On the Warpath

Hey, anybody catch the Double Header between the Crackers and Negroes last night? See the highlights from the Kike-Chinks game on sportscenter? Wouldn't that seem weird? Incredibly offensive, I'd say. So offensive that I get that butt-puckered, oh geez sensation just writing those epithets to pose the hypothetical. But we don't feel that sort of defensive welling-up when we're cheering the Redskins or Indians or Chiefs on. Ask somebody at a game sometime if they think any of those names are offensive and I wonder if they'll just laugh it off, pretend as if they're just ingrained, the way things are in our curious little country. Let's try to see why we don't question these teams en masse, and what they all might have in common that we so easily can disparage them openly.

 Well, a quick internet search brings us to the oracle of all internet wisdom, Wikipedia, which lists out the myriad sports teams that use offensive or racially-identifying words in their team names. The vast majority, almost all of these names infact, are derived from indigenous peoples that are vastly underrepresented in the general populations, and most of which also, have been decimated by war and political obliteration, (such is the case with the continental American teams.)

 Now, some people would say, and do, that these are proud, identifying names for groups that enjoy the attention, and any reasonable person can see that there is no way that we could know that, and little chance there's ever been a discussion with those groups affected. Still others would say that the names are identifiers only, and have no associated value that would put the afflicted groups into a particular light. However, what would be the point of just listing groups of people on helmets and jerseys without some implied value statement about them? No one has Grackles and Cowbirds as team names just to list out passerine species, but we have vibrant cardinals, fierce blue jays or gorgeous cardinals, each with their implied worth and value. Such, I believe, is the case with Florida Seminoles and Canyon Comanches, and many of the other tribes and peoples that are archived not in libraries or their homelands, but on bleachers and scoreboards. It's a travesty to the peoples that have been obliterated from our collective conscience and from ancestral lands. 

Native American writer Sherman Alexie often jokes that he went to an all-white high school where the only other Native American was the team mascot. He also is aghast at the mainstream's perpetuation of stereotypes with The Lone Ranger , a movie recently released where Johnny Depp does his best to assimilate no native culture into his portrayal of Tonto. The whole issue raises a concern for me that our society has moved so far in the past 50 years, (not far enough) to become an inclusive, racially and socially integrated culture, but we have left these indigenous peoples so far out of our viewfinder that the mention of something so rudimentary as changing sports teams names is laughable. It causes me to wonder if we are not truly the integrated culture we'd like to claim, but merely a squeaky wheel culture that adapts when it has to, but for a culture that is so small, so effectively exterminated as native peoples, we turn away and leave them to their vices, forgotten.

america's cup, roosevelt field mall, mike glennon, metro north, paul oliver

Down at the PawPaw Patch

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working and traveling around hiking and biking with Buddy as always, seeing family and friends, but a lot of my attention has been devoted to..wait for it...the largest endemic fruit in North America. It's the fruit that resembles a custard-like banana and looks like a pale, ovoid cucumber. I try to stay on task, keeping up with the important, 'necessary' things in life, but this time of year, especially when I'm walking through a protected area such as a State or National Park, and stumble upon a PawPaw patch, all reason flies out the window, and I immediately look for a bag-type receptacle and start shaking trees. My justification as a fellow preservationist and would-be protector of the woods? Well, the deer will eat them anyways, and there's an overabundance of deer, so really, I'm culling an overpopulated herd, therefore saving the government money. I know, I know, but it works for me, just enough reason to remove the guilt. The PawPaw or Asimina triloba is a wonderful fruit that grows over a large swath of the East Coast and is under-appreciated. It's the king of Appalachian foraging fruits, and you'll have to get to the fruit before the deer do. These fruits have more nutritional value than many foods that we commonly associate with health foods. They contain tons of antioxidants and bioactive compounds that are not well understood, but which will have potential utility in pharmaceuticals upon further study. Ask around and you'll find that a majority of the population doesn't know PawPaws exist, and many more don't understand their incredible nutritional value. In a highly populated area of the tidewater region such as this (I'm currently living in Northern Virginia outside of D.C.) I'm glad that more people don't know about the fruit. More PawPaws for me, I say. It seems that we are so fixed on all the new, chic things out there, foods from different lands and cultures, that we forget some of the real gems that naturally abound here. I'm a niche guy, and I'm also into all of the incredible mushrooms that we have in our Appalachian Mountains. There are all sorts of great things here, wild leeks termed ramps, which have been causing long-term bad breath for hundreds of years in rural towns during harvest season, and ginseng, sassafras, black birch, teaberry, and all sorts of other edible and medicinal fruits of the land. We're not special really, because every natural place in the world has its edible and medicinal wild foods, it's just that it seems important to know the harvestable bounty in your specific area. Maybe I'm just weird about this, but it seems so primitive and essential to know what is around you, to know the flowers and trees and fruits that are part of your home, your place in the world. There's so much to learn right around us, so much to discover and appreciate. I suppose that goes for much of life, and a necessary satisfaction we should all shoot for. Why is it that we are so myopically entrenched in the buildings and man-made structures around us, creating new synthetic compounds on a daily basis, when our forests go unmanaged and untended, and we haven't even unleashed the mysterious potential in the compounds of the natural world? Once again, we see that balance is vital in all things. Wow, really off topic. Back to PawPaws. Word to the wise, if you desire to make PawPaw jam, prepare for a long ordeal, complete with stickiness all over a tiny apartment kitchen, your dog licking at seeds that pop out of your hand when you're squeezing the juice from them, and finally, prepare for the jam not to set right because, first of all, you 'eyeball' relentlessly although you should know better by now, and you're left telling co-workers that you have some non-viscous marmalade for them to try. Long story short, I really like PawPaws. So, if you or an attractive unattached female friend is in the Northern Virginia area and seeks a day of PawPaw picking, I'm game for the next week or two, or until every single tree is picked clean.

Of Scuds and Sarin

Say what, Mr. President? We're going to do what? Without whose approval? Our decisions are based on how much evidence? Blame it on my pietist background, or my bleeding heart, Peace Corps serving, hippie mentality, or just on a higher sense of order, but I am wondering what in the world our executive leadership is thinking when they threaten to take unilateral action against a Middle-Eastern nation with controvertible evidence of wrongdoing. Even our current president, who has, for many of us, been a symbol of deference and reason, stands in total contradiction to his rhetoric during the early days of the Iraqi conflict. I'm disappointed, and I hope others are, when they hear our leaders say, "We have evidence, some of which we can share with the public, which strongly suggests wrongdoing." Be wary, very wary of this talk, especially when it hearkens back so ominously to the trillion dollar incursion that we are still cleaning up from, a recent conflict that, it can be compellingly argued, created more destruction than it helped to avoid. If we cannot learn from Vietnam, or use the War Powers Act as a tool to avoid the same mistakes, then what is this great civilization able to learn from? If we cannot wait to get confirmation from inspectors, or until other nations join ranks to say that strikes are necessary, what collective self restraint do we have? When other nations choose to wait for evidence of chemical weapons and just where they came from, and the United States' leaders choose to move forward, we are demonstrating collective arrogance and disdain for the judgement of all of our 'allies' throughout the international community. I don't get mad much, because I just don't see the point, but this kind of senselessness from politicians really angers me. Don't tell me about your civil order or how we should appeal to higher angels when you will take life and order so lightly as to jump into another conflict. Chemical weapons and despots should not exist, but neither should African genocide or abject poverty, but somehow the dull ache of hunger and systemic hate isn't as sexy as unilaterally blasting away a possible occurence of chemical warfare.

Poets and Busboys

Last Sunday, I went with a good friend to Poets and Busboys in Northwest D.C. and had a great time listening to incredibly talented, passionate people speak their truths.  One by one, poets and writers rose, walked to a dimly lit stage, and spoke in front of a crowd of black and white and Hispanic and Asian and young and old and men and women, about 75, and spilled unbridled emotion.  There was joy and sadness and love and hate.  A major theme, though, was anger.  Anger at government, at 'white' society, the 'men' that have kept everyone down, all of those people who work within 'the system,' and support the 'status quo.'  Honestly, I found it hard to take.  If the anger had been based upon something other than anti-establishment angst at humankind, it would have hit home, and I could have understood more where it all was coming from, but most of the hard words came out of a general malcontent, irritable, affect.  In the past days, I have seen over and over coverage of the 23-year-old man who was shot because he was white and the aggressors were bored.

High profile hate crimes towards the historical majority take place frequently, and it remains taboo in our society to question whether our emphasis on equality and openness for one segment of the population has tipped the scales so far that we have become blind to true equality, blind to an entitled racism that persists in a historical minority.  As we celebrate the incredible leap forward that the march on Washington afforded our civilization 50 years ago, I hope that all of us can think about peace for all, the end of prejudice and racism for all, and begin to think about the present and future, instead of always feeling angry or apologetic for the past.  Poverty continues, as well as racism, bigotry, and sexism.  I'm sure many people will disagree with my simplification of the situation, but I think it is like any other relationship we have in life.  Until we can forget the past, or forgive for the past, for betrayal, or for harsh words,  the violence or hatred or bigotry that scarred us, we cannot get to a new place.  It's true also for 'macro' race and gender relations in America.  We have to get to a place where we can separate the past from the present.  Many would say that we aren't there yet, but we have to pick a point when we say 'the future starts now, horrible things have happened, but this is now, and that was then.'

Slipping Tires

One summer evening, a college friend and I decided to drive his rear-wheel drive Chevy truck out to the Hone Quarry reservoir and try our luck at the trout that were purported to be in the deep waters at its south-west end, the area shaded by still extant Eastern Hemlocks.  The deep waters were crowded with tree trunks and stumps that had fallen off barren, arid slopes at the foot of a steep skid littered with shale of the Alleghany Plateau.  We backed the little truck down close to the water and then waded with rods and tackle as far as we could into the cool water until we were up to our bellys and the gravelly bottom gave way to slushy sandy loam that had collected on the lake bottom in the years since Civilian Conservation Corps men had impounded the area.  A mild evening gave way to a cool night, and as stars started to shine in a darkening sky, we headed back to the little truck.

Key turned, ignition clicked, and the engine hummed but the tires spun.  We pushed and prodded, taking turns pushing for hernias, but we gave up, and decided to walk for help, a bigger truck with a stout rope was sure to be right down the dirt road that led through the campground.

On this evening, though, no one was camped or parked along the road, so we walked the long winding path out of Hone Quarry, some 3 miles to Rt. 257.  As we walked on a school night, apathetic to tests and classes, we talked of all of our hopes for the future, careers, women, sang David Allen Coe, Alabama, and all of the verses of American Pie we could remember.  We were tired and wanted to get back to Milwaukee's Best at the dorm, but, realizing that we had a long road ahead of us, we just laughed and planned and poked at what life might bring.  We would go into business, we decided.  George's Seafood with the motto "If it ain't fried, you 'been denied."  Across the road from the seafood restaurant, filling the tanks of all the fried seafood eaters, I'd erect a service station named Pete's Pitstop.  Our little utopia of all you'd ever need would be down in Southside Virginia, between Buckingham Courthouse and Richmond on Rt. 60, in the land of tobacco fields, loblolly plantations, and the best pulled pork Virginia has to offer.

My friend is a teacher now, with two beautiful little girls and we don't get to talk much, but lots of nights like that one, when we walked 6 miles to find someone to pull the Chevy a couple feet so that we could go back to life, remind me of a bond that we share, much like the bond that we all share through memories and happenstance that make life the great experience it can be.  It's as if all of our plans and work and routines just serve as backdrop to the serendipitous times that come along unexpectedly, forcing us to walk a bit farther, and think a little harder, about what could be.  Whether or not we get to the destination we set out looking for, we've seen growth and change, and, at the end of a full life, that may be all that matters.

I think we're all a little too independent and overconfident to think that life might just be leading us from coincidence to coincidence, and from sorrow to circumstance, from enchantment to epiphany.  The next day, I'm sure I had classes where I sat at a lecture and learned important ideas, but none so important as that moonlit walk with wet clothes, tired legs, and invigorated spirit.

Naturalist's Manifesto

Cars flash by,
Diesel and Gas,
Coolant and Rubber,
On Asphalt and Heat Scorched Sand,
All Pulled from Deep Bowels,
Of this Home,

Lights Flash and Flicker,
Synthetic Lightning Bugs of Defiance,
To the Turning of this Great Blue Green Ball,
Gnats and ants on our secure, seductive flotilla,
In the midst of an ancient plan,
That continues to roll and roil and revolve,

Above the mayhem of confusion,
Cumulus rolls with a fury,
The sleeping fatalistic giant,
With a wall of wet torrent,
Sheeting across a dark sky,

Our tiny egos and racing and raging and ruckus,
Reduced to slippery, invigorating coolness in an instant,
Trees cower and printed bits of our madness blow,
And the gnats turn their heads to avoid the fury,
As fierce winds breathe,
And soiled tears fall,
This power of eons rakes across the landscape as if to say,
"Remember me; time still belongs to me,"

Crevasse

Walking, crawling, scraping,

Through an ancient streambed,

The hum of water is gone,

And the drip, drip, of sustenance has dried,

Riffles have since flowed to the ocean,

And every sign of life is lost, evaporated into eternity,

All except for me. 

 

How far have I walked in this void?

And how far must I continue?

Without answer,

My legs propel me further,

Bone and cartilage with tendon and sinew,

Unrelenting, forgetting their frailty and age,

Looking for something, feeling, groping for something.

 

I sing to myself,

Reminded of my own thoughts,

And all I hear are my footsteps,

And the ringing of rivets on an old carabiner,

Plod…..plod….crink…crink.

 

The sounds of biner on cave pack persist,

To remind me of another trip,

And another streambed,

And other riffles that have since disappeared,

To the ocean,

 

Everything is gone in this dark old channel.

Everything except for me.