Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Finally some Winter – clouds, wind, snow flurries, 25 degrees – and then clear blue skies in the afternoon, and more clear skies . . . and more . . .
Written over several days at the winding down of January in 2012.

JUST LOOKING . . .

Last night I created a small museum.
When I say small I mean the exhibits fit into a cigar box.
It was an after-dinner present for my wife.
“Here, my love, it’s a Museum of the Pleasures of the Hand.
Take out one thing at a time and hold it in your fingers and palm.”

What was in the box?
Wait . . . I’ll tell you soon.
But first, this:

What comes to mind when you read the word museum?
Perhaps the great treasure-filled bank vault collections of art and history found in cities like Paris or New York or London or Vienna or Athens?
That’s where all the bigtime goodstuff is kept on view.
Go if you can.

The lesser museums of the world are also worthy attractions.
The ones in small towns – collections based on local pride and history.
The little roadside museums – accumulations of human squirrely-ness and single-minded eccentricity.

“Yep, that’s the biggest hairball ever cut out of a cat . . .”
“This really is the largest collection of two-headed lizards in the world. . .”
“The whole house is made of glass bottles and hockey pucks.”

There are unplanned, unintended museums, as well.
And there are the museums I create myself.
Plus the invisible museums in my mind.

But first, this perspective:

One of my favorite small museums is the Cam Wah Chung & Co. Museum in the town of John Day, Oregon.
Two Chinese immigrants – Ing Hay and Lung On - opened a store in 1887 in an abandoned military trading post to serve their countrymen who were working in the local gold mines and building the nearby railroads.
They offered basic supplies, plus Chinese herbal medicines, cultural and religious items, social contacts for the Chinese community, and a four-bed opium den in the back room.
For lack of Chinese customers, the store quietly closed in the late 1940’s.

A nephew of Ing Hay signed over the deed to the property to the town of John Day. But, apparently, the city fathers didn’t get the word until 1969.
When they finally opened the building they found that the cold dry climate had preserved the contents. Everything was still there - in place just as it was the day it was closed and boarded up.

Now it’s a museum – still unchanged – a place where time stopped.
A memorial to the real life of Chinese immigrant society of long ago.
Even the owner’s bedroom and kitchen are just as he left them.
And opium smoke still blackens the back room.
When you walk in the door you step back into 1887.
Amazing!

Hold the thought.

In Moab last month I had time on my hands waiting for my old Ford to be rehabbed, and to get its emissions inspection certificate.
Wandering uptown, midtown, and downtown – that’s six blocks in Moab.
I wondered what the Walker Drugstore, the Ace Hardware, the City Market, and the Moonflower organic store would be like as museums of the future.

Suppose, like Cam Wah Chung & Company, these modern emporiums would be closed, shuttered, and sealed – to be opened 100 years later.
As memorials to the life of people in the first decade of the 21st century.
Us.
Museums. Time capsules.
What would the citizens of the future think?

Usually when I go to these stores I have a list of things-to-get, and a focused mind. I’m on a re-supply mission – get in, get it, get out.
And, of course, I never look at the rest of the stuff on offer.
There are whole aisles I’ve never wandered down because I don’t need baby supplies or pet food or plumbing fixtures or finger nail polish.
With a couple of hours to spare, I spent my free time in Walker Drugstore, the Ace Hardware, the City Market, and the Moonflower organic store.
Just looking – not shopping to buy, just to look - aisle by aisle – as if the stores were museums.
Dumbfounding!

Try it some time and be amazed.
The constant refrain in my mind as I looked at products I had never noticed before and didn’t even know existed was:
“Holy cow, look at that! Who buys this stuff? Who needs this stuff? Who eats or uses this stuff? Where did it all come from?”

Just looking at two full aisles of screws and nuts and bolts in the Ace Hardware set me to thinking about the history of the screw, how they’re made now so cheaply, and how I would make even one screw by hand.
Good old Archimedes was really on to something when he conceived of the screw way back there in the 3rd century B.C.

That’s another dimension of seeing these stores as museums.
Almost every product has a social or scientific history.
There’s an inventive mind behind every part of what’s on display.

In the same spirit I’ve visited butcher shops in Vienna, bakeries in Munich, cheese shops in Paris, sausage stores in the Czech Republic, and a fish market on the island of Crete.
Not to buy – but just looking – seeing these places as museums of contemporary life and culture.
Seeing the present as past.

To do this means being in museum mode – walking slowly, thoughtfully, with curiosity and respect, as you would in any great museum.
Just looking . . .

So - about the museum I gave my wife last night . . .

The Museum of the Pleasures of the Hand.
The criteria for each item:
- it must have a small-scale tactile pleasure – nice to touch and handle.
- either be hand-made or a natural item that when picked up feels good.
- must be from my own collection of stuff I like to hold.
- no more than 10 objects - must fit together into a wooden cigar box.

She opened the cigar box lid and removed one item at a time:

- a small sculptural wooden form that looks like a dancing man – broken off the dead limb of a nearby juniper tree while out on a walk – brought home, shaped, sanded, polished with beeswax and lemon oil.

- a perfectly round golf-ball size rock from a beach on the island of Crete found on a glorious October day when we were shore-shopping.

- a fat, round, old amber bead about the same size as the beach rock – from a shop in Vienna - made from amber from the Baltic sea area – from fossilized tree sap maybe 30 million years old. When rubbed it smells of pine resin.

- the coiled beginning of an unfinished basket – cookie size – made by hand by my wife from yucca fiber and willow root – lovely just as it is - in its promise of the basket it is yet to become.

- a small, white, delicate ivory carving based on one of the imaginary figures in Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights – made by an immigrant Russian ivory carver for me from fossilized mammoth tusk ivory found in the frozen tundra of eastern Siberia.

- a small shiny palm-size abalone shell from I-don’t-know-where, but certainly made by a living creature of the deep blue salt sea.

- a black ebony carving of a small hand holding a resting ox – in the netsuke style from Japan (I was born in the Year of the Ox.)

- a flat, round, white marble disc - a stone – perfectly shaped by the work of ocean and sand – when you find this kind of rock, you pick it up, and as you walk along, you turn it over and over in your hand like a one-bead rosary.

- a polished, teak-wood carving of a partially opened shell – with the head of a shore bird peaking out from the inside – from the island of Bali.

- a rectangular baked-clay tablet incised with cuneiform writing – probably 3,000 years old or even more – bought in a backstreet shop in Istanbul.
An expert told me it was only an ancient shopping list.

As I said, all of these objects fit into the palm of a hand – all can be most appreciated with eyes closed and fingers doing the reporting.
My wife was pleased – and each object led to a conversation.
That’s the point of museums – to have the senses pleased and provoked.
To be spoken to by all the muses.

The museum in the cigar box was temporary – it’s closed now.
All of the objects went back into the larger collection I keep in the basement.

It’s not the first small, temporary museum I’ve created.
Or the last.

There was the Museum of Shades of Green – a spring collection of small samples of green things in as wide a range of colors I could find on an hour’s walk. Tiny green buds from plants, several chunks of moss, spears of grass, first leaves of trees – so many unique shades of green that I filled my hands and pockets and was home in half an hour, the green spread out on the kitchen table.
This museum closed the next day.
It had become the Museum of Shades of Brown . . .

The Museum of the Sidewalk’s Edge – small mystery objects picked from either side of a sidewalk in Seattle on an hour’s walk.

The Museum of the End of Fall – the last colored leaves from trees and plants and flowers before they went bare for winter.

The Museum of the Dry Wash – small sticks and stones and bones picked from a nearby dry wash where they had been tumbled down and shaped smooth by flood waters from rainstorms.

The Smell Museum In A Bag – items collected nearby my house in Utah. Placed in a paper bag – things that smell good – juniper bark, sage leaves, a sliver off a broken incense cedar branch, a chunk of pinon pine resin, and two distinctly different samples of fresh, damp dirt.

It’s a special spice mix.
Or an aphrodisiac pot-pouri that makes you love the world around you.

These small temporary museums come from Just Looking . . .
And collecting just enough samples to fill a hand or a pocket.
The exhibits are spread out on the kitchen table for a few days only.
Then the museum closes – and moves on to remain open only in memory.

And, finally, there’s the museum in my mind – invisible things that cannot be seen or touched or picked up – the Museum of Imagination, such as:

A shadow cast by a guardian angel.

The memory of the laugh that comes after a hiccup.

The end of a small rainbow.

A map a raven made when it flew across the sky.

The answer to the question of “Who knows where the time goes?”

The sweet smell of success.

The sound of summer rain on a tin roof.

Three wishes.

A ticket for a free ride back from the edge of the abyss.

A fragment of Alice’s Looking Glass.

The sound of silence.

The way clouds look when I am flying in my dreams.

The view of the other side when you walk across a bridge over troubled waters.

And Lady Luck’s cell phone number.

To be alive in the world is to inhabit an infinite museum.

Our homes, dresser tops, bathrooms, kitchen pantries, photo albums - and the collections of used wrapping paper and ribbon, old Christmas cards, the drawers of mysterious odds and ends, as well as the vast accumulations in our memory bank. All museums.

Even a teenager’s room may be seen not as a mess but a museum.
Imagine how you feel when you look in it now and how you would feel if you boarded it up and opened it 25 years from now. Instead of being appalled and angry as you may often be now, you’d probably go all sentimental and cry when you re-opened it. The past become present.

In a big-deal big-city museum a solemn serious atmosphere prevails – not unlike visiting a mausoleum or a cemetery. Shh…..
Never have I heard laughter in such a museum – the guards would ask you to calm down or leave.

But in the smaller museums of the real life of the rest of the world, comedy abounds. Check your own closet, your own shoe collection, your underwear drawer, your purse or wallet, or your kid’s backpacks . . .
Maybe you wouldn’t laugh, but the rest of us probably would.
(Think about your response to neighborhood garage sales.)

Take a look at all this stuff – it’s us – we are what we accumulate.
Not stuff meant to be bought or sold . . . just kept.
A Museum of History - yours, mine, ours.
It’s what you will notice if you are . . .
Just looking . . .

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Finally some Winter – clouds, wind, snow flurries, 25 degrees – and then clear blue skies in the afternoon, and back to calm and mild.
Written over several days at the winding down of January in 2012.

Last Saturday morning I found the tracks and scat of a mountain lion on the path between my house and studio. In truth, from the size of the evidence, it was probably a small mountain lion.
But not a bobcat – I know the difference.
Though, in the innate fearfulness of the scardy-cat part of my imagination, it was as big and as dangerous as a full-grown man-eating Bengal tiger.
And it had not run away very far . . .
It was out there . . . crouching . . . waiting . . .

It is a well-established fact that mountain lions are people-shy.
For good reason.
They’re not stupid.
Creatures like me are far more dangerous to them than they are to me.
My species has guns and dogs and poison and Apache Attack Helicopters.

On reflection, the evidence of the presence of this mountain lion was a fine sign that something wild and wonderful and mysterious silently passed nearby me in the darkness of the deep snowy night . . . and moved on . . .

ELDER HOSTILE

In front of the Walker Drugstore in Moab there are some requisite Handicap parking spaces.
Also a couple of special spots marked Senior Citizens Only.
I never park in either one.
Not my categories.
But today the parking lot was full, except for one Senior Citizen space.
And I was in a hurry . . .

In Moab, a Senior Citizen is pretty much anyone over the age of 60.
I’m 75 years old.
Technically speaking, I qualify for the parking space.
So I pulled in and parked.
I didn’t think anyone would notice or complain.
I was wrong.

A black Ford 150 4x4 pickup truck pulled up right behind me.
The horn blared belligerently. honk/honk/honk/honk/honk . . .
I got out of my car and walked back to the Ford.
The driver, a trim little blue-haired old lady barked at me:
“That’s a Senior Citizen parking space! Move out!”
“Well, I am a Senior Citizen.”
She looked me over, toe to head.
“No you’re not!” she growled.
“Here, I’ll show you my driver’s license.”

And I took out my wallet and opened it for her to check.
She scrutinized my driver’s license, and did the math.
Handing my wallet back, she scrutinized me.
And smiled.
“Well, well,” she said, “Want a date?”

“I’m flattered,” I said. “And you look pretty good to me. But I’m married.”
“Well, too damn bad,” she said.
“However,” I said, “I won’t ask to see your license, but a hot lady like you in a truck like this doesn’t belong in a Senior Citizen parking space either.”
Big smile. She winked. She laughed and drove away.

I probably missed a good time . . . and I liked her truck . . .

I’m not Handicapped, except perhaps mentally, but that’s always been the case, and is a matter of opinion.
But Senior Citizen is not my identity, either.
I don’t think Senior, act Senior, dress Senior, talk Senior, or live Senior.
I don’t belong to the AARP and don’t take Senior Discounts.
Not my style.
I just don’t do Senior.

Culturally, when you pass 60 or retire you are a Senior Citizen.
Which means old or elderly or over the hill – subject to pity and jokes.

One is free to accept the status or not.
It’s a choice – an attitude.
A personal, internal decision, no matter what the culture says.

And the culture says to men over 60, “Get in the box - get a lounge chair -plant yourself in front of the TV - get a walker or a cane - let your hair and beard grow – including what’s sprouting out of your ears and nose.

Get some beige orthopedic walking shoes with Velcro straps, a baseball hat, a stupid T shirt about aging, baggy cargo shorts. And learn to shuffle or duck-walk, mumble, and eat the senior fodder specials at the local cafe.
Use a toothpick to scratch away at your teeth as you go out the door.

Wear baggy sweat pants and your house-slippers to the grocery store.
And fart or belch whenever and wherever you please.
Change your underwear once a week and your socks when they fall off.

Get the moves, the outfit and the attitude.
Get in the Senior groove - and talk non-stop about it:
Tell stories about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, vitamin supplements, doctor visits, medications, and coupons.

In sum, just go to seed.
You can probably buy a Senior Citizen kit at Wal-Mart – with a manual.
And get Senior Citizen apps for your I-phone, I-pad, and toaster oven.

The transition into Senior-hood can take less than a week.
I’ve seen it happen.
And some men do it quite willingly – they’ve looked forward to Senior.
They’re done and don’t give a damn.
And that’s their business.

Not me.
Not yet . . .

I was recently asked to contribute to a book about aging.
And I replied, “No, I haven’t thought about it and haven’t done it much yet.
Ask me again when I get old.”

And you might reply, “Fulghum, who are you kidding. You are in denial.”
You might ask, “Fulghum, have you looked at yourself naked in a full-length mirror recently?”

No, I avoid full-length mirrors.
I just look at myself in the loving blue eyes of my sweet wife every morning over oatmeal and coffee.
She keeps her eyes on me for awhile . . . she smiles.
And I don’t see Senior.
Not yet . . . 

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Finally some Winter – clouds, wind, snow flurries, 25 degrees – and then clear blue skies in the afternoon
The 25th day of January in 2012

News from the world of astronomy today is a reverse view – the Earth’s blue ball taken by satellite on Jan 4. It’s all over the internet - take a close look.
Somewhere down there . . . you are . . .

THE CURSE OF THE SLASHING RED PENCIL

For twenty years I served on the faculty of an elite high school.
Drawing, Painting, and Art History were the subjects I taught.
Part of the pleasure of any given day was time spent in the faculty lounge.
Swapping the war stories of the teaching experience, talking ideas, kicking administrative incompetence around, telling jokes, and above all, bonding with those whose basic values included quality education.

The faculty lounge served as an informal seminar, where you could learn aspects of subjects you did not teach or comprehend – Chemistry, Math, French, and Music, for example, in my case.
The faculty lounge, at its best, was a graduate seminary in education.
And several times this led to be being allowed to sit in the back of other teacher’s classes to get a taste of their knowledge and pedagogical style.

There were some remarkable colleagues there and I treasure their memory.
I miss them and the experiences of the private club of the faculty lounge.

On the other hand.

It was often painful to watch when teachers of English and History marked and graded papers in the faculty room – a common event.
The marking and grading was done in red pencil.
The teachers often thrashed through piles – multi-tasking in haste, as if they knew what to expect and could do the work without much deliberation.
The teachers were looking for mistakes in punctuation and spelling, as well as content and construction, and seemed to take pleasure in finding errors.
They worked with swift slashing motions as if they wielded a sharp knife or an ice pick – cut-and-stick style.
It seemed like a “gotcha” approach to correcting papers.

They scribbled notes and esoteric remarks that were hard to decipher.
I know because when I went over the papers with students who were my advisees I often could not fathom what the teacher said or meant.

There were times in the faculty room when a teacher would say or even shout, “Listen to this!” And read a garbled sentence or a paragraph full of confused facts.
The denizens of the faculty lounge would laugh.
And gossip about the intelligence and personality of the student.

I found this process of speed marking and this brand of comedy painful.
This breed of English teachers had blood on their hands, from scratching out the heart and souls of aspiring young writers.
Intentionally or not they were wounding instead of inspiring.
Students were being held up for ridicule for being students.

What I witnessed reminded me of what must have happened to me and my writing once upon a long time ago . . .
And probably to you, as well.
Remember all those papers you got back marked in red?
“WRONG!” was what one teacher used often on my work.
Why was it wrong? She didn’t say. I was just supposed to work it out.

And I recall one teacher whose handwriting was so bad and whose notes so cryptic it would take a code book to figure out what she meant.
But some of us figured out that if you just re-wrote the paper with minimal obvious changes she would never re-read it. And your grade was really based on what she thought of you as a student in other respects.
She didn’t really care about the writing – she’d seen too much of it, I guess.

On the other hand.

My favorite English teacher addressed a paper first with a green pencil.
She first read through a paper for basic content – looking for the good stuff.
Her green comments, which I can still see in my mind’s eye, were such as:
“Good.” - “Yes!” - “You’ve been thinking!” - “Strong paragraph.” And the best one: “If this paper was a song it would be a hit! Keep singing!”

At worst she would write: “Think about this again.” or “Are you sure?”
and “What about another point of view?” She raised questions to encourage me to think, not to leave me defeated with scars on my spirit.
I looked forward to getting papers back from her with excitement, not fear.

And yes, she did go back and read papers again using a red pencil.
Using little editorial marks we understood: “sp.” – “punc.” and a slash line meaning starting a new paragraph would be better.
We did make errors.
We were students.
We most needed encouragement, not damnation.

This English teacher was not a wimp or a pushover, by the way.
She had high standards for us and for herself.
She made us work hard, and even memorize poetry.
She thought the best of us.
She wanted us to think the best of us.
She was an educator, not a teacher-terrorist.
I still treasure her marks in green pencil.

(And then there was the professor who used a whole box of pencils of many colors . . . he favored purple . . . but that’s a story for another time.)

All of us have been victim of the slashing red pencil syndrome.
As teachers we tend to refer to our own teacher’s example, and they, in turn, were probably victims of the slashing red pencil syndrome in their own time . . . and on back into far time, forever.

The red pencil approach to education slops over into our way in the world.
Encouraging a red pencil approach to life itself.
We edit the world:
Wrong, wrong, wrong and again wrong . . . bad, bad, bad . . .

This is not meant as indictment of all English teachers.
But it is an indictment of a style of approaching life . . . and editing.

Editing.

That’s what set this train of thought in motion in the first place.
If you make your living as a writer, as I do, then the curse of the slashing red pencil continues to be a part of your ongoing life.
And I’m in the process of marketing three new manuscripts – all to be scrutinized by the wielders of the red pencil.

Editors edit.
That’s their chosen profession; that’s their job; they get paid to wield the slashing red pencil. It’s a mentality – “I can fix it – I can make it better”
And, to be honest, the best ones can and do.

Once I had an editor for my nationally syndicated newspaper column who said to me that there was nothing I could write that she could not improve.
And she added that the test was whether or not I agreed with her edits.
And no matter how often I sent something to her that I thought she could not mess with, she did, and she was right. Every time.
I don’t know what tool she used to mark up my words.
Her edits were conveyed to me in black and white in e-mail form.
But what I sensed and felt was the work of a green pencil.
I thought of her as a coach, an advocate, an educator – not just an editor.
I’m a better writer because of her.

Enough of all that.

Here’s a summary of Fulghum’s view of writing and editing.

The theories of post-modern literature make sense to me.
There is no one book – one way to write – one way to think.
There is the book the author writes – with his intentions and sensibilities.
There is the book the editor edits – with her values.
And there is the book each individual reader reads, adding their intelligence, desires, experiences, and imaginations to what the author and editor began.
None are the same book.
All reflect a human need to communicate one’s truth in one’s way.
All have validity.
All should be respected.
All should first bear the marks of the green pencil, and then the red one.

Finally, this encouragement:
When you go out into the world to examine what’s offered, always carry a green pencil with you.

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Cloudy skies, snow flurries, 20 degrees
The 18th day of January in 2012

The hot astronomy news is the discovery of planets orbiting around two suns. Imagine that. Two sunrises and two sunsets every day.
It’s truly weird way out there.
And weird here, as well. No winter. Mild, dry, sunny. No snow.
Minimal wild life, inside and out – no mice, no packrats, few deer or coyotes or saber tooth tigers or mountain alligators.
A disconcertingly high amount of calm . . .

AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

A couple of weeks ago I posted a journal containing 7 very short stories.
The posting had this introduction:

My daily personal journal contains a random collection ideas and images and information accumulated in real life, day by day.
My imagination often takes that material and runs away with it – extending the factual into the world of the possible.
Truth is at the heart of the process, but in different forms.
Here is a variety of examples – with no particular connection or theme.
The only thread is between my mind and yours.

The posting ended with the note that there would be more to come.
Sure enough, the stories have continued to unfold in my mind.
Here’s one – the original beginning and then what happened . . .

FIVE

A couple made rambunctious love in the room below me in the middle of the night in the Nikos-Takis Hotel on the Island of Rhodes - Nov. 11, 2011.
The floor and walls were thin, without much soundproofing.
Woooo-haaaa!

I salute their enthusiasm, their passionate cries, their sense of rhythm,
their endurance, and their terms of endearment.
And I appreciate their religious sensibility in again and again calling upon God to witness their love making. “Aiee, Dios – Aiee, Dios – Aiee, Dios!”

Moreover, I admire their stamina.
It was a three-round, two-hour circus event.
Leaving me sitting wide-eyed and exhausted on the edge of my bed.
Wow!

When I sat across from them the next morning at breakfast, I was surprised.
For one thing, they were sharing a bottle of red wine at 9 a.m.
For another, neither of them was young or beautiful.
Nicely dressed, neatly coiffed, politely behaved – but not young or pretty.

“Is that the couple from room 2 – the one below mine?” I asked the waiter.
“Yes. They come every year at this time. And . . . they are not . . . how shall I say . . . married to each other.”

Later that night I was at a cafe called Rogmi Tou Chrona – The Crack In Time. They were there, drinking champagne and eating roast lamb.
When the musicians began playing, they danced with graceful skill out on the terrace under the full moon.

A taxi came and took them away.
That night there was silence beneath my room.

“Is the couple from room 2 still here?” I asked at breakfast.
“No, they only come for one night – every year.
They are . . . sister and brother . . .”

Later that night, in a plane high over the Mediterranean Sea, the woman sits holding the hand of the man. Same couple.
She looks at him . . . and begins softly laughing.
“Costas, did you really tell the concierge that we were sister and brother?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“You crazy, crazy man. That’s kinky.”
“Actually, not really. We are all Greeks, are we not? And in our myths our gods committed incest all the time. Fathers slept with daughters. Mothers slept with sons. Brothers and sisters slept together. And in our ancient drama, it is the same. No Greek should really be surprised at the idea.
We grow up knowing at least the habits of the gods, if not our own.”

“Yes, but this is now. Isn’t incest illegal?”

“Sure, but the hotel is not going to call the police. We are good customers. They need our business. And our incestuous relationship gives a certain edginess to our presence there. They pay a lot of attention to us. We’re not just another stuffy old tourist couple.  Brother and sister . . . oooooh.
And you can bet that the concierge probably told everybody on the staff and any guest who asked. Did you see how that American couple stared at us?
They were in the room above us . . .”

The woman laughed again and kissed Costas on the cheek.

“I like all the crazy games you play – it gives an edginess to our love- making when we go off on our anniversary trips. Thirty years . . .”

Costas smiled and squeezed her hand.

“Ah, Maria, my beloved . . . we may not be as good as we once were, but we are as good once as we ever were.”

She laughed and kissed him on the check again.
“What do you suppose the Americans upstairs thought?”

“Well, they didn’t complain – and . . . maybe . . . if they knew the whole truth about us, they might be inspired. Maybe they would like knowing that old love is not always tired love . . .”

Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Clear skies, 17 degrees overnight, calm
The 12th day of January in 2012

One of the first things I do every morning is take a look at the news of the day from the world of Astronomy – the long, long view.
Just to put the rest of the news in perspective.
Astronomers said yesterday that each of the billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet. That’s a billion planets.
The article went on to say that until April, 1994, there was no other known solar system except ours. Now, after the Hubble and Kepler telescopes took pictures, it turns out, ours is only one planet among billions.
And that’s only what we have evidence for now.
It’s as far as we can see . . . now. . .

Before you read the following, go to “Monument Valley” in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley and take a look at the panoramic views posted there.

MONUMENT VALLEY REPORT

There are at least three Monument Valleys.

One is an American Indian Theme Park that caters to the nomadic Bilaganaas - a Navajo category that includes White people, Chinese, Africans, and just about anybody else who is not Dineh – the Navajo word for themselves – meaning “The People.” The tourists come from all over the world to look at Indians and the landscape, buy curios and souvenirs – mostly made in China – and take pictures.

A second Monument Valley is the ancestral home of the Dineh - the real world of the real Navajo people, who go about their lives largely un-noticed by the Bilaganaas. The Navajos have, of necessity, stopped herding sheep and now herd Bilaganaas. Don’t fleece the sheep – fleece the Bilagaanas.
It means jobs for the Navajos, so they accept the situation.

The third Monument Valley is a landscape made of red sandstone buttes and spires of volcanic rock. This scenic part of the Colorado Plateau has been heaving up and weathering away for a jillion years – long before the Dineh or Billagaanas showed up to live in it or look at it. Words really can’t touch it – so do go to the website.

The View Hotel in the Navajo National Monument in Monument Valley is an example of the Theme Park. Take a look on the web. http://www.monumentvalleyview.com/ The hotel focuses on Western Movies. Stagecoach, Apache Junction, etc.Mostly starring John Wayne, who is always the hero of the films.You can see where John Wayne stayed, where he stared at the scenery, and probably where he took a leak – if you ask – whatever . . .The movies dominate the menu in the View’s restaurant.
Food named after characters in the films – the Billagaanas, not the Dineh.So . . . in the spirit of the Theme Park mythology, I had a John Wayne Burger for lunch. Ground, cooked meat on a stale bun, with pickles.Somehow, it did remind me of John Wayne.

As for the second Monument Valley and what’s going on in the lives of the Dineh, take a look on the web at The Navajo Times http://navajotimes.com/ – the newspaper of the Navajo Nation. The excitement is in the winter basketball games – take a look at the Sports section on the website. High school Navajo basketball is the hottest, fastest, fiercest form of basketball – both boys and girls. You never hear about the players – they don’t go on to college ball or the NBA – the Dineh are not tall, just tough. The high school teams really kick butt – while the spectators pound drums and chant in the stands. Wild!

But I went to see the full moon rise over the landscape of Monument Valley.
I did that.
And saw the sunrise the next morning.
Awesome.
Worth the trip.

Talking with an old friend who lives in Alameda, California, he reported seeing the same full moon rising red out of the clutches of the trees on the top of the Oakland hills – meanwhile sitting at his dinner table eating cracked crab.
Just as awesome.
It’s not where you are, I guess, but just that you manage to look – to be there.
Putting “Watch the Full Moon Rise” on your Things-To-Do-List helps.

So what did I bring back from Monument Valley?
First, a traditional Navajo ceremonial basket – a flat form made of juniper root and yucca fibre, in a red and black pattern that has a spirit way in it – an open path for the ritual powers to come and go.
It was made by Mary Holiday Black who lives on the Navajo Reservation near the Arizona/Utah border.
She is the driving force behind the revival of this Navajo craft.
She says considering the baskets will help calm your mind.
(Go to Mary Holiday Black Navajo Basket Weaver to see for yourself.)

Besides Mary’s basket, I brought home a bag of fine red sand – so fine it seems more like flour. The soft sand is the main component of the great read monoliths of the Valley – stone weathered by wind and time into sand.

I collected the sand from the dry river bed near Oljato – way, way out in the emptiness of the land of the Dineh.
Oljato means “moonlight water” – referring to the way the light of the moon is reflected on the fingers of water flowing into the wash from a spring at that place.
Somebody, sometime, must have looked . . . and thought . . . and called it,
“Moonlight Water” – Oljato.

I brought some of the water with me, as well.

I placed some of the sand in Mary’s basket.
Along with a small bowl of the water.
And lit two sticks of pinon incense.
And placed this ritual offering outside in the moonlight last night.
Mary is right.
My mind was calm.

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And lest you think this is all ooo-wah mystical hooey, the sand has a practical use as well.
It is part of my plan to catch mice.
After catching 61 last winter, but not seeing any recent signs, I wondered.
Last winter I learned that if you put out a cookie tin covered with the fine red sand on it – in a place where mice travel – with a pine nut in the middle – the mice will leave their tiny footprints in the sand on the way to the nut.
Then you know . . . and can set traps . . .

Ah, but no mice tracks this morning.
Perhaps the basket and the water and the incense and the sand calmed the minds of the mice.