Irish, and English ancestors. What impelled them and what impelled Ms Ché and me on our journeys? 

Simply: why?

Though I was told no stories of it growing up, the Irish Famine was clearly a factor and probably the main one in my Irish ancestors' decision to emigrate to the United States. The whole family left at once in 1849, all except my great-grandfather who stayed behind for some reason while his parents and five of his siblings took ship to -- surprisingly -- New Orleans and then made their way upriver to Ohio where a relation had been since 1835 or so.

My great-grandfather doesn't show up in the US records until 1856 when the family and their relations had moved to Iowa -- with no clear indication of when he arrived. Part of what struck me about this is that the most of them arrived during the California Gold Rush, but they didn't go to California, though it would later become the home to all their descendants (none are left in Iowa) including my own self.

So far as I know, none of my Irish ancestors' descendants are left in Ireland. Or if they are, they aren't in County Offaly or Tipperary where my Irish roots were planted. 

I can understand the Famine impelling them to leave Ireland. But why would they not go to California right away? Clearly it was a longed for dream destination. But it's a question I can't answer. 

They went to the United States because they could; there were no restrictions on emigration from Europe at the time. They encountered sometimes extreme levels of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic discrimination once they got here, but that wasn't the same as prohibition from entry. I'm pretty sure they were driven out of Ohio by the Know-Nothings back in the day. But they put a brave face on it ("There were better opportunities on the Iowa frontier") and made a success of farming and later the law.

As for the German side of my ancestry, I'm not at all sure. I know very little about them. My German great-grandfather left his little town in Baden-Wurttemburg when he was 14 -- 1854 -- after two of his brothers had already left. He arrived in New York when he was 15 (taking almost a year from the time he left home till the day he arrived in NYC.) He apprenticed to a bookbinder in Brooklyn until 1863 when he moved to Iowa, got married to another German immigrant and lived among his brothers there. He took work as a carpenter on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a job he held till he died in 1901.

One thing I discovered was that there were still people with my great-grandfather's last name in that little town in Germany, so it's likely the whole family didn't emigrate to America the way my Irish ancestors did. What I found was that my great-grandfather, his parents, and two of his brothers all emigrated at various times from 1852 to 1856 or '57, but other relations stayed behind and their descendants are still there. Why the ones who left did so, I don't know. The situation in Southern Germany was unsettled to say the least after the Revolutions of 1848, but how that affected my ancestors and whether it was a motivation for them to leave I don't know. 

Unsettled or deadly conditions at home and the opportunity to emigrate to somewhere else appear to have been the motivations for my ancestors to leave their homes in Europe. It wasn't adventure and conquest -- such as it was for many British emigrants during the Colonial era. 

I've been able to trace my mother's British ancestors to arrivals in New Jersey in the 1640s. That was a surprise. There was no hint from her that she had ancestors that were practically on the Mayflower -- and in fact, if some of the stories I've found being told are true, she may well have other ancestors who were on the Mayflower. The impelling cause of their emigration from England is not entirely mysterious. Religious animosity and civil war seem to be obvious. Together with opportunity to live somewhere else, why not leave?

But the opportunity to emigrate in the 1620s and 1640s was risky to say the least, and if one survived, it was the opportunity to live rough. Colonists until the late 1600s and well into the 1700s were largely a miserable lot. Most lived rough on a frontier where the Natives were no longer inclined to welcome them.

So why would my ancestors take that kind of risk and endure such discomfort?

I didn't know anything about them until did all that research in the Ancestry archives.

And that gets us to current events and the masses of migrants all over the world, many impelled by wars and social disruption as well as the acceleration of climate change. 

Many seem to see no other choice but to take the risk and endure the discomfort -- and if it comes to it, lose their lives in the attempt.

Dreadful. But it's happened before, and it's happening now. 

When my ancestors went abroad to America migration was celebrated in song and story. Not so with current migrants whose suffering and deaths are a "tragedy" -- but apparently unavoidable. There is no welcome for them. Anywhere. 

Like the Jews trying to escape Pharaoh or the Nazis. Nope. Can't come here! 

For the millions on the move today, there is no welcome anywhere. 

Still they come, still they try, still they long for succor. 

And some, a very few, will succeed.

As for our own migrations to California and from California to New Mexico, that's another story I think I'll leave for another time.

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.