Bread, Circuses and the Danger of Reading Science Fiction

The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be

like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty

-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to

thewriters of fiction for such information. It's none of their

business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're
like, and what you are like -- what's going on -- what the

weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight,

look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists

say. But they don't tell you what what you will see and hear.

All they can tell you is what they have seen and
heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent

in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent telling lies.

--Ursula K. LeGuin, Introduction to

The Left Hand of Darkness

I have been engaging in the dangerous and subversive activity of reading science fiction.

As Ursula K. LeGuin tells us above, Science Fiction is never about the future, and it makes no predictions. Science Fiction is, she says--though far more poetically--always about us, now.

This is why when reading a particularly good Sci-Fi novel, one is apt to see truth within the lies so convincingly spun by a master in genre. And this is why one walks away from reading a well-crafted Sci-Fi story or novel with new insight into who we are at this moment in time.

An awareness of this can a little scary--when it's not downright terrifying.

I have been reading the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. The story, for young adults, is the tale of Katniss Everdeen, a young woman who grows up in the country of Panem, which exist(s)(ed) in what used to be North America. In this alternate future/world-- the people of12 districts are enslaved by a city known only as the Capitol, and in order to maintain their slave status of crafty obedience, the Capitol forces them each to send a boy and a girl to compete in the "Hunger Games", a fight to the death on national television. The people are told that these Games--and the need to send their children to almost certain death--is in punishment for a rebellion that took place almost a century before, so that the children are sacrifices--called "Tributes"--and their deaths are punishment for a crime that happened before any of them had ever been born.

There are many realities about us, now, that are reflected in these books: the sacrafice of innocent lives to sustain political power and the cynical use of the real aspirations of individuals for life and freedom to consolidate that power; the blurring of television and reality to the point where the misery of others becomes entertainment for the some and a cruel reminder of servility to others; the acquiescence of many to servitude for the sake, not of great riches and power, but merely for enough to (barely) survive another day; the spark of freedom and rebellion that dwells within the hearts of even the meekest of slaves.

In this story there is also the theme of the disconnect between the privileged Capitol Dwellers--one can certainly not call them free!-- and those born to the Districts, whose lot in life is to toil and to starve; and the work of their hands is taken from them, tribute to a class of political royalty who party and play in the Capitol, while the people of the Districts learn subtle disobedience to their masters in order to survive. Thus, while the people in the Districts understand that they are slaves, that the government owns everything, the support staff of that government do not. Rather, they primp and party and bet on the deaths of children in the Hunger Games each year, and within them there is no thought, only the constant distraction.

Katniss sees this stark contrast after she has won the Hunger Games through an act of rebellion. As she is being dressed and fussed over by her "prep" team for a televised appearance, she thinks:

"It's funny, because even though they are rattling on about the Games, it's all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred. "I was in bed!" "I had just had my eyebrows dyed!" "I swear I nearly fainted!" Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena." (The Hunger Games, p. 354).

For the people of the Capitol, the Games are a gruesome reality show through which they live a life and death adventure vicariously, and without thought, whereas for the people of the districts it is a grim reality to be endured, like all of the other privations forced upon them because of their status as the children and grandchildren of traitors:

"We don't wallow around the Games this way in District 12. We grit our teeth and watch because we must, and try to get back to business as soon as possible when they're over." (ibid.)

Thus, any child of the Districts of Panem learns that he or she is a slave, whose life and work belong to the government in the Capitol, whereas the people who do the mundane work of the government are adults in name only, acting like thoughtless children, their lives governed by the latest fashion, their heads full of the latest gossip about others. Not the power brokers, these people live silly, second hand lives.

The children who are forced into the arena each year come to understand that they are pawns, pampered and fed for a little while before their almost certain deaths in the arena; they are game pieces for the entertainment of the Capitol citizens, used to distract the privileged from the reality of serfdom. For the children, 'winning' means surviving by killing other innocent children, and their pampered future back in their districts is a life of nightmares and deceit, a damaged life sustained only by finding ways to evade the terrible knowledge that their lives are not their own, ever. Those "winners" who do not have a talent for that evasion live out their lives in madness. As another "winner", Peeta, says in a televised interview to a glittering talk-show host called Ceasar:

" 'Once you're in the arena,the rest of the world becomes very distant,' he continues. 'All of the people, the things you really cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you know you're going to have to do some killing because in the arena you only get one wish. And it's very costly.'

'It costs your life,' says Ceasar.

'Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?' says Peeta. 'It costs everything you are.' " (Mockinjay , p. 23).

And so, within such a reality, there are those like the heroine, Katniss, who survive the Games through an irrepressible act of rebellion, a free act that may indeed cost her life, an act that demonstrates to those in power that physical chains cannot entirely supress the memory of freedom. Such an act is not consciously contemplated but arises out of the knowledge of the nature of human freedom that burns, unquenchable in the soul. And once such an action is taken, the person is changed, and one such act leads to another and another, until the reality of freedom bubbles into consciousness thought:

"As I drift off, I try to imagine that world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died. Where Peeta's child could be safe." (Catching Fire, p. 354).

Thus, reading a good Sci-Fi novel is dangerous. For as Ursula K. LeGuin says:

"In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find -- if it's a good novel -- that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to _say_ just what we learned, how we were changed. " (Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness).

Oh, yes, reading Sci-Fi can be a subversive act. Sometimes, if it is good Sci-Fi, we see a truth that the author is telling us about our world, about our selves. And we cannot unsee it . Good Sci-Fi it is not about geeking out on the future or vegging out on technology. Good Sci-Fi is about us. Now. And once we have seen the particular truth about our condition, we cannot unsee it.

Reading science fiction is a dangerous thing. For a good science fiction novel strips away the evasions and the confusions, making stark the reality of our own lives within the text. In our real lives we often go about like Katniss's prep team, wrapped in the mundane and necessary routines that make up daily life. But in the dialogue between the reader and the text, the reader's reality is stripped of the little things, and the meaning of it, illuminated. We are made uncomfortable. Are we really like the citizens of the Capitol, living vicariously through others? Do we see revolution as a Google-made game, created for our entertainment, returning to our own fleshpots, making a pun of the crack-down that we ignore afterwards? Are we more like the people of the Districts, afraid to step out of line for fear of losing what little they have? Is there perhaps, something of Katniss hidden deep within us, something that drives us to act--albeit uncounsciously--in defiance of our own slavery?

No wonder, then, that unfree societies take up the time of the individuals that they enslave with bread and circuses, in order to distract. But even in the real world, bread and circuses are in themselves dangerous to the regime that uses them. For while they lull the "citizens" who are fed bread they did not earn into somnolence, they eventually remind the circus "performers" that their lives are not their own, that they are living for the purposes of others. But in real life, this may take generations. In the story of the Israelites in Egypt, it took 400 years for the Israelites to realize that they had allowed themselves to become enslaved, the lives of their children at stake to prop up the power of Pharaoh.

But in Sci-Fi novels like the Hunger Games Trilogy, the story begins at the place where the reality of the consequences of second-hand lives, and of enslavement is no longer obscured; in the stripped down version of a story about us, now, we the truth of who we are now, and what we are doing now. And what it means. Really.

Oh, reading Sci-Fi can be a dangerous, dangerous act. For by paring down what is, and placing it in another place and time, it can cut through the bread and circuses, and bring the reader into an uncomfortable confrontation with reality.

And that changes a person, until with that internal dialogue, and then another and another, the unconscious understanding of what human freedom entails bubbles dangerously up, irrepressible, and the undercurrent becomes a mighty stream that wakes us up and forces us to confront the reality that all is not as we thought it was. And that understanding leads us into a confrontation with those who wish to keep us asleep and compliant to the thousands of little slaveries that keep us in bondage to their wills.

And so the subversive act of reading Sci-Fi can enventually provoke us to recognize who we are, to break our bonds, and lead us out of our second hand lives into the liberty of who knows where?

The Principle of Least Astonishment: Deep Time and Human Time

‎"People look upon the natural world as if all motions

of the past had set the stage for us and were now frozen

. . . To imagine that turmoil is in the past and

somehow we are now in a more stable time

seems to be a psychological need. Leonardo Seeber

. . .referred to it as the principle of least astonishment.

As we have seen, the time we are in

is just as active as the past. "

--Eldrige Moores, Tectonist;

from "Assembling California",

in Annals of the Former World, by John McPhee

Years ago, before I studied biology in graduate school, I graduated with a degree in Geology with Honors from a stable university on the continental craton. Although I ended up in a different field, my knowledge of geology has made the history of North America come alive for me in my travels across the continent over the course of the past 30 years.

Photo: Unconformity between the Tertiary volcanics of the Datil-Mogollon Volcanic field and the underlying Mesaverde shales and sandstones. The lavas were extruded during Eocene-Oligocene time (beginning approximately 28 mya). This unconformity is exposed in the wall of the Zuni Plateau north of the Zuni Salt Lake, Catron County, NM.

Browsing in the trade books section of the university bookstore one day during my senior undergraduate year, a title caught my eye: In Suspect Terrain, by John McPhee. A reproduction of a painting of the Delaware Water Gap graced the cover. It was a book of essays about geology and the plate tectonics revolution from the perspective of the USGS's conondont specialist at the time, Anita Harris.

The title caught my eye, because Skip Nelson, our structural professor, had been discussing with us the concept of "suspect terranes", pieces of the geology of a region that have a different geology from the adjacent country rock, and the origins of which are suspected to be from elsewhere on earth. In those early days of the theory of Plate Tectonics, little was known about suspect terranes, and it was hard to see how such terranes fit into the theory. Much arm-waving--the speculations of scientists scratching their heads together--became stories,and then hypotheses that had a decent chance of being tested as the both the science and the technology that supported it advanced over the years. But at that time it was still arm-waving and stories.

Of course I had to buy the book. And in rooting around a bit more in the same section, I ended up buying McPhee's first book on the subject, Basin and Range, as well.

I had gone into geology in 1979, after hearing about plate tectonics from my English professor at a small private liberal arts college. A transfer to the state university was required once my passion was ignited and my interests revealed. (That English professor saw that I was less than passionate about the liberal arts, and being somewhat of a curmudgeon, Dr. Pierson had written on one my papers: 'Does college bore you?' I was a little hurt at the time, because the truth hurts when one is trying to make the best of a bad college decision, but I was grateful to him later). The early '80's, as the revolutionary theory of Plate Tectonics was maturing in the field, was an exciting time to be thinking about geology and earth history, and I was captivated.

As I went through the spring semester of my senior year, with field trips to Missouri, Wisconsin and Ohio, I was also reading about the rise of the Basin and Range, the possible docking of micro-terranes on eastern North America, and the problem of overgeneralizing from theory without benefit of working field experience with the actual rocks. Reading McPhee and my texts in historical geology, stratigraphy, sedimentology, and structural geology became an obsession that took precedence over everything else. (I got a "C" in communications--required to "round out the degree"--which did not even upset me as it otherwise might have done).

Later, as a young mother chasing after a very energetic two-year old, I discovered McPhee's third book in the series, Rising from the Plains, about the Grand Old Man of Rocky Mountain Geology, David Love, whom I had met briefly during a field camp a few years earlier. Although my later interests and experiences, as well as the need to support my children by myself, took me in other directions, I maintained my interest in Geology. Recently, I found McPhee's Annals of the Former World, which contains the three original books about Geology,with updates and two new books, one on the geological origins of California, and one on the pre-Cambrian rocks that underly the sediments of the stable craton of North America.

Our move to the Ragamuffin Ranch, where the geology of the Colorado Plateau stands out in the Datil-Mogollon Volcanics, caused me to want to pick up Annals for a second time, and as with every really good book one re-reads, I noticed certain parts anew. In this case, I was thinking about the problem of dogmatism in science, encouraged both by scientists whose funding is politically motivated, and by non-scientists who confuse initial arm-waving with a testable hypothesis, and who take it to be the same as truth handed down from Sinai. "The science is settled," says one of the latter about one such arm-waving idea. But the science is rarely settled so early in the life of an idea.

Geology is by its nature a big-picture science, and one that depends a great deal on inference from what can be observed to how it got to be the way it is. Whereas much of science as practiced within the dominant paradigms of each scientific field today is deductive, the big-picture thinking about Geology is necessarily inductive. (Despite the turf wars about these two methods of discovery, both deductive and inductive thinking are necessary for a complete science). Further, Geology--by the nature of its subject matter--is primarily about TIME. Lots and lots of time. Or as geologists say it, "Deep Time". Time that is orders of magnitude greater than the span of a human life, or even the span of numerous human generations. The kind of time that geologists tend to discuss makes a million years appear as the blink of an eye, and the entire time of human existance on the earth is scarcely longer than that.

The disconnect between Deep Time and Human Time leads to some interesting human misconceptions about our power and place upon the planet. On the one hand, human beings are the first species upon the earth that have become self-referencing observers of the evolution of life on the planet. We are capable of thinking about and questioning the way life came to be here, and our place in that parade of "endless forms most beautiful". We can think about the meaning of our existence and we know the finite nature of our lives. All of this makes us important to ourselves, and perhaps, as an aspect of the universe that observes itself, we are important in the grand scheme of things.

But this disconnect between Deep Time and Human Time also leads to the idea that we are the culminating act of evolution: that our existence was the necessary end of a long chain of programmed events. It is rather like the paint on the Eiffel Tower believing that the tower was built for its own sake, as Mark Twain once remarked. Enter Seeber's Principle of Least Astonishment, which is the idea that all of what we see around us is the culmination, that now that human beings walk the earth, change should stop because evolution is finished. The continents are in their final place, the species that exist now shall exist forever, the climate that we have been born into shall not change. So we have written, and so shall it be done.

Evolution has no teleological direction. It is the response of organisms adapting to and failing to adapt to changing environments over time. This leads to changes in the gene frequencies within species, and that is evolution. If we were able to rewind and replay the course of the evolution of life upon the earth, there is no guarantee that the results would be the same as we now see; there are too variables along the way. Species that have the genetic wherewithal to meet and survive environmental change evolve. Those that do not become extinct.

And so it becomes somewhat amusing to watch as those who believe that they understand evolution, those that make fun of the Creationists and call them "neanderthals", are also those that have turned science into a political agenda and have begun an effort to "Stop Global Climate Change" by legislation. They have about as much chance of success as they do to "Re-Unite Gondwanaland!" (Both quotes can be found on bumperstickers.The first appears to be serious, and the second is geological tongue-in-cheek).

Even geologists get pulled up short by the disconnect between Deep Time and Human Time. And even though they predict that when the two kinds of time intersect, as they did during the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and the Tsunami of 2004, turmoil becomes inevitable, we still tend to think that the earth should behave itself and stay still beneath our feet. We tend to want the species that existed when we were born to be there when we are old, and glaciers should neither retreat nor advance so long as human beings live upon the earth. We think of disasters as a nasty interruption of "normal" rather than a "normal" feature of a dynamic planet.

Never mind that we owe our big brains to the last ice age. Never mind that climate has been changing upon the earth since before the oldest rocks we can find on the continents existed. And never mind that life on the planet has had an effect on its environment since the oxygen revolution.

From the perspective of Human Time, an earthquake, a tsunami, a volcanic eruption, are all potential disasters. And it makes sense to think of them as such. Human beings are meaning-making individuals, and we view events from the perspective of their meaning to us.
And that is necessary and--dare I say it?--normal to our evolutionary niche. And if we can predict and protect ourselves from disaster, this is a good thing for us. But when put into the perspective of Deep Time, such disasters, even ones on a extinction-level scale, are more grist for the mill of evolution--the change over time of life on earth.

The Principle of Least Astonishment may indeed by a psychological necessity for going about the daily business of living. And yet now and then, the view from the perspective of Deep Time creates for us the Most Astonishment, it creates wonder at the precious nature of our existence, birthed on the edge of the creative maelstrom and able to look into it and see the circumstances of our genesis. Wonderful life, indeed!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: From the Very Edge of the Storm

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY REVIVED!

It has been so long since I posted a "Nearly Wordless Wednesday" post on a regular basis that I would have to research my archives to figure out when I was last in the habit. I have been neglecting the fun side and the daily life part of my blog in the past while, but now with a new year and so many changes, it is as good a time as any to revive these homely and fun practices. No better time, really, than when one is at the western edge of an historic blizzard!

Winter Storm Warnings appeared on Sunday here, and were not in effect for Apache County, AZ just 12 miles to the west. The storm formed here, where all the weather maps showed the front forming and the Jet stream was just east of us. The first precipitation started Monday afternoon, in the form of sleet that turned to snow.







It snowed in bands interspersed with sunshine all day Tuesday. Here at the edge, we were getting blowback from the rotation of the storm cell. On Tuesday evening, the dogs and I enjoyed a spirited ball game, the Canine Super Bowl, in weather that was reminiscent of Soldier Field.

It snowed all night Tuesday to Wednesday morning, and the Cross Quarter dawned gray and cloudy, but soon turned to sunshine as the cold front finally rotated back to us. A snow day for the CIT meant that we fed the cattle in the light. Domestic cattle do not scrape off the snow to get at the grass. They must be fed when the snow is on!

The snow in this picture is deeper than it looks--about six inches fell on Ragamuffin ranch.



This snowy hillside is the view from my new office window in the house at Ragamuffin Ranch. It was taken this afternoon, when the storm had passed and the cold had come on.

Although it is quite cold outside, the sun coming through the picture window feels warm on my face.





A combination of fog created by the sublimation of the snow by the intense sunlight and windblown surface snow obscure the side vents of the Red Hill caldera to the northeast, making a kind of foggy ground blizzard in the plains north of our valley. Beautiful. And deadly cold.

I don't know if old Punxatawney Phil saw his shadow or not, but I do hope that we get an early spring this year! Last year it was quite late, and I am still shell shocked from the two-storms per week regimine that we endured last year. I like snow. And we need it. But the bitter cold, I can do without.

Good Weather for a Road Trip

Since January 1, 2011, the Engineering Geek and I have spent exactly three nights under the same roof. All of those nights were within the first two weeks of January. On New Year's Day, the CIT and I drove down through frigid sunshine on icy roads because he was due to start school on the 3rd. At that time, Cowboy J. and his wife Nurse A. were still living in the ranch house, and the CIT and I took up housekeeping in the Cabin. However, they have since moved to new digs, and we have one horse, three pregnant cows, two heifers, and one bull to care for, as well as the dogs. So as one of us stays at Ragamuffin House to prepare our move, the other is down here, looking after the CIT and Ragamuffin Ranch.

One of the few consolations for our hurried lunches at halfway points between the two places is that the weather had been good for roadtrips over the past month. Last Monday was one of the best days. The roads were completely dry, the sun was out and the temperature was in the 40's in the highlands and in the 50's in the Rio Grande Valley. And I was driving US 60 to Socorro and then up I-25 to Belen, where I was planning to meet the EG for lunch, so that we did not have to pass exactly like ships in the night. I took some good pictures of the geological features that day, for the sun was out and despite a stiff wind in the valley, the air was relatively clear. Here, then, are some pictures of the grandeur of New Mexico.

Peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains near Pie Town, NM, rise above the surface in these southern reaches of the Colorado Plateau. The Sawtooths are part of the Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field, and are the sedimentary deposition of pyroclastics weathered from the volcanic action between 24 and 40 million years ago. The sedimentary layers also include breccias composed of large pieces of the country rock at the time, limestones and sandstones that were incorporated by the streams that deposited the weathered volcanics.

Looking southwest across the plains of San Augustin towards the San Mateo Mountains west of Magdalena. During the last ice age, a glacial lake resided within the downfaulted block between two upfaulted mountain ranges. The lake within this graben finally disappeared about 8,000 years ago. I was standing on an old beach bar of the lake that once was. The San Mateos are volcanic in nature, and the rock is composed of ash flow tuff and rhyolite flows that erupted during the Oligocene, about 28 million years ago. I find it easy to imagine the waters of a lake on the flat plain below the mountains.



The western front of the northern Magdalena Mountains, here seen from just west of Magdalena, NM. The mountains core consists of Precambrian igneous and sedimentary rocks that were upfaulted relative to the Precambrian sediments I was standing above while taking the picture. These mountains were later intruded and extruded by basalts and volcanics of the same age as the Rocky Mountains to the north, during the Laramide Revolution about 65 million years ago. These events account for the minerals , including silver and iron ore mined at Magdalena and Kelly during the early years of the 20th century. Highway 60 here joins a fault that defines the edge of the mountain range.


Looking slightly north of east across the Rio Grande Rift west of Magdalena. Behind me is the Magdalena fault that is resposible for the high valley upon which I stand. Across the rift are the upfaulted Los Pinos Mountains that define the eastern edge of the rift. The rift defines an area where the continent is being stretched apart, and the fault blocks on either side bound a graben. These faults are still active and the mountains are still rising relative to the valley floor. The Rio Grande Rift began pulling apart nearly 30 million years ago, and the maximum distance between Pennsylvanian Limestone at the top of the fault-block mountains and that same formation below the valley sediments is as much as 30,000 feet. The rifting is responsible for the activity of the Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Field to the west.



Here I am standing on the stabilized dunes of the Rio Salado north of Lemitar, within the Rio Grande Rift itself. The mountains in the background are rift fault block above the dunes to the southwest. They are composed of tertiary sedimentary rocks rising from the quaternary Santa Fe Formation. In the foreground, is a moving dune field just across the Rio Salado.





Here, I am standing on a terrace of the Santa Fe Group west of the Rio Grande at Belen looking across the rift to the Manzano Mountains that here define the Eastern boundary of the Rift. The steep side of the fault block, these mountains rise steeply, and form a rainshadow over the valley. The "green side" is the other side, that falls to the hinge of the fault block at a much gentler angle, and catches the rainfall.

The EG and I met and ate at a little railway car diner there on the edge of the terrace, that is open 24 hours a day. I recommend the Green Chile Burger.My trip took me on up the Rio Grande Rift to Albuquerque and then through the pass made by the Tijeras Fault to Ragamuffin House.

I thought I would be making another road trip from the Ragamuffin Ranch to Ragamuffin House this week, but the January thaw seems to have ended with the month, and today snow showers have become a steady snowfall here in the Western Mountains. It looks like I am here for the week, as the Continental Divide is expected to be difficult traveling. So I will look back with pleasure at the good weather and the road trip while I contemplate taking the 4WD ranch truck to the bus stop this afternoon to pick up the CIT.

We do need the snow. But the bitter cold that will follow, I could do without.

Update: Why Blogging Has Been Sporadic

In getting ready to finally write a blog post that has been planned for over a week, I am thinking that my readers deserve a little insight into the reasons for sporadic blogging.

It is not that I don't want to blog, and it is not that I have nothing to say. Many great ideas have come and gone with no blog post because I had other things I did not want to do as much, but that nevertheless needed to be done.



This is the way the world works when your Engineering Geek retires and you begin to do more than plan a move to a new part of the state. When doing takes the place of planning, that alone takes a monumental investment of time and energy. But when insurance companies first extend coverage and then rescind it, because--quite frankly--they don't know what they are doing; when it takes a10 minute hold time--and thus 10 wasted minutes of cell phone time--to establish long distance service on the ranch landline--; when time gets eaten by all of those little annoyances that used to be non-existent back in the days of real customer service--something has to give. And what has given (and given!) is the time alloted to writing the blog.



Yesterday, computer technical problems required an otherwise unnecessary trip to Gallup, the closest New Mexico Radio Shack to the ranch. Today, I was scheduled to write my blog.

And then--a major snowstorm watch was issued for most of the state. So a trip into the grocery store in Springerville became a must, to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables that would have run out in the next few days, and to get a few other items to make a snowstorm more bearable. Such as makings for hot chocolate . . .

And upon my return, the CIT and I dedicated a few hours to cutting wood. With the help of logging chains and good old Henry, the F-150, we pulled out four logs from the discard pile--too messed up to use in a house--and then the CIT took out the chainsaw and cut them into fireplace size pieces. We now have enough wood for the snow and cold temperatures that are on their way to us.



Now I am ready. I do hope we get a good snow so that I can finally write the planned blog!



In a few weeks I will be able to begin blogging more regularly again. Until then, know that I am thinking of all my blogging friends, and I am spending some time reading other blogs. It is easier to read than write after a long day of packing and hauling boxes of books. In the meantime, my planned blog for last week will go up tomorrow.



Let it snow!

In Which We Acquire a Horse and I Learn the Contemplative Art of Mucking

On Shabbat afternoon, I loaded up the CR-V, and with Umbrae riding shotgun, I headed out on the open road down to Ragamuffin Ranch. The Engineering Geek had returned to Ragamuffin House for Shabbat on Friday, and now it was my week to be at the ranch and his week to work on the house.

I had come down with a cold, and was not at all sure that I wanted to go down. But once I left the freeway and was driving down through the Malpais, and then across the high plain of the Continental Divide, I decided that all was most well. In our part of the world, the car commercials are true to life, and being the only car on the road is a frequent experience.


This week at Ragamuffin Ranch, besides the work of moving more boxes and taking care of details, I was arriving check in hand, to purchase Reeds Shiny Eyes, a five-year old registered Quarter horse, better known as Badger. (We also purchased a bull, a ranch truck complete with generator and winch, and a few other sundry items, but I am mainly here to talk about the important purchase).

Badger is a gentle, well-trained gelding. He comes when he is called, stands patiently so that the rider can open a gate without dismounting, stands when the rider dismounts to take care of a cow, and takes care of his rider. A few weeks ago, when Cowboy J.'s wife Nurse A., was mounting, the saddle slipped, and he stood through that, too. This is the kind of horse that will actually help teach the CIT to do cowboy work.

Yesterday, as part of moving out, Nurse A. has stepped out on the porch, tested the wind and checked the temperature (both mild), and decided that it was the day to muck out the entire barn and back pasture. The CIT and I decided to participate as an educational project called Learning by Doing. It has been years since I participated in mucking, and I am older now, so I came armed with an ergonomic mucking rake, a garden rake, a gravel shovel and two mucking buckets. Cowboy J. and Nurse A., however, have been housing four equines and have had little time to keep up with mucking--what with the move and all--and so it was not quite the Augean stables, but we estimated four cart-loads of muck would need to be hauled away to the compost. But the day sunny, the snowmelt was proceeding apace, and a warm breeze was blowing up from southern Arizona. And so we started to work.



Rake a mixture of hay, manure and sawdust into a pile, switch garden implements, and shovel the pile into the cart hooked up to the ATV. Muscles happy to move, and the sweet scent of humus rising in the warm air, the sunshine warm on my back. Do it again. Stop every now and again to watch a hawk rising lazily on thermals above the mesas, take a deep breath and give thanks for being alive on such a day. Rake. Shovel. Pause. Let the CIT handle heavy buckets, and every now and again, give Tommy the Ranch Dog a pat. Soon, in the drowsy warmth (nearly 60 degrees at 7500 feet, don't let the snow on the north-facing hills fool you), I caught the rhythm of the work, and that sense of pondering that accompanies certain kinds of work transformed me. And for the day, it didn't matter to me if governments were falling, oil prices rising, and mayhem ensuing: I am mucking. All other thoughts were merely passing clouds, almost unnoticed, outside of me.

My mind and body slow down every time I cross the Catron County line. People are comfortably solid here. Sales are made on a handshake, and opening an account at the propane company comes with a 40 minute conversation aimed at repairing the world country-style, by telling stories and beginning a cautious relationship that has potential far beyond the sale and delivery of propane. The manager of the propane office is a neighbor; the school-bus driver who picks the CIT up every morning over McKinley Ranch Road is also the school librarian and the owner of the local gas station and convenience store. Among the Big Men in Trucks (a la Jon Katz) who gather around the woodstove and Y and A Auto is a 90 year-old Navy Vet who can tell you the whole history of the county, and who has lived about half of it.

Ninety. Good clean living, I suppose. Out in the air and the sunshine. It is not that there isn't stress here, but when you move more slowly and stop to watch the hawk, time telescopes and stretches out. And in such space-time, it really does one well to slow down in telling one's own story, to become circumspect. There is lots of time for people to learn who you are. No need to create a rushed first impression. So I listened as the Big Men in Trucks solved the worlds problems as they drank cups of coffee and welcomed the CIT into their midst while I bought a chain saw. I was quiet while they gave the CIT a demonstration on how to use the Stihl saw. And while Nurse A. was instructing him on the finer points of grooming Badger--who loves a good brushing on the rump--I stopped and took in January sun on my face, the warm wind from the southwest, the coyotes crossing Cemetery Hill, and the hawk, stooping to catch lunch on the mesa.

Who need an afterlife? This is the life we are living right here and right now. This is G-d's country. And so, like cleaning for Pesach, mucking becomes another time for pondering, for getting into flow.

You Shall be a Blessing: Debbie Friedman z'l

To stand in covenant with God is to accept a challenge

to regard one’s entire life as a channel for

bringing divine presence and blessing into the world.

We as a Jewish people, the people of Sinai, made such a commitment,

one to which we remain bound forever. To understand us Jews

is to realize that we are eternally devoted to that vision.

No matter how secular we may declare ourselves,

something within us remains priest at that altar.

--Rabbi Arthur Green

There is a lot going on in the world. There is a lot going on in my life, too, as we are packing and moving into a new life of our own making. And at our ages!

I have had several blog posts planned, some political and some personal, but they can wait.




Yesterday, I heard that Debbie Friedman died.
I put aside the boxes, the bubble wrap and the packing tape.
And I sat on a just-packed box of Siddurim and cried.

Although I can count the number of times I met her on both hands, she was one of those people that completely altered the direction of my life. Many Reform Jews of my generation can probably say the same thing. Debbie was a singer and songwriter who completely changed the world of Jewish Music, and the way worship services are conducted in Reform synagogues. And yet she had no formal training, did not read music, and never got the credentials that have become so very important in the Reform Jewish world.

Debbie's heart and soul were her credentials, and all of the fussy rabbis and cantors looking for degrees and checking for skills off of lists were undone by her energy, her joy, and her love for her work.


But for me, Debbie's influence was much more personal. I believe her music saved my life and confirmed to me my Jewish soul--the one that was standing at Sinai*-- though I didn't believe in that at the time.

*In the Talmud we are told that the soul of every Jew that has ever lived or ever will live stood at Sinai and directly experienced the giving of Torah, each one accepting the Covenant for herself.

My high school years were a living hell.
My Aspergian traits were in full flower, though I had never heard of Hans Asperger. In me resided a strange combination of idealism and social naivete that together made me a perfect candidate to be the class outcast. I went to a small private high school in a very socially conscious town, where social climbing was a blood sport, conducted both on and off the athletic fields. I am not an athlete, and to this day I possess that self-conscious awkwardness that plagues so many of us Aspies.


Things at home were difficult for me as well. There were aspects of my childhood home and family of origin that made it very difficult for me to believe that my differences had value, and that what I did or did not do made any difference at all. Depression is a common co-morbidity for Aspies, and I struggled with undiagnosed depression for most of high school and into the beginning of college. My parents had no idea of what to make of my moods, my social ineptness, my perseverations, and my passions. I was a strange little kid who grew into a very different and difficult teenager. I was vehement that they should leave me alone, and they did. To be fair,they were trying to sort out their rebellious middle child whose behavior required a great deal of attention, and it must have been overwhelming. They finally got a break with my even-tempered, mostly normal baby sister. But that was years later.


And into this difficult picture burst a short young woman with long flowing hair, unbounded energy, a huge guitar and an even huger voice.
My best friend and twin-sister-by-different-parents bought me her first album, Sing Unto God, from Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute Camp where Debbie was a song leader, and I fell head over heels in love. In love with this voice and this music, and in love with Judaism and the Hebrew language through the music.

Using a copy of Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook (with transliteration) and a dusty little Hebrew dictionary I found at the university library, I sat down to teach myself Hebrew. Not yet a university student, I had to do that work at the library. I began to light a candle for Shabbat, hidden alone in my room, like a Spanish converso. I began to understand that somehow, those Jews in part of my family tree had reached out across space and time and bequeathed to me the soul that stood a Sinai. I have no better explanation for this.

My Hebrew study and my solitary practice were not terribly successful, but they stood me in good stead later, when as a college student I began attending services sporadically at the local Reform synagogue. It never occured to me to actually talk to a rabbi; I would go in, sitting with my best friend if she was there, and if she wasn't, I'd leave immediately after the service. Later, when as an adult I actually joined the Reform synagogue here in Albuquerque, I had learned a few social skills and actually talked to people. And I felt like I was coming home to a place I had never been before.

Throughout the years that followed as I studied Hebrew intensively, had an adult Bat Mitzvah at the age of 33 (only 20 years late), served for a while as a cantorial soloist, taught Hebrew, and took my own children through life-cycle ritual and Holy Days--throughout it all--Debbie's music kept the beat of my Jewish life. It was her melody that I sang to end Shabbat with the ceremony of Havdalah. It was her Shehecheyanu that I chanted at my Bat Mitzvah. It was her Misheberach with which I prayed for the sick. And it was her healing album, Renewal of Spirit, that brought me through breast cancer and gave me the courage to ask for the help I so desperately needed. And I sang Debbie's Arise, My Love at the reception after I married my dear Engineering Geek under the Chuppah.

It isn't as if Debbie was my only Jewish mentor. There are countless others who were angels unawares for different parts of my Jewish journey: My two rabbis, Paul Citrin and Joseph Black, challenged me to choose life in very different ways--and I wasn't such an easy student then, either. (Just ask them. Or better yet, don't ask). And my cantor's cantor, Jacqueline Shuchat Marx, taught me how to pursue happiness again after a very dark time. Glenda, my Hebrew teacher, pushed and prodded and mothered, helping me learn to be a grown-up, as well as starting me on the way as a Hebrew scholar. But Debbie was there through her music for the entire long, strange trip my life has been.

I did have the privilege of singing with her as her student at several CAJE (Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education) conferences, and I was able to thank her in person and sing "Days of Wine and Haroses" with her when she gave a concert at Congregation Beth Shalom in Santa Fe. I will never forget, when she came to give a concert at Congregation B'nei Israel in Albuquerque, her story of being stuck on the tarmac in an airplane at the Sunport. The reason for the delay escapes me now, but Debbie was having health problems even then, and I suppose it must have been uncomfortable for her. It was very early morning, pre-dawn, she said, and she was staring out of the little window at darkness, until, she said, "Suddenly, the mountains came out!" And her joy at their beauty was obvious in the energy with which she said it. That was Debbie, and that was something else that she reminded me of, something that with my Aspie tendency to see the glass as half-full, cracked and dingy, I too easily forget. There is beauty in the most unexpected places and in the most uncomfortable situations. Then she called all of the cantors and soloists in the audience to come up and sing Carlbach's Esa Enai (I look to the Mountains) with her.

Yes, Debbie and her music have been there for my entire Jewish journey.
Until now. And I feel as if, when she left us, she took a little piece of my soul with her.
As many Jews of my generation feel today, our crown is broken and a precious jewel has been taken from us.

And yet I know that her music remains. In particular, her song taken from the verse in B'reshit (Genesis) in which G-d tells Abraham to go to a new and strange place when Abraham is already somewhat advanced in age, speaks to me anew these days. It is not only about the journey of the young, but about the new adventures that await us, boundary crossers all, as we travel on our life's path. Each new step requires a choice. When G-d told Abraham to "GO!", old Abe still had a choice. But despite his age, and all the other reasons to stay in Haran, he went. The Hebrew words for G-d's command are lech l'cha--go to/for yourself!--the name of the song is the feminine of these words, Lechi L'ach:






L'simchat Chayim--to a joyful life!

Debbie Freidman has taught me that we are all meant to make of our lives a blessing. I have been a rather recalcitrant student, and it has taken me all these years to learn the lesson that finding joy in life is what makes our lives a blessing.

Debbie's name and her memory will be a blessing to me and to all who were touched by her energy, her music and that heart of hers.

Alev ha' Shalom, Debbie.