Things slowed down enough over the weekend to whittle away at the stack of books by my reading chair. One day I read Ivan Doig’s “The Eleventh Man” and the next I finished Mary Gaitskill’s “Veronica.” It’s hard to imagine two more different books, and yet there is plenty of similarity. For one thing, both of these authors are poets who barely suppress, if at all, their impulse toward metaphor, simile, and other vivid word play. For another, both plots consist of a series of deaths. The difference is partly that between the time periods: Doig is writing about World War II and Gaitskill is writing about now. Doig’s casualties of battle are matched by Gaitskill’s casualties of AIDS.
Both include scenes of sex, naturally, but Doig’s are monogamous on the part of his male hero (not his partner) and Gaitskill’s are serial and sometimes trivial if not predatory. Doig’s are partly produced by adrenaline and Gaitskill’s the search for comfort. Neither is particularly pornographic, though Doig’s are more conventional, which is what one would expect.
Ivan Doig has been Valier’s identified author for a long time. This is the country he writes about, fictionalized and merged into the “Two” country in honor of the Two Medicine River. People around here and elsewhere love his accounts of the Scots ranchers along the east front of the Rockies. He ties most of his plots to some historical event, since much of his original training was in history and journalism. Dams attract him, as in “Bucking the Sun” and “The Whistling Season,” and sometimes a bit of social advocacy as in “Prairie Nocturne” about a black man with a big singing voice. But his audience resists when he does that.
This particular book hinges on the WASPs, a little-known group of women pilots who ferried airplanes around the country in order to free up the men to fly combat. It doesn’t seem quite so revolutionary for those who have watched their twenty-something female airline pilot walk up the aisle to the cockpit or who have heard news accounts of the nicely manicured female bomber pilots in the Middle East, flying so high they must operate from an electronic screen, no less than the keyboard jockeys in the US Predator drones that fly over Pakistan.
All of the characters are pretty cut and dried, from the smarmy guy with wealth who slides by to the “animal” who thrives on the military life. The other part of the plot design is about a mythical football team on which the protagonist played in high school -- mythical in more than one way, since Montana high school athletic triumphs rank right up there with the Odyssey and the Iliad. These fellows have fanned out into combat locations that make a nice check-list of kinds of war. One by one they are picked off and the conceit is that a mysterious force called TPWP (Tepee-Weepy) is sending the journalist protagonist around the world to immortalize them as heroes, regardless of the facts. Doig has no personal experience of neither war or high school athletics so far as I know, but today’s veterans, approaching their centennial years, won’t care. They’ll fill in with their own knowledge.
For the first time, Doig includes a bit about Indians, which also come from imagination. Hill 57 was an actual place, now dispersed, the location of “Stay Away, Joe.” It housed mostly Metis and Cree people who didn’t fit into any reservation, notably the Gopher family. Today they are on the verge of achieving formal tribe status.
Francine Prose says, in her review of “Veronica,” “There's a way in which each novel we read enters into a conversation with every other novel we've read. Even though they may have been written in different eras and places, they can talk to one another because they speak essentially the same language: They follow a narrative arc, they include a cast of characters who may or may not remind us of people we know, and they create a world that in some sense mirrors the world outside the novel.” Then she quickly steps away from her assertion. Surely this book is a nightmare that contains no one we know. I don’t think so. Not many Valier people know Parisian models or Manhattan temps -- maybe. But I suspect that many of the more beautiful girls (and there are a LOT of beautiful young women around here) have an internal life that could lead them into these predicaments. Anyway, AIDS does not confine itself to Manhattan.
In the end “Veronica” is about attachment rather than sex. As Gaitskill puts it, the story is about the pretty parlor maid who flirts with the caddish nobleman in the upstairs household, in order to come up in the world, when her real longing is for Mrs. Bridges (who is the Veronica character -- Veronica is not a devil in Prada) and the comfort she provides. The Mrs. Bridges/Veronicas in this town are what make it work.
Gaitskill has to work hard to make this case and she often inserts dream-equivalents to ponder, as though the reader were a gypsy telling fortunes or a psychoanalyst looking for patterns. We do that a lot these days. Every era has its puzzles and labyrinths: it’s only the minotaur consuming the young while living at the center that is different from one time to another. It’s oddly reassuring to read that a funny-looking but intelligent and effective woman can have a full-spectrum intimate relationship, even at the unimaginably old age of forty! Of course, Veronica has a lot more cats than I do and I’m nearly seventy. And she has TWO relationships if you count Alison, the protagonist.
Both of these books are works of imagination. They will appeal to radically different readers. It’s not surprising that Gaitskill is the one nominated for a National Book Award, since the award is Manhattan-based and Manhattan thinks that Doig is a “regional” writer of local interest only. They’re wrong. Only now do they realize -- because of money -- they’re not the pivot but the pit. The people who are doorkeepers for Montana lit are just as insistent at excluding what they don’t say is “unregional.” What I really enjoy is reading BOTH, because the point of reading can be not just confirming one’s opinions but also seeing through someone else’s eyes. Even Mrs. Bridges has a point of view though she’s confined to belowstairs.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
DROP THAT ARROWHEAD!
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) 6-14-09
A Utah physician indicted in a federal investigation into the theft of ancient artifacts in the Four Corners region has been found dead in an apparent suicide, a sheriff’s official said Friday.
San Juan County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Grayson Redd, a distant relative, said James Redd’s body was found Thursday afternoon by his local church leader near a dried-up pond on his property in Blanding.
Phil Mueller, a family member, said Redd died from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning in his Jeep.
“It’s a tragic loss for the community,” Mueller said. “He was everybody’s general practitioner and birthed most of the babies in Blanding.”
Police did not verify a cause of death, but the sheriff’s chief deputy said the death has been ruled a suicide.
James Redd, 60, was one of 24 people indicted after a two-year investigation. The indictments were announced by federal officials Wednesday. Court papers say those involved stole, received or tried to sell Native American artifacts, including bowls, stone pipes, arrowheads, pendants and necklaces.
Redd was charged with one felony count of theft of Indian tribal property. His wife, 59-year-old Jean Redd, was also charged.
Of those indicted, 19 are from southern Utah, four are from Colorado, and one is from New Mexico. They range in age from 27 to 78.
BLM and FBI agents assigned to the investigation used a confidential source who came forward in 2006 and paid more than $335,00 during the following two years for 256 stolen artifacts, according to court documents.
_______
It’s impossible to judge such a case from the outside with this little information, but on the surface it appears that this respected doctor in a conservative community was so devastated by this accusation that he abandoned his wife, also accused, and snuffed himself. But people all over the West -- both Indian and white -- have picked up and bought arrowheads and larger objects for centuries. People proudly show off their arrowhead collections, arranged in patterns on cotton and put under glass.
In my neighborhood in Portland, the amateur anthropologist on the back of the block had a considerable aggregation of stones with worn or chipped patterns on them to indicate they had been used for pounding or grinding. When he died, our next door neighbor took them to his house. When he died, my mother moved them to the side of our garage, arranged in a row. Before my mother died, they were all stolen, probably by a man she hired to help her in the yard.
They are seen as “found wealth” that belong to no one. We could go out to the likely places around Valier and find some today. Look on high places, where a sentinel might sit flint-knapping the day away. Look in places that the wind or erosion or human activity has turned up or worn away the earth. Check out the tailings of gophers and badgers who’ve been digging burrows. Bob used to pride himself on being able to spot arrowheads, often small, since they only needed to provide a sharp point on the end of the arrow.
If you pick up something small that has belonged to no living person in a place where it has been for centuries, isn’t that harmless? It’s not as though one stole a framed collection from a basement museum or, indeed, a curated collection presented at a university or major institution. This is not the same thing as picking up as fully-beaded buckskin parade outfit complete with an eagle tail-feather Sioux bonnet! You could hardly find such a thing lying on a gopher hill anyway. But, you know, you find it in a hock shop in some small town. The decorating magazines are stuffed with photos of rooms with walls where elegant bags and banners hang.
We are in a time when a LOT of rules have changed. Every morning when I go to the post office, some guy and I have to do a little dance about the doors -- who opens it for whom? I have a pocketful of jokes to relieve the situation. Often the guy is older, raised to believe women are special and should be cherished and protected. Do I want to give that up? But it’s a generalized assumption. Some women are special and cherishable and some are not.
Likewise, our assumptions about American Indians and their artifacts. Two hundred years ago (1809) artifacts -- even skulls -- were considered war trophies and curiosities. A hundred and fifty years ago (1859) the flashy outfits were just being constructed and the Medicine Pipe Bundles were being created, because the people needed power. A hundred years ago (1909) the American Indian was the face of the United States: noble, spiritual, and elegant. Fifty years ago (1959) the back-hoes were digging out buffalo jumps so the local ranchers could sift the dirt for arrowheads. Today (2009) all that sort of thing has gone underground and you have to know the right people to buy the really good stuff, unless you’re willing to accept arti-fakes, which are remarkably good. Tribes are aggressive about protecting their land.
Like everything else we drive underground, once forbidden the objects in question were greatly enhanced in value and a network sprang up, often among people who were already inclined to be secretive. My guess is that they are about evenly divided between red and white. That is, if you accept a marginal, sometimes low-quantum, sometimes urban enrolled person as “Indian.” I expect there are more men than women. There is sometimes a gay connection, partly because NA populations do not demonize gays. (Today they DO demonize artifact dealers.) And there can be a drug connection because drugs are money and they are underground.
Why would a doctor get involved in the first place? Because he has much money (legal). Why would he be so humiliated as to commit suicide? Two possible reasons: he was educated and therefore understood the high post-colonial reasoning about ownership that would be used against him in court -- let alone the fact that he was committing a felony -- and maybe because a doctor is invested in privacy. Things happen in the medical context that neither the law nor society wants to know about, which is why there is such a high value on confidentiality in professions. Sometimes justice and the law do not dance together, even among lawyers and judges, much less officers.
A third reason: Native American issues are so highly politicized, so incendiary, so reinforced by emotional ideas left over from the early days (that Indians are all noble, that Indians are all fiendish killers, that ALL Indians are really like each other, that collecting arrowheads is an innocent pursuit) that it’s pretty tough to keep a clear head about the issues. This case turns up some real biggies with major consequences, quite apart from the life of the ironically named Doctor Redd.
A Utah physician indicted in a federal investigation into the theft of ancient artifacts in the Four Corners region has been found dead in an apparent suicide, a sheriff’s official said Friday.
San Juan County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Grayson Redd, a distant relative, said James Redd’s body was found Thursday afternoon by his local church leader near a dried-up pond on his property in Blanding.
Phil Mueller, a family member, said Redd died from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning in his Jeep.
“It’s a tragic loss for the community,” Mueller said. “He was everybody’s general practitioner and birthed most of the babies in Blanding.”
Police did not verify a cause of death, but the sheriff’s chief deputy said the death has been ruled a suicide.
James Redd, 60, was one of 24 people indicted after a two-year investigation. The indictments were announced by federal officials Wednesday. Court papers say those involved stole, received or tried to sell Native American artifacts, including bowls, stone pipes, arrowheads, pendants and necklaces.
Redd was charged with one felony count of theft of Indian tribal property. His wife, 59-year-old Jean Redd, was also charged.
Of those indicted, 19 are from southern Utah, four are from Colorado, and one is from New Mexico. They range in age from 27 to 78.
BLM and FBI agents assigned to the investigation used a confidential source who came forward in 2006 and paid more than $335,00 during the following two years for 256 stolen artifacts, according to court documents.
_______
It’s impossible to judge such a case from the outside with this little information, but on the surface it appears that this respected doctor in a conservative community was so devastated by this accusation that he abandoned his wife, also accused, and snuffed himself. But people all over the West -- both Indian and white -- have picked up and bought arrowheads and larger objects for centuries. People proudly show off their arrowhead collections, arranged in patterns on cotton and put under glass.
In my neighborhood in Portland, the amateur anthropologist on the back of the block had a considerable aggregation of stones with worn or chipped patterns on them to indicate they had been used for pounding or grinding. When he died, our next door neighbor took them to his house. When he died, my mother moved them to the side of our garage, arranged in a row. Before my mother died, they were all stolen, probably by a man she hired to help her in the yard.
They are seen as “found wealth” that belong to no one. We could go out to the likely places around Valier and find some today. Look on high places, where a sentinel might sit flint-knapping the day away. Look in places that the wind or erosion or human activity has turned up or worn away the earth. Check out the tailings of gophers and badgers who’ve been digging burrows. Bob used to pride himself on being able to spot arrowheads, often small, since they only needed to provide a sharp point on the end of the arrow.
If you pick up something small that has belonged to no living person in a place where it has been for centuries, isn’t that harmless? It’s not as though one stole a framed collection from a basement museum or, indeed, a curated collection presented at a university or major institution. This is not the same thing as picking up as fully-beaded buckskin parade outfit complete with an eagle tail-feather Sioux bonnet! You could hardly find such a thing lying on a gopher hill anyway. But, you know, you find it in a hock shop in some small town. The decorating magazines are stuffed with photos of rooms with walls where elegant bags and banners hang.
We are in a time when a LOT of rules have changed. Every morning when I go to the post office, some guy and I have to do a little dance about the doors -- who opens it for whom? I have a pocketful of jokes to relieve the situation. Often the guy is older, raised to believe women are special and should be cherished and protected. Do I want to give that up? But it’s a generalized assumption. Some women are special and cherishable and some are not.
Likewise, our assumptions about American Indians and their artifacts. Two hundred years ago (1809) artifacts -- even skulls -- were considered war trophies and curiosities. A hundred and fifty years ago (1859) the flashy outfits were just being constructed and the Medicine Pipe Bundles were being created, because the people needed power. A hundred years ago (1909) the American Indian was the face of the United States: noble, spiritual, and elegant. Fifty years ago (1959) the back-hoes were digging out buffalo jumps so the local ranchers could sift the dirt for arrowheads. Today (2009) all that sort of thing has gone underground and you have to know the right people to buy the really good stuff, unless you’re willing to accept arti-fakes, which are remarkably good. Tribes are aggressive about protecting their land.
Like everything else we drive underground, once forbidden the objects in question were greatly enhanced in value and a network sprang up, often among people who were already inclined to be secretive. My guess is that they are about evenly divided between red and white. That is, if you accept a marginal, sometimes low-quantum, sometimes urban enrolled person as “Indian.” I expect there are more men than women. There is sometimes a gay connection, partly because NA populations do not demonize gays. (Today they DO demonize artifact dealers.) And there can be a drug connection because drugs are money and they are underground.
Why would a doctor get involved in the first place? Because he has much money (legal). Why would he be so humiliated as to commit suicide? Two possible reasons: he was educated and therefore understood the high post-colonial reasoning about ownership that would be used against him in court -- let alone the fact that he was committing a felony -- and maybe because a doctor is invested in privacy. Things happen in the medical context that neither the law nor society wants to know about, which is why there is such a high value on confidentiality in professions. Sometimes justice and the law do not dance together, even among lawyers and judges, much less officers.
A third reason: Native American issues are so highly politicized, so incendiary, so reinforced by emotional ideas left over from the early days (that Indians are all noble, that Indians are all fiendish killers, that ALL Indians are really like each other, that collecting arrowheads is an innocent pursuit) that it’s pretty tough to keep a clear head about the issues. This case turns up some real biggies with major consequences, quite apart from the life of the ironically named Doctor Redd.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
AMORETTE DIEDERICKA SEELE GROUND
The Glacier Reporter for June 11, 2009, devoted two color pages to the graduating seniors, their senior portraits in small squares, eight across and seven down on two pages. That’s 126 kids, right? When their superintendent of schools, Mary Margaret McKay Johnson, graduated, there might have been fifty. I was there.
The photos are great. None are ugly kids. Some casual and some formal, with their horses or leaning on a mirror or with a pow-wow drum or wrapped in a Pendleton blanket or with their skateboard on their shoulder or wearing a whole garland of athletic gold medals or in their cowboy gear. I see braids and mustaches and girls more beautiful than movie stars. For me, because I have a half-century history, every face and name has a kind of shadow rising up behind it, faces and names from the past.
One took me totally by surprise: Amorette Diedericka Seele Ground. I wish I could send you the photo but they didn’t make it to the website, so I’ll try for a word picture. A young woman with a Mona Lisa smile and a perfect Plains Indian profile wearing a pristine classic Stetson, loose hair, long pendant earrings and a high-collared but sleeveless lavendar blouse. The collar is buttoned but the opening below is not. In the background is a strawstack. I do not know this girl, but I know her parents, Richard Ground who married Elsie Mad Plume, and I knew Diedericka Seele.
In the Sixties Diedericka and Keith Seele came every summer in their Mercedes and with their Boston Bull terrier, Sparky. They always stayed at Moyer’s motel which had rooms with kitchenettes. According to the Glacier Reporter of Aug. 22, 1957, Keith Seele was visiting and Chewing Black Bone named him “Sits in the Middle.” Ish-tut-sick-taupi, a real Indian name inherited from a real person. A few weeks later Gary Cooper was given the name “Chief Eagle Cloud,” a suitably Hollywood name.
Chewing Black Bone was one of the last old-time Indians, a man of rock-ribbed honor and independence and an important force in the shaping of early Blackfeet self-governance. He is the old man sitting down in Bob Scriver’s sculpture called “Transition.” Blinded by trachoma, he lived in a lodge and mended his own moccassins. Keith got to know him because he was “Ahku Pitsu” in the James Willard Schultz books, a close friend of Schultz who gave him many stories and shared adventures. Keith was a dedicated admirer of Schultz and edited “Blackfeet and Buffalo : Memories of Life among the Indians” which is a collection of short stories that hadn’t been been gathered up earlier. Schultz is buried not far from where Chewing Black Bone lived with his descendants, the Mad Plumes, on Two Medicine just past the old Holy Family Mission. The Mad Plumes are a rodeo family. The grave was originally unmarked and it remains hard to get to since it’s across an irrigation ditch and up a steep bluff. Keith was the one who finally arranged for a headstone. Sid Gustafson gets up there to pull weeds every spring.
Keith’s real lifework was as an Egyptologist. He was quite famous in that field, and charged with extracting as much information as possible from the area that would be flooded by the Aswan Dam. He had begun adult life as a missionary in Germany and while he was there, he found Diedericka. The pair took marriage as seriously as is possible, considering it sacred and dedicated.
Keith didn’t want Diedericka to have any children because if she did, he felt it would not be safe to take a child into the field so that she would have to stay at home with them -- and he couldn’t bear to be parted from her. For her, this was both a protection and a burden. But there was another element: she had a weak heart so child-bearing might have killed her. Nevertheless, a doctor explained to her that she must not hurry in life -- then she would be safe. She learned to walk with long, slow steps and got along fine. They generally lived on a boat of some kind in Egypt but during the university year, they lived near the Oriental Institute attached to the University of Chicago. Keith’s books, such as his revision of “When Egypt Ruled the East,” remains vital reading.
When Keith asked for permission to marry Diedericka in Germany, the matter was considered very carefully because the family knew, even before the wars, that she would probably not return and they would never see her again. When they agreed that Keith was promising and honorable, her mother and sisters made an album of photos and other things for her to take with her as a kind of “talismanic bundle” holding a little piece of home. They were right -- she never did see them again but there were many, many fond letters.
The couple spent many happy summer days with Chewing Black Bone and the Mad Plumes. They were happy for Elsie Mad Plume when she married Richard Ground because it united two families with old-time ties. Agnes Mad Plume and Mary Ground, carriers of the heritage as the women are, were formidable grandmothers. I knew them both, but not as closely as Diedericka did. When Keith died, Elsie and Richard invited her to come live with them as their honored ancestor. She didn’t do it, but it moved her deeply. I suspect that Amorette is too young to remember Diedericka Seele. In fact, she may have been named because her birth coincided with Diedericka’s death. I’ll have to call up and ask.
When I went to seminary at the University of Chicago, I made contact with Diedericka, who was just leaving her modest brick house and garden in order to live in a senior citizens apartment, really a rather plush one, especially with all the Oriental rugs spread on the floor. I took a box of books to O’Gara’s, the Hyde Park used book dealer, for her.
But what I remember most was a late spring evening when she suggested we go for a drive. We just wandered mostly, but as the dusk we happened upon a little nature preserve just as the fireflies began to blink. On the dirt road through the woods they were thick as stars on the prairie and we were both agog at being “lost in the stars” while they moved all around us and even came in the windows of the van and perched on us. Just a small and not unnatural moment, but never forgotten and always remembered with wonder.
Down through time come these connections. It’s why I live here.
The photos are great. None are ugly kids. Some casual and some formal, with their horses or leaning on a mirror or with a pow-wow drum or wrapped in a Pendleton blanket or with their skateboard on their shoulder or wearing a whole garland of athletic gold medals or in their cowboy gear. I see braids and mustaches and girls more beautiful than movie stars. For me, because I have a half-century history, every face and name has a kind of shadow rising up behind it, faces and names from the past.
One took me totally by surprise: Amorette Diedericka Seele Ground. I wish I could send you the photo but they didn’t make it to the website, so I’ll try for a word picture. A young woman with a Mona Lisa smile and a perfect Plains Indian profile wearing a pristine classic Stetson, loose hair, long pendant earrings and a high-collared but sleeveless lavendar blouse. The collar is buttoned but the opening below is not. In the background is a strawstack. I do not know this girl, but I know her parents, Richard Ground who married Elsie Mad Plume, and I knew Diedericka Seele.
In the Sixties Diedericka and Keith Seele came every summer in their Mercedes and with their Boston Bull terrier, Sparky. They always stayed at Moyer’s motel which had rooms with kitchenettes. According to the Glacier Reporter of Aug. 22, 1957, Keith Seele was visiting and Chewing Black Bone named him “Sits in the Middle.” Ish-tut-sick-taupi, a real Indian name inherited from a real person. A few weeks later Gary Cooper was given the name “Chief Eagle Cloud,” a suitably Hollywood name.
Chewing Black Bone was one of the last old-time Indians, a man of rock-ribbed honor and independence and an important force in the shaping of early Blackfeet self-governance. He is the old man sitting down in Bob Scriver’s sculpture called “Transition.” Blinded by trachoma, he lived in a lodge and mended his own moccassins. Keith got to know him because he was “Ahku Pitsu” in the James Willard Schultz books, a close friend of Schultz who gave him many stories and shared adventures. Keith was a dedicated admirer of Schultz and edited “Blackfeet and Buffalo : Memories of Life among the Indians” which is a collection of short stories that hadn’t been been gathered up earlier. Schultz is buried not far from where Chewing Black Bone lived with his descendants, the Mad Plumes, on Two Medicine just past the old Holy Family Mission. The Mad Plumes are a rodeo family. The grave was originally unmarked and it remains hard to get to since it’s across an irrigation ditch and up a steep bluff. Keith was the one who finally arranged for a headstone. Sid Gustafson gets up there to pull weeds every spring.
Keith’s real lifework was as an Egyptologist. He was quite famous in that field, and charged with extracting as much information as possible from the area that would be flooded by the Aswan Dam. He had begun adult life as a missionary in Germany and while he was there, he found Diedericka. The pair took marriage as seriously as is possible, considering it sacred and dedicated.
Keith didn’t want Diedericka to have any children because if she did, he felt it would not be safe to take a child into the field so that she would have to stay at home with them -- and he couldn’t bear to be parted from her. For her, this was both a protection and a burden. But there was another element: she had a weak heart so child-bearing might have killed her. Nevertheless, a doctor explained to her that she must not hurry in life -- then she would be safe. She learned to walk with long, slow steps and got along fine. They generally lived on a boat of some kind in Egypt but during the university year, they lived near the Oriental Institute attached to the University of Chicago. Keith’s books, such as his revision of “When Egypt Ruled the East,” remains vital reading.
When Keith asked for permission to marry Diedericka in Germany, the matter was considered very carefully because the family knew, even before the wars, that she would probably not return and they would never see her again. When they agreed that Keith was promising and honorable, her mother and sisters made an album of photos and other things for her to take with her as a kind of “talismanic bundle” holding a little piece of home. They were right -- she never did see them again but there were many, many fond letters.
The couple spent many happy summer days with Chewing Black Bone and the Mad Plumes. They were happy for Elsie Mad Plume when she married Richard Ground because it united two families with old-time ties. Agnes Mad Plume and Mary Ground, carriers of the heritage as the women are, were formidable grandmothers. I knew them both, but not as closely as Diedericka did. When Keith died, Elsie and Richard invited her to come live with them as their honored ancestor. She didn’t do it, but it moved her deeply. I suspect that Amorette is too young to remember Diedericka Seele. In fact, she may have been named because her birth coincided with Diedericka’s death. I’ll have to call up and ask.
When I went to seminary at the University of Chicago, I made contact with Diedericka, who was just leaving her modest brick house and garden in order to live in a senior citizens apartment, really a rather plush one, especially with all the Oriental rugs spread on the floor. I took a box of books to O’Gara’s, the Hyde Park used book dealer, for her.
But what I remember most was a late spring evening when she suggested we go for a drive. We just wandered mostly, but as the dusk we happened upon a little nature preserve just as the fireflies began to blink. On the dirt road through the woods they were thick as stars on the prairie and we were both agog at being “lost in the stars” while they moved all around us and even came in the windows of the van and perched on us. Just a small and not unnatural moment, but never forgotten and always remembered with wonder.
Down through time come these connections. It’s why I live here.
Friday, June 12, 2009
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
The little snippet of movie about the signing of the 1928 oil lease mentioned “Kills Across the Way” which is not a familiar name, so I thought I’d look him up in the 1907-08 census, that dependable resource. (Available from the Blackfeet Heritage Center and the Museum of the Plains Indian -- both have websites.)
There he was: full-Piegan, 33 years old so born in 1864, before the People settled down into reservation life.
His father, Striped Dog, was deceased. No one knew who his parents were. Neither did they know about any of his sisters or brothers.
John’s mother was named Kills Across the Way, so he had her name. She was 60 at this time. Her father was unknown and her mother was Quill Work, who was deceased. She had two sisters, Bounces Up, wife of Eagle Flag, and Knows No More.
Quill Work, Bounces Up and Knows No More are not listed under their own names, but Eagle Flag is in the census. He is full-Piegan and eighty years old. His father was “Packing Tail Feathers Coming Up Hill,” and is deceased, but the name survives, much shortened, as “Tail Feathers.” Eagle Flag’s mother was “Kills First” and she is dead. (Women are often named for the exploits of their fathers or husbands.) His sibs were Fox-Head (same father, different mother) deceased who had three sons: Weasel Bear, Aims Back and another.
Red Snake was Eagle Flag’s full sister. She died, leaving John and Henry Merchant; Shadow, the wife of Peter Oscar; and Elizabeth.
Eagle Flag had three recorded wives and lived on Badger Creek just above the forks of Two Medicine. The three wives were Diving at Night, Good Looking Down, and Bounces Up. The first two had died by the time of the census.
Here’s the information about Bounces Up, who was sixty in 1907 but married at ten, “Indian custom” which only means she joined the household then. Her father was Wolf Robe Inside Out (child of North Chief, father; and Berry Eater, mother.) and her mother was Spotted Kill (child of Long Hair, father; and Hairy Eyes, mother). All these people were deceased.
Bounces Up’s brother Many White Horses had the same father but had died. His wife, Walking in the Water, was married to Little Dog, and her other brother was Garrett Many White Horses.
Her uncle, Many Braids, died leaving her cousin, Chief All Over; her half-sister Crow Head (who married Three Bears) had the same father as Bounces Up’s father but a different mother. The same was true of Big Lodge Pole, also Yellow Robe Inside Out. The latter is deceased. His daughter was Baby Girl Wrapped Up, widow of John Middle Calf.
Bounces Up’s aunts and uncles on her mother’s side were Spotted Calf (Running Crane) who died, leaving Young Running Crane and Catches Inside, the widow of Crow Cut. Her full brother, Mountain Chief, died leaving a son. Old Woman Child died, leaving James Gambler and Under Otter, a daughter, who died, leaving Weasel Gut, a daughter who died, leaving Louise After Buffalo. This paragraph is confusing as the punctuation and so on don’t make it clear who is whose sib or descendant.
There are many names in this round-up that are familiar today, sometimes for sorrowful reasons, like Many White Horses. The most famous is Mountain Chief. Spotted Calf, Running Crane, Wolf Robe and Aimsback and After Buffalo all persist. Walking in the Water is probably Wades in the Water, an important name. Merchant and Oscar were mixed blood families. Joe Gambler was one of the figures in Bob Scriver’s depiction of the Opening of the Medicine Pipe Bundle and Little Dog was the ceremonialist.
We’ve been talking about Bounces Up, aunt of John Kills Across the way, so let’s get back to John. At age 33 he’d already had four wives. The first is significant but she only lived with him for four months and had no children with him. She was already the mother of David Duvall, the collaborator who so crucially contributed to the work of Clarke Wissler.
The second wife was Hear Her All the Time, deceased, no children. The third wife was named Caught! She lived with him for a year, went off with another man, had a baby as soon as she left, and neither man would claim it. She died and so did the baby.
The fourth wife was Making Signs to One Another who lived with him for five years. She was full Piegan and her father was Sore Mouth. Her mother and grandparents were unknown, also her aunts and uncles. Before John, she was married to Old Bear Chief but had no children with him, and then Long Time Pine Squirrel, who is Blood and living. With him she had two children, one died and one lives. The latter is Blood Woman, 22 years old, married to Ira Sheriff, and living on Milk River.
With John, Making Signs had three children, one of which died. The daughters who lived were Double Shouting Woman, 6 years old at this census, and Louise, 5 years old, who was named by the priest.
“Making Signs” had a sister and three cousins. Her full-sister was Goes in Many, wife of Chief Coward. I taught Stanley Chief Coward in the eighth grade in 1961-62. This may be the granny who raised him. The cousins were Weasel Fat, Home Gun and Three Guns.
People away from here are not accustomed to Indian names and get distracted by them, trying to understand what they mean. The media encourages colorful, even poetic, phrases so something like “Weasel Fat” or a long phrase like “Making Signs to One Another” is startling.
There are two things in this account that strike me. First there are so many people dead -- this is a period in which the tribe had not quite emerged from holocaust, sort of like the years right after WWII when so many concentration camp prisoners were wandering and dazed. The saving mercy is that the Blackfeet were never displaced from their own high prairie home against the Rockies. But they were refugees in their own land, dependent on food aid and improvised shelter. It is Shadow who has the name that might have been fitting for many people.
The other is that John Kills Across the Way was 33 and already had had four wives, yet only two little girls survive as his children, whom the last wife presumably took with her when she left. Yet twenty years later this lonesome, evidently hard-to-live-with man is negotiating oil leases as a member of the Tribal Council, one of fifty-something voting members who control the future of the whole tribe, now numbering 16,000.
Where IS Stanley Chief Coward anyway? When I ask, they tell me “He’s over in Washington somewhere.” He’d be in his sixties now. How many wives? How many children?
There he was: full-Piegan, 33 years old so born in 1864, before the People settled down into reservation life.
His father, Striped Dog, was deceased. No one knew who his parents were. Neither did they know about any of his sisters or brothers.
John’s mother was named Kills Across the Way, so he had her name. She was 60 at this time. Her father was unknown and her mother was Quill Work, who was deceased. She had two sisters, Bounces Up, wife of Eagle Flag, and Knows No More.
Quill Work, Bounces Up and Knows No More are not listed under their own names, but Eagle Flag is in the census. He is full-Piegan and eighty years old. His father was “Packing Tail Feathers Coming Up Hill,” and is deceased, but the name survives, much shortened, as “Tail Feathers.” Eagle Flag’s mother was “Kills First” and she is dead. (Women are often named for the exploits of their fathers or husbands.) His sibs were Fox-Head (same father, different mother) deceased who had three sons: Weasel Bear, Aims Back and another.
Red Snake was Eagle Flag’s full sister. She died, leaving John and Henry Merchant; Shadow, the wife of Peter Oscar; and Elizabeth.
Eagle Flag had three recorded wives and lived on Badger Creek just above the forks of Two Medicine. The three wives were Diving at Night, Good Looking Down, and Bounces Up. The first two had died by the time of the census.
Here’s the information about Bounces Up, who was sixty in 1907 but married at ten, “Indian custom” which only means she joined the household then. Her father was Wolf Robe Inside Out (child of North Chief, father; and Berry Eater, mother.) and her mother was Spotted Kill (child of Long Hair, father; and Hairy Eyes, mother). All these people were deceased.
Bounces Up’s brother Many White Horses had the same father but had died. His wife, Walking in the Water, was married to Little Dog, and her other brother was Garrett Many White Horses.
Her uncle, Many Braids, died leaving her cousin, Chief All Over; her half-sister Crow Head (who married Three Bears) had the same father as Bounces Up’s father but a different mother. The same was true of Big Lodge Pole, also Yellow Robe Inside Out. The latter is deceased. His daughter was Baby Girl Wrapped Up, widow of John Middle Calf.
Bounces Up’s aunts and uncles on her mother’s side were Spotted Calf (Running Crane) who died, leaving Young Running Crane and Catches Inside, the widow of Crow Cut. Her full brother, Mountain Chief, died leaving a son. Old Woman Child died, leaving James Gambler and Under Otter, a daughter, who died, leaving Weasel Gut, a daughter who died, leaving Louise After Buffalo. This paragraph is confusing as the punctuation and so on don’t make it clear who is whose sib or descendant.
There are many names in this round-up that are familiar today, sometimes for sorrowful reasons, like Many White Horses. The most famous is Mountain Chief. Spotted Calf, Running Crane, Wolf Robe and Aimsback and After Buffalo all persist. Walking in the Water is probably Wades in the Water, an important name. Merchant and Oscar were mixed blood families. Joe Gambler was one of the figures in Bob Scriver’s depiction of the Opening of the Medicine Pipe Bundle and Little Dog was the ceremonialist.
We’ve been talking about Bounces Up, aunt of John Kills Across the way, so let’s get back to John. At age 33 he’d already had four wives. The first is significant but she only lived with him for four months and had no children with him. She was already the mother of David Duvall, the collaborator who so crucially contributed to the work of Clarke Wissler.
The second wife was Hear Her All the Time, deceased, no children. The third wife was named Caught! She lived with him for a year, went off with another man, had a baby as soon as she left, and neither man would claim it. She died and so did the baby.
The fourth wife was Making Signs to One Another who lived with him for five years. She was full Piegan and her father was Sore Mouth. Her mother and grandparents were unknown, also her aunts and uncles. Before John, she was married to Old Bear Chief but had no children with him, and then Long Time Pine Squirrel, who is Blood and living. With him she had two children, one died and one lives. The latter is Blood Woman, 22 years old, married to Ira Sheriff, and living on Milk River.
With John, Making Signs had three children, one of which died. The daughters who lived were Double Shouting Woman, 6 years old at this census, and Louise, 5 years old, who was named by the priest.
“Making Signs” had a sister and three cousins. Her full-sister was Goes in Many, wife of Chief Coward. I taught Stanley Chief Coward in the eighth grade in 1961-62. This may be the granny who raised him. The cousins were Weasel Fat, Home Gun and Three Guns.
People away from here are not accustomed to Indian names and get distracted by them, trying to understand what they mean. The media encourages colorful, even poetic, phrases so something like “Weasel Fat” or a long phrase like “Making Signs to One Another” is startling.
There are two things in this account that strike me. First there are so many people dead -- this is a period in which the tribe had not quite emerged from holocaust, sort of like the years right after WWII when so many concentration camp prisoners were wandering and dazed. The saving mercy is that the Blackfeet were never displaced from their own high prairie home against the Rockies. But they were refugees in their own land, dependent on food aid and improvised shelter. It is Shadow who has the name that might have been fitting for many people.
The other is that John Kills Across the Way was 33 and already had had four wives, yet only two little girls survive as his children, whom the last wife presumably took with her when she left. Yet twenty years later this lonesome, evidently hard-to-live-with man is negotiating oil leases as a member of the Tribal Council, one of fifty-something voting members who control the future of the whole tribe, now numbering 16,000.
Where IS Stanley Chief Coward anyway? When I ask, they tell me “He’s over in Washington somewhere.” He’d be in his sixties now. How many wives? How many children?
Thursday, June 11, 2009
LET ME ASK YOU THIS. . .
The manuscript of the book I’m writing with Tim Barrus is complete. Now comes the hard part. It’s easy to generate a lot of print -- high quality and exciting -- from Tim because he’s like a volcano throwing out lava. My job has been bricolage and writing the interstitial transitions. He’s the stained glass, I’m the lead caning. Actually, it’s been a lot of fun. Tim’s ramrod, Eavan, thinks he’s also writing this book, but the truth is that he’s not, at least not this book -- there are others. However, some of his writing is included as well as some of the writing of the other boys, assuming they’re real. The words are real.
While I’m still trying to figure out the last editing and thinking ahead to queries, Tim has already leapt to publicity, his favorite part. His idea of how to entice media coverage is to insult and mock them, on the premise that they’ll want to set everyone straight. Maybe. He describes an interview with the genteel Jackie Leyden in which she failed to perceive that he wasn’t Native American, although all good liberal intelligentsia are supposed to know their stuff about Indians. (archived at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1112194)
When I listened to it, I laughed, because he DID sound Indian! I know Jackie was sitting at her mike with a paper prepared by someone else that told her what to ask, which parts to ask him to read, and what topics NOT to raise. Also, she undoubtedly had a Borgian earpiece guiding her if things went too slowly or quickly. On his end, in a different city, Tim sat in a little room alone with a mike and tried to respond to someone he couldn’t see, without even knowing her appearance much less her body language and responses. He came across as meek and gentle, which is hardly his normal mode.
Bill Houff, author of “Infinity in your Hand,” an overview of his near-Buddhist religious philosophy, used to wax indignant over the many radio interviews he did. Someone in some other place, intent on looking good to a cadre of devoted listeners, would ask questions without ever reading the book. Based on their limited understanding of religion, some would attack and some would interpret what Houff had written, but he was basically there as a stooge. The point of the interview was to make the interviewer look good.
My experience with George Cole at Yellowstone Public Radio was much better. To hear the interview go to www.ypradio.org. Look for “RealTime,” George’s program, and then the Archive. This link might be a shortcut: http://ypr-pc.streamguys.net/podcast/realtime/rt090420.mp3 We didn’t know each other, but we met and chatted for a while beforehand and had the advantage of sharing some of the same worlds: Montana, Unitarians -- he’d even met Bob Scriver long enough ago that Bob hadn’t sunk into old age yet. We were in the same small room, looking at each other’s faces. George had a cheater in front of him to remind him of names and events, so he’d get them right, and I knew he was watching my face to see how far I would go on some topics, though he’d cautioned me that if I got too far off the rails, it would be edited. We had been VERY frank beforehand. Much useful information was exchanged! George hasn’t been a king-maker, but close: a governor-guider, you might say. I was in my devoted wife persona and trying not to pound the table for emphasis because it goes into the mike as thunder.
It sounded like the most relaxed and spontaneous of conversations and some people, including some of my relatives, considered it very daring because George asked me if I still loved Bob Scriver and I said yes.
Well, you know, define love.
One of the continuing themes of “Orpheus Pressed Up Against the Windows of the Catacombs” is love and the other is death, which you might expect if you read mythology. Because the real subject matter of the book is boys with HIV, “at risk,” which means they die. In fact, some of what is included in the book is now posthumous.
But, you know, define death.
This morning (5AM in Montana is a good time to talk to Europe) Tim and I had an exchange about the above thoughts and death. This is what we said:
TIM: RE: “Do you still love. . . I would have said: he's dead.”
MARY: “As long as someone remembers you vividly, are you dead? Dead is if you never existed in the first place. Lots of people are walking around looking undead, but they are dead.
“Dead is in how you feel about someone. He doesn't feel dead to me. If you don't like that answer, ask someone else. Anyway, George loved having a romantic answer. It was a romantic question. I was there to sell books, not pass a lie detector test.”
TIM: “I like that answer.”
That’s how the whole book goes. Our problem is to keep a balance in the book as well as our own sanity as authors and peace between us. One of the best loved of Tim’s little community recently died. I never met the boy but he was real to me. I grieve but he’s not dead to me.
It is also a problem to fight off Tim’s critics and accusers, a weird collaboration of jealous gays and resentful Native Americans. The two realms, gay and NA, do intertwine in a shadowy and sometimes illicit way on reservations and in big city ghettoes, mostly through the underground artifact trade.
I once asked Sherman Alexie whether he liked “Fancy Dancer,” a novel about a gay priest and the gay motorcyclist (Leather Man) who teaches him to be proud of his sexuality. I haven’t read it for a long time so I don’t quite remember which one was Indian -- I think the priest. Alexie did like it. I’ve wondered how much that book influenced his “The Toughest Indian in the World,” which some thought was about being gay but which I believe is about the “Mythic Indian,” the one that Jackie Leyden thinks is real and believes she interviewed. That Indian has been killed over and over, but constantly resurrects.
This book that Tim and I have written will not tell you who the real Tim Barrus is. Nor the real Mary Scriver either. In the first place, like all fully alive humans, we’re both many personas. In the second place, define real.
While I’m still trying to figure out the last editing and thinking ahead to queries, Tim has already leapt to publicity, his favorite part. His idea of how to entice media coverage is to insult and mock them, on the premise that they’ll want to set everyone straight. Maybe. He describes an interview with the genteel Jackie Leyden in which she failed to perceive that he wasn’t Native American, although all good liberal intelligentsia are supposed to know their stuff about Indians. (archived at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1112194)
When I listened to it, I laughed, because he DID sound Indian! I know Jackie was sitting at her mike with a paper prepared by someone else that told her what to ask, which parts to ask him to read, and what topics NOT to raise. Also, she undoubtedly had a Borgian earpiece guiding her if things went too slowly or quickly. On his end, in a different city, Tim sat in a little room alone with a mike and tried to respond to someone he couldn’t see, without even knowing her appearance much less her body language and responses. He came across as meek and gentle, which is hardly his normal mode.
Bill Houff, author of “Infinity in your Hand,” an overview of his near-Buddhist religious philosophy, used to wax indignant over the many radio interviews he did. Someone in some other place, intent on looking good to a cadre of devoted listeners, would ask questions without ever reading the book. Based on their limited understanding of religion, some would attack and some would interpret what Houff had written, but he was basically there as a stooge. The point of the interview was to make the interviewer look good.
My experience with George Cole at Yellowstone Public Radio was much better. To hear the interview go to www.ypradio.org. Look for “RealTime,” George’s program, and then the Archive. This link might be a shortcut: http://ypr-pc.streamguys.net/podcast/realtime/rt090420.mp3 We didn’t know each other, but we met and chatted for a while beforehand and had the advantage of sharing some of the same worlds: Montana, Unitarians -- he’d even met Bob Scriver long enough ago that Bob hadn’t sunk into old age yet. We were in the same small room, looking at each other’s faces. George had a cheater in front of him to remind him of names and events, so he’d get them right, and I knew he was watching my face to see how far I would go on some topics, though he’d cautioned me that if I got too far off the rails, it would be edited. We had been VERY frank beforehand. Much useful information was exchanged! George hasn’t been a king-maker, but close: a governor-guider, you might say. I was in my devoted wife persona and trying not to pound the table for emphasis because it goes into the mike as thunder.
It sounded like the most relaxed and spontaneous of conversations and some people, including some of my relatives, considered it very daring because George asked me if I still loved Bob Scriver and I said yes.
Well, you know, define love.
One of the continuing themes of “Orpheus Pressed Up Against the Windows of the Catacombs” is love and the other is death, which you might expect if you read mythology. Because the real subject matter of the book is boys with HIV, “at risk,” which means they die. In fact, some of what is included in the book is now posthumous.
But, you know, define death.
This morning (5AM in Montana is a good time to talk to Europe) Tim and I had an exchange about the above thoughts and death. This is what we said:
TIM: RE: “Do you still love. . . I would have said: he's dead.”
MARY: “As long as someone remembers you vividly, are you dead? Dead is if you never existed in the first place. Lots of people are walking around looking undead, but they are dead.
“Dead is in how you feel about someone. He doesn't feel dead to me. If you don't like that answer, ask someone else. Anyway, George loved having a romantic answer. It was a romantic question. I was there to sell books, not pass a lie detector test.”
TIM: “I like that answer.”
That’s how the whole book goes. Our problem is to keep a balance in the book as well as our own sanity as authors and peace between us. One of the best loved of Tim’s little community recently died. I never met the boy but he was real to me. I grieve but he’s not dead to me.
It is also a problem to fight off Tim’s critics and accusers, a weird collaboration of jealous gays and resentful Native Americans. The two realms, gay and NA, do intertwine in a shadowy and sometimes illicit way on reservations and in big city ghettoes, mostly through the underground artifact trade.
I once asked Sherman Alexie whether he liked “Fancy Dancer,” a novel about a gay priest and the gay motorcyclist (Leather Man) who teaches him to be proud of his sexuality. I haven’t read it for a long time so I don’t quite remember which one was Indian -- I think the priest. Alexie did like it. I’ve wondered how much that book influenced his “The Toughest Indian in the World,” which some thought was about being gay but which I believe is about the “Mythic Indian,” the one that Jackie Leyden thinks is real and believes she interviewed. That Indian has been killed over and over, but constantly resurrects.
This book that Tim and I have written will not tell you who the real Tim Barrus is. Nor the real Mary Scriver either. In the first place, like all fully alive humans, we’re both many personas. In the second place, define real.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
OIL ON THE BLACKFEET REZ: The Twenties
The following message came to me on my blog from Dr. Hypercube, who
“I saw this: http://hollisterhovey.blogspot.com/2009/06/oil.html and thought of you. I'd be interested in your thoughts and observations. The 20's always make me think of the end of some things - people who remembered the previous world were almost gone. Is that a dance lodge at 2:10 or so? Best - J “
“Dr. Hypercube” writes the blog “Diary of a Mad Natural Historian” at www.hawkdog.net/wordpress/ which I love.
Indeed, the Twenties in Browning, Montana, where this footage of Blackfeet chiefs was taken at Indian Days (still the second weekend of every July) even then were barely the end of the 19th century. Probably the real end was WWI, which heralded the industrial age even more definitively than the Great Northern Railroad coming through, because at this point oil was struck on the reservation. Oil is still being pumped today, though at nothing like the same rate since most of it has been removed. The big fields were and are Kevin/Sunburst and Cut Bank.
An oil strike was a fateful event and everyone knew it, because oil had previously been struck in Oklahoma and everyone learned from how things played out there. A fictionalized version is in the fine novel “Mean Spirits” by Linda Hogan. Native Osage and Ponca people had little understanding of what was going on and swindling opportunists rushed to marry enrolled women so that they could inherit their oil rights. The impatient ones removed older members of the family the old-fashioned way: murder.
For the Blackfeet events were more muted. The boundaries of the reservation was juggled over a bit to accommodate the Cut Bank predators. A long struggle over the legal arrangements split the leaders. Briefly, the issues were very basic: since the people, especially full-bloods, were in dire poverty, they wanted the money right now. Their idea was that they needed to live through today. They also wanted the government to handle all the leasing arrangements because they didn’t trust the mixed-bloods, who had white fathers. Those people thought that the oil rights should be divvied up among tribal members for their own individual use and that the tribal council should make all the leasing arrangements. The hangup was that it takes money to drill for oil and the tribe had none -- therefore they were dependent on an outside entity or the BIA.
Fred Campbell, the tall red-headed agent (who always makes me think of George Washington though he evidently had better teeth) felt that too much cash flowing too quickly would ruin the people and that their best bet was to turn away from oil and stick to developing the land. But outsiders with carpet bags were constantly on hand to tell the people they were being robbed and oil was “the new buffalo.” Campbell was eventually forced out by the issue.
Other forces were in Washington, D.C., where they tried to argue that the oil didn’t belong to the Indians since it wasn’t specifically mentioned in the treaties of 1850. James J. Hill managed a ten year lease, but didn’t drill. In fact, there were test wells on the Blackfeet land but no real pumping. Meantime, the whole High Line from the eastern reservation boundary (which mysteriously somehow moved to the west) towards the east exploded with oil exploration and development. Some felt that the oil reserves under the rez were being emptied by aggressive drilling along the boundary. It’s instructive to look at a map that shows the wells.
In 1924 Indians were given citizenship. Some had fought in WWI. If they were individualized, they could be dealt with politically much more easily. Divide and conquer always works with Indians. Foley details events after that. My notes from Foley are included in “Reservation Blackfeet” which can be purchased at www.lulu.com/prairiemary. It’s hard to get one’s hands on an original full copy since it’s not really a publication but rather a lawyer’s brief on the mismanagement of the reservation by the government. Eloise Cobell’s lawsuit against the US government comes in large part from the Foley report and oil asset corruption.
H.L. Lambert (not Fulton), a personal friend of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, finally managed to secure a lease from the tribal council at a 7 to 1 vote (not 9 to 1). (See Paul Rosier’s “Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1812-1954” for details.) This film footage was intended to celebrate and certify that. Note the “flappers” getting a little thrill from squeezing into the line of “chiefs.” The chiefs, which may or many not have been members of the elective Tribal Council, were well-accustomed to wearing their full buckskins and feathers to ceremonial events, though the poorer ones stayed in their “citizen’s clothes.”
The closeup photos were taken in front of the “Big Hotel” in East Glacier, not at the campgrounds just west of Browning. There was normally an “encampment” of several lodges in front of the “Big Hotel” and after everyone else had eaten, the Indians were allowed to come into the employee cafeteria to finish off the leftovers. The people complained that the meat was always gone. Then around a campfire the Indians would dance and tell stories.
The boys whose faces appear would have been about retirement age when I arrived on the rez in 1961 and I probably knew them if they lived that long. Attrition among rez boys is always high. I don’t know anyone who might recognize these boys in their early years. They would be very old now.
Lambert’s coup was certified by a vote of the tribe, 55 to 1 in favor of Lambert. That’s right. 56 voting members. Women still didn’t have the vote. The Office of Indian Affairs shut everything down, probably for fear of scandal. An early Twenties oil scandal concerned a formation in Wyoming, the Tea Pot Dome, that was illicitly and secretly leased under the Harding administration. The La Follette investigation panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas J. Walsh, led what most expected to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry seeking answers to many questions, which turned out to be anything but. It was very major scandal, played up big in the newspapers.
Two Guns Whitecalf, the fellow with the famous profile, was one of the leaders of the full-bloods at Starr School. His son, James Whitecalf, as “Old Jim”, became famous for being famous and also for being very old. Even his son, “Young Jim,” is gone now. He was a little older than myself. Old Jim Whitecalf has been chronicled by two writers: R.L. Lancaster in “Piegan” and Adolf Hungry Wolf in several volumes, (somewhat more reliably than Lancaster.) Ray Djuff, a writer in Calgary, is currently tracing out the entire Whitecalf family.
James Earle Fraser was the sculptor of the buffalo nickel and protested that he used several people as models and that he didn’t know Two Guns Whitecalf, but this didn’t slow down the conviction of many people that Two Guns was “the one.”
The brushy structure at 2.1 in this video COULD be only a dance pavilion but was likely for a Sun Lodge Ceremony. The framework is constructed of heavy cottonwood logs and will remain for many years, long after the leaves that provide shade and privacy have shriveled away. Of course, the structure could be a rather ambiguous blending of secular and religious, since most whites didn’t really know what they were looking at. Torture was forbidden.
How much of the ancient ways could survive depended in large part on the agent at the time. The original version required that an ancient and universally acknowledged virtuous woman should fast in a lodge for three days, then emerge to pray. Sometimes they didn’t survive the ceremony. At the same time warriors would use dancing to exhaustion and torture (thongs tied to skewers in the breast) to achieve an endorphin-fueled mystic trance. This is what alcohol provided without so much effort.
Bob Scriver, who was born in 1914 in Browning, attended the erection of this structure and was deeply impressed by it. All his life he remembered the thrilling song of the men riding in on horses, carrying the leafy branches.
This precious video shows the power of the Internet to find and connect history with today.
“I saw this: http://hollisterhovey.blogspot.com/2009/06/oil.html and thought of you. I'd be interested in your thoughts and observations. The 20's always make me think of the end of some things - people who remembered the previous world were almost gone. Is that a dance lodge at 2:10 or so? Best - J “
“Dr. Hypercube” writes the blog “Diary of a Mad Natural Historian” at www.hawkdog.net/wordpress/ which I love.
Indeed, the Twenties in Browning, Montana, where this footage of Blackfeet chiefs was taken at Indian Days (still the second weekend of every July) even then were barely the end of the 19th century. Probably the real end was WWI, which heralded the industrial age even more definitively than the Great Northern Railroad coming through, because at this point oil was struck on the reservation. Oil is still being pumped today, though at nothing like the same rate since most of it has been removed. The big fields were and are Kevin/Sunburst and Cut Bank.
An oil strike was a fateful event and everyone knew it, because oil had previously been struck in Oklahoma and everyone learned from how things played out there. A fictionalized version is in the fine novel “Mean Spirits” by Linda Hogan. Native Osage and Ponca people had little understanding of what was going on and swindling opportunists rushed to marry enrolled women so that they could inherit their oil rights. The impatient ones removed older members of the family the old-fashioned way: murder.
For the Blackfeet events were more muted. The boundaries of the reservation was juggled over a bit to accommodate the Cut Bank predators. A long struggle over the legal arrangements split the leaders. Briefly, the issues were very basic: since the people, especially full-bloods, were in dire poverty, they wanted the money right now. Their idea was that they needed to live through today. They also wanted the government to handle all the leasing arrangements because they didn’t trust the mixed-bloods, who had white fathers. Those people thought that the oil rights should be divvied up among tribal members for their own individual use and that the tribal council should make all the leasing arrangements. The hangup was that it takes money to drill for oil and the tribe had none -- therefore they were dependent on an outside entity or the BIA.
Fred Campbell, the tall red-headed agent (who always makes me think of George Washington though he evidently had better teeth) felt that too much cash flowing too quickly would ruin the people and that their best bet was to turn away from oil and stick to developing the land. But outsiders with carpet bags were constantly on hand to tell the people they were being robbed and oil was “the new buffalo.” Campbell was eventually forced out by the issue.
Other forces were in Washington, D.C., where they tried to argue that the oil didn’t belong to the Indians since it wasn’t specifically mentioned in the treaties of 1850. James J. Hill managed a ten year lease, but didn’t drill. In fact, there were test wells on the Blackfeet land but no real pumping. Meantime, the whole High Line from the eastern reservation boundary (which mysteriously somehow moved to the west) towards the east exploded with oil exploration and development. Some felt that the oil reserves under the rez were being emptied by aggressive drilling along the boundary. It’s instructive to look at a map that shows the wells.
In 1924 Indians were given citizenship. Some had fought in WWI. If they were individualized, they could be dealt with politically much more easily. Divide and conquer always works with Indians. Foley details events after that. My notes from Foley are included in “Reservation Blackfeet” which can be purchased at www.lulu.com/prairiemary. It’s hard to get one’s hands on an original full copy since it’s not really a publication but rather a lawyer’s brief on the mismanagement of the reservation by the government. Eloise Cobell’s lawsuit against the US government comes in large part from the Foley report and oil asset corruption.
H.L. Lambert (not Fulton), a personal friend of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, finally managed to secure a lease from the tribal council at a 7 to 1 vote (not 9 to 1). (See Paul Rosier’s “Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1812-1954” for details.) This film footage was intended to celebrate and certify that. Note the “flappers” getting a little thrill from squeezing into the line of “chiefs.” The chiefs, which may or many not have been members of the elective Tribal Council, were well-accustomed to wearing their full buckskins and feathers to ceremonial events, though the poorer ones stayed in their “citizen’s clothes.”
The closeup photos were taken in front of the “Big Hotel” in East Glacier, not at the campgrounds just west of Browning. There was normally an “encampment” of several lodges in front of the “Big Hotel” and after everyone else had eaten, the Indians were allowed to come into the employee cafeteria to finish off the leftovers. The people complained that the meat was always gone. Then around a campfire the Indians would dance and tell stories.
The boys whose faces appear would have been about retirement age when I arrived on the rez in 1961 and I probably knew them if they lived that long. Attrition among rez boys is always high. I don’t know anyone who might recognize these boys in their early years. They would be very old now.
Lambert’s coup was certified by a vote of the tribe, 55 to 1 in favor of Lambert. That’s right. 56 voting members. Women still didn’t have the vote. The Office of Indian Affairs shut everything down, probably for fear of scandal. An early Twenties oil scandal concerned a formation in Wyoming, the Tea Pot Dome, that was illicitly and secretly leased under the Harding administration. The La Follette investigation panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas J. Walsh, led what most expected to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry seeking answers to many questions, which turned out to be anything but. It was very major scandal, played up big in the newspapers.
Two Guns Whitecalf, the fellow with the famous profile, was one of the leaders of the full-bloods at Starr School. His son, James Whitecalf, as “Old Jim”, became famous for being famous and also for being very old. Even his son, “Young Jim,” is gone now. He was a little older than myself. Old Jim Whitecalf has been chronicled by two writers: R.L. Lancaster in “Piegan” and Adolf Hungry Wolf in several volumes, (somewhat more reliably than Lancaster.) Ray Djuff, a writer in Calgary, is currently tracing out the entire Whitecalf family.
James Earle Fraser was the sculptor of the buffalo nickel and protested that he used several people as models and that he didn’t know Two Guns Whitecalf, but this didn’t slow down the conviction of many people that Two Guns was “the one.”
The brushy structure at 2.1 in this video COULD be only a dance pavilion but was likely for a Sun Lodge Ceremony. The framework is constructed of heavy cottonwood logs and will remain for many years, long after the leaves that provide shade and privacy have shriveled away. Of course, the structure could be a rather ambiguous blending of secular and religious, since most whites didn’t really know what they were looking at. Torture was forbidden.
How much of the ancient ways could survive depended in large part on the agent at the time. The original version required that an ancient and universally acknowledged virtuous woman should fast in a lodge for three days, then emerge to pray. Sometimes they didn’t survive the ceremony. At the same time warriors would use dancing to exhaustion and torture (thongs tied to skewers in the breast) to achieve an endorphin-fueled mystic trance. This is what alcohol provided without so much effort.
Bob Scriver, who was born in 1914 in Browning, attended the erection of this structure and was deeply impressed by it. All his life he remembered the thrilling song of the men riding in on horses, carrying the leafy branches.
This precious video shows the power of the Internet to find and connect history with today.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
"LOVE IN A DARK TIME" by Colm Toibin
Though I get entirely absorbed in this book collaboration with Tim Barrus, a person can only be perceptive and skillful at writing for a limited number of hours in a day. At least that’s the case for me. So there are other ongoing projects, one of which HAS to be the yard, just now emerging from a spring snowstorm that is making it leaping greenly as an ee cummings poem.
Another is reading with a specific goal, to try to get a grip on the concept and phenomena of “gay.” A hopeless project, sort of like trying to get a grip on, say, the concept and phenomena of India or even Native Americans. Because it’s a construct, imposed from both inside and outside so that all boundaries are controversial, and because it’s so multiple and morphing that one has to chase along with a butterfly net, hoping the mesh is strong enough to hold whatever one is pursuing.
My latest book is Colm Toibin’s “Love in a Dark Time and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature.” He’s a tough, clear writer as the best Irish always are, but more than that, he always has his underlying concepts under control and sharpened. So far I’m only a couple of chapters into the book, but already the ideas are thick and rich.
The first chapter, called “Roaming the Greenwood,” addresses writers who defended against being accused of homosexuality and the second, “Oscar Wilde: Love in a Dark Time” gives a clear account of why they should do that. Maybe it’s clearer to start with the second.
Wilde was a frog in heating water, married with children, successful, gentry, popular -- all the good things. But his love affair with Lord Douglas (“Bosie”) made him vulnerable to extreme legal punishment for just that, though it was disguised as being a characteristic of his essential nature or un-nature. If he had simply cruised in the usual manner and quarters, the gentlemen’s agreement was that all would be overlooked. But when he took the relationship as seriously as, say, “gay marriage,” Bosie’s father made it publicly, crushingly, impossible. Things like property get involved, don’t they? Control, inheritance, allowances . . .
I had known that Wilde went to prison while Bosie skipped out, but I had imagined that prison meant something like Galileo’s house arrest or maybe the Marquis de Sade scribbling in a cell. In fact, Wilde was treated like a terrorist, which was pretty much the way all “criminals” were treated in those days, including those who were the victims of the criminalization of poverty. He had to sleep on a board, the food was so substandard that he couldn’t digest it, he was constantly a victim of diarrhea, and he was forced to march on a treadmill to satisfy the requirement of “hard labor.” (I hope the two female journalists just sentenced in North Korea are able to escape anything parallel.) The screaming and bellowing of whipped prisoners echoed through the place. Almost worse was the denial of reading and writing.
Wilde survived, only barely, and said his “mainspring had been broken.” Afterwards he tried to help prisoners he’d somehow grown to know, but with little success. He didn’t live much longer. It is clear to me that he was not punished for “buggery” but for being frank and self-determined, which are supposed to be characteristics of a proud and educated person. The homosexuality part only made him vulnerable to revenge for his real offenses, which were offenses to individuals (Bosie’s father) rather than to the state or to any religion.
The whole idea of homosexuality is a construct, because human sexuality is amorphous, situational, and varies in many dimensions. For instance, men who desire sex with other men is not the same as men who desire to be women or men who desire to be desired by men instead of women or men who are effeminate. Prison rapists of the weak desire power, not sex. Some have access to men they desire but no will to act on it. Some are confined by social mores. Some never realize that they desire men physically. Some displace physical desire into intellectual or even athletic channels. Some act out desire for men without feeling anything at all.
And that’s just men.
Toibin takes a look at writers who have been reverse diagnosed as repressed homosexuals, once that concept formed: people like Henry James or Kafka or George Orwell. As soon as the concept exists, it can be imposed on or drawn out of everywhere. It’s like “co-dependence” or “blaming the victim” -- as soon as you realize what the pattern is, you see it everywhere, including oneself. But then what do you do with it? It’s part of life, isn’t it?
Anyway, Toibin has this major insight: homosexuality, like anything that has to be hidden, becomes expressed in literature in many coded ways: spies, terrorists, underclasses, a life confined by convention (maybe racism) so that it is without love, a vulnerability to revulsion on the part of others (being a cockroach), being shut out, powerless. And, reversely, homosexuality -- which can be converted into all these other manifestations -- can become a coded version of them in turn. How do you know whether you are reading/writing about spies as gays or gays as spies or both?
Here’s the horror I can see coming and it has nothing to do with sex. A statistic going the rounds is that the USA has 6% of the world’s population but incarcerates more than 30%. We must be criminalizing something that the rest of the world is not. We are criminalizing minorities, mostly through maintaining the criminalization of marijuana possession in small amounts. (I support the criminalization of meth, the other poor person’s drug and a huge source of anti-social behavior.)
What I see coming is debtor’s prison: the re-criminalization of poverty, even among formerly respectable mainstream people. Forming just under the surface is a contempt for anyone who isn’t “making it” and the assertion that this is a choice. Pushing out the low-wage immigrants means that other people must be forced into their jobs, which are the equivalent of treadmills. Reforming health care means capping how much medical intervention you “deserve.” I predict that in a few decades no one will care how gay you are, so long as you’re rich. And when the costs of incarceration become too high, we will go “Chinese” and simply erase the poor, converting them into organ assets.
I’d better go back and read more Colm Toibin. If the Irish don’t know about this sort of thing, no one does.
Another is reading with a specific goal, to try to get a grip on the concept and phenomena of “gay.” A hopeless project, sort of like trying to get a grip on, say, the concept and phenomena of India or even Native Americans. Because it’s a construct, imposed from both inside and outside so that all boundaries are controversial, and because it’s so multiple and morphing that one has to chase along with a butterfly net, hoping the mesh is strong enough to hold whatever one is pursuing.
My latest book is Colm Toibin’s “Love in a Dark Time and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature.” He’s a tough, clear writer as the best Irish always are, but more than that, he always has his underlying concepts under control and sharpened. So far I’m only a couple of chapters into the book, but already the ideas are thick and rich.
The first chapter, called “Roaming the Greenwood,” addresses writers who defended against being accused of homosexuality and the second, “Oscar Wilde: Love in a Dark Time” gives a clear account of why they should do that. Maybe it’s clearer to start with the second.
Wilde was a frog in heating water, married with children, successful, gentry, popular -- all the good things. But his love affair with Lord Douglas (“Bosie”) made him vulnerable to extreme legal punishment for just that, though it was disguised as being a characteristic of his essential nature or un-nature. If he had simply cruised in the usual manner and quarters, the gentlemen’s agreement was that all would be overlooked. But when he took the relationship as seriously as, say, “gay marriage,” Bosie’s father made it publicly, crushingly, impossible. Things like property get involved, don’t they? Control, inheritance, allowances . . .
I had known that Wilde went to prison while Bosie skipped out, but I had imagined that prison meant something like Galileo’s house arrest or maybe the Marquis de Sade scribbling in a cell. In fact, Wilde was treated like a terrorist, which was pretty much the way all “criminals” were treated in those days, including those who were the victims of the criminalization of poverty. He had to sleep on a board, the food was so substandard that he couldn’t digest it, he was constantly a victim of diarrhea, and he was forced to march on a treadmill to satisfy the requirement of “hard labor.” (I hope the two female journalists just sentenced in North Korea are able to escape anything parallel.) The screaming and bellowing of whipped prisoners echoed through the place. Almost worse was the denial of reading and writing.
Wilde survived, only barely, and said his “mainspring had been broken.” Afterwards he tried to help prisoners he’d somehow grown to know, but with little success. He didn’t live much longer. It is clear to me that he was not punished for “buggery” but for being frank and self-determined, which are supposed to be characteristics of a proud and educated person. The homosexuality part only made him vulnerable to revenge for his real offenses, which were offenses to individuals (Bosie’s father) rather than to the state or to any religion.
The whole idea of homosexuality is a construct, because human sexuality is amorphous, situational, and varies in many dimensions. For instance, men who desire sex with other men is not the same as men who desire to be women or men who desire to be desired by men instead of women or men who are effeminate. Prison rapists of the weak desire power, not sex. Some have access to men they desire but no will to act on it. Some are confined by social mores. Some never realize that they desire men physically. Some displace physical desire into intellectual or even athletic channels. Some act out desire for men without feeling anything at all.
And that’s just men.
Toibin takes a look at writers who have been reverse diagnosed as repressed homosexuals, once that concept formed: people like Henry James or Kafka or George Orwell. As soon as the concept exists, it can be imposed on or drawn out of everywhere. It’s like “co-dependence” or “blaming the victim” -- as soon as you realize what the pattern is, you see it everywhere, including oneself. But then what do you do with it? It’s part of life, isn’t it?
Anyway, Toibin has this major insight: homosexuality, like anything that has to be hidden, becomes expressed in literature in many coded ways: spies, terrorists, underclasses, a life confined by convention (maybe racism) so that it is without love, a vulnerability to revulsion on the part of others (being a cockroach), being shut out, powerless. And, reversely, homosexuality -- which can be converted into all these other manifestations -- can become a coded version of them in turn. How do you know whether you are reading/writing about spies as gays or gays as spies or both?
Here’s the horror I can see coming and it has nothing to do with sex. A statistic going the rounds is that the USA has 6% of the world’s population but incarcerates more than 30%. We must be criminalizing something that the rest of the world is not. We are criminalizing minorities, mostly through maintaining the criminalization of marijuana possession in small amounts. (I support the criminalization of meth, the other poor person’s drug and a huge source of anti-social behavior.)
What I see coming is debtor’s prison: the re-criminalization of poverty, even among formerly respectable mainstream people. Forming just under the surface is a contempt for anyone who isn’t “making it” and the assertion that this is a choice. Pushing out the low-wage immigrants means that other people must be forced into their jobs, which are the equivalent of treadmills. Reforming health care means capping how much medical intervention you “deserve.” I predict that in a few decades no one will care how gay you are, so long as you’re rich. And when the costs of incarceration become too high, we will go “Chinese” and simply erase the poor, converting them into organ assets.
I’d better go back and read more Colm Toibin. If the Irish don’t know about this sort of thing, no one does.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Sunday, June 07, 2009
KEEP THEM DOGIES MOVIN' !
Tim Barrus and I have been working together on a book called “Orpheus Pressed up Against the Windows of the Catacombs” which used to be called “Kickstart” which is about “Cinematheque,” which used to be “Storyboard,” and is now “Vraisemblance.” If you can’t keep up with the name changes, don’t worry about it. It’s more about the writers than the readers unless you’re trying to Google. I mean, I have four other blogs which I try to keep separated by keeping their names in mind and I frame subjects in different ways according to which blog I’m writing. For instance, “Merry Scribbler” is the English teacher stuff (nothing posted for quite a while) and if I were going to talk about Tim’s and my collaboration I would approach it quite differently on that blog.
What I’m going to talk about here could fit on that blog because it concerns young people trying to write. The collaboration between Tim and I has been entered by a third person, one of Tim’s students and also one of his -- well -- I’ll choose the Western term “ramrods.” Remember “Rawhide?” Eric Fleming was the trail boss, Mr. Favor (sp?), and Clint Eastwood was the ramrod, “Rowdy Yates.” Eavan is Tim’s ramrod.
Eric Fleming, you probably don’t remember, was making a movie with a director who was notorious for risking his actors. Fleming was in a canoe on the Amazon River that overturned. He was eaten by piranhas. Clint Eastwood became a big star -- actually more of a “force of nature” in the Hollywood community.
In “Suddenly Last Summer,” you may remember, Sebastian on the beach in his Speedo is eaten by beach-dwelling boy hustlers. That’s a sort of companion story to “Orpheus Descending,” another Tennessee Williams play. The mythic Orpheus is torn to pieces by one of those mobs of Dionysian over-ecstatic devotees, something like modern paparazzi. And of course, Tim has been torn to pieces by a million tiny bloggers, all repeating the same accusation: that he ripped off America’s Indians by telling their story as though it happened to him. One of the more active condemners is not even American and has only visited once, to present a paper on Gerald Vizenor.
“Orpheus Pressed up against the Windows of the Catacombs” started out to be the story of “Mr. Favor” and somehow turned into the story of his trail herd -- at-risk boys -- which is the story AFTER the dismemberment, with the reconstituted Tim continuing his other life, quite apart from Native Americans. In fact, he moved to Europe.
I’m not sure how I fit into this, but I’m not much like Miss Kitty, so you can’t go by gender. (Anyway, she was in "Gunsmoke," not "Rawhide".) I might be Wishbone. Sheb Wooley is probably Kilian, Eavan’s partner. He pays close attention and often rescues the situation. Also, Sheb became famous by singing about purple people-eaters. I don’t know about Kilian’s singing.
Frivolous as these comparisons are, there is some serious business here. In some places the “Orpheus” manuscript quotes at length from Eavan’s notes about Tim. Now Eavan wants to come aboard as the third collaborator. The key question is whether this is good for his development -- he’s college-aged, no fool, but has a lot of issues to tend. On one hand a high-quality Jesuit education and on the other a very successful career as a (ahem) performer, which only fell apart due to heroin. (Happens all the time.) The secondary question is whether it’s good for the book. The tertiary question is whether it’s good for the relationship between Tim and I.
In a way I don’t know Tim. I’m perfectly well aware that I’ve been corresponding with him and reading his writing for years now and that when a reader does such a thing, a sort of cloud of the person forms behind and above them. But I know it’s a construct and all writers MUST form a construct of themselves. It’s not a matter of lying, it’s a matter of editing.
The Tim Barrus of the infamous porn
is as much a construct as the Barrus in Nasdijj form.
A good little couplet for readers to remember. I’ve never MET Tim. I’ve never talked to him on the phone. I’ve never held his hand or smelled him or eaten a sandwich he made. I’ve never played with the dog. Eavan has been traveling the world alongside Tim, ramrodding. He feels he knows the REAL Tim, up close and personal.
I’ve never even corresponded with Tina, Tim’s wife, though she sent me a Navajo rug and videos of her little-kid classes in Navajo land. I don’t know whether that was a thank you, whether it meant she was through with that life, or whether she just thought I would appreciate them. I do. I REALLY do! I put the rug on the back of my reading chair and think of her every time I sit down there, which is many times a day. (Right now there’s a heating pad on top of it.) I do know that one of the things Bob Scriver feared most was his women getting together to discuss him. (I was Bob Scriver’s ramrod.)
Back to the practicalities. To Eavan, a book is about telling the truth, the same as it is for a lot of readers, who get very upset to find out that they haven’t gotten the factual truth after all. But to Eavan, I think, it’s not about facts so much as about emotional truth. The general public will accept books about transgressive and dangerous things like at-risk boys and rez life so long as one of three other elements are present.
One is poetic expression, which we might call the Baudelaire principle. Perversion, torture, and all the other “flowers of evil” can be admired if the writing is elegant enough.
The second is analysis. If you’re wearing a white coat, you can build a machine that thrusts a penis containing a camera inside a woman and openly write about whether it gives her orgasms.
The third is as a victim/witness. If you can survive violation and abuse, you’re entitled to write about it, but only in a certain tone of voice. No bragging, no exaggeration, etc. -- just testimony along the lines of legal testimony because it is an indictment.
If you take that tack,
You must stick to fact.
This paragraph will seem like a change of subject but it isn’t. When I was an animal control officer, there was a certain kind of dog that seemed ordinary and friendly and approachable until you took hold of its collar. Then it went nuts attacking you. Unless you were strong and had a tight grip, you were likely to get bitten, but as soon as you let go, it would simply stand out of reach and study you. These dogs were fear-biters and what they feared was capture. I’m talking about Tim. As journalists have discovered, when Tim feels a hand on his collar, he goes nuts. Not biting, but using wild and vulgar language to make accusations. He has not recognized until recently that this is not essentially different from physical violence.
It is the clearest evidence that he was badly abused earlier. That’s how fear-biters get that way. I’m not talking about a thousand little duck bites from journalists. I’m talking about full-scale, testosterone-driven, near-fatal abuse in childhood from men. But that’s another book, tentatively called “Shape Shifter.”
What Tim knows about his boys is that most of them are fear-biters, though some will go catatonic (play possom), so he never grabs their collars. And I never grab Tim’s. Publishers, agents and editors who have grabbed Tim’s collar have been blasted out of their “fuck me” shoes. (4 inch heels, ankle straps -- in case you’re living in Montana where one doesn’t wear such footgear.)
What will happen next? Darned if I know. Head 'em up. Move 'em out.
What I’m going to talk about here could fit on that blog because it concerns young people trying to write. The collaboration between Tim and I has been entered by a third person, one of Tim’s students and also one of his -- well -- I’ll choose the Western term “ramrods.” Remember “Rawhide?” Eric Fleming was the trail boss, Mr. Favor (sp?), and Clint Eastwood was the ramrod, “Rowdy Yates.” Eavan is Tim’s ramrod.
Eric Fleming, you probably don’t remember, was making a movie with a director who was notorious for risking his actors. Fleming was in a canoe on the Amazon River that overturned. He was eaten by piranhas. Clint Eastwood became a big star -- actually more of a “force of nature” in the Hollywood community.
In “Suddenly Last Summer,” you may remember, Sebastian on the beach in his Speedo is eaten by beach-dwelling boy hustlers. That’s a sort of companion story to “Orpheus Descending,” another Tennessee Williams play. The mythic Orpheus is torn to pieces by one of those mobs of Dionysian over-ecstatic devotees, something like modern paparazzi. And of course, Tim has been torn to pieces by a million tiny bloggers, all repeating the same accusation: that he ripped off America’s Indians by telling their story as though it happened to him. One of the more active condemners is not even American and has only visited once, to present a paper on Gerald Vizenor.
“Orpheus Pressed up against the Windows of the Catacombs” started out to be the story of “Mr. Favor” and somehow turned into the story of his trail herd -- at-risk boys -- which is the story AFTER the dismemberment, with the reconstituted Tim continuing his other life, quite apart from Native Americans. In fact, he moved to Europe.
I’m not sure how I fit into this, but I’m not much like Miss Kitty, so you can’t go by gender. (Anyway, she was in "Gunsmoke," not "Rawhide".) I might be Wishbone. Sheb Wooley is probably Kilian, Eavan’s partner. He pays close attention and often rescues the situation. Also, Sheb became famous by singing about purple people-eaters. I don’t know about Kilian’s singing.
Frivolous as these comparisons are, there is some serious business here. In some places the “Orpheus” manuscript quotes at length from Eavan’s notes about Tim. Now Eavan wants to come aboard as the third collaborator. The key question is whether this is good for his development -- he’s college-aged, no fool, but has a lot of issues to tend. On one hand a high-quality Jesuit education and on the other a very successful career as a (ahem) performer, which only fell apart due to heroin. (Happens all the time.) The secondary question is whether it’s good for the book. The tertiary question is whether it’s good for the relationship between Tim and I.
In a way I don’t know Tim. I’m perfectly well aware that I’ve been corresponding with him and reading his writing for years now and that when a reader does such a thing, a sort of cloud of the person forms behind and above them. But I know it’s a construct and all writers MUST form a construct of themselves. It’s not a matter of lying, it’s a matter of editing.
The Tim Barrus of the infamous porn
is as much a construct as the Barrus in Nasdijj form.
A good little couplet for readers to remember. I’ve never MET Tim. I’ve never talked to him on the phone. I’ve never held his hand or smelled him or eaten a sandwich he made. I’ve never played with the dog. Eavan has been traveling the world alongside Tim, ramrodding. He feels he knows the REAL Tim, up close and personal.
I’ve never even corresponded with Tina, Tim’s wife, though she sent me a Navajo rug and videos of her little-kid classes in Navajo land. I don’t know whether that was a thank you, whether it meant she was through with that life, or whether she just thought I would appreciate them. I do. I REALLY do! I put the rug on the back of my reading chair and think of her every time I sit down there, which is many times a day. (Right now there’s a heating pad on top of it.) I do know that one of the things Bob Scriver feared most was his women getting together to discuss him. (I was Bob Scriver’s ramrod.)
Back to the practicalities. To Eavan, a book is about telling the truth, the same as it is for a lot of readers, who get very upset to find out that they haven’t gotten the factual truth after all. But to Eavan, I think, it’s not about facts so much as about emotional truth. The general public will accept books about transgressive and dangerous things like at-risk boys and rez life so long as one of three other elements are present.
One is poetic expression, which we might call the Baudelaire principle. Perversion, torture, and all the other “flowers of evil” can be admired if the writing is elegant enough.
The second is analysis. If you’re wearing a white coat, you can build a machine that thrusts a penis containing a camera inside a woman and openly write about whether it gives her orgasms.
The third is as a victim/witness. If you can survive violation and abuse, you’re entitled to write about it, but only in a certain tone of voice. No bragging, no exaggeration, etc. -- just testimony along the lines of legal testimony because it is an indictment.
If you take that tack,
You must stick to fact.
This paragraph will seem like a change of subject but it isn’t. When I was an animal control officer, there was a certain kind of dog that seemed ordinary and friendly and approachable until you took hold of its collar. Then it went nuts attacking you. Unless you were strong and had a tight grip, you were likely to get bitten, but as soon as you let go, it would simply stand out of reach and study you. These dogs were fear-biters and what they feared was capture. I’m talking about Tim. As journalists have discovered, when Tim feels a hand on his collar, he goes nuts. Not biting, but using wild and vulgar language to make accusations. He has not recognized until recently that this is not essentially different from physical violence.
It is the clearest evidence that he was badly abused earlier. That’s how fear-biters get that way. I’m not talking about a thousand little duck bites from journalists. I’m talking about full-scale, testosterone-driven, near-fatal abuse in childhood from men. But that’s another book, tentatively called “Shape Shifter.”
What Tim knows about his boys is that most of them are fear-biters, though some will go catatonic (play possom), so he never grabs their collars. And I never grab Tim’s. Publishers, agents and editors who have grabbed Tim’s collar have been blasted out of their “fuck me” shoes. (4 inch heels, ankle straps -- in case you’re living in Montana where one doesn’t wear such footgear.)
What will happen next? Darned if I know. Head 'em up. Move 'em out.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
SNOW IN JUNE
Everyone here is obsessed with the weather and not only listens to the reports via radio, TV and computers, but also compares the forecasts to each other’s fav source and to the opinion of neighbors, esp. the old-timers. When one gets up in June to discover a half-inch of snow, the motivation is clear. We knew it was coming. It’s supposed to be this kind of weather until Monday.
And it’s been a lot worse before.
Browning old-timers remember the time it snowed four inches for the Fourth of July and, since this was back in the Forties sometime, there were no motels. People took the tourists into their homes. Of course, tourists in those days were different, a hardier bunch seeking experiences that didn’t necessarily center on luxury. Anyway, today’s independent tourist comes in a million-dollar RV, though they complain when the mountains prevent good television reception. They never meet any locals except “wait persons” and clerks.
The temp just outside my bathroom window is 35, which is the same temp as inside my bathroom since the window is cracked. I just HATE having to back off from summer. But it may have been a mistake to take the electric mattress pad off the bed. At least my footwarmer is still plugged in and warm. Happy feet means a happy typist. It’s cold enough that the housetops are staying white but warm enough that all paved surfaces are wet. There’s a breeze so most trees and bushes are shaking off the spitting snow as it falls. That includes the blooming lilacs.
I haven’t heard what it’s doing in other places, but there’s bound to be a lot of snow up towards the mountains which is all to the good, since the snowpack sank much too quickly and too far in May. After a wet April, we had a dry May. Think pendulum. Every extreme is soon matched by an equal and opposite extreme. At the outer limits of each extreme, some living things are eliminated by cold or drought. It could be worse: the rainfall in Washington, D.C. at the moment is 300% of “normal” and some things will drown, hopefully not too many people.
Every time we have a weather extreme like this in Montana, we say, “Oh, good. That will drive out the Californians.” We don’t really mean actual card-carrying Californians, we mean privileged, over-educated, “life-style” aficionadoes. But the rich ones don’t leave because they can afford to build roaring fires in their huge stone mansions and sip something restorative. (I don’t mean the sugarless hot chocolate I plan on having with my tuna-fish-on-toast lunch.) They already drive cars capable of handling weather. It does drive out the marginal people, some who came here looking for a refuge and some who’ve been here all along, some of them Native American. It makes the old people ache and long for sun, but few have enough money to just leave. They’re lucky to afford to turn the gas back on. There is an abandoned, very old, and possibly homemade RV parked by the post office just now. No one knows why. A Montana plate.
Snow in June is inconvenient and hard on livestock but not so much on plants. It’s transient and most of us humans know to compensate some way: drive to a shopping town and take in a movie or bake stuff all day. And make plans enabled by the moisture, like pulling weeds since they’ll come up easier now. Catch up on paperwork under a warm desk lamp. Or go the other way: do something vigorous outside, but not lawn-mowing. All the painting and caulking I want to do will have to wait for warm temps.
My movie yesterday and the day before (I watched it twice) was “September” from the Rosamund Pilcher novel. She’s Scots, of course, so this kind of weather features largely in her plots. Even with the movie crew supplying artificial sunshine, the actors/characters keep jackets and “Wellies” by the outside doors. They wear hats with brims that turn down all around and practical shoes with anklets, except for the men, who wear suits because Pilcher always concentrates on the wealthy, titled, fancy people -- making it seem as though their only problems are interpersonal relationships, which are hard enough and deserve our attention. She makes the point that the Scots clan system eliminates the idea of servants and instead creates something like interlocking families. Right. The reservation is like that, too.
We’re all slowly beginning to realize that there’s no such thing as global warming, because what we’ve been calling “warming” is really raw energy that can slip into being violent sudden sequences of weather-swings like mood-swings. It does seem to be increasing when one looks at the statistics, as though someone were stirring the atmosphere with a giant spoon and speeding up as well as stirring with more force. At the same time we’re finding out more about the cosmic weather, the solar wind and so on. A human life doesn’t really last long enough to appreciate the big patterns, nor does human civilization -- if you count from the beginning of agriculture ten thousand years ago when the ice ace began to retreat -- last long enough to record anything much except the overwhelmingness of the changes possible.
In June, 1999, when I moved back here, there was a frost halfway through June and everyone lost their gardens, at least those who didn’t use walls o’water or some other cover. But after 1961 when I came here for the first time, I remember both summers when there was no “summer” and winters when there was no “winter.” Bob’s dad came in 1903. I wish I knew how to access the records for weather patterns in that whole century and the century before it (if there were any), because it is a major component of history -- creating and destroying empires and population patterns.
In the meantime, one cat is curled up under the computer lamp and the other has made a nest in the bed, in the micro-migrations that create a household. Both bailed on me in the night, because I stubbornly left the window open an inch -- even without the electric mattress pad. I dreamt of being a child in Oregon where we always slept with the window open at least a little and the many blankets were wool.
And it’s been a lot worse before.
Browning old-timers remember the time it snowed four inches for the Fourth of July and, since this was back in the Forties sometime, there were no motels. People took the tourists into their homes. Of course, tourists in those days were different, a hardier bunch seeking experiences that didn’t necessarily center on luxury. Anyway, today’s independent tourist comes in a million-dollar RV, though they complain when the mountains prevent good television reception. They never meet any locals except “wait persons” and clerks.
The temp just outside my bathroom window is 35, which is the same temp as inside my bathroom since the window is cracked. I just HATE having to back off from summer. But it may have been a mistake to take the electric mattress pad off the bed. At least my footwarmer is still plugged in and warm. Happy feet means a happy typist. It’s cold enough that the housetops are staying white but warm enough that all paved surfaces are wet. There’s a breeze so most trees and bushes are shaking off the spitting snow as it falls. That includes the blooming lilacs.
I haven’t heard what it’s doing in other places, but there’s bound to be a lot of snow up towards the mountains which is all to the good, since the snowpack sank much too quickly and too far in May. After a wet April, we had a dry May. Think pendulum. Every extreme is soon matched by an equal and opposite extreme. At the outer limits of each extreme, some living things are eliminated by cold or drought. It could be worse: the rainfall in Washington, D.C. at the moment is 300% of “normal” and some things will drown, hopefully not too many people.
Every time we have a weather extreme like this in Montana, we say, “Oh, good. That will drive out the Californians.” We don’t really mean actual card-carrying Californians, we mean privileged, over-educated, “life-style” aficionadoes. But the rich ones don’t leave because they can afford to build roaring fires in their huge stone mansions and sip something restorative. (I don’t mean the sugarless hot chocolate I plan on having with my tuna-fish-on-toast lunch.) They already drive cars capable of handling weather. It does drive out the marginal people, some who came here looking for a refuge and some who’ve been here all along, some of them Native American. It makes the old people ache and long for sun, but few have enough money to just leave. They’re lucky to afford to turn the gas back on. There is an abandoned, very old, and possibly homemade RV parked by the post office just now. No one knows why. A Montana plate.
Snow in June is inconvenient and hard on livestock but not so much on plants. It’s transient and most of us humans know to compensate some way: drive to a shopping town and take in a movie or bake stuff all day. And make plans enabled by the moisture, like pulling weeds since they’ll come up easier now. Catch up on paperwork under a warm desk lamp. Or go the other way: do something vigorous outside, but not lawn-mowing. All the painting and caulking I want to do will have to wait for warm temps.
My movie yesterday and the day before (I watched it twice) was “September” from the Rosamund Pilcher novel. She’s Scots, of course, so this kind of weather features largely in her plots. Even with the movie crew supplying artificial sunshine, the actors/characters keep jackets and “Wellies” by the outside doors. They wear hats with brims that turn down all around and practical shoes with anklets, except for the men, who wear suits because Pilcher always concentrates on the wealthy, titled, fancy people -- making it seem as though their only problems are interpersonal relationships, which are hard enough and deserve our attention. She makes the point that the Scots clan system eliminates the idea of servants and instead creates something like interlocking families. Right. The reservation is like that, too.
We’re all slowly beginning to realize that there’s no such thing as global warming, because what we’ve been calling “warming” is really raw energy that can slip into being violent sudden sequences of weather-swings like mood-swings. It does seem to be increasing when one looks at the statistics, as though someone were stirring the atmosphere with a giant spoon and speeding up as well as stirring with more force. At the same time we’re finding out more about the cosmic weather, the solar wind and so on. A human life doesn’t really last long enough to appreciate the big patterns, nor does human civilization -- if you count from the beginning of agriculture ten thousand years ago when the ice ace began to retreat -- last long enough to record anything much except the overwhelmingness of the changes possible.
In June, 1999, when I moved back here, there was a frost halfway through June and everyone lost their gardens, at least those who didn’t use walls o’water or some other cover. But after 1961 when I came here for the first time, I remember both summers when there was no “summer” and winters when there was no “winter.” Bob’s dad came in 1903. I wish I knew how to access the records for weather patterns in that whole century and the century before it (if there were any), because it is a major component of history -- creating and destroying empires and population patterns.
In the meantime, one cat is curled up under the computer lamp and the other has made a nest in the bed, in the micro-migrations that create a household. Both bailed on me in the night, because I stubbornly left the window open an inch -- even without the electric mattress pad. I dreamt of being a child in Oregon where we always slept with the window open at least a little and the many blankets were wool.
Friday, June 05, 2009
NONE OF YOUR EARWAX
When I was diagnosed with diabetes II and dropped all sugar, white flour, corn syrup, and processed food from my diet -- and I was SERIOUS about it! -- my physiology began to change. It wasn’t just that I dropped fifty pounds, which I did, but also strange small changes developed over the months. Actually, the one I’ve most recently noticed is not strange.
I’ve been a person who had a lot of earwax and bought those little kits with peroxide to fizz around in one’s ear and then a little bulb to wash out whatever has been loosened. Those little bulbs used to turn up around the house in strange places. It’s a remarkably erotic and rather addictive experience to use these kits. But for the last few years I’ve had very little earwax. Until now. It’s come back. Not as much, mind you. I use a q-tip, against all advice, but dip it into hand lotion or something to keep from scratching the ear canal.
My father was always digging in his ears with the mechanical pencil that lived in his shirt pocket with a little notebook. My mother cautioned him constantly against the possibility of something driving that pencil through his ear into his brain, but it never happened. She had a lot of earwax, too, so that now and then she had to go get the doctor to clean out what her hearing aid had impacted against the drum until nothing less than a seismic sound could get through.
One of the characteristics of Native Americans is that they have dry earwax, a kind of powder, as contrasted with Caucasians who have waxy “wet” earwax that can even be used for chapstick. I’ve never figured out a way to get this into a story.
Now I have even more information, thanks to gnxp.com, one of my fav blogs even though I don’t always understand what they are saying. It’s about genetics and uses a lot of math. I read it with my medical dictionary handy, but the stuff is so cutting edge it’s often too new for my dictionary. This latest news is about earwax, breast cancer, and bromodrosis/osmidrosis. That last is fancy talk for “B.O.” Body odor. This phenomenon was discovered by the marketeers just after WWII, I think. Lifebouy soap and all that.
I may not be your best friend, but I’m now prepared to tell you that “one single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), 538G>A (Gly180Arg), in the ABCC11 gene determines the type of earwax. The G/G and G/A genotypes correspond to the wet type of earwax, whereas A/A corresponds to the dry type.” So on the long wound-up double helix, one little gene has a short section (an SNP or “snip”) that varies from person to person in an inherited way (polymorphic=many formed) and this what decides whether you have earwax or not, stink or not, or might be inclined to breast cancer or not. My father was a smelly man. My mother had breast cancer. Me? Come a little closer.
The good news is: “For rapid genetic diagnosis of axillary osmidrosis and potential risk of breast cancer, we developed specific primers for the SmartAmp method that enabled us to clinically genotype the ABCC11 gene within 30 min.”
If you want the scientific details, get out your own medical dictionary: “We herein provide the evidence that this genetic polymorphism has an effect on the N-linked glycosylation of ABCC11, intracellular sorting, and proteasomal degradation of the variant protein. Immunohistochemical studies with cerumen gland-containing tissue specimens revealed that the ABCC11 WT protein was localized in intracellular granules and large vacuoles, as well as at the luminal membrane of secretory cells in the cerumen gland, whereas granular or vacuolar localization was not detected for the SNP (Arg180) variant. This SNP variant lacking N-linked glycosylation is recognized as a misfolded protein in the endoplasmic reticulum and readily undergoes ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation, which determines the dry type of earwax as a mendelian trait with a recessive phenotype.”
The variation in earwax seems to conform pretty closely to that of EDAR which is the name of a gene. “This gene encodes a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family. The encoded transmembrane protein is a receptor for the soluble ligand ectodysplasin A, and can activate the nuclear factor-kappaB, JNK, and caspase-independent cell death pathways. It is required for the development of hair, teeth, and other ectodermal derivatives. Mutations in this gene result in autosomal dominant and recessive forms of hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.” (Thank goodness for Google and cut-and-paste.)
“While the populations of Europe and Africa have wet ear wax, those of East Asia have dry ear wax. Other populations are somewhere in between. Nature Genetics has the original paper (don't be surprised if the link takes a while to load).”
There doesn’t seem to be any particular survival advantage in the nature of one’s earwax, unless one generates enough of it to be deafened, but since “earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, whereas the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have greater body odor.” Razib, whose blog this is, remarks: “The adults I have known who do not need to make recourse to deodorants to ward off body odor have all been East Asian females. No surprise.”
So now I’d be curious to know about geographical rates of breast cancer and their correlation, which clearly involve survival value. And maybe lack of body odor has some advantages in tiger country. American Indians (esp. those in the seventh grade who have recently discovered deodorants) complain about the smell of Euros, which fits this, while the idea that “squaws” smell bad is clearly unjustified. For population scientists, this “allele” (genetic section) is an interesting way to track population migrations. In fact, perhaps those who claim to be genetic Native Americans (as opposed to pedigree-certified, the federal legal standard now) will be asked to pass a “sniff test.” Of course, they might be mongolian.
I’ve been a person who had a lot of earwax and bought those little kits with peroxide to fizz around in one’s ear and then a little bulb to wash out whatever has been loosened. Those little bulbs used to turn up around the house in strange places. It’s a remarkably erotic and rather addictive experience to use these kits. But for the last few years I’ve had very little earwax. Until now. It’s come back. Not as much, mind you. I use a q-tip, against all advice, but dip it into hand lotion or something to keep from scratching the ear canal.
My father was always digging in his ears with the mechanical pencil that lived in his shirt pocket with a little notebook. My mother cautioned him constantly against the possibility of something driving that pencil through his ear into his brain, but it never happened. She had a lot of earwax, too, so that now and then she had to go get the doctor to clean out what her hearing aid had impacted against the drum until nothing less than a seismic sound could get through.
One of the characteristics of Native Americans is that they have dry earwax, a kind of powder, as contrasted with Caucasians who have waxy “wet” earwax that can even be used for chapstick. I’ve never figured out a way to get this into a story.
Now I have even more information, thanks to gnxp.com, one of my fav blogs even though I don’t always understand what they are saying. It’s about genetics and uses a lot of math. I read it with my medical dictionary handy, but the stuff is so cutting edge it’s often too new for my dictionary. This latest news is about earwax, breast cancer, and bromodrosis/osmidrosis. That last is fancy talk for “B.O.” Body odor. This phenomenon was discovered by the marketeers just after WWII, I think. Lifebouy soap and all that.
I may not be your best friend, but I’m now prepared to tell you that “one single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), 538G>A (Gly180Arg), in the ABCC11 gene determines the type of earwax. The G/G and G/A genotypes correspond to the wet type of earwax, whereas A/A corresponds to the dry type.” So on the long wound-up double helix, one little gene has a short section (an SNP or “snip”) that varies from person to person in an inherited way (polymorphic=many formed) and this what decides whether you have earwax or not, stink or not, or might be inclined to breast cancer or not. My father was a smelly man. My mother had breast cancer. Me? Come a little closer.
The good news is: “For rapid genetic diagnosis of axillary osmidrosis and potential risk of breast cancer, we developed specific primers for the SmartAmp method that enabled us to clinically genotype the ABCC11 gene within 30 min.”
If you want the scientific details, get out your own medical dictionary: “We herein provide the evidence that this genetic polymorphism has an effect on the N-linked glycosylation of ABCC11, intracellular sorting, and proteasomal degradation of the variant protein. Immunohistochemical studies with cerumen gland-containing tissue specimens revealed that the ABCC11 WT protein was localized in intracellular granules and large vacuoles, as well as at the luminal membrane of secretory cells in the cerumen gland, whereas granular or vacuolar localization was not detected for the SNP (Arg180) variant. This SNP variant lacking N-linked glycosylation is recognized as a misfolded protein in the endoplasmic reticulum and readily undergoes ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation, which determines the dry type of earwax as a mendelian trait with a recessive phenotype.”
The variation in earwax seems to conform pretty closely to that of EDAR which is the name of a gene. “This gene encodes a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family. The encoded transmembrane protein is a receptor for the soluble ligand ectodysplasin A, and can activate the nuclear factor-kappaB, JNK, and caspase-independent cell death pathways. It is required for the development of hair, teeth, and other ectodermal derivatives. Mutations in this gene result in autosomal dominant and recessive forms of hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia.” (Thank goodness for Google and cut-and-paste.)
“While the populations of Europe and Africa have wet ear wax, those of East Asia have dry ear wax. Other populations are somewhere in between. Nature Genetics has the original paper (don't be surprised if the link takes a while to load).”
There doesn’t seem to be any particular survival advantage in the nature of one’s earwax, unless one generates enough of it to be deafened, but since “earwax type and armpit odor are correlated, populations with dry earwax, such as those of East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, whereas the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have greater body odor.” Razib, whose blog this is, remarks: “The adults I have known who do not need to make recourse to deodorants to ward off body odor have all been East Asian females. No surprise.”
So now I’d be curious to know about geographical rates of breast cancer and their correlation, which clearly involve survival value. And maybe lack of body odor has some advantages in tiger country. American Indians (esp. those in the seventh grade who have recently discovered deodorants) complain about the smell of Euros, which fits this, while the idea that “squaws” smell bad is clearly unjustified. For population scientists, this “allele” (genetic section) is an interesting way to track population migrations. In fact, perhaps those who claim to be genetic Native Americans (as opposed to pedigree-certified, the federal legal standard now) will be asked to pass a “sniff test.” Of course, they might be mongolian.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
POLITICS OF IDENTITY & RESENTMENT
Only one time did I claim to be an Indian and even then I only took advantage of preconceptions and it was at the behest of one of my former students, who was supposed to be monitoring RezNet and wanted me to do it for him. This was in the Nineties, so long ago that I was working on a Lisa computer. My printouts from that time were dot matrix. I kept them. (Lawyers form a line to the left.)
It was supposed to be Indians-only, but I was coached not to say anything except, “I’m from Browning.” They assumed no white person would know about Browning and that I was Indian. This was the time of the violent NA on-line flame wars and I had my consciousness raised in a hurry. That’s when I invented the nom d’post of “prairie mary” and began to emphasize that I was old. I was convincing enough that one war-like woman intent on tracking down and killing every plastic shaman invited me to join her little side-operation, an even more secret group. That’s about the time I began to worry and got off the list, confessing that I was white. As it turned out, several people had recognized me and several others urged me to stay, which was very flattering, but I still left.
In fact, when my mother died in 1998 and Bob Scriver died in 1999, I had been much supported by the generosity and sympathy of others in the group, one of whom had just lost HER ex-husband. She lived on one of the islands off the Carolinas and sent me a braid of sweetgrass tied in red yarn. We shared dreams for a while -- they seemed to be visits from our lost ones.
Some of the group were beginning careers in the then-promising field of Native American literature, buoyed by the renaissance of their kind of writing and the attention of the media. Departments and publications were organizing. One of the correspondents was Sherman Alexie. Some were starstruck by him and others enjoyed plaguing him. He was soon offended and left. Others in the group did make names for themselves in the field.
But much of the media support eroded due to identity politics and the eight years of defying the Bush administration, combined with the slow realization that a tribal person who has enough education to catch the eye of a bigtime publisher is probably assimilated. The double bind is that if a tribal person gets a decent education, that person is no longer very “Indian,” or if the person is very Indian, no white people will read him. The assumption of publishers is that no Indians can read, so Native American books are not often distributed to reservation venues, and therefore even if any ordinary tribal people wanted to read them, they wouldn’t know they existed. So why would they write?
Identity politics has supported immersion Native language classes in the near past, but they are -- of necessity -- oral. Not many tribes had written languages so there is no body of literature for anyone to read alone as when Hebrew was brought back to life. Immersion language classes work, especially for little kids, and are worthwhile, but they haven’t had much impact except locally.
The politics of resentment have come to dominate reservations. Of course, it’s always powerful when people don’t feel as though they’re getting the possessions or the respect that they want and feel they deserve, which is to say that poor people are always vulnerable to the politics of resentment. In spite of major advances, the reservations have still not caught up to the rest of society (at least the society they see on television) nor even to the defined treaty obligations of the government, which hasn’t noticed that Indians vote until lately.
Yesterday I was looking for a good example of the politics of resentment that wouldn’t get me into trouble with any Blackfeet families, since I live close enough for retaliation, when Sherman Alexie fell into my email in-box. It seems that on a panel at Book Expo he attacked Bezos as “imperial”, accusing him of preventing ordinary folks from reading books by insisting that they read them on Kindle, which is enormously expensive and therefore “elitist.” [http://www.edrants.com/sherman-alexie-clarifies-elitist-charges/ The best thinking is all in the comments.] In order to defend himself from charges that he is a “Luddite” (against technology), he discloses that his Seattle apartment shelters his iPod, his cell phone, his computer and his HDTV. But “I have this strange, subterranean fear and loathing of the Kindle and its kind. I think it’s really about childhood. Books saved my life, Edward. I rose out of poverty and incredible social dysfunction because of books.” Also, epublishing would cut deep into his royalties.
He confides he has “to make my books available electronically. I have held out on the matter for as long as possible, but I have no author allies in this fight, so I have to submit. I have to sign contracts for eBook rights. I’m doing this in the blind because none of us know what’s going to happen. The last screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood was largely the result of this same issue. The legal issues regarding the Internet and copyrights and revenue are still unclear.”
Poor handsome, achieving, head-of-the-FallsApart-corporation, having to wrestle with some barbarian like Bezos. “I’m worried about the eBook’s influence on the whole culture.” What? We might all start creating Slam Poetry? Stand up comedy? Did I mention that his most recent poem in The New Yorker is about struggling across the desert with your brother on your back?
Which brother was that? One of those guys who sits in Old Town slipping a bottle in a paper bag back and forth among friends? It won’t be Tony Hillerman, whom he “razzed” -- as he puts it -- in “Indian Killer,” a tactical mistake since no one else much resents affable Tony Hillerman. And it sure as hell wasn’t Tim Barrus, whose LA Weekly attacker was encouraged and reinforced by Sherman, all indignant about any white person who pretended to be Indian.
Here on the Blackfeet reservation Sherman Alexie is a big hero, not because he’s Indian but because he’s like a white man. He even managed to make a movie, which means real success. (We don’t read the New Yorker here. Too expensive.) He’s right -- no one here reads from a Kindle. Not many even read books on paper. They don’t read ebooks either. They watch movies and videos. The library has assimilated all the Nat Lit into the other books.
It was supposed to be Indians-only, but I was coached not to say anything except, “I’m from Browning.” They assumed no white person would know about Browning and that I was Indian. This was the time of the violent NA on-line flame wars and I had my consciousness raised in a hurry. That’s when I invented the nom d’post of “prairie mary” and began to emphasize that I was old. I was convincing enough that one war-like woman intent on tracking down and killing every plastic shaman invited me to join her little side-operation, an even more secret group. That’s about the time I began to worry and got off the list, confessing that I was white. As it turned out, several people had recognized me and several others urged me to stay, which was very flattering, but I still left.
In fact, when my mother died in 1998 and Bob Scriver died in 1999, I had been much supported by the generosity and sympathy of others in the group, one of whom had just lost HER ex-husband. She lived on one of the islands off the Carolinas and sent me a braid of sweetgrass tied in red yarn. We shared dreams for a while -- they seemed to be visits from our lost ones.
Some of the group were beginning careers in the then-promising field of Native American literature, buoyed by the renaissance of their kind of writing and the attention of the media. Departments and publications were organizing. One of the correspondents was Sherman Alexie. Some were starstruck by him and others enjoyed plaguing him. He was soon offended and left. Others in the group did make names for themselves in the field.
But much of the media support eroded due to identity politics and the eight years of defying the Bush administration, combined with the slow realization that a tribal person who has enough education to catch the eye of a bigtime publisher is probably assimilated. The double bind is that if a tribal person gets a decent education, that person is no longer very “Indian,” or if the person is very Indian, no white people will read him. The assumption of publishers is that no Indians can read, so Native American books are not often distributed to reservation venues, and therefore even if any ordinary tribal people wanted to read them, they wouldn’t know they existed. So why would they write?
Identity politics has supported immersion Native language classes in the near past, but they are -- of necessity -- oral. Not many tribes had written languages so there is no body of literature for anyone to read alone as when Hebrew was brought back to life. Immersion language classes work, especially for little kids, and are worthwhile, but they haven’t had much impact except locally.
The politics of resentment have come to dominate reservations. Of course, it’s always powerful when people don’t feel as though they’re getting the possessions or the respect that they want and feel they deserve, which is to say that poor people are always vulnerable to the politics of resentment. In spite of major advances, the reservations have still not caught up to the rest of society (at least the society they see on television) nor even to the defined treaty obligations of the government, which hasn’t noticed that Indians vote until lately.
Yesterday I was looking for a good example of the politics of resentment that wouldn’t get me into trouble with any Blackfeet families, since I live close enough for retaliation, when Sherman Alexie fell into my email in-box. It seems that on a panel at Book Expo he attacked Bezos as “imperial”, accusing him of preventing ordinary folks from reading books by insisting that they read them on Kindle, which is enormously expensive and therefore “elitist.” [http://www.edrants.com/sherman-alexie-clarifies-elitist-charges/ The best thinking is all in the comments.] In order to defend himself from charges that he is a “Luddite” (against technology), he discloses that his Seattle apartment shelters his iPod, his cell phone, his computer and his HDTV. But “I have this strange, subterranean fear and loathing of the Kindle and its kind. I think it’s really about childhood. Books saved my life, Edward. I rose out of poverty and incredible social dysfunction because of books.” Also, epublishing would cut deep into his royalties.
He confides he has “to make my books available electronically. I have held out on the matter for as long as possible, but I have no author allies in this fight, so I have to submit. I have to sign contracts for eBook rights. I’m doing this in the blind because none of us know what’s going to happen. The last screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood was largely the result of this same issue. The legal issues regarding the Internet and copyrights and revenue are still unclear.”
Poor handsome, achieving, head-of-the-FallsApart-corporation, having to wrestle with some barbarian like Bezos. “I’m worried about the eBook’s influence on the whole culture.” What? We might all start creating Slam Poetry? Stand up comedy? Did I mention that his most recent poem in The New Yorker is about struggling across the desert with your brother on your back?
Which brother was that? One of those guys who sits in Old Town slipping a bottle in a paper bag back and forth among friends? It won’t be Tony Hillerman, whom he “razzed” -- as he puts it -- in “Indian Killer,” a tactical mistake since no one else much resents affable Tony Hillerman. And it sure as hell wasn’t Tim Barrus, whose LA Weekly attacker was encouraged and reinforced by Sherman, all indignant about any white person who pretended to be Indian.
Here on the Blackfeet reservation Sherman Alexie is a big hero, not because he’s Indian but because he’s like a white man. He even managed to make a movie, which means real success. (We don’t read the New Yorker here. Too expensive.) He’s right -- no one here reads from a Kindle. Not many even read books on paper. They don’t read ebooks either. They watch movies and videos. The library has assimilated all the Nat Lit into the other books.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
SCARY MARY
When the Cinematheque guys realized I was in their midst (if you can be in the “midst” of someone’s blog without ever meeting them physically because you are thousands of miles away -- I just had posting privileges) they were astounded. “Why aren’t you scared of us?” they demanded.
The first gay men I met (and knew were gay) were fellow students at Northwestern University in 1957. They were handsome, intelligent, generous, protective -- altogether admirable -- and we’ve stayed friends ever since. Some have married, some to men and some to women and some have children. They’ve had major success in their lives. I had no reason to become homophobic. I also had a female roommate who was “ac/dc” as we said in those days and her female lover sometimes stayed over, which outraged all authority figures once they realized but didn’t bother me any. I didn’t want to have sex with either one of them, nor any authority figures either. Nor did they with me.
I share a similarity with the Cinematheque boys in that when I handed over my virginity (which is the way I thought of it, since it was a deliberate act rather than being “lost”), I was 26 years younger than my male lover. (I was also over 21.) But I was different in that we continued on through a ten-year relationship that even included four years of marriage. Of course, there were financial advantages and it was always me who accommodated him. There was never force. In the end, not only do I have no regrets, but also I feel it was the making of me. Still, some people were shocked or contemptuous. Are now. Less so since he became locally famous.
Most people would deplore a world where boys are abandoned in great enough numbers that they have to steal, hustle, and otherwise compromise themselves in order to survive. Around here people occasionally express the belief that a fourteen-year-old is “old enough to look out for himself,” though forty-year-olds can’t find jobs. But who can work with boys without being accused of the great American sin of pedophilia? The nation loves little children, sentimentalizes and indulges them to the point of ruining their character, but -- seriously-- who can work with sexualized boys without being suspected of indecent relationship? Certainly not priests. Not teachers. My gay friends, when I asked them about man/boy relationships, firmly closed the door. None of them is interested in boys and none is willing to be accused of that interest. I have the advantage of being a tubby old woman whom no one suspects of having any interest in sex at all. That’s not quite true, but I’ve never been interested in boys in that way even when I was their age.
There are Unitarian ministers who have died of AIDS, Unitarian ministers who are “out,” Unitarian ministers who have same sex partners. I am accustomed to such phenomena. There are Unitarian ministers who are members of Lambda but I think NONE who are members of Nambla. (There are Unitarian parishoners who will join anything and do.)
A distinguished professor reflecting on the issue points out that man/boy relationships have occurred all through history in many societies, but that in each society the circumstances, expectations, and arrangements have been entirely different. What happened in the Greek world, what happened in King Arthur’s Court, what happened in New Guinea or on the Great Plains of America, was specific to that society and not relevant to ours. What has made our version of man/boy relationships so demonic is our whole understanding of sex and the way it is locked into economics.
To us, though we say sex is mutual and equal, the truth is that to us sex is a transaction between one powerful “top” and one less powerful “bottom.” After all these years of activism, it’s STILL what we think male/female relations are about. On that pattern, weak people are seen as sexual objects because they are seen as vulnerable, victims. Being able to penetrate them means power, prestige, success. Even if you have to pay. And in our society we have deeply confused sex with violence, so that the ultimate act of penetration is murder. But we don’t talk about it. We deny it. Until it shows up in the newspaper as sensational serial killings of young boys or low-class women.
Boys whose poverty or trauma expose them to this soon learn that the only escape is to be as powerful as they can be. Their other choice is to die. They fight authority, refuse boundaries, maybe form gangs. Who can work with these boys? It has to be someone even more powerful than them, but not in a violent way that invites confrontation, and not in an insincere or unfocused way. And someone who understands AIDS, since that’s the street disease of our era, requiring a treatment-intensive regime that will not cure but will maintain. AIDS is as likely to kill young street people as tuberculosis was in the 19th century, and in fact, a person with AIDS is exceptionally vulnerable to TB.
Here’s the Cinematheque answer. The focus: art. The leader: a “leather lit” writer with San Francisco street creds. The place: anywhere but the USA. The strategy: keep moving, keep busy. More recently: transparency through blogging. If all else fails, go fishing.
Why should I be afraid of Cinematheque if I’m not afraid of gays, not afraid of catching AIDS from people on a different continent, and retired so that I don’t need to be afraid of losing my job? Some people sincerely think that the guys will get on a plane and come to Montana in order to somehow chain me up and whip me. Isn’t that what S/M gays do? This is so deeply embedded that they don’t question whether it’s common sense. After all, they saw it on “Prime Suspect,” didn’t they?
But there IS a danger, a seduction. It is hubris on my part to think because I read and contribute to a blog about a double-dozen boys at risk I know anything special or have any special virtue or even that I’m helping them. I can easily be hooked by neediness and tragic stories, as easily as by appealing looks and clever achievements. I do NOT have power, nor am I a victim. My job is to understand and maybe doing that will change the world a little bit.
The first gay men I met (and knew were gay) were fellow students at Northwestern University in 1957. They were handsome, intelligent, generous, protective -- altogether admirable -- and we’ve stayed friends ever since. Some have married, some to men and some to women and some have children. They’ve had major success in their lives. I had no reason to become homophobic. I also had a female roommate who was “ac/dc” as we said in those days and her female lover sometimes stayed over, which outraged all authority figures once they realized but didn’t bother me any. I didn’t want to have sex with either one of them, nor any authority figures either. Nor did they with me.
I share a similarity with the Cinematheque boys in that when I handed over my virginity (which is the way I thought of it, since it was a deliberate act rather than being “lost”), I was 26 years younger than my male lover. (I was also over 21.) But I was different in that we continued on through a ten-year relationship that even included four years of marriage. Of course, there were financial advantages and it was always me who accommodated him. There was never force. In the end, not only do I have no regrets, but also I feel it was the making of me. Still, some people were shocked or contemptuous. Are now. Less so since he became locally famous.
Most people would deplore a world where boys are abandoned in great enough numbers that they have to steal, hustle, and otherwise compromise themselves in order to survive. Around here people occasionally express the belief that a fourteen-year-old is “old enough to look out for himself,” though forty-year-olds can’t find jobs. But who can work with boys without being accused of the great American sin of pedophilia? The nation loves little children, sentimentalizes and indulges them to the point of ruining their character, but -- seriously-- who can work with sexualized boys without being suspected of indecent relationship? Certainly not priests. Not teachers. My gay friends, when I asked them about man/boy relationships, firmly closed the door. None of them is interested in boys and none is willing to be accused of that interest. I have the advantage of being a tubby old woman whom no one suspects of having any interest in sex at all. That’s not quite true, but I’ve never been interested in boys in that way even when I was their age.
There are Unitarian ministers who have died of AIDS, Unitarian ministers who are “out,” Unitarian ministers who have same sex partners. I am accustomed to such phenomena. There are Unitarian ministers who are members of Lambda but I think NONE who are members of Nambla. (There are Unitarian parishoners who will join anything and do.)
A distinguished professor reflecting on the issue points out that man/boy relationships have occurred all through history in many societies, but that in each society the circumstances, expectations, and arrangements have been entirely different. What happened in the Greek world, what happened in King Arthur’s Court, what happened in New Guinea or on the Great Plains of America, was specific to that society and not relevant to ours. What has made our version of man/boy relationships so demonic is our whole understanding of sex and the way it is locked into economics.
To us, though we say sex is mutual and equal, the truth is that to us sex is a transaction between one powerful “top” and one less powerful “bottom.” After all these years of activism, it’s STILL what we think male/female relations are about. On that pattern, weak people are seen as sexual objects because they are seen as vulnerable, victims. Being able to penetrate them means power, prestige, success. Even if you have to pay. And in our society we have deeply confused sex with violence, so that the ultimate act of penetration is murder. But we don’t talk about it. We deny it. Until it shows up in the newspaper as sensational serial killings of young boys or low-class women.
Boys whose poverty or trauma expose them to this soon learn that the only escape is to be as powerful as they can be. Their other choice is to die. They fight authority, refuse boundaries, maybe form gangs. Who can work with these boys? It has to be someone even more powerful than them, but not in a violent way that invites confrontation, and not in an insincere or unfocused way. And someone who understands AIDS, since that’s the street disease of our era, requiring a treatment-intensive regime that will not cure but will maintain. AIDS is as likely to kill young street people as tuberculosis was in the 19th century, and in fact, a person with AIDS is exceptionally vulnerable to TB.
Here’s the Cinematheque answer. The focus: art. The leader: a “leather lit” writer with San Francisco street creds. The place: anywhere but the USA. The strategy: keep moving, keep busy. More recently: transparency through blogging. If all else fails, go fishing.
Why should I be afraid of Cinematheque if I’m not afraid of gays, not afraid of catching AIDS from people on a different continent, and retired so that I don’t need to be afraid of losing my job? Some people sincerely think that the guys will get on a plane and come to Montana in order to somehow chain me up and whip me. Isn’t that what S/M gays do? This is so deeply embedded that they don’t question whether it’s common sense. After all, they saw it on “Prime Suspect,” didn’t they?
But there IS a danger, a seduction. It is hubris on my part to think because I read and contribute to a blog about a double-dozen boys at risk I know anything special or have any special virtue or even that I’m helping them. I can easily be hooked by neediness and tragic stories, as easily as by appealing looks and clever achievements. I do NOT have power, nor am I a victim. My job is to understand and maybe doing that will change the world a little bit.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
CITY STREETS CAN BE CATACOMBS
When they think of catacombs most people think of the catacombs of Rome because of the stories about Christians who hid there to celebrate Mass, even though they had to keep a napkin over the wine chalice so no untoward substances from the bat-infested ceiling would fall into the wine. But the Catacombes de Paris, officially known as l’Ossuaire Municipal, are also famous. Built on valuable deposits of “plaster of Paris,” clay and other building materials, the city has long been under-tunneled with caverns and mines. When the mining stopped, the spaces were pressed into service as ossuaries, in order to reclaim the overcrowded and fetid cemeteries of Les Innocentes and Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs. Bodies of the dead from the riots in the Place de Grève, the Hotel de Brienne, and Rue Meslee were put in the catacombs on 28 and 29 August 1788.
The catacombs contain the indissolubles, the indescribables, the spines and phalanges and skulls of the lost. But they also shelter those who are hunted, seeking burrows like any other mammals, a literal underground society of those too wicked or too virtuous or too revolutionary for those walking above.
Once we leave the Latinate word and think of tunneling, we think of the Vietnamese underground towns; the tunnels that bypass the walls we build to keep Israel from Arab, Mexican from American; escapes from jails -- many patient hours of slow small labor in confined spaces. A list of notable burial “catacombs” includes Anatolia, Turkey; Sousse, North Africa; Naples, Italy; Syracuse, Italy; Trier, Germany; Kiev, Russia. The Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Sicily were used as late as the 1920s.
Underground galleries and mines are dangerous, collapsing without warning, creating sinkholes that swallow houses. But we continue our tunnels for sewers, water mains, subways, raceways for wiring, reinforcing as necessary and -- hopefully -- keeping accurate maps. Tunnels are scary and yet we dare to drive the Chunnel between Franch and England; mock danger by floating in small boats through “Tunnels of Love.” Coastal cities have underground labyrinths created for smuggling inland from ports as recently as prohibition or created in small Western towns by Chinese hiding from authorities and hostile ruffians. Everywhere the piling up of new construction on top of old buildings, the filling-in of streets, have caused what was once ground level to become subterranean.
Very early caves surrender neolithic hair and not-yet-coprolites for analysis, high and dry places preserve ancient artifacts of remarkable fragility and ingenuity -- in America, sandals said to be 60,000 years old, even though no humans were supposed to be present so early. But the most touching are the early art like the painted figures at Lascaux, ghostly animals and handprints so deep in caves that the sun has never seen them. We almost know what they mean: something religious no doubt, something about good fortune and success in the hunt.
What worries us about the underground is not being able to see. Miners and spelunkers hope they have enough fuel, enough battery power, to last through their work. We feel our way through our dreams, not quite able to see what looms over us, what falls away beneath our feet, what paralyzes us.
Human thought is topographic so we speak of the subconscious, that part of the mind that cannot be consciously, deliberately, conveniently accessed, but that constantly controls from underneath our feelings and ideas -- only now and then surprised into observation by a clever psychoanalyst or poet. Now and then we feel something “in the back of our mind,” know it’s there but can’t quite drag it out with memory or logic. We hate not knowing our own minds. We pry at the doors of perception with drugs or lately with mild magnetic currents applied to the temples, hoping to see through to some bright vision.
Likewise, on the social level, for every culture there is a subculture where forbidden things happen: drugs, sex, violence, captivity. The underground is where messages are passed and censored information is accessed. Books you aren’t supposed to read. Like the tiny filaments of fungus that crisscross beneath groves of trees, unseen unless they pop to the surface as mushrooms, these mycelia surreptitiously supply elemental substances that support the trees, things that polite society doesn’t want to know about. Death, disease, perversion, sociopathy, betrayal, slavery, murder, infanticide and forbidden love. These surface in novels, plays, opera -- all the arts. Sometimes they burst out in revolution. Everyone is curious, but most don’t dare go into the dark, unless safely removed to a stage or a book or a screen. We are always there to watch. Car wrecks and pornography, or are they the same thing? (J.G. Ballard thought so.) The insane deaths of famous artists, movie stars and princesses: we review them endlessly in search of what? A key? An explanation. There is none.
When we wander the catacombs, we hope to meet the dead, the dear faces we used to know -- not the old mother we last saw on her deathbed, but the young mother who came to us at bedtime. The once-so-well-known faces of the past wax and wane, so that we wonder whether losing the memory of the faces means we are losing the person.
I remember many things. Portland, Oregon, where I grew up, is portrayed as a green city, honorable and progressive. It has its street people. It has its runaway kids, sleeping on the porch of the Outside-In, an agency run by First Unitarian church, because in the Sixties, when they were allowed inside to sleep on the cushioned pews (in spite of semen stains discovered on Sunday morning) one of the crazier runaways set a fire in the organ loft that destroyed the sanctuary as well as (temporarily) the sanity of the minister. In the Seventies someone showed me where the young boys sat along a parking structure, waiting for the chicken hawks who came by in expensive cars to choose someone for the evening -- maybe the night. It was dark and we didn’t get out of our own car, but the street lights were strong enough for us to identify a few politicians.
But would you want to take one of these boys home? To save, I mean? What would make them stay with you? What would you do with them? Who do you think you are -- Orpheus? Or Jesus? What do you know about the catacombs of their minds? What do you know about how AIDS reduces boys to bones?
The catacombs contain the indissolubles, the indescribables, the spines and phalanges and skulls of the lost. But they also shelter those who are hunted, seeking burrows like any other mammals, a literal underground society of those too wicked or too virtuous or too revolutionary for those walking above.
Once we leave the Latinate word and think of tunneling, we think of the Vietnamese underground towns; the tunnels that bypass the walls we build to keep Israel from Arab, Mexican from American; escapes from jails -- many patient hours of slow small labor in confined spaces. A list of notable burial “catacombs” includes Anatolia, Turkey; Sousse, North Africa; Naples, Italy; Syracuse, Italy; Trier, Germany; Kiev, Russia. The Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Sicily were used as late as the 1920s.
Underground galleries and mines are dangerous, collapsing without warning, creating sinkholes that swallow houses. But we continue our tunnels for sewers, water mains, subways, raceways for wiring, reinforcing as necessary and -- hopefully -- keeping accurate maps. Tunnels are scary and yet we dare to drive the Chunnel between Franch and England; mock danger by floating in small boats through “Tunnels of Love.” Coastal cities have underground labyrinths created for smuggling inland from ports as recently as prohibition or created in small Western towns by Chinese hiding from authorities and hostile ruffians. Everywhere the piling up of new construction on top of old buildings, the filling-in of streets, have caused what was once ground level to become subterranean.
Very early caves surrender neolithic hair and not-yet-coprolites for analysis, high and dry places preserve ancient artifacts of remarkable fragility and ingenuity -- in America, sandals said to be 60,000 years old, even though no humans were supposed to be present so early. But the most touching are the early art like the painted figures at Lascaux, ghostly animals and handprints so deep in caves that the sun has never seen them. We almost know what they mean: something religious no doubt, something about good fortune and success in the hunt.
What worries us about the underground is not being able to see. Miners and spelunkers hope they have enough fuel, enough battery power, to last through their work. We feel our way through our dreams, not quite able to see what looms over us, what falls away beneath our feet, what paralyzes us.
Human thought is topographic so we speak of the subconscious, that part of the mind that cannot be consciously, deliberately, conveniently accessed, but that constantly controls from underneath our feelings and ideas -- only now and then surprised into observation by a clever psychoanalyst or poet. Now and then we feel something “in the back of our mind,” know it’s there but can’t quite drag it out with memory or logic. We hate not knowing our own minds. We pry at the doors of perception with drugs or lately with mild magnetic currents applied to the temples, hoping to see through to some bright vision.
Likewise, on the social level, for every culture there is a subculture where forbidden things happen: drugs, sex, violence, captivity. The underground is where messages are passed and censored information is accessed. Books you aren’t supposed to read. Like the tiny filaments of fungus that crisscross beneath groves of trees, unseen unless they pop to the surface as mushrooms, these mycelia surreptitiously supply elemental substances that support the trees, things that polite society doesn’t want to know about. Death, disease, perversion, sociopathy, betrayal, slavery, murder, infanticide and forbidden love. These surface in novels, plays, opera -- all the arts. Sometimes they burst out in revolution. Everyone is curious, but most don’t dare go into the dark, unless safely removed to a stage or a book or a screen. We are always there to watch. Car wrecks and pornography, or are they the same thing? (J.G. Ballard thought so.) The insane deaths of famous artists, movie stars and princesses: we review them endlessly in search of what? A key? An explanation. There is none.
When we wander the catacombs, we hope to meet the dead, the dear faces we used to know -- not the old mother we last saw on her deathbed, but the young mother who came to us at bedtime. The once-so-well-known faces of the past wax and wane, so that we wonder whether losing the memory of the faces means we are losing the person.
I remember many things. Portland, Oregon, where I grew up, is portrayed as a green city, honorable and progressive. It has its street people. It has its runaway kids, sleeping on the porch of the Outside-In, an agency run by First Unitarian church, because in the Sixties, when they were allowed inside to sleep on the cushioned pews (in spite of semen stains discovered on Sunday morning) one of the crazier runaways set a fire in the organ loft that destroyed the sanctuary as well as (temporarily) the sanity of the minister. In the Seventies someone showed me where the young boys sat along a parking structure, waiting for the chicken hawks who came by in expensive cars to choose someone for the evening -- maybe the night. It was dark and we didn’t get out of our own car, but the street lights were strong enough for us to identify a few politicians.
But would you want to take one of these boys home? To save, I mean? What would make them stay with you? What would you do with them? Who do you think you are -- Orpheus? Or Jesus? What do you know about the catacombs of their minds? What do you know about how AIDS reduces boys to bones?
Monday, June 01, 2009
AN ODD MARRIAGE: JOHN ADAMS & DAVID MCCULLOCH
John Adams, a tubby, opinionated, stubborn man redeemed by his wonderful full-sharing marriage to Abigail, was the second president of the United States. He was not an easy man to love but he raised a son, John Quincy, who also became a president of the United States. (Another died alcoholic and repudiated.) John was salt to Thomas Jefferson’s pepper in the great stew that finally became our country.
The HBO series that recounts this story is based on the biography by David McCulloch and even at the distance of several levels of translation and interpretation, it is David McCulloch’s marriage and personality that finally gleams through that early history. McCulloch is everything Adams wasn’t (except for the quality of mind): handsome, graceful, confident, well-rooted and informed, a people’s man and yet somehow aristocratic, and, like Adams, very very well-married.
It is a credit to all concerned, especially the actors, that the people McCulloch researched and wrote about become so vivid and understandable, even the barely suppressed monarchists like Hamilton. But the episode in which the Adamses arrive at the president’s residence, newly and barely built and not yet white, a big drafty awkward barn with no amenities except inadequate fireplaces and a very large slave population, is the scene where we are really faced with how fragile a dream the whole thing was in the earliest days. Abigail, as embodied by Laura Linney, looks at the tangle of felled trees and mud traversed every which way by laboring black people in rags, and asks -- on our behalf -- “Can anything good come out of a capitol built by slaves?”
People accustomed to explosions and morphing sci-fi monsters will find this a very boring movie full of talking heads. The more sophisticated will recognize the roots of everything we struggle with now, even Rush Limbaugh. In those days the talk was not on the radio, but on the streets, and the blogs were hand-printed broadsides and pamphlets, no less intemperate than today’s flame wars. Rumsfield and Cheney are there in the person of imperial Madison and perhaps the Kennedy of the times was Jefferson: idealistic, improvident, and eloquent.
John Adams was no Obama. “Rotund,” “hermaphroditic,” fiery and obdurate, we can barely understand him. I’m not sure he has a modern equivalent -- maybe Jimmy Carter, a bit. The piety and marriage seem similar. Laura Linney would make an excellent Rosalyn Carter but never at all a Pat Nixon. Lady Bird? Hmmm. It fun to play at personalities this way, and this cast is QUITE the equal of the Masterpiece Theatre English, even though few of them are familiar to us. Stephen Dillane, for instance, I last saw as a bad guy bamboozled by Robert Redford in “The Spy Game.” He could do a very insightful version of Rumsfeld, a sexy guy lost in theory.
To compensate and emphasize the constant back-and-forth of multi-syllabic argument, the camera in this movie is on the move, literally, drifting past, leaving a talking head at the edge of the frame facing out of it, tilting, pulling back to an upper corner of the “room,” peering through things and around things, leaving speakers down in one corner, even as the people glance slantwise, avert gazes to the floor, suddenly look up to check a reaction. Most of the serious conversations between John and his wife are in bed -- naked when they are young, nightgowned in later years -- the camera is as close to their faces as they are to each other, gazing into each other’s eyes, watching each other’s lips, turning away, pressing together. The sheer intimacy and trust they convey makes the sexual writhing we are used to seem childish.
Awards for this mini-series are multitudinous -- check them out on imdb.com. So much of the work is subtle and genuine even though the tasks were pretty daunting: imagine making someone look like George Washington! (Speaking of likenesses, I was pretty impressed by the inclusion of the sculptor Houdon, who became a special favorite of Jefferson’s and Franklin’s. I loved the final gimmick of Adams dying with a bust of Jefferson in the background while Jefferson was dying with a bust of Adams in the background. These are familiar sculptures, as were the paintings. The person who replicated them know what he, she or they were doing.
This is a director’s version of a script writer working from a book written by an historian working from letters written by the Adamses and others. It is amazing that so much seems absolutely trustworthy. And yet what keeps shining through is the happy marriage of David McCulloch, his love of his country, and his respect for famous men while never letting them off the hook of responsibility for their actions. McCulloch is a man of irenic temperament writing about a man who could be righteously rigid enough to disown his son and stingily scrupulous enough to deny a helping hand to his son-in-law, and yet we don’t feel the dissonance of a happy man writing grim tales.
Much of our empathy comes from the remarkable performance of Paul Giamatti, who has previously starred in such films as “Thunderpants” and “The Haunted World of El SuperBeasto.” (About the current ruler of Venezuela?) John Adams is clearly Giamatti’s role of a lifetime and he was certainly up to it. He has not lacked for work in the past and I don’t think he will in the future either.
But my mind keeps returning to David McCulloch, that prince of a fellow with the beautiful wife and daughters, working away on an old manual typewriter with two fingers of each hand. He built himself a little house in the woods with a gate whose posts once marked the maximum height of visitors who would be welcome. Short ones. Children. He’s been a host for the Smithsonian for many of their shows and is at home on the streets greeting citizens in a most un-ivory tower way. “It’s wonderful,” he exclaims. “Everyone says hello to me!”
“Daaaad,” remonstrates his grown daughter, “You always say hello to them first!” And the camera catches him at it. “Hello, I’m David McCulloch,” he says to a man.
“Oh, hello! I have your book in my car this very minute!” Would that everyone in America did. They could at least watch the DVD.
The HBO series that recounts this story is based on the biography by David McCulloch and even at the distance of several levels of translation and interpretation, it is David McCulloch’s marriage and personality that finally gleams through that early history. McCulloch is everything Adams wasn’t (except for the quality of mind): handsome, graceful, confident, well-rooted and informed, a people’s man and yet somehow aristocratic, and, like Adams, very very well-married.
It is a credit to all concerned, especially the actors, that the people McCulloch researched and wrote about become so vivid and understandable, even the barely suppressed monarchists like Hamilton. But the episode in which the Adamses arrive at the president’s residence, newly and barely built and not yet white, a big drafty awkward barn with no amenities except inadequate fireplaces and a very large slave population, is the scene where we are really faced with how fragile a dream the whole thing was in the earliest days. Abigail, as embodied by Laura Linney, looks at the tangle of felled trees and mud traversed every which way by laboring black people in rags, and asks -- on our behalf -- “Can anything good come out of a capitol built by slaves?”
People accustomed to explosions and morphing sci-fi monsters will find this a very boring movie full of talking heads. The more sophisticated will recognize the roots of everything we struggle with now, even Rush Limbaugh. In those days the talk was not on the radio, but on the streets, and the blogs were hand-printed broadsides and pamphlets, no less intemperate than today’s flame wars. Rumsfield and Cheney are there in the person of imperial Madison and perhaps the Kennedy of the times was Jefferson: idealistic, improvident, and eloquent.
John Adams was no Obama. “Rotund,” “hermaphroditic,” fiery and obdurate, we can barely understand him. I’m not sure he has a modern equivalent -- maybe Jimmy Carter, a bit. The piety and marriage seem similar. Laura Linney would make an excellent Rosalyn Carter but never at all a Pat Nixon. Lady Bird? Hmmm. It fun to play at personalities this way, and this cast is QUITE the equal of the Masterpiece Theatre English, even though few of them are familiar to us. Stephen Dillane, for instance, I last saw as a bad guy bamboozled by Robert Redford in “The Spy Game.” He could do a very insightful version of Rumsfeld, a sexy guy lost in theory.
To compensate and emphasize the constant back-and-forth of multi-syllabic argument, the camera in this movie is on the move, literally, drifting past, leaving a talking head at the edge of the frame facing out of it, tilting, pulling back to an upper corner of the “room,” peering through things and around things, leaving speakers down in one corner, even as the people glance slantwise, avert gazes to the floor, suddenly look up to check a reaction. Most of the serious conversations between John and his wife are in bed -- naked when they are young, nightgowned in later years -- the camera is as close to their faces as they are to each other, gazing into each other’s eyes, watching each other’s lips, turning away, pressing together. The sheer intimacy and trust they convey makes the sexual writhing we are used to seem childish.
Awards for this mini-series are multitudinous -- check them out on imdb.com. So much of the work is subtle and genuine even though the tasks were pretty daunting: imagine making someone look like George Washington! (Speaking of likenesses, I was pretty impressed by the inclusion of the sculptor Houdon, who became a special favorite of Jefferson’s and Franklin’s. I loved the final gimmick of Adams dying with a bust of Jefferson in the background while Jefferson was dying with a bust of Adams in the background. These are familiar sculptures, as were the paintings. The person who replicated them know what he, she or they were doing.
This is a director’s version of a script writer working from a book written by an historian working from letters written by the Adamses and others. It is amazing that so much seems absolutely trustworthy. And yet what keeps shining through is the happy marriage of David McCulloch, his love of his country, and his respect for famous men while never letting them off the hook of responsibility for their actions. McCulloch is a man of irenic temperament writing about a man who could be righteously rigid enough to disown his son and stingily scrupulous enough to deny a helping hand to his son-in-law, and yet we don’t feel the dissonance of a happy man writing grim tales.
Much of our empathy comes from the remarkable performance of Paul Giamatti, who has previously starred in such films as “Thunderpants” and “The Haunted World of El SuperBeasto.” (About the current ruler of Venezuela?) John Adams is clearly Giamatti’s role of a lifetime and he was certainly up to it. He has not lacked for work in the past and I don’t think he will in the future either.
But my mind keeps returning to David McCulloch, that prince of a fellow with the beautiful wife and daughters, working away on an old manual typewriter with two fingers of each hand. He built himself a little house in the woods with a gate whose posts once marked the maximum height of visitors who would be welcome. Short ones. Children. He’s been a host for the Smithsonian for many of their shows and is at home on the streets greeting citizens in a most un-ivory tower way. “It’s wonderful,” he exclaims. “Everyone says hello to me!”
“Daaaad,” remonstrates his grown daughter, “You always say hello to them first!” And the camera catches him at it. “Hello, I’m David McCulloch,” he says to a man.
“Oh, hello! I have your book in my car this very minute!” Would that everyone in America did. They could at least watch the DVD.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
METHODIST BLACKFEET PARISH HISTORY
*
Weasel Feather, Buffalo Hide, Running Antelope (Rev. Edgar B. Smith), Old Chief, Eagle Calf
In some ways the World War II years were the best the reservation ever had. The young men were proud warriors and there was no doubt that the “old bulls” were chiefs. Likewise, churches were full and the Blackfeet War Mothers paid little attention to what race those mothers were. Divisions are were minimized and categories went unquestioned for a while.
1956-58 George P. Cox (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
George was born on April 16, 1923 and passed away on Sunday, September 24, 1995. George was last known to be living in Alder, Montana. This is the only info I could find and I’m not entirely sure it’s the same person.
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
I know nothing about these people and have heard few say much.
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, Heart Butte
Jim and Mary Bell were the pastors in residence when I came to Browning, Montana. A tall rangy Texas man along the lines of Randolph Scott or Gary Cooper, Jim Bell was a missionary who believed in pluralism. Though he was a strong Christian and a dedicated Methodist, he had great respect for indigenous ways and sought to bring them into the life of the congregation, though the Browning congregation saw itself pretty much as a white church and were more willing to welcome any Indians assimilated, that is, pretty much like them. The perennial problem was solved again by creating a ring of more “Indian” churches around the reservation in the small communities and leaving the major congregation in Browning to be more conventional.
The hammer blow suffered by the Bell ministry was the Flood of 1964. It swept away the little Apistotoke church, known as Swims Under, out near Heart Butte, and lost homes out there meant that much of the population moved to Browning. Coincidentally, the Methodist church in Babb burned down at the same time. The parsonage was not much damaged, but topsoil on the flood plain was stripped off the underlying gravel. There was suddenly huge need and trauma as people tried to cope with loss and change. That year had been meant to celebrate the Centennial of the Territory of Montana and no one could even understand whether to cancel events. Bell and other townsfolk had grown whiskers of various sorts and Bob Scriver was inspired to portray some of them in a diorama sculpture of a poker game, but Jim Bell is seen as a tall, thin cowboy rather than as a parson.
I was not part of the Bell’s personal circle. They lived in a new ranch-style house on the flood plain of Willow Creek just west of the Indian Days campground. The house was meant to accommodate Indian children who needed emergency care or fostering, but I’m not sure exactly how many or which children those included. Once we responded with the rest of Browning to a fire in the barn that had been set by children playing with matches. The major grief of the couple was losing in infancy their twin sons and the chimes in the church were donated in the name of those children. The Bells were beloved but controversial. The final quarrel was over a pair of urban Black young people the Bells took in for the summer.
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
“Papa” Pearson was a retired volunteer social worker rather than a pastor. He addressed the mounds and mounds of used clothing and spent much of his time wrestling around boxes of donated stuff. Twice we lived on the two sides of duplexes, first the Halseth apartments now under the Blackfeet Trading Post and second Wessie Scriver’s duplex across the street from her. In both locations his stacks of boxes would occasionally topple, sometimes sounding like a body falling, and we’d worry over what had happened to him. In a few minutes his habitual humming/singing would start back up and we’d know he was all right.
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
Conrad and Gayle Himmel were hard workers who had agreed to split the double-yolked egg with the Bells by taking up the mission side of things, but the Bells left. The last I heard they were in Africa. The major contribution of the Himmels was acquring the decommissioned Air Force building that became Day Care. This was just before Heart Start, but made much the same contribution by allowing parents to work and providing both protection and education to the kids.
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
This was probably also one of the mission arrangements that came and went in Heart Butte, which was the most remote and -- in some opinions -- the most backward of the territory. It was where the old people settled and depended upon the leadership of Dick Sanderville, “Chief Bull.”
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
When organizations are struggling to find a new identity, they often start with a new name.
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
This pleasant and competent man settled things down. I don’t know much about him, because I left in 1973.
1981-83 F. Richard and H. Marine
Another couple that is remembered with affection.
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
Some said that Jim Bentley was brought in to straighten out the books. I believe it was during this time that Brent Warrington was commissioned to create a stunning set of stained glass windows, though it may have been earlier. Brent had taught at the Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop and also did the stained glass windows at Holy Family Mission on Two Medicine River.
1986-87 Ron Barr
Barr was the person who installed the quonset hut church at the Heart Butte location across the graveyard from the Catholic Church. It never quite jelled as a congregation and was nothing like the replacement for Swims Under that Bell had promised. It became the inevitable repository for old clothes and a location for sporadic mission visits. Barr had a tendency to overreach and that evidently overwhelmed his family, which shattered. He left suddenly.
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
I had just left a Unitarian Universalist ministry in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Jacobson had been called to be the next Methodist minister, but he was retained for another year in his previous calling as a Navy chaplain in Florida. I agreed to serve the congregation by preaching and living in the parsonage in lieu of wages, which meant it would be exempt from taxes. Otherwise the choices were renting and paying taxes, or leaving it to stand empty in a place where it was likely to be vandalized. We didn’t do any mission work but I dearly loved the year.
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
Jake was only in residence a matter of months before he realized he’d made a huge mistake and left.
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
Everyone speaks very highly of Peggy, who was a lay interim, I think.
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
Donna had a strong service ethic, which was supported with dedication by her husband, who upgraded the parsonage. People found Donna “very emotional,” which was a plus to some. She did a lot of work with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and was a senstive one-on-one counselor.
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
Rowland had a strong pentecostal bent and introduced much of that to the congregation. As usual, strong personalities make controversy. Under his guidance, more stained glass was installed in the bell tower windows. The funeral of Mike Swims Under, the wise old man of the original Apistotoke church that was swept away, was guided by Freeman and included many Blackfeet old-timers even from Canada.
After Rowland I have no list to guide me and events are recent enough to be not quite history anyhow. The same problems persist today, though Browning is dominantly Indian now and the congregation is almost entirely of mixed blood.
Weasel Feather, Buffalo Hide, Running Antelope (Rev. Edgar B. Smith), Old Chief, Eagle Calf
In some ways the World War II years were the best the reservation ever had. The young men were proud warriors and there was no doubt that the “old bulls” were chiefs. Likewise, churches were full and the Blackfeet War Mothers paid little attention to what race those mothers were. Divisions are were minimized and categories went unquestioned for a while.
1956-58 George P. Cox (intern) Babb, Heart Butte
George was born on April 16, 1923 and passed away on Sunday, September 24, 1995. George was last known to be living in Alder, Montana. This is the only info I could find and I’m not entirely sure it’s the same person.
1958-59 Charlotte Bridges
I know nothing about these people and have heard few say much.
1959-67 James E. Bell Babb, Heart Butte
Jim and Mary Bell were the pastors in residence when I came to Browning, Montana. A tall rangy Texas man along the lines of Randolph Scott or Gary Cooper, Jim Bell was a missionary who believed in pluralism. Though he was a strong Christian and a dedicated Methodist, he had great respect for indigenous ways and sought to bring them into the life of the congregation, though the Browning congregation saw itself pretty much as a white church and were more willing to welcome any Indians assimilated, that is, pretty much like them. The perennial problem was solved again by creating a ring of more “Indian” churches around the reservation in the small communities and leaving the major congregation in Browning to be more conventional.
The hammer blow suffered by the Bell ministry was the Flood of 1964. It swept away the little Apistotoke church, known as Swims Under, out near Heart Butte, and lost homes out there meant that much of the population moved to Browning. Coincidentally, the Methodist church in Babb burned down at the same time. The parsonage was not much damaged, but topsoil on the flood plain was stripped off the underlying gravel. There was suddenly huge need and trauma as people tried to cope with loss and change. That year had been meant to celebrate the Centennial of the Territory of Montana and no one could even understand whether to cancel events. Bell and other townsfolk had grown whiskers of various sorts and Bob Scriver was inspired to portray some of them in a diorama sculpture of a poker game, but Jim Bell is seen as a tall, thin cowboy rather than as a parson.
I was not part of the Bell’s personal circle. They lived in a new ranch-style house on the flood plain of Willow Creek just west of the Indian Days campground. The house was meant to accommodate Indian children who needed emergency care or fostering, but I’m not sure exactly how many or which children those included. Once we responded with the rest of Browning to a fire in the barn that had been set by children playing with matches. The major grief of the couple was losing in infancy their twin sons and the chimes in the church were donated in the name of those children. The Bells were beloved but controversial. The final quarrel was over a pair of urban Black young people the Bells took in for the summer.
1963 - Harry E. Pearson Blackfeet United Methodist Parish (lay)
“Papa” Pearson was a retired volunteer social worker rather than a pastor. He addressed the mounds and mounds of used clothing and spent much of his time wrestling around boxes of donated stuff. Twice we lived on the two sides of duplexes, first the Halseth apartments now under the Blackfeet Trading Post and second Wessie Scriver’s duplex across the street from her. In both locations his stacks of boxes would occasionally topple, sometimes sounding like a body falling, and we’d worry over what had happened to him. In a few minutes his habitual humming/singing would start back up and we’d know he was all right.
1965- 68 Conrad Himmel
Conrad and Gayle Himmel were hard workers who had agreed to split the double-yolked egg with the Bells by taking up the mission side of things, but the Bells left. The last I heard they were in Africa. The major contribution of the Himmels was acquring the decommissioned Air Force building that became Day Care. This was just before Heart Start, but made much the same contribution by allowing parents to work and providing both protection and education to the kids.
1963-64 Richard D. Fiero Heart Butte
This was probably also one of the mission arrangements that came and went in Heart Butte, which was the most remote and -- in some opinions -- the most backward of the territory. It was where the old people settled and depended upon the leadership of Dick Sanderville, “Chief Bull.”
BROWNING UNITED METHODIST PARISH
When organizations are struggling to find a new identity, they often start with a new name.
1974-1981 Walter F. Mason
This pleasant and competent man settled things down. I don’t know much about him, because I left in 1973.
1981-83 F. Richard and H. Marine
Another couple that is remembered with affection.
1983-1985 James R. Bentley (PM)
Some said that Jim Bentley was brought in to straighten out the books. I believe it was during this time that Brent Warrington was commissioned to create a stunning set of stained glass windows, though it may have been earlier. Brent had taught at the Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop and also did the stained glass windows at Holy Family Mission on Two Medicine River.
1986-87 Ron Barr
Barr was the person who installed the quonset hut church at the Heart Butte location across the graveyard from the Catholic Church. It never quite jelled as a congregation and was nothing like the replacement for Swims Under that Bell had promised. It became the inevitable repository for old clothes and a location for sporadic mission visits. Barr had a tendency to overreach and that evidently overwhelmed his family, which shattered. He left suddenly.
1987 - 88 Mary Scriver
I had just left a Unitarian Universalist ministry in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Jacobson had been called to be the next Methodist minister, but he was retained for another year in his previous calling as a Navy chaplain in Florida. I agreed to serve the congregation by preaching and living in the parsonage in lieu of wages, which meant it would be exempt from taxes. Otherwise the choices were renting and paying taxes, or leaving it to stand empty in a place where it was likely to be vandalized. We didn’t do any mission work but I dearly loved the year.
1989 Richard (Jake) Jacobson
Jake was only in residence a matter of months before he realized he’d made a huge mistake and left.
1989 -90 Peggy Salois
Everyone speaks very highly of Peggy, who was a lay interim, I think.
1990- 1994 Donna Lee Martin
Donna had a strong service ethic, which was supported with dedication by her husband, who upgraded the parsonage. People found Donna “very emotional,” which was a plus to some. She did a lot of work with groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and was a senstive one-on-one counselor.
1994 - 1998 Rowland Freeman
Rowland had a strong pentecostal bent and introduced much of that to the congregation. As usual, strong personalities make controversy. Under his guidance, more stained glass was installed in the bell tower windows. The funeral of Mike Swims Under, the wise old man of the original Apistotoke church that was swept away, was guided by Freeman and included many Blackfeet old-timers even from Canada.
After Rowland I have no list to guide me and events are recent enough to be not quite history anyhow. The same problems persist today, though Browning is dominantly Indian now and the congregation is almost entirely of mixed blood.
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