Elul 5771: Renewing Our Days at Freedom Ridge Ranch

The Jewish year 5771 has been a year of changes. This has been reflected in my blog, in my daily life and in our family's approach to Jewish life. Last year, I completely missed writing a post about Elul at all, and the posts about our Jewish holidays have been short or entirely missing. Although we did celebrate them, our celebrations were different--especially in the springtime of the year, when we were caught up in the most protracted move I have ever made, complicated as it was by the Engineering Geek's retirement, surgery and frequent travel. However, this summer--as we got settled here on the ranch--we began some practices for our Jewish life way out here, far from any organized form of communal life.

Change, even good change, even planned change, is hard. It is endings and beginnings. For me, starting a business, investing in that business, buying property, moving out of a house I loved, learning, learning, learning--sometimes the hard way--all of these things create a lot of emotional stress. For the EG, retiring from a career at the National Labs, a work environment that was becoming increasingly bureaucratic and difficult to fit himself into, leaving the work itself--which he loved, learning how to organize his own work, forming his own Engineering firm and dealing with the financial changes this all entailed created stress that matched and exceeded mine. For the CIT, making the decision to move to a new school in mid-year, making that move, meeting new people, adjusting to small-town life, planning for life after high school, and taking a great deal of responsibility for animals and the infrastructure of the ranch, all made for his own adjustments.

The confluence of all of these individual changes definitely put great stress on each set of individual relationships--husband to wife, wife to husband; mother to son, son to mother; step-father to step-son, step-son to stepfather--and there was a great deal of family turmoil as all of these relationships had to be negotiated anew. For not only are the parents transitioning to a new phase of life--retirement, new work and new plans, but so is the boy becoming a man, planning his next moves, working out how to be up and out and yet remaining attached to the ranch, work that he wishes to inherit.

And of course, there is also everything that is happening in the outside world, a world that is becoming increasingly unstable as it approaches a Crisis period, the Fourth Turning of the Saeculum. Increasing financial stress upon our country, and the crash of economies in other countries; the increasingly dire realization that--like it or not--there is an implacable enemy out there that threatens our country and our world; and for us, the rise of the oldest hatred, the virulent antisemitism, expressed this time through a threat to the very existence of Medinat Yisrael--the Jewish State.

As the world labors to enter a new cycle of seasons, as the generations enter new phases of their own lives, and as we make huge changes, we have found the need to establish new ways of reconnection to our heritage and our religion. All these stresses, coming together as they are, require a strong central anchor, a place of coherence, in order for us to generate the faith in life and in ourselves so that we can weather what is coming with strength of spirit.

So as the physical requirements of the move receded into the past, and as spring became summer and the emotional turmoil began to manifest, we knew we had to establish a different kind of Jewish life. At one point in June, when the smoke hung in the air and the rumors of evacuation were upon us, we knew it was going to be divorce, murder or a positive evolution to our marriage. At this time, when it looked like we weren't going to survive ourselves, we happened to unpack our Ketubah--our marriage contract. And we read the contract we had made: to establish a household within the People Israel, and to nurture our lives through the cycles of Sabbaths and Holy Days.

So we began to turn again, a little earlier than Elul, or our Elul began a little before it begins formally. We are not certain which is true. So we each established for ourselves our own person ritual of prayer and study, more of less formal as we each felt we needed. As a family, we have always observed the Sabbath together, but during this past year it had become disorganized and perfunctory. Into this latent framework we breathed new life, making it a point to appreciate each other through the formal ritual of the Friday night Shabbat ritual. To this we added a casual, communal service on Shabbat morning, including Torah Study. As it has been summer, we have been praying this service together on the porch, developing our own minhag (custom) about who leads and who responds during the different prayers.
And then before we eat lunch, we make Shabbat morning Kiddush. And in the evening when three stars appear, we make Havdalah.

As always, I am amazed at the truth of the saying about Torah from Pirke Avot: "Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it." Each week, the portion says something to us about the things we have been pondering, or about what is happening in the world. Soon we will celebrate Sukkot, our first here at the ranch, and this phenomenon of the eternal relevance of Torah to our lives and the life of the world is stated in the readings from Kohelet (Ecclesiastes): There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to events created out of the relationships of person to person and community to community.

There is nothing set in stone about this routine we are establishing. We still have to travel to Albuquerque to care for our house, to take care of other business, and to fulfill appointments. When we do, our comings and goings do not always go as planned. And so, when we are there instead of here, we reconnect with our now far-away Jewish community by attending Friday night services, and then having a more simple ritual at home.

There can be, we have discovered, Jewish life when one lives 30 miles from nowhere, and 200 miles from the nearest synagogue. The bands of connection to ritual life and community have to become elastic, and the ways that we relate to it must change. At the same time, we are learning that in some ways, those connections become more necessary and more important.

I have learned again that Jewish life changes with the lifecycle, that the cycle of the year and the circle of one's life are wheels within wheels, ever turning, bringing us back always to that stable and necessary center.

Blessed is the One who renews our days as in days of old.

9/11: Remembering Amalek

Although this past weekend was not as I expected, that is not why it took me until today to write a post about 9/11. It is true that I spent the day itself taking down bookshelves that we bought from the local Borders, and that the transmission on the truck went out, keeping me camping out at Ragamuffin House in Tijeras with no internet.

But the whole truth of the matter is that the delay was about more than those logistics. It was about the unexpected emotions of that day, brought up, whole from the past. I am not sure why this anniversary was different than the nine that preceded it, but it was. I think part of it was the realization that this year there is still no Freedom Tower, that we have not really dealt with an enemy who murders civilians at work, making war that we are told not to acknowledge. That there are people who would have us put the memory of that day away from us, as easily as we discard the column in the Los Angeles Times, as if the lives of the innocent can be so easily dismissed.

But even though the main-stream media has conspired to keep the images and sounds of that day away from us, I do not need to go to You Tube to find them, for they are seared in my mind's eye as if it had happened yesterday: The tower burning, black smoke in the clear blue September sky; the second plane and the people who jumped to their deaths holding hands, to escape the flames; the towers falling first the second, then the first, in a cloud of smoke and ash that pursued fleeing New Yorkers. And later, the candles lit--this one for the first tower and that for the second--at Friday evening services at the end of that terrible week.

This year the Shabbat of September 10 Torah reading, Ki Teitze, included the commandment to blot out the name of Amalek, and was read thus:

"Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you were coming forth from Egypt; How he happened upon you on the road and attacked you from the rear, killing all of your weak ones (the women and children) while you were faint and exhausted. He did not fear G-d. It shall be that when the Eternal your G-d lets you rest from all your enemies all around you, . . . you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget." (Devarim 25: 17 - 19)

I could not help but translate it in my own mind as: "Remember what Al Quaida did to you in your own land out of a clear sky; How he came upon you at your work and attacked you without warning, killing your civilians and those of the nations while you were attending to your lives. He did not fear G-d. . . You shall destroy the very memory of Al Quaida from under the heavens. Do not forget."

These verses are found among quite a few miscellaneous laws and commandments, rules and regulations, and early in the same portion and in previous portions there are laws and commandments about how to conduct wars. There are different kinds of wars discussed. Those which are defensive, that is when the land is attacked from without, obligate everyone--even the bride under her chuppah--to take up arms against the enemy. Other wars, called the King's wars, which are wars for territory and booty, allow individuals to refrain from taking up arms altogether for various reasons. (In the Book of Samuel, in the Nevi'im, where the people demand a king, it becomes clear that such wars are not considered altogether kosher by the Prophet Samuel who speaks in the name of the Eternal, telling the people that if they get a king he will take their wealth to fight wars of conquest and make their sons run before his chariots). However, none of the wars discussed elsewhere have a Commandment of Remembrance attached to them. The commandment here is unique.

Amalek is depicted as entirely evil because he does not attack the vanguard of the Israelites where the warriors are, thus conducting an honest war. Rather he attacks the rear, where the women and children and animals walk, those who are not warriors and not prepared to defend themselves. The commandment to remember what Amalek did and to blot out the name of Amalek is the commandment to entirely destroy those such as Amalek, who in his cowardice, attacked civilians going about their lives.

This tenth anniversary of the attacks by Al Quaida on 9/11 has been one of great regret and difficulty for many Americans, as we take stock of where we are in terms of defending ourselves against an act of war conducted by terrorists on our own soil and in a civilian place of commerce in New York, as well as against the Pentagon from where our warriors are commanded. The attack on the World Trade Center is an attack like that of Amalek, an attack on those not prepared to to defend themselves, and who were engaged in the honorable act of trade and commerce.

There are two things we ought to be doing, two things that even people of the Bronze Age understood. And we are being told by the leftist press and their masters that we should do neither.

First, we are commanded to REMEMBER. "Remember what Amalek did to you . . . Don't forget." To maintain that memory is important in order to honor the innocents who died that day, and the importance of each life taken, leaving behind an absence and pain to those living who loved them and counted upon them. To take a life, we are taught, is to destroy an entire world: the worlds of those who must mourn, the worlds of deeds undone, the worlds of children never to be.

There are those who wish us not to remember, like the leftist American shilling for the Islamo-fascists by writing for Al Jazeera who advised that "we get over ourselves." But it is not ourselves that he wants us to get over. It is the sacred memory of those who were attacked, their lives torn from them unfinished that he wants to erase. And there are those, like the New York Times columnist (may his name be erased), who wrote that it is we--and not Amalek--who ought to be ashamed. It is he who ought to be ashamed for giving aid and comfort to an enemy and forgetting what that enemy did to us.

It is also important to not only remember those killed on that day, but what was done to us and by whom. Such memory is necessary in order to respond, to mete out the just due that the enemy has earned by such a cowardly evil. Do not forget--we are told--do not forget to blot out even the memory of the enemy from under the heavens.

In Jewish memory, we connect all tyrants who have tried to destroy the weak, the civilians, the innocent, and the whole Jewish people, to Amalek. From Haman to Hitler to Imadinnerjacket (may their names be erased)--we call them all Amalek. They are to be despised and they are to be destroyed so that their evil does not persist on earth. By their words and their deeds they have shown that do not deserve the respect that memory brings from decent human beings. We, the living, should act so that our lives are free of them.

As civilized people, we no longer think that this means that we ought to wipe out all those related by blood or belief to the Amalek's of the world, but who have refrained from committing such an attack. But the commandment to blot out the name of Amalek does mean the destruction of those who planned and/or financed and/or supported and/or committed this act of war against civilians who were not at war against them. To do so is self-defense, but further it is deterrence. To remember what Amalek did to us and to blot his name out from under the heavens is to demonstrate to anyone who might be an Amalek-wanna-be that this is what will happen.

This applies to bin Laden, who met his death at the hands of soldiers, who were entirely correct in shooting him, for he was at war with them. And it applies to Al Quaida, and to the governments of those places that supported his effort to attack us. By their actions against the innocent, they have given their destinies over into our hands, and it is up to us to determine what it means to utterly blot out the name of Amalek from under the heavens.

This 9/11 was subdued. Our memories are still tinged with loss and anger. Not because we need to get over it, nor because we ought to be ashamed. It is so because we are being told that those who are responsible are not responsible, and that we should not fight against them, because it is we who are somehow guilty: guilty for existing, for taking up space on this earth, for our prosperity and our way of life. It is those who commit this sin of moral equivalence who ought to be ashamed.

As we go into the next years, we can continue to cherish the memory. And we can refuse to submit to unearned guilt. And we can determine what it means to blot out the name of Amalek from under the heavens.

Restoring Courage: Glenn Beck's Moment

בְּיָדוֹ אַפְקִיד רוּחִי
בְּעֵת אִישָׁן וְאָעִירָה
וְעִם רוּחִי גְוִיָּתִי
אֲדֹנָי לִי וְלֹא אִירָא
Into G-d's hand, I commit my spirit,
When I sleep, and I shall awake;
And with my spirit, my body.
G-d is with me, I shall not fear.
--Adon Olam

Israel is under attack.
The Jewish people are once again threatened by destruction.
Who among the nations will speak up for us?

This is not a novel statement.
In certain circles such a statement would inspire the response:
"Ya think?" It would be said with a certain sarcastic, world-weary tone intended to impress the listener with the speaker's oh, so sophisticated approach to events. No doubt the responder has a different and more self-flattering view of what sophistication is than the actual meaning, derived from the practice of the ancient Greek sophists to teach a rhetoric in which the Socratic rules of logic may be used to argue contradictory sides of an argument one after another. Sophistry was a method of teaching used to inculcate in the young elite the skills needed to be a successful politician in the Athenian democracy. In the right hands, such skills could be useful in order to create a platform from which a politician could discuss ideas, but more often to be sophisticated in the root sense meant using the skills to manipulate voters in order to obtain power over them.

Israel is under attack.
This is not novel, but it is true.
Israel's very right to exist is being questioned and delegitimized. No other country on the face of the earth has had its right to exist challenged this way, no matter how cruel its government is to its own people, no matter how belligerent it is toward other countries, no matter how it was created.

The sophists find reasons why it is good and right and just to allow such talk. The cynics say that Israel is evil and that the West is too mired in its own sin to do anything about it.

And into the breech steps an earnest and idealistic American Christian who is somewhat ignorant of Judaism and even more so about Jews ourselves. Like many American Christians, he does not understand our fears and foibles, our prickly response to those who are not MOT*s and yet who seem to like us anyway. Last week in Jerusalem, the radio host and commentator Glenn Beck held a rally in support of the Jewish people and of Israel. He called it Restoring Courage. He explained that just as the people of a small town in Ohio who had banded together to help one another in the face of the worst unemployment rate in the country had something to teach Americans about self-reliance, so too, does a tiny country surrounded by enemies have something to teach the world about courage.

With some trepidation, I arrived at the JCC in Albuquerque to watch the rally that was streamed from the south steps of the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem into a computer and onto a screen in New Mexico. I say 'with some trepidation', because Glenn Beck has made some gaffes about Jews and Judaism in the past that in my estimation were the product of his ignorance about us and his lack of knowledge about our long and trying history in relationship to Christianity.

I believe that these gaffes were the result of the fact that he views Judaism through the prism of his own experience with Christianity--as Christians are wont to do--and thus made these critical errors, not out of hatred, but out of ignorance and a habit of letting his mouth run ahead of his thoughts--as radio talk show hosts are wont to do. I also think that the Jewish leftists who gleefully took those gaffes out of context and ran with them while tolerating outright antisemitism from the men and women surrounding their O-Messiah were more than a little ridiculous, but that's another blog.

As I watched the sun move across the ancient stones of the walls and towers that once compromised the outer defenses of the Temple, and as I listened to the music by the Jerusalem Synagogue Choir (and an Israeli pop star soloist), and as I heard the speech by Jerusalem's Mayor, I was not only reassured, but I was also moved. And there at the JCC in Albuquerque, I was even more moved by the fact that when I reflexively stood for Hatikvah**, the whole roomful of people around me--who were mostly Christians from pro-Israel churches and campus organizations-- hastily, but graciously stood with me. The latter reminded me of the times within the past ten years that I have stood alone, surrounded by Christians (and sometimes even a few Jews), to defend Israel and the Jewish people against lies and calumny.

However, when Glenn Beck took the stage during his narration of the history of the Temple Mount--a place special to three religions--I gripped my chair with anxiety. What would this non-Jew say about Israel, sympathetic as he might be? Thus far the program had been very tasteful, and the historical narration did not peddle an exclusively Christian understanding nor was it condescending. But now, what would he say about Israel? About us?

As Daniel Gordis wrote in his book, Saving Israel, this anxiety stems from the expectation that when we hear about Israel from outsiders, we will hear a horror story designed to show that there is no goodness in Israel; that Israel is the state that has been designated to carry the sins of the world, as a scapegoat sent out into the desert is forced to bear the accusations that most people dare not aim at themselves, in their impossible pursuit of an impossible moral code that demands suicide. Israel, after all, is a country that is hated not for its vices, but for its virtues. So it was that as Mr. Beck began to speak, my anxiety mounted.

Just as the speaker was a different man than most who speak about Israel, so, too, was his speech different. He began by stating his purpose:

"Today, I ask you turn your eyes to Israel and restore courage. I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing.Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage." ***

Previously in the program, Beck had demonstrated that the courage of faith, the courage of hope, and the courage of tikkun olam (repairing of the world) through the awarding of three Restoring Courage awards, given to the Fogel family of Itamar (posthumously), Maxim's Restaurant in Haifa, and Rami Levy's Grocery Stores, respectively. When he said these words, his audience had already been given examples upon which to reflect.

As Glenn continued speaking, my hands relaxed, and then went to my eyes to wipe away tears, for I was moved no more by anxiety, but by a combination of pride and relief, and a growing and fierce resolve. For Glenn spoke first about Israel's virtue, the commitment of her people--our people--to be strong and of good courage:

"In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds . . . against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true."

I felt relief, coming to know that there are people out there who are not Jews, and who can still see-- see through the lies of those cold-hearted bureaucrats at the UN, and the calculated hatred of the NGOs at the Durban Conferences, and through the casual libels of moral equivalency from the left and from the right--that Israel has virtue, that it is committed--as perhaps no other country is--to the protection of something good and precious and true. And I felt pride in the people that I call my own, and in my own willingness--for I am not bold, not really--to stand up, blushing, trembling and afraid--to counter the lies, the hatred and the venality of moral equivalence; to stand for principle even in venues where I am sure to be vilified.

My resolve grew as the speech continued, and Glenn Beck talked about why restoring our courage is so important now. For the world, he said, is once again on the verge of plunging itself into darkness and tyranny and death. And in such a world, the so-called leaders do not have the courage to tell the truth of things, to stand against the darkness, and it is their cowardice that takes us into the shadow. And it is our cowardice that allows it, and teaches our children that there is no remedy except chaos and fear:

"We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.
When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder our children light their streets on fire."

What one generation tolerates, the next will embrace.

This is why Beck would have us look to Israel in order to restore our own courage. For that is what it will take to overcome the silence of the grand councils and the false pomp of those who wish to rule us. And this is where the resolve comes, for courage--as the Cowardly Lion learned--is not something from without, but something that is ignited within:

"In the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the ancient Hebrews were led through the dark of night by a pillar of fire. Courage is the act of walking into the darkness, and knowing that each step would be guided and protected by the pillar of fire, if we follow it. God is with us."

And this is where my resolve meets my doubt. He says what we sing at Purim:
"Plot your plots. Scheme your schemes. They will amount to nothingness. Ki-emmanuel. For with us is G-d."
But sadly, there are so many Hamans plotting our destruction; so many Hamans, but only one Purim.

For on the surface, there seems a vast difference between this naive Christian from America, who has boundless confidence that the Master of the Universe must do justice, must free the captive and must keep the Covenant. Beck stands in Jerusalem restored by human hands, and tells us that standing here--here, as the stones of Jerusalem burn gold in the setting sun--is why we can have courage. He says that the Pillar of Fire did indeed bring us here, after severe and awesome trials. Like the generation the wandered in the wilderness, we have seen the signs and wonders. But we have also seen the death and destruction; the smoke and ash that was once the bodies of those who made up a great civilization in the heart of Europe. To many Jewish ears such words do not come comfortably, with the blessed assurance that the American, the Christian, seems to have. Does the Eternal keep the Covenant? Jews might joke--as we have--that we ought to sue for breech of contract; that perhaps G-d ought to choose a different people. And we are not altogether joking, as the dark evil of antisemitism rises once more in our own time.

But there is more to Beck than meets the eye. He is no stranger to pain and doubt and destruction; not wrought by others, but brought upon himself. And out of despair, he set himself the goal of finding his life's purpose, of restoring his own honor and courage. And standing there, as he did, in Jerusalem rebuilt by human hands, this man of the nations, a stranger in Israel, reminded us of the hope and courage of those who dusted off their hands and rebuilt the city. And my resolve smoulders and catches again as I remember that a nes--a Hebrew miracle--is not the suspension of natural law, it is the tangible result of a stubborn resolve, the pillar of fire that burns in the human heart, demanding that we push back against death and destruction, that we live and live well. If G-d is, then surely G-d is in the small, wavering flame of that resolve.

Jewish tradition teaches there is a moment for which each person was born; a purpose which, if discovered and pursued, will lead to greatness and awesome deeds. Otherwise, life is vanity and chasing after the wind. I believe that Glenn Beck was reaching for his own purpose, which he believes is to be a watchman upon the walls, when he said:

"Let us have the courage to choose life.
No more incitement.
No more threats.
No more terror.
No more talk of genocide.
No more hate.
No fear.
No more lies.

"We can read their signs, listen to their speeches. So we know that they say what they mean and mean what they say.

"Well: SO. DO. WE. . . .

"And so I say that if the world decides it must know who will stand with Israel, who will stand with the Jewish people, so they know exactly who to condemn, who to target, let them know this.

Condemn me. Target me. I will stand with Israel. I will stand with the Jewish people. And if they want to round us up again, I will proudly raise my hand and say 'Take me first.' "

And they call this man a fear-monger, a hater, a chaser after wind. The "ubiquitous they"--those who are oh, so sophisticated, and oh, so cynical--they who cannot accept that others have found what they refuse to look for within themselves, and so they see in others only what they find within: fear and hatred and futility.
But we are all weak vessels, our lives finite, our striving uncertain, and the possibilities for errors and false starts are very real. The cowards never start, and the weak fall by the wayside. And those who believe the rumors of their own evil throw themselves over into emptiness. But those who pick themselves up, and dust themselves off, finding the goodness within themselves and others, those are the ones who come to their moment.

Glenn Beck has found his purpose. He has come to his moment. If he does or says nothing else of meaning or weight in all the years left to him, it will not matter. Neither does it matter what the cynics say of him. He has lived his destiny. He has found his place among the righteous of the nations.

There is more to the speech. Beck outlines the responsibilities that go with the freedom to chart one's own course; the responsibilities that make it possible to create one's destiny. He urges us to take up the challenge, to commit to good purpose. There is more, and it is well worth reading. But he ends on a theme of the last lines of Adon Olam, the creed of Maimonides, saying:

"Evil is counting on us to do nothing. Evil is counting on us to be afraid. But evil has misjudged us. Evil has misjudged us as it has misjudged the Jewish people. The last line of a Jewish prayer is …Adonai li, v’lo ira.
God is with me, I fear not. . .

". . .There are many reasons to hear my words, leave here and do nothing. We all have been trained to believe that we are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough. Abraham was old, Moses was slow of speech, Ruth was a widow, David was a little boy, Joseph was in prison, and Lazarus was dead. What is your excuse?

"You were born for a time such as this. Begin by declaring that this is why you were placed on this earth. It doesn’t matter how you’ve spent your years on this planet. What matters is what you do now from here. I cannot promise you safety, prosperity or comfort. But I can promise you this. One day, your children and grandchildren will ask you: 'What did you do when the world was on the edge again? What did you say when the West, Israel and the Jews were blamed again?'

"You will look them in the eye and say: I had courage. And on the 24th of Av, I committed to stand with courage… to walk… to march… arm in arm… behind God’s pillar of fire.

Adonai li v’Lo Ira. God is with me, I fear not. "

Ken yehi ratzon. May it be G-d's will.

*Member of the Tribe
** The Hope--the Israeli National Anthem
*** All quotes from Beck's speech are taken from the full text published at The Blaze

Geology Road Trip Yuma: Part II

Part II: Salt River Canyon to Globe

On Sunday, August 24, I drove to Yuma to meet a friend. The trip was a wonderful drive across Geological Provinces and through various biozones, as I descended from more than 8000 feet above sea level to about 200 feet above sea level. (Yes, my ears popped, and my shampoo bottle collapsed inward). Because of areas of great geological, anthropological and historical interest, the tale of this trip is broken up into several parts. Part I--the White Mountains and the Mogollon Rim can be found here.

After leaving the Mogollon Rim and following the volcanics along Corduroy Creek, Salt River Canyon opened out shortly before reaching the Becker Butte Lookout on the north side. Traveling down the north side of the canyon is to travel downsection and down through time because the Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata dip northward, with a great deal of missing time. The caprock of Becker Butte is made up of the Devonian Martin formation, composed of the competent cliff-forming layers of limestone , with mudrocks and shales underlying the gentler, slopes on which the trees are growing. The Martin formation rests upon a sill intrusion of Devonian age. The Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian periods are entirely missing in the canyon.

At the Becker Butte pull-out, two plaques have been erected in honor of Gustav Becker (1856 - 1940), "Pioneer, Merchant, Trailblazer and Roadbuilder--A father of US 60"; and his son, Julius Becker (1886 - 1959), "His life was based on the Principles of his Father". They were both from the first family of Springerville, Arizona, and both made their mark on the Rim Country, and are remembered for their devotion to the place.



Looking down-canyon, from a switchback on the north canyon wall, one can see back to the north rim. The inner canyon at the bottom is composed of pre-Cambrian rocks around a billion years old, that are overlain by the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks. The heights are composed of the Mesozoic Red Wall Limestone which preserves at its top an ancient karst topography. It is underlain by the Martin, with its limestone cliffs and shale and mudrock slopes that fall steeply to the inner canyon and the Salt River. Upon crossing the river itself, one crosses not only from the Fort Apache--White Mountain Apache Reservation to the San Carlos Apache Reservation, but also from the Paleozoic back in time to the Middle pre-Cambrian age. The south canyon wall is composed entirely of pre-Cambrian sediments, many of them hardened by high temperatures and pressures, and metamorphosed into quartzite and marble.




Looking upstream from Hieroglyphic Point at weathered diabase intrusion, itself intruded by lighter veins of metamorphics (including asbestos), also weathered. The diabase intrudes a middle pre-Cambrian granite, and is therefore younger, upper-middle to lower upper pre=Cambrian.

Beyond the diabase, one can see a ridge of columnar jointed quaternary basalts that are as young as the diabase is old. Beyond the basalts in the background--and across the river--are the Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks of the north face of the canyon, showing clear stratification.

Hieroglyphic Point's name originates in petroglyphs that were pecked into the canyon wall with sharp rocks. They are the youngest features of all here, hardly varnished by the desert winds, they are a mere 1000 years old, mas or menos.



Climbing out of Salt River Canyon and moving on south toward Globe, Arizona, we enter the Tonto National forest, growing on thin soils resting on pre-Cambrian granites and quartzites also intruded by pre-Cambrian diabase. In a road cut near milepost 272 is exposed the tan and pink granite, which is deeply weathered into square blocks. Down and to the left in the picture, one can see the contact with part of a diabase sill. The sill-penetrated granite steps down southward along a series of faults that keep the highway near its surface for sometime, before the overlying upper pre-Cambrian Apache group makes its appearance in road cuts near Seven Mile Wash. The Apache group is made up of mostly unmetamorphosed sedimentary rocks upon which the road descends into the Gila River drainage and Globe.




Globe, Arizona is a gold and copper mining town that sits on the Gila Conglomerate. Globe and the mining town of Miami sit on the north end of a graben--a downfaulted area-- that extends southeast to Safford. During Pliocene time (roughly 5.2 - 1.25 years before present), the mountains rising around the graben dumped 1500+ vertical feet of their own downwasting on it. During Quaternary time, the Gila River established through drainage here, carving the terraces upon which the town of Globe is built. These terraces give Globe the steep roads that seem to rise straight up out of the Gila River valley along which US 60 runs.

It is lunchtime in Globe, 3400 feet above Sea Level, and at noon, the temperature is much warmer than it was leaving Show Low, 8000 feet at 9:30 AM. This is a good time for a break before heading through Arizona's Copper country and into the desert basins south of Phoenix.
I consider taking fewer pictures in order to get to Yuma close to when my friend's plane will arrive there. She is already landing in Phoenix, I think, which is not far away, although the winding roads in the mountains make the city seem like it must be another world.

On the REAL Name for the Ranch

Welcome to Freedom Ridge Ranch: Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the cows are above average.

Alert readers may have noticed that the name of our ranch has finally been decided upon. I have been calling it "Ragamuffin Ranch" here on this blog and in general conversation because, well, I liked it. But there are other people involved in this enterprise besides me. The CIT thought the name was too cutesy, and threatened to pull out of the whole enterprise if it stayed that way. "Mom," he stated, "You don't rope cattle on a place called Ragamuffin Ranch." The EG was in total agreement, the name was too 'girly girl" and had to go. And he pointed out that even our ranching partner hated the name. "She hates that as much as you hate anything with the word 'Pointe' at the end of it!"
It is true. I refused to buy property once in a place with 'Pointe' as part of its name. I hate that pretentious 'e' at the end, and mocking call a place called Primrose Pointe, 'Primrose Pointy.'

We thought of a lot of possible and not so fussy names. We thought of a lot of humorous names, too, but we didn't intend to use them. "City Slickers Ranch" or "Broke Acres" just doesn't have the proper ring, the one that will make certain people want to be part of this adventure. So we looked at names based on local rock formations and local features. I really liked the idea of "Point Lookout Ranch, a name taken from the Point Lookout formation that makes up the caprock of our mesas and ridges . But the name with the most 'ring' to it was "Freedom Ridge Ranch", named after the ridge there behind the cabin the picture. This is the ridge that the old homesteader who took out a claim on this land a hundred years ago looked up at every day while proving up his claim, and the one that rainbows like to visit and mists (and smoke) like to curl around.

Freedom Ridge Ranch.
It brings up connotations of grass fed, grass finished beef raised in freedom right here on the ranch. It brings up the wholesome goodness of free-range chickens pecking in the grass, producing eggs with the yellowest yolks you have ever seen. And for Studley Dooright, our bull, it brings up the run up the ridge and through the fence to check out the pretty cows in season over at the McKinley place--but that's another story.

Most importantly, it reminds the EG of why he invested in the project in the first place. Freedom might have been 'just another word for nothin' left to lose' to Janice Joplin, but for the EG it means self-employment and entrepreneurship--and the time to craft really fine wood products-- after years of being just another engineer at a government lab. Our ranching partner likes all the connotations, but seems particularly taken with the idea of naming the ranch after a local geographical feature. And the CIT likes the freedom he has to swing a rope and to ride his horse daily.

And me? I like the whole concept of freedom. The freedom from the noise and traffic of the city. The freedom to set my own daily schedule, and the freedom of having my husband around all the time . . . (Hmmm. I wouldn't go that far, even out of sheer enthusiasm).
But I especially like the idea that we are free and clear, and can decide how to use this wealth made up of this place at this time using for our own best interest. That's the best part of having one's husband retire. Not to mention that the alarm does not go off at dark o'clock anymore. I never see a cow until after the sun comes up . . . Perhaps that's the greatest freedom. The Freedom from the tyranny of the alarm clock.

Pass that grass fed, grass finished beef, please.
And welcome to Freedom Ridge Ranch.

Geology Road Trip Yuma: Part I

Part I: The White Mountains and the Mogollon Rim

I have a young Facebook friend who has just completed her MS in Engineering and has been looking for the first job of her career. She got an interview in Yuma, AZ, and wanted to know if there was a way we could meet one another, since the Freedom Ridge Ranch is so close to Arizona. Although we are very close to Arizona, we are pretty far from Yuma, because it is in the far southwest corner of that state, where Arizona, California and the country of Mexico meet. Although it is a long drive, I was anxious to take a road trip, and since my friend offered to share her hotel room with me, I took her up on it.

I had a great time, and we had some really good conversation because we share an interest in Objectivism, and I happen to be partial to engineers and scientists. And I got some really good Geology Road Tripping in, because the drive took me across two Geological provinces, and through several biological regions and ecotones. I drove from the Colorado Plateau where I now live and into the Basin and Range. In the process, I crossed through the short grass prairie of the east Mogollon slope, through the White Mountains of the Datil-Mogollon Volcanic field, and down through the copper and gold mining country of the Superstition mountains, and into the Sonoran Desert province, with its unique biology and weather. Over the trip I took more than 100 pictures. I geeked out so much on the landscapes and underlying geology that it will take several blogs to do the trip justice. That's what happens when I get to drive by myself!


On Sunday morning last, bags packed, I picked up my AAPG geological map, The Roadside Geology of Arizona, and I was off on an adventure. The first part of my journey took me from New Mexico into Arizona, and through the White Mountains from Springerville to Show Low, and on to Salt River Canyon. I crossed the state line on US 60, just before plunging down into Coyote Creek Canyon, the first of several canyons stepping the highway down into Round Valley and Springerville. Here a truck has just climbed up to the Arizona-New Mexico state line as I prepare to go the other way. The White Mountain volcanic field rises on the horizon ahead.



In Springerville, I turned south to stop at Safeway to get provisions, and then I continue on west on AZ 260, which will take me right through the White Mountains. West of Springerville, at South Fork, the burn scars from the wallow fire are still fresh, although the monsoons have turned the burned and blackened pastures of June into the emerald green of late July. Soon, I will leave behind the Little Colorado river valley and climb the mesa to the west, entering the high country around White Mountain Baldy.


After the climb from Round Valley and South Fork, and past the Greer turn-off ("Still Here, Still Green"), AZ 260 enters Fort Apache -White Mountain Apache Reservation, north of the Sunrise Ski area. Here, volcanic cones rise from mountain meadows. The snow fences are silent testimony to the areas of blowing snows that drift across the highway in winter.
The White Mountains consist of Tertiary and Quaternary volcanics that overlie the Colorado Plateau, forming Arizona's east-central highlands. The volcanic field has been eroded by Quaternary glaciers and their outflow, and is deeply dissected by canyons in the south, these cut by streams that are now some of finest for trout fishing in the United States.



Near McNary, 260 begins to drop just a bit, as it takes me towards the resort communities of Pinetop and Lakeside, south of Show Low. The mountain meadows and mixed conifers give way to Aspen and Ponderosa Pine. The ground here is covered in native grasses and ferns. This is a clean woods, kept so by the Fort Apache Indians, and is less susceptible to fire. The US forest service policy of no cutting and no burning, and now no grazing due to the protection of endangered species is not followed on the Res. As is true throughout the mountains, whenever one crosses a boundary between the National Forest and private and/or Indian land, the difference is immediately noticeable. Here on the White Mountain Reservation, as well as on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, we see some of the most beautiful areas in the White Mountains.

Following 260 through Pinetop-Lakeside, and then on into Show Low, where I stopped to gas up and take a short break, I rejoined US 60 and headed west. Still on the Colorado Plateau, here, the rocks in the shallow mountaintop road cuts are composed of the Permian Kaibab Limestone and Coconino Sandstone, which in other areas of the White Mountains are covered by the Tertiary and Quaternary volcanics. Here, on the west side of Carrizo Creek, I stopped to look back upon the White Mountains. In foreground is a layer of the older Supai Group, dating back to Pennsylvanian and early Permian time. Here, I have already descended from the Mogollon Rim, the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau, although the exact location of the contact is obscured by the volcanoes I am about to leave behind me.

The descent from the Mogollon Rim is both a physical descent and a descent through time as US 60 runs down and then up, but always more down than up, through small canyons whose drainage eventually ends up in the Salt River. Here, the road cuts are composed of the Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks of the Supai Group, composed of limestones, mudstones, sandstones and conglomerates, that tell the story of a coastal area on an epicratonic sea, that rose and fell over late Paleozoic time. The descent into the Paleozoic here takes place over a few miles, as the early Pennsylvanian Naco limestone appears in the road cuts, and still further south, the Mississipian Redwall Limestone, its top surface white with the evidence of Karst topography, further down section, the Devonian Martin Formation, banded blue mudrocks between layers of brown limestones. All of these limestones tell of the depths of the sea that once covered this area, a sea teaming with strange and wonderful life.

Although by this point, the Colorado Plateau has been left behind, the descent in elevation and in time has been steady. Soon though, a dramatic plunge in the pre-Cambrian rocks of Arizona's copper and gold country will occur. Stay tuned for Part II of Road Trip Yuma.

No Justice: The Nanny State Becomes the Police State

I recently finished a book by a friend and business associate that discussed his time in jail. He was arrested based on a false accusation and investigation and before the smoke cleared even a little bit, he spent some time in jail. His book was very interesting and it was also revealing. It gives the reader a look into a world that most of us do not know anything about, and one that we all hope to never experience.

One of the most revealing parts of his experience was the attitude of the jailors toward those confined there, and the attitude of the general public toward those who have been arrested. The assumption is one of guilt, even though most of those confined have not yet been charged or gone to trial. The general public has forgotten that in the United States, a person is to be presumed innocent until he is actually convicted of a crime. He does not have to prove his innocence in court, rather the state must prove that the person is guilty using standards of evidence and judgment. But Americans have forgotten about the presumption of innocence and assume that if a person is hassled by the police--even if he is not arrested--that he must have done something to deserve it. In this way, presumably innocent people are deprived of their liberty and dehumanized even though they are often completely innocent of any crime.

This attitude is one of the core components of our rapidly developing police state: a state in which peace officers who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Sovereign State in which they work have, in the time of a generation, morphed into quasi-militarized "law enforcement officers" who ignore the rights of the citizens whose rights they are purportedly hired to protect. And the rights of the accused are not much understood or honored by either the operatives of the police state itself, nor by citizens, who generally do not realize how much danger they are in of being dragged into its tyranny. Lately, even the Constitutional protections that the accused enjoy have been deliberately removed by the courts.

The sheer number of people who have had their liberty removed for weeks or months before ever going to trial is another sure indication that we are rapidly becoming a police state. In the United States now, most of those so confined are accused of "crimes" determined by fiat, "crimes" in which no one's rights were even remotely close to being violated. Many of these are drug law violations, and often a person's rights are removed for long periods of time due to an accusation of possession of a small amount of an "illegal" substance, which now carries sentences that are often greater than those handed out for severe child abuse. In some ways, the possession or use of an "illegal" substance has become a life sentence, creating a permanent underclass, because the penalties have become so severe, and other sanctions meted out by the federal government have become so limiting that the individual cannot overcome them over a lifetime, even if he is a minor child at the time of arrest. More often than not, an individual's probation is indeterminate and full liberty is only restored if and when a social worker determines that the person has been rehabilitated. In such cases, a court is only peripherally involved, and the case is not determined by any rational standards of evidence judged by a jury at all. This indeterminate "sentencing" is a complete violation of any just standard, and plays havoc with the rights of the accused.

All of this stems from the soft tyranny of the Nanny State, and can always be expected to become the hard tyranny of the Police State. It is injustice pure and simple.

Justice requires that each person is treated as equal under the law. Further, the law itself is unjust if the legislation is intended to limit the freedom of an individual for purposes other than the protection of the rights of all individuals.

The very assumptions of the Nanny State--that there are some people wiser and better than the individual, who therefore should be enabled to control the choices and actions of individuals for their own good--are antithetical to the very concepts of liberty that the United States was founded upon, and fly in the face of the Constitution written to create a government whose sole purpose is to protect those rights. It is up to each competent adult to determine what his or her own good is, and the bar to declaring incompetence should necessarily be very high. No matter how much a person who is different in some way might disturb us, and no matter what we think of his or her decisions, we ought to be very wary of removing liberty for light or transient reasons.

The very concept of a "justice system", which is a product of the Nanny State, is a contradiction in terms. There can be no "system", no collective method of determining innocence or guilt, no "system" of mandatory sentencing, or of required rehabilitation standards that is just. The purpose of justice is not to cure social ills or to rehabilitate individuals. It is to make a judgment about the responsibility of an individual for an action that violates the rights of another, and to exact a penalty upon that action in accordance with the severity of the violation.

Justice must be individual or it is not justice at all. Justice must always refer to the law, which must be applied equally to all, or it is not justice at all. Justice requires that the law be knowable and uncomplicated, and that a person must be able to know ahead of time whether a contemplated action is a violation of the law. Justice requires that the individual merits of the case be considered, and that the evidence be weighed by a jury of peers of the accused; that is those who live in the same community, know its standards, and its weaknesses.

We are seeing a great deal of evidence that the Nanny State that has been established in order to impose the ideas of some of us upon us all, applying a soft tyranny of rules and regulations, is rapidly becoming a police state. Those conservatives who were content to remove the rights of those who ingest socially unapproved substances are now dismayed to watch storm troopers from federal agencies raiding Amish dairy farms to stop us all from ingesting unpasteurized milk or locally produced chickens. Those liberals who have been content to remove the property rights of individuals who disagree with them about diversity, are now dismayed to watch police officers cum storm troopers wrestle individuals to the ground and arrest them for the crime of standing on their own property and observing the actions of the police themselves.

Most of us stand idly by now while our friends and neighbors are presumed guilty for fear of contradicting the monster that we have created,and thereby being subject to the meat grinder of the "justice system". Many of us implicitly favor mob rule over the rule of law, calling for the blood of the innocent when a jury rules that the state has not made its case, because the news media has already tried and convicted the defendant in the court of public opinion. We presume to make judgments based on little evidence, and to condemn people because of the emotional impact of the crime itself, rather than on evidence of guilt or innocence of the accused.

Thus we have come to the place where, as a friend posted to my Facebook Wall:

"When they took the 4th Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the 2nd Amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they have taken the 1st Amendment, and I can only be quiet." - Lyle Myhr

If we treasure our freedom, we need to know our rights, and their basis in the principles of Liberty. We need to understand that the protection afforded to the accused protects us all, and to to remove the rights of accused imperils all of our rights. We need to remember that a little bit of liberty is like being a little bit pregnant--either we act on our rights or we don't have them. And most importantly, we need to understand that justice is a more exacting standard than is goodness, and being "good" in the face of injustice will always turn us to evil.