The "Brokenness" Controversy

Both of those words have been setting my teeth on edge for months.

"Broken" because any pundit or politician with a big megaphone can declare something (Obamacare, education, our foreign policy) to be "broken" and then, perhaps because it is such an extreme statement, it becomes a matter of common knowledge and any crackbrained scheme to replace that "broken" system is worthy of thoughtful consideration.  The only thing that doesn't seem to warrant study is whether the declaration itself is true!

"Controversy" because the news media, in its search for the two sides of everything, continually declares settled fact to be "controversial" as long as there is somebody to publicly question that fact.  The current heavy hitter in this usage is clearly climate change.  Anybody who has observed the blooming of flowers or the migration of birds for more than a few years knows that climate change is a fact.  But as long as there are paid shills for the energy industry questioning this fact, there will, apparently, be a "controversy."  We have seen such "controversies" before, such as the "controversy" over whether cigarettes are a health hazard.  Well-established science is confronted by people who say, "I don't believe that," without any supporting evidence whatsoever, and the news industry allows its public to consider a question unsettled.

Today I came across the name for these approaches, the concept of agnatology, or manufactured ignorance.  The PR people for corporations and politicians consider these to be well-established tools, with their own advantages and disadvantages.  I find it reprehensible.

Icy Slopes

Days after the last serious snow it is still icy on the paths and on the slopes in the park where Prophet and I usually walk in the morning.  The woods are still full of snow, but it has a hard crust that we can step on without sinking in (most of the time!)  There are a few bare spots, but with ten degree temperatures, it isn't from melting.  The snow and ice are slowly subliming (I love that word!) and so each day there is a little less, but without mud and run off.

Walking on that ice, especially down the slopes, frequently requires so much attention that it shuts down all the other thoughts.  And then I gain a flat spot, with a view of the river and the Palisades and a moment of complete silence and I am awestruck with wonder and appreciation of the moment and the place and my companion.

On a dry, relatively flat path I sometimes spin with wondering who we will run into or what path we should take.  I rehearse the exact wording for things I want to write.  I consider new approaches to things that have been bothering me.  I get stuck in those things that have been bothering me.  I usually wake up to where I am after a few minutes because Prophet wants me to tug on the other end of a stick or go bushwhacking through terrain that requires my attention.  Or, again, suddenly I see the light coming through the clouds in a single beam and on a single bush.  Or I overflow with thanks for the friendship of a dog who wants to go for epic adventures every single day.

I have heard a lot of discussion privileging one or more of these approaches.  Somebody is on the radio urging me to "mindfulness."  I shouldn't lose myself in what I am doing or in my worries.  I should just watch myself.  Or perhaps I should completely throw myself into what I am doing, without thinking about it or other things.  And these people are all so earnest and calm and fulfilled and they are all so patient with my blundering.

I think I will continue blundering.  I enjoy the moments of awe at being alive and breathing.  But I get a lot of thinking done when I am distracted from what I am doing.  And being lost in activity is its own reward... especially when the alternative is falling headlong down an icy slope.

Anatevka

Two months ago I wrote a short post about the history we imagine that we understand.  Two generations of moviegoers thought they knew about plantation life because they saw "Gone With the Wind."  Who knows how much longer people will think they understand Eastern European Jewish life because they saw "Fiddler on the Roof"?

Brody, Ukraine was -- at the turn of the twentieth century -- a small city (roughly 20,000) on the border between Austria-Hungary and Russia.  It was easily over 80% Jewish, which is a very large proportion.  We picture muddy streets and leaning, wood-framed structures in the "shtetl" but Brody's streets were paved with stone blocks and many of the downtown buildings were stone or brick and quite substantial.  The main synagogue, in particular, was an imposing stone building.

And what about the community of Jews in Brody?  The whole range of schools and conflicts was present.  There were Hasidim and Misnagdim.  There were Maskilim.  The well-known Yiddish writer Joseph Roth, author of "Radetsky March" was from Brody.  The Baal Shem Tov lived there for a time, too.

But Brody was a commercial town, important for its position on the frontier.  Most of those Jews weren't rabbinical scholars or mystics or advocates of the Enlightenment.  They were business people, doing the business of border towns.  I think if we imagine ourselves having devolved dramatically from the piety of our grandfathers, or having evolved dramatically from their ignorance, we fail to understand both them and ourselves.

And a sidenote for readers of Stones from the Creek.  "Brody" in Ukrainian means "fords".  "Vado" in the name San Miguel del Vado also refers to the ford, in that case of the Pecos River.

Lynyrd Skynyrd

I indulged myself in two Lynyrd Skynyrd moments in Stones from the Creek.  Rock and roll fans will know that Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington and Allen Collins named their band after a hated gym teacher, Leonard Skinner, who acted as a dean in their Florida high school (Robert E. Lee… really) and enforced the rule against long hair.  They used a sign from his realty agency for an album cover which resulted in his having to change his phone number after a slew of hate calls from total strangers.  He, meanwhile, had become friendly with the now-adult musicians.

I have two repellent sheriffs in my stories.  The first is Raymond J. Hearn of Barnwell County, SC.  He sends Mingo Sanders to a work gang at a privately-owned phosphate mine without so much as a hearing.  His grandson is a conservative Republican congressman.

The second is John Edack of Lyon County, NV.  He also made his living arresting people in order to provide free labor for local employers.  In his case, the arrested (I won't say "convict" because there was no legitimate charge or conviction) were Pyramid Lake Paiute Indians.

Neither of these is a historical character.  They are names I assigned to characters who were performing the vicious and exploitative work that sheriffs, in fact, did in those two counties and many more at that time.  But their names, while not drawn from the historic record, were also not made up.

Raymond J. Hearn was the assistant principal of the junior high school I attended.  John Edack was assistant principal of my high school.  I have unpleasant memories of both.  They seemed to me to dislike teens and all-to-happy to punish students unfairly.  When I was myself and assistant principal, other teachers and administrators were astonished that I had such stories.  After sharing one in a graduate seminar once, I heard the hushed whisper, "And he's and assistant principal!"

The truth is that educators like that drove me to become a teacher myself.  I kept feeling, "It shouldn't have to be so bad."  And I tried hard to be a different kind of person, I think successfully.  I was surprised when old classmates started reading Stones from the Creek and did not recognize the names.   I guess my friends were able to shake them off over the last four-and-a-half decades; they had an unforgettable effect on me.  But I will not thank them.

Trust

I often say that we get to choose the stories we tell about our lives.  A bunch of stuff happens, but we choose which parts to remember and how they fit together.  So what is the story of this morning's walk through (very) snowy woods with my GSD, Prophet.

He did totally pull me off my feet.  He really did lunge at his friend Chapman, a black Lab, while on leash and while I was off balance with one foot in a calf deep hole in the snow.  And he did this only two days after walking off when I took a bad spill on a damaged steel grate in a sidewalk.  I felt some kind of way that he didn't come and check on me then and it came right back today she he just forgot about the leash because he felt like playing.

But there was a lot more to this morning.  While he was off-leash in the park with Chapman, Prophet ran headlong up and down the trail; Chapman in hot pursuit.  They wrestled with each other and played tug with sticks.  And this all gave me a great deal of joy.  We took our off-piste detours into the ravines and down to the Metro North tracks, too.  Even two days after the most recent snow (and there have been so many storms) we were breaking trail there.  And Prophet also lured me into playing tug with his sticks once Chapman went home.

But the story I want to choose is that Prophet got a small piece of stick lodged deep in his throat.  The distress is unmistakable: he shakes his head, mouth open, and tries to insert a paw.  Once I saw I reached into his mouth and down his throat.  On my third try (!) I got that twig and pulled it out.  Now the temperature was in the mid-teens and having my hand coated with saliva in the wind was no great pleasure.  But I helped my friend.  More, he let me.  How much trust must it take for him to allow me to reach into his throat, especially when he is frightened and in trouble?  Not to speak, I suppose, of my trust that he won't take my hand off at the wrist.

I don't know what he remembers about this six hours later.  But I know that I can choose to remember.  Just as I can choose to forget that he yanked me off my feet.  Because I choose to value our mutual trust over his momentary loss of control in the face of the joy of play.

Goldfield, Nevada

On December 4, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent 300 Federal troops into Goldfield, Nevada under the command of Major General Frederick Funston, the butcher of the Philippines.  The mine owners of the district had informed Roosevelt that the area was in a state of anarchy and that martial law was required.  When the troops arrived they found Goldfield quiet, with no civil disorder or unrest at all.  But the mine owners took advantage of the presence of troops -- as they had planned -- to cut wages and declare that no union member would be allowed employment.

Roosevelt concluded that, although the troops had been brought in under false pretenses, he could not now remove them.  With the wage cuts and the move to break the union, he felt, there now would be civil unrest in the absence of troops.  The result: a non-union camp.

This is class warfare.  It doesn't matter that the President wasn't part of the plan from its inception.  It matters that he allowed the US Army to be used to destroy collective bargaining and to back the owners' play even when he realized that they had tricked him.  Goldfield was another exclusive camp, like Cripple Creek in the collection Stones from the Creek.  But neither the bosses nor Roosevelt were opposed to the union because they opposed discrimination.  We needn't make heroes of the miners in Goldfield to understand that the owners conspired with the US government to reduce them to interchangeable parts.

The owners have often created a multinational work force in a desire to divide their workers.  This shouldn't stop us creating a multinational resistance against them.  If we do not, we condemn ourselves to a continuation of the very one-sided class warfare that they have been waging for decades.

Separate Universes

Certain revelations have to be repeated daily for me.  It doesn't matter how big or forceful my "Aha!" is:  if I didn't truly get it before I will probably have to be bludgeoned over the head with this realization again.  I think the AA phrase "One Day at a Time" best captures my need to discover important things over and over.

One of these epiphanies is the separate universes inhabited by us and our dogs.  I have known this for years and have read about it, but I still have light and music when I see it again as if for the first time.  This morning Prophet and I were coming over the top of Spuyten Duyvil Hill when I saw the red light of dawn on the New Jersey Palisades and the entire thing reflected below in the momentarily calm Hudson River.  I looked at Prophet to see whether he was sharing this magic moment, but he was otherwise occupied.  For a short moment I wondered whether dogs were denied awe and wonder.

Then I remembered the moment we left the house.  There is still a dusting of snow over the two-inch crust of ice and the few inches of snow below.  Prophet dashed up onto an intact surface, snatched some up in his mouth, and then rolled on his back in ecstasy.  I stood watching.  Had he wondered whether humans are denied awe and wonder?

We walk through the same spatial coordinates of latitude, longitude and altitude but we inhabit separate universes that have only some intersections.  For days, Prophet has been walking on top of that icy crust, only occasionally breaking through.  Every step I take off trail has me plunging through the crust ankle deep (sometimes calf deep.)  I am much less willing to go on off-piste adventures under these conditions.  For me they are trudges, focused on my feet.  For Prophet, even the skidding on slippery surfaces seems to be fun.

And then there is all that urine.  We walked on an errand later in the morning and I managed to control my goal orientation with the memory that I had no particular time limits.  That meant that I could allow myself to wait each time Prophet absolutely had to stop to study some other dog's urine.  Does he analyze it?  Does he reflect on it?  Is it an aesthetic savoring?  Is it all of these?  Or is it something else beyond my imagination?  At this moment I have no way of knowing.  I just know it doesn't interest me.

And then, as I have mentioned before, occasionally Prophet stops to sign the guest book himself.  Why that time and not the time before?  Is it an enemy who he has to dis?  Is it a friend who he has to say "hey" to?  All I can do is wonder:  be filled with awe and wonder.