Sunday, July 24, 2016

Western Wildfires: Smoke gets in your eyes

It was a wet spring when I opened the cabin in early June this year. I didn't think about wildfires very much until after a week-long stay in Denver the following month. Returning to the cabin in mid-July, I discovered that seven fires were burning in Colorado, bringing a smoky haze to the horizon some days and worry that this summer would bring more fires, more smoke, and possible evacuation. So far we've been spared, but the summer is just at the midway point. The environment continues to dry as we move farther away from spring snowmelt and the July monsoons, which were very sparse this year. The causes of fires are diverse and unpredictable: lightening strikes and careless campers being at the top of the list.

When I moved to this rural area 6 years ago, I had to readjust my concept of fire. To a person like me who has lived most of her life in cities, a fire means a kitchen accident, a forgotten cigarette, or a burst pipeline--occasionally arson. Usually the fire department arrives promptly and puts it out. Larger fires, part of riots ensuing from injustice, euphemistically called "civil unrest", happen too sometimes, and they also are contained, usually within a day or two. The massive fires of yesteryear--the Great Chicago Fire of the 19th century and the ones that nearly destroyed Tokyo after the 1923 earthquake--seem consigned to history, unlikely to repeat with modern building codes, alarms and well-equipped fire departments.

I've been fortunate in that I've never suffered a home fire; nor have I been evacuated because of one nearby. When I was a child I remember seeing the burned shell of a house a few blocks from us in Hammond, Indiana, and shuddering with a kind of dread--that something so big and solid as a house could be vulnerable, could be destroyed.

My next experience with fire close-up was in 2012. My Japanese sister, Junko, was visiting that June, and I wanted to show her nearby Manitou Springs. We stayed at a motel there, and as we were leaving the following morning, we saw the plume from what became the Waldo Canyon Fire. Manitou Springs was evacuated later that night as the fire spread. By then we were west of the area and were never in any danger, though the air was heavy with smoke when I drove Junko to the Colorado Springs airport several days later. Others were not so fortunate. The fire, which spread over 18,000 acres west of the city, was not contained until 17 days after it began. Nearly 350 homes were destroyed and 32,000 people evacuated. Six were injured and two died. Wildlife suffered. This photo shows one view of that fire.


The cause of the Waldo fire was arson, and the arsonist was never found. I wonder if s/he or they ever repented or even knew of the harm that ensued. Hazards from the resulting burn scar remained for the next few years, causing road closures, flooding, and the deaths of two people--one of whom I knew: John Collins, a much-loved and respected local man. Meanwhile, so many had to start over and live with the feeling I had as a child, that something as sturdy as a home could be gone within hours. You can still see the burn scar as you drive along US 24 west of Colorado Springs, but fortunately, much mitigation has been done since the fire.

The largest fire burning near me now is the Hayden Pass fire, about an hour and a half away, southeast of the town of Salida. Started by lightning on July 8, it's now 50 percent contained, expected to burn until October. October! More than 16,000 acres are involved. Will there be other fires in Colorado? Very likely.

The West has always been prone to summer wildfires, but the problem has gotten worse during the past decade and more. More people, more carelessness, more buildings are here. Climate change has brought damage from insects such as the pine beetle, previously killed off during colder winters, resulting in more dead timber. Underlying it all has been a century or more of misguided land management policy. Unlike Native American stewards who did periodic burns to remove ground-level brush, modern land managers have suppressed fires, resulting in more fuel ready to ignite. Climate change predictions are for a steadily drier Western US.

And so, as I spend another summer here on Linda's land in Florissant, I stay tuned to fire-monitoring sites. One of the best is the Incident Information System. It includes progress reports on wildfires in other states as well as Colorado. Today there are 16 burning in California, one of the most vulnerable states this season. I'm holding all of those affected in my heart.







Thursday, July 21, 2016

Older Self and Younger Self have another chat about politics

Now that Bernie Sanders' presidential bid has ended, Older Self and Younger Self are able to sit down  for a real conversation about the coming election. Coming of age in the late Sixties, Younger Self has decided to stay in this century for awhile to see if she can make herself useful. I conjure her sitting next to me, wondering how she might have turned out differently had she been a Millennial instead of a Boomer: a tattoo perhaps or a shock of blue hair.... I digress. Actually, when she first visited the 21st Century,  it took her awhile to get over her shock of seeing how things turned out, nearly 50 years after she first volunteered for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Surely Power would have returned to the People by now, and the People, now United, would never have been Defeated. Putting aside her huge disappointment in the state of political affairs in 2016, she immediately plunged into working for Bernie's campaign. She still is working for Bernie, having signed up for Our Revolution, which is working to elect candidates committed to Sanders' progressive values.

Younger Self might vote for Hillary ("Another Hubert Humphrey!) Older Self will definitely vote for Hillary. Our enthusiasm levels are considerably different, and Older Self has yet to convince her that Hillary will be a far better president than she expects--provided the electorate really gets behind progressive candidates running for Congress. However, today our conversation is not about Hillary, but rather about Trump. We both agree on the threat Trump's campaign poses to the US and the world, but our emphasis differs.

Younger Self's political science courses have convinced her it's all a matter of strategy and getting out the vote. Trump is just another George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who carried 5 Southern states in 1968. She dismisses my preoccupation with trying to understand how we got to this place or just what motivates Trump supporters. "They're either idiots or people who have never even heard the phrase 'unexamined racism'", she insists. "They're marginal. We're creating a new future. Let's just get down to work--get out the vote, show that the people can act!"

Older Self remembers that she too once thought of herself as a person whose actions--combined with those of others, of course--made a Significant Difference. Older Self seems less sure of anything these days, haunted by memories of unintended consequences of yesterday's decisive actions and victories. Still, Older Self agrees, we must act, always with insufficient information or insight, hopeful we're making the right choice. Understanding why others feel differently seems key, however.

Today, Older Self read what she considers a brilliant and incisive article in The Guardian. The author is Dave Eggers, a writer and reporter who covered a Trump rally in Sacramento, California, in June. You can read it here. Eggers, posing as a participant, found the supporters he met to a be a diverse and courteous bunch attending an event as "as peaceful and patriotic as a Fourth of July picnic". Still, he was left with a number of questions, including: (W)hy is it that the song Trump’s campaign uses to mark his arrival and departure is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer?” Is it more troubling, or less troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says? And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he could actually win?"

Older Self shows the article to Younger Self, and the result is impatience: "Who cares about the song?  Instead of worrying about whether or not he can win, let's get on with a counter-offensive!" Older Self decides this is the time to tell her of some of the changes in getting out the vote since she went to Wisconsin in '68 to make calls for McCarthy: "No one answers their phone anymore; calls are screened, and for that matter, no one comes to the door during campaign season. Too many door-knockers. Some say it's all about social media these days." Older Self takes a deep breath and starts to explain social media. Unnecessary, it turns out, as Younger Self has already opened a Facebook account and joined Twitter. All she needs now are friends who think differently from how she does.

Older Self pulls out another article--another one of the three articles that have helped her understand the Trump phenomenon. Trump Days: Up Close with the candidate and his crowds, by George Saunders, appeared in the July 11 New Yorker. Read it here. Lots of insights in this one, including Saunders' analysis of what he calls RightLand and LeftLand. Essentially, people on the political Right and Left have no common ground, and that's what makes communication challenging at best. "In the old days," Saunders writes, "a liberal ad a conservative (a "dove" and a "hawk", say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional." Younger Self stares at Older Self: "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Older Self  decides not to mention the concept of "frames", the concept that all of us filter "reality" through a set of experiences/beliefs/biases. (UPDATE: For an excellent discussion of this, see this article by the linguist who introduced the concept of frames in his widely-read book Don't Think of an Elephant.) We see the same things, yet come up with radically different interpretations. Older Self bites her tongue, hesitating to remind Younger Self of all the debates/arguments she had with Dad, a youthful socialist turned Wallace supporter, debates full of sound and fury, yet ultimately changing neither of our beliefs or votes.



There's one more article I'd like you to see, Older Self says. It's called How American Politics Went Insane, and it appeared in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Here's the link. Among other things, it argues that political parties played an important role in vetting candidates and that the trend to diminishing their power, in favor of direct democracy, has resulted in renegade candidates like Trump. Younger Self looks aghast. "Are you saying that Daley's Machine (that is, the late Chicago Mayor Richard Daley) was a positive force in the politics of 1968? The guy whose cops bashed the heads of protesters in Grant Park?!" "Well, not exactly," Older Self tries to explain. "It's just that parties played a role, and today without them, we have a different kind of contest...."

Younger Self gulps down the rest of her coffee and says she has to be off. Older Self gives her a hug and wishes her all the best, thinking that communication across generations is not all that easy, but important nonetheless.







Sunday, July 10, 2016

Lives in Ruins: my introduction to archaeology

Archaeology is a science that never really appealed to me that much. Every time I saw pictures of toiling students sifting through rubble under a hot sun for bits of bone or pottery, I turned the page. So much toil for such scant reward. This is a review of a book that changed my thinking. It has a title that should belong to the genre of romance novel: Lives in Ruins. Instead it's a wonderful piece of participatory journalism by an author who is responsible for my digging one dusty toe into the field of archaeology this year. Lives in Ruins, by Marilyn Johnson, has a subtitle: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble (Harper, 2014). Johnson's repeated forays into this diverse intrigued me even though I never had much interest in it before.



It's a tribute to Johnson's writing that she made me take more than a second look. And probably it's her book that encouraged me to say yes to an invitation to become a site steward in Park County, Colorado. Working with a partner, site stewards volunteer to visit places in the county where remains of early human habitation or migration have been found. The idea is to document any change or damage--human or natural--to that site. Volunteers agree to visit 2--4 times a year, carefully looking at the land and taking photos. I'll have more to write after I get started this summer. So far I have a modest weekend of training behind me and a practice visit coming up next week when I return to Florissant for awhile.

This photo was taken during our training session last month. Diane Parisi (second from left), a field coordinator with the site steward program in New Mexico, explains an aspect of a stone fragment.



Will I find a "seductive lure" in the whole thing, as Johnson did during her years of research and participation in this field? That remains to be seen, but after reading her book, I could see how others have found a kind of seduction in the dust or watery depths of the past.

Johnson takes us around the world with her as she joins digs or visits projects in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, South America and the US East Coast. She interviews archaeologists, attends conferences and reflects on what she is experiencing. She has that rare gift of enjoying her subjects’ eccentricities while never mocking them, as well as giving the reader an understanding of issues in the field of archaeology today.

Some key insights: Archeology is a field where jobs are scarce, deadlines often dictated by developers ready to excavate, and devoted practitioners face less financial security than fledgling artists. Much work depends on volunteers. Many sites are not protected, and as Johnson writes, “The tension between keeping a site secret so it won’t get looted and publicizing it so it can be preserved and appreciated is a constant in archaeology.” Furthermore, archaeology is much more than a retrieval process. Even when a team is ready to dig or resurrect (as in the case of Revolutionary War ships still sunk in the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island), other essentials may not have been funded, such as a place to store and preserve artifacts and a team to do the work. Twenty-plus years after sensors first located the fleet in Newport harbor, those essentials were still not available.

Although archaeologists may be hired by owners or developers, their first responsibility is to the site and its resources. If a proposed project may cause harm, they have to “mitigate”—record and rescue what they can. For example, when surprised archaeologists discovered an 18th century wooden ship in a Manhattan landfill in 2010, they had to scramble to protect the giant timbers, which began to disintegrate the moment they were exposed to oxygen.

Two of the most fascinating chapters deal with forensic archeology and the protection of humankind’s cultural heritage during war. Forensics deals with buried bodies, and Johnson takes us through efforts in Fishkill, New York, to protect the Fishkill Depot, the graveyard of America’s first veterans—soldiers who died during The Revolutionary War.  Protection and development of the site is still not assured.  My favorite interview in the book is with Laurie Rush, an archaeologist with the U.S. Department of Defense. (That was news to me--that the D.O.D hires archaeologists.) Rush’s job is to make sure that past military mistakes are not repeated. A prime example: in 2003 US troops, assigned to protect Babylon, put their base on top of the ruins and bulldozed ancient temples into helicopter pads. Rush, the cultural resources manager at Fort Drum, has supervised much and built excellent relationships with Native American tribes, Johnson reports. She has also designed one of more creative teaching projects I’ve encountered: a deck of Iraqi and Afghan Heritage playing cards, teaching soldiers what they need to know as they play poker or solitaire.

Marilyn Johnson wrote two other fascinating books, both about people documenting the past in one way or another. One is about librarians and the other about obituary writers: This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (Harper Perennial, 2011); and The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries (Harper Perennial, 2007) You can find out more about her and her work at on her website.

While I enjoyed Johnson's stories immensely, I also need to keep in mind this quote from her in a Daily Beast interview. "We’re conditioned by narrative to expect some resolution, whether it’s answers to our questions or solutions to a mystery. We expect a neat wrap-up to the story, but in fact there are many things we don’t understand and might never understand."

At our site steward training, we got a list of the top ten things archaeologists never find. Tops on that list were buried treasure, mummies, and secret tunnels. We all laughed. No expectations there! For those things, rent an Indiana Jones movie.

Still, we hope to find something. Yet, prehistoric people have been gone so long and so much of what they used has been lost. Will I find any identifiable rubble at all as a site steward? Perhaps not, but at the very least, I hope to learn to see and recognize more than I can today.



Wednesday, July 6, 2016

A salute to the Dalai Lama's mother and reflections on Grandmother Bogdanski

It's the Dalai Lama's birthday today--he turns 81--and through serendipity, I watched a film about his mother's life: Women of Tibet: The Great Mother. Known to Tibetans as Gyalum Chemo (or Great Mother), she gave birth to 16 children, three of whom were recognized as incarnate lamas. In this film, the Dalai Lama talks of his love and respect for her, as well as his belief that a mother's love is the basis of compassion, the wellspring of a person's health and well-being. He brings his characteristic humor to his reminiscences, laughing as he remembers going to her after difficult school lessons. It seems there she was there with her wisdom for all of her children--sewed their clothes, including shoes. She was not in an egalitarian marriage during all of that; apparently her husband was from a wealthy family and "spoiled", one descendant recalls.

A picture of Gyalum Chemo and her most venerated son:



On learning this, my first thought, before wandering into thoughts about my maternal grandmother, was the poetry of the late Pat Parker, who wrote a poem with a line like this: "Doin' like mama did will do ya" or something like that. Wish I had a copy. It was a tribute to all the work that mothers and grandmothers did, especially those who were African-American and lived in pre-Civil Rights America. It was work most of us today cannot even imagine getting done. Is each generation progressively softer than the one before? Or does it all balance out when you consider all the multitasking and networking we feel compelled to do these days? I wonder.

I think of my own grandmother that way. I never met her; she died 9 years before I was born.  Her name was Barbara Bogdanski, and she emigrated to the US from Poland in December, 1910, along with her husband and infant daughter, Marie. I heard a lot about her from my mother, who adored her, and was only 21 when she died. My mother's name was Angeline, and I wonder if she ever felt like Pat Parker, despite her own accomplishments as a mom. Like the Dalai Lama, she'd no doubt credit her mother for being a role model for the best in her.

Grandmother Barbara gave birth to 8 children, the oldest of which--a baby christened Casimir-- died on the ship crossing. After Marie, 6 others followed, and as if that weren't enough, she babysat for another child, Lily, whose mother worked all day. The family lived in an immigrant neighborhood in Chicago, and it was Barbara who kept things together. She learned English, cooked healthy and delicious food--including homemade Polish sausages, scrubbed floors part-time for a dentist, and coped with a husband who never quite adjusted to life in America. I have only two photos of her. The first, taken behind their apartment, circa 1935, shows Barbara in the top row, next to her daughter Stephanie. She's holding young Lily, I believe. On the bottom steps are Angeline (left) and her cousin, Evelyn.


At least once in her life, she went to a photo studio and this portrait was taken.



There are many things I don't know about Barbara, who died when she was only 53. Who was she apart from being a mother? Did she laugh often? Could she sing? How much education did she have? Was it her idea to come to America? Did she ever regret it? Did she ever have what we call "spare time" and how did she fill it? I wish I had asked more of Angeline and her siblings before they all passed away. As it is, I remember bits and pieces of my mom's memories, the ones she repeated to my sister and me. I know she had standards in speaking Polish, insisting on speaking something called High Polish. (Was she a bit elitist--or just proud of speaking well?). She had a few sayings which could be translated as: "The cow does not remember when it was a calf". Or "too soon old, too late smart."

The most chilling memory to come down to me was her reaction to a fortune teller's prediction that she would die "before the snows came".  She came home crying that day, Angeline told me. Soon afterwards, she was hit by a bus in a freak accident. She was not seriously injured. However, because the company's insurance covered the bill, the doctor suggested that he fix her hernia while she was in the hospital. She agreed. Soon after, she died of a post-surgical blood clot. That was in September, 1938, and that year it snowed that month, uncharacteristically early for Chicago.

My mother and her siblings all grew to be up to be fine people, or if they weren't, that was never apparent to me at family reunions. They were kind and indulgent to children, and for the most part with each other, despite boisterous behavior from time to time. Perhaps, like my mom, they would thank their own "great mother"for the nurture they received.
NOTE: Dates have been changed since this blog was written in 2016. New genealogical research suggests that Barbara was born in 1885, not 1889, as reported on her death certificate.



Monday, July 4, 2016

The 4th of July: Reframing an afflicted holiday

Like Dylan Thomas' Christmas memories, wrapped in a snowball rolling to the sea, my memories of childhood 4th of July events are a blaze of sparklers, illuminating images of backyard barbecues, barefoot summers, relatives enjoying a day off with a beer and home-cooked food, evenings with fireflies and the echo of far-off fireworks, TV reruns of Yankee Doodle Dandy. The 1950s in Hammond, Indiana.

After that, the magic ended. In later years, the day brought sadness or indifference, and now, sitting here on July 4, 2016, I wonder what to make of Independence Day. Skimming through my Facebook feed, I picture this holiday as a stressed Statue of Liberty trying to move through an excited crowd. People are grabbing at her sleeves, insisting that the day reminds us how much the promise of America has failed, or how it never was that hot to begin with, or how we've failed to honor those who have served, or how we should be proud of the freedoms we have. Polarizing thoughts in a very polarized country. Cautionary notes too: this is, after all, a noisy and stressful day for animals. Some friends, mercifully, simply wish me a happy 4th of July. I hope to join some of them later in a non-ideological viewing of fireworks.

By the mid-1960s, as I entered early adulthood, my image of this celebration of national independence had darkened. The Vietnam War, which I opposed, made any patriotic display distasteful to me. Living in various apartments in Chicago, I had no backyard or interest in barbecue or sparklers. Less time for TV or family visits as well.

By age 30, the day acquired a painful meaning: my father died suddenly on July 4, 1977. En route from Denver to Chicago that day, I didn't know the news until later, watching fireworks for the last time as a young woman with two living parents. That day was also my half-sister's birthday, the day she received such a terrible present. Can any anniversary of a painful event ever escape such an association?

Years passed, I acquired animal companions along the way, and the celebrations of the 4th were a source of anxiety for them. It was usually hot, and I still had no interest in patriotic displays. Some years I enjoyed having a day off work, I'll admit, though not always. It was summer vacation for those working or studying in the school system.

In 1990, I escaped the 4th of July by moving to Japan. Early July is still part of the school year in Japanese universities, and the 4th came and went as I prepared for final exams and the following summer vacation. Japan has only one national holiday in July, "umi no hi" (Sea Day), a day set aside for enjoying vacation time, preferably at a beach. I was usually on my way back to the US by the time it arrived.

Since returning in 2010, I've observed or not observed the holiday in various ways. One year I cooled off while watching rather impressive fireworks off Navy Pier in Chicago. Last year I was at my cabin, venturing out for a couple of hours for Guffey Heritage Day. I enjoyed the library's book and bake sale, but had to pass on the chicken wing cook-off. Guffey used to have a "chicken fly" contest, in which children could see whose chicken could fly the farthest, an event the chickens never seemed to mind. (Only hot dogs were served in those days).... I digress.

If July 4th has to have a meaning, I vote for a national "Interdependence" day, one in which we try to heal the polarization and acknowledge all of the ways we are bound to each other and to the developing world. Acting locally, thinking globally--my favorite ideological phrase these days. We could fly the Earth flag, reminding ourselves where our true allegiance lies. (Image from NASA)




This morning I started the day with music. The GALA chorus convention is in downtown Denver, and thousands of singers with LBGT choruses all over the country have come to sing together. They have a live broadcast stream, which began today at 9 a.m. The Boston Gay Men's Chorus performed beautifully in a program which included a commissioned work celebrating peace and interconnectedness. More concerts will be broadcast daily through July 6, and you can access them free. Click here.

For the rest of the day, I'll let my mental image of the Statue of Liberty free herself from the crowd, letting herself and the beleaguered country she represents have a day off,  just to chill and look up at the sky.