Commonplace of the Landscape

Natasha Trethewey writes in Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast:

"It is commonplace that the landscape is inscribed with the traces of things long gone. Everywhere the names of towns, rivers, shopping malls, and subdivisions bear witness to vanished Native American tribes, communities of former slaves, long-ago industrial districts and transit routes.

"We speak these names often unaware of their history, forgetting how they came to be. Each generation is further from the events and the people to which the names refer--these relics becoming more and more abstract.

"No longer talismans of memory, the words are monuments nonetheless. As Robert Haas has written, 'A word is elegy to the things signified.'" (Trethewey 33)

It was a small expedition led by two willful young ladies. The destination? The rocky paths and steep inclines of the petroglyph-laden Boca Negra Canyon. The exigence? To experience the convergence of history and nature and to bask in the beauty of it all. The reality? Allergies, urban sprawl, and a 4 year old who (in)conveniently had to pee half-way up the embankment.

As I sit here thinking about mine and Laurel’s trip today I can say that it was another chance for me to get out of my house and experience some more of amazing New Mexico. The Petroglyph National Monument is beautiful, well-kept, and has a rich history that is accessible and hands on. It saddened me, though, that I could not lose myself in the drawings or the cold sunshine because of the noise pollution and the neighborhood eyesore that was constantly in my peripheral. I definitely had a Hot, Flat, and Crowded moment as I stood gazing at a huge lava rock with a gorgeous spiral drawing on it and was snapped back into reality by the honking of a car horn and the subsequent slamming of someone’s front door. Seriously, the houses could not have been any closer.

I realize that the petroglyphs are protected and that the human developments will probably never reach beyond their present position, I just wonder what the reasoning was behind allowing sprawl to reach that closely to such a sacred and honored space. I wonder if the developers or city planners were trying to be ironic. Maybe they had some foresight into the lesson that people such as myself would find in the juxtaposition of a Native American landmark and a boxhouse neighborhood. Maybe they had some inkling that Hot, Flat, and Crowded needed some prime-o examples for Friedman’s words to really crystallize in the brains of humanity and thus be compelled to take some action. Or maybe these developers and city planners are so greedy, so short-sighted, and so ignorant that they did not care that that neighborhood really puts a damper on the magic of the petroglyphs.

Hmmm.

Doug Fine @ UNM: Flippin' da Script

Sky and Mud

It’s not that you feel yourself rising up into the sky; it’s that you feel the ground gently falling away from you.

You lean forward and look out over the basket and what you feel is not fear, but peace.

Up here, the world is silent. And still. You are not aware of the wind, although you know that without it, you couldn’t be up here, sailing the skies.

You remember that dream you had when you were a kid, the one where you were flying and it felt so natural and so right and so free. You woke up from the dream but all you wanted was to go back so you shut your eyes tight and put your head back on the pillow and tried really really hard to fall back asleep. But it was gone. You never had that dream again.

This, you realize, is the closest you’ve ever come.

*
It is now 12:30. You have just come home from the Fiesta. Your groupmates will be here in a half an hour to pick you up. You make a cup of tea, change into a t-shirt, head out the door. You are wide awake—you haven’t slept all night—but you are still dreaming of flying.

*

You are squishing your toes in mud. Your feet let you feel: this sand feels like wet brown sugar, packed in tight, but this here feels like white sugar left to the air for too long. These mud pancakes crack under your feet; this riverclay sucks your toes in quick.

You make a sandangel.

You feel like a kid, playing in the dirt. No, you are a kid playing in the dirt. That other person, that grown-up you, the one with the camera and the pen, you’ve left her behind today. She’s tired of seeing the world through a lens. She’s forgotten what it feels like…to feel. The mud, the sand, the water, the clay; the spontaneity, the playfulness, the fun.

*

Your feet are covered in dried mud. Your hair is heavy with dirt. The legs of your jeans are wet with riverwater.

You smile.

You haven’t forgotten anything.

Awesome Doug Fine visit!

I so enjoyed Doug Fine’s presentation last evening! The live performance of recounting his adventures and misadventures conveys his message so much more effectively than in print alone - while Farewell, My Subaru was humorous, the skillful performance of the stories, the engagement of the audience, allows an emotional connection that makes a powerful message come alive to the American public through humor. Well done!

Fine may be onto something with this eco-comedy performance. Not only does he render acknowledging the environmental destruction we're imposing on the planet nearly digestible to the American masses (the minivan drivers in Duluth?) but he promotes it as a “fun, hassle-free way of living” that we can aspire to by taking baby steps. Fine says, we can all “inch toward living locally” and delivers encouragement through humor. Brilliant! I love the delivery style, too – the acerbic humor, comic asides, and very physical (re-enacted) comedy really draw the audience in and give them a stake in accepting the message. Fine creates emotional buy-in by the audience to stellar theatrical effect.

I am really glad to have seen the live delivery because I guess I was confused when I read the book. I left it with the impression that Fine was trying to be a farmer. I understand now that doesn’t seem to be the case – he is, like many urban ex-pats from both coasts – simply trying to live more sustainably in his little corner of the world. Fine is a writer and performer (his are not farmer’s hands) crafting his livelihood from his home environment – from the goats to the gardens. He is providing for himself and his family’s needs with a little left over to trade with neighbors doing similar – an excellent model for what each of us really can do. Even in the city (yes, chickens are legal to keep in Albuquerque, for those who are wondering) – Fine’s message is that we can all do something, little by little reducing our footprint.

Fine had the good fortune (and, from his live performance, I venture to add a generous dollop of “persuasive ability” that fortune) of generous support to set up the backdrop and source of his humor – the Funky Butte Ranch. In setting up what appears to have been a well-funded publicity ploy at the outset, Fine has really hit on an extraordinary combination of sustainability and humor that is palatable to American sensibilities (or lack thereof?).

I wonder if billing Fine’s presentation/performance as comedy – “ecocomedy” (which seems to be a nascent movement, google it) – might be judicious to avoid audience confusion in the future? Promoting Fine’s presentation as humor might reduce misunderstandings. Not only the misunderstandings like mine – he’s a writer who has created a garden of material at home, not a farmer or rancher blogging about farm/ranch life – but also possible future difficulties that will likely arise if people really do follow his suggestions. For instance, Kevin Forrest made clear to me that the veg oil must be strained (for solids) and heated (to evaporate off the moisture in the oil) before using in the vehicle – its not quite as simple as pulling up to the back of the restaurant and “filling up.” When presenting “facts” in comedy, its perfectly fine to caricaturize processes and issues as the point of the presentation/performance is the message – and Fine’s message is powerful and important. His is a vital part of the sustainability conversation, providing levity and relief of tension.

I think its important to also keep in mind the ethical responsibilities of representing authority on a topic, however. Fine claims/asserts, and/or is assigned by his audiences, authority in the topic areas he writes about. While on one hand he says “baby steps, everyone do something little,” on the other hand he says he wanted to prove that if he can do it, “anyone can.” Professionally, I feel this raises serious concerns – if other “mall-rat consumers” were to follow his example, would they be successful? Without the significant financial cushion of the $80K or so that Fine had to work with at the outset of his experiment, I would have to say the answer is “not likely.” Is it ethical to promote with authority a way of life to an audience for whom following that advice would be financially (at the minimum) disastrous? See, even though the audience of the humor is the mall-rat minivan drivers, the only audience that would have a prayer’s chance of following Fine’s footsteps would be other writers with good back-east publishing connections/support and the generous (trust-?) funding to dismiss practical, real-life financial concerns. I don’t think that is quite such a big audience.

Fine said a couple of times “I’m not an expert on this so you should research it more if you’re considering it, BUT ….” Perhaps if he said that more often, my concerns wouldn’t rap so insistently at the door of my professional ethic. If that caveat were implicit in the presentation itself (beyond explicit embedded in the performance), there might not be reason for concern at all. By billing his routine as ecocomedy, Fine would be making the caveat implicit – this is intended as humor, although you might think these are good ideas, they really need a LOT more development before they can responsibly be recommended as financially and practically feasible to my intended audience.

Because the actual audience and highly simplified content of Fine’s performance situates it in, or defines it as, humor/comedy, it seems most appropriate that it would be called that as well. By presenting himself as a serious voice, Fine runs the risk of people taking his suggestions seriously and running out to attempt the same kind of stunt. This would be extremely ill-advised from practical, business, and financial perspectives and would make him feel really guilty – like the first lemming, maybe. If he presented his act as ecocomedy – a comedic routine with a powerful green message – the caveat of just kidding, but serious would be implicit because it is understood as implicit in the comedic genre. Fine would have an even broader audience for his routine if it were billed as comedy, too (thereby increasing his speaking engagements) – he could take it to more popular venues to reach more than just conference attendees. He could reach the entire American public – OMG!!! Go, Doug!

8 o'clock light

This morning I woke up to 8 o'clock light--

at seven--

golden rays streaming through

translucent green leaves on the lower branches

of a giant mulberry that makes its home behind

my bedroom window.

"The tree with the lights in it," I thought,

and then spent the next hour trying to bring it back.

No such luck,

but such joy in the present passing moments with each

curtain

of leaves dropping noiselessly,

randomly,

shamelessly dancing their way

to the ground.

8 o'clock light at seven, and the leaves dancing down;

it must be autumn.

See America First

Last night, Josh and I watched episode 3 of the National Parks Series, "The Empire of Grandeur" (I've taken to co-opting our Netflix list when he's not paying attention. Killer of Sheep came home this way, too, but I think Josh was much more excited about the National Parks than that one). Episode 3 covers 1915-1919, but also jumps back in history quite a bit to explain some of the context of what was going on at the time.

The 2 hours really follows the creation of the National Park Service under the direction of Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane, who appointed Stephen Mather to clean up the mess that were the national parks. Mather had written Lane a letter insinuating that that parks were poorly managed, and Lane asked him to come manage them. There was no official National Park Service at the time, and the parks were a hodge-podge of lands that weren't managed consistently or evenly. Mather went on a crusade to create a National Park Service, and he was wildly successful, not only getting the Park Service created, but also bringing new National Parks into the department as well, including both Acadia and the Grand Canyon.

What I found most interesting about Mather's story were his tactics: he was a wealthy man (he had made his fortune as a Borax salesman and then as the owner of Thorkildsen-Mather Borax Company) and he was a marketing genius. He put his marketing talents to work selling the public on the idea of the National Parks, not just as a place of rest and respite, but also as America's greatest treasure, as a patriotic venture, and as something with real (read: monetary) value. He mobilized other millionaires and the press corps, taking influential editors, writers, and politicians out into the wilderness of the National Parks to preach to them about the wonders of the natural world and the need to protect the land. He travelled all over the country, surveying the National Parks. He wined and dined politicians and the press, business men and landowners. He was among the first to make use of a new law that he had lobbied for--allowing private citizens to donate lands to be added to National Park lands. He often bought and donated land or paid for improvements to roads or the salaries of his help in order to keep the momentum going. But above all, Mather went to the public, through the press, to convince the public and the politicians that the National Parks were good for American, good for the public, and that it was no less than an obligation to protect the land: for the enjoyment of the public as well as the enjoyment of future generations.

In the national park mission, protecting and managing the land for use by all now and use by all later, the movie points out the inherent contradiction or paradox. How do we allow use now and yet preserve these sites for future generations without them deteriorating under the strain of the tourism and visits? It seems to be the same paradox we as a species are now facing in all of our communities: how do we enjoy what we've built, now, while at the same time protecting the future for our children and grandchildren?