Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Talez from the Santa Zone


The last year Yer Ol' Perfeser did the "Santa" gig--two? three years ago?--it was at one of those ticket-fired 'fun&food' joints, like an in-door midway with "games of skill" (now electronified) without the carneys but with card-board pizza. (Those goddam machines just suck the fucking money outta people's pockets.)
 Lots of loud noise and flashing lights. Like a casino, without the booze. But it paid $100 for a three-hour shift, three days a week for a couple of weeks, which is serious weed money.
So I was (natural-beard) Santa, the most demanded kind.
That last year, some obnoxious kid crawled up on my lap and said he wanted a gun to kill his little brother. I told him Santa thought he was a psycho, and I sent his parents a note about it... That was the end of my interest in that avatar. I sold my red suit, to my brother, and kept the beard.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

A Local Icon and Landmark for Centuries.


Image by Michael Wagner.
Subject: Camel Rock
Location: Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico
Date: Nov. 30, 2014

Yeah, we really DO have skies like that. Not EVERY night, but regularly. One never tires of it.

Monday, November 3, 2014

"I've Been Everywhere..."



This meme popped up on F-book. It bluntly declares that "staying is settling (for)" your current arrangements. It posits five good reasons to drag or cut the anchor rope and find yer own private Idaho:
1. Just getting away.
2. Doing something new (obverse of the medal).
3. Chase love (or whatever).
4. Flee love (or whatever).
5. Start over.

No earth-shaking revelations, but it prompted me to consider my own peregrinations and the reasons for them. I'd say this life had been 'mildly peripatetic,' until 2002. My folks moved five times, in and between three states--Illinois, Ohio, and NMex), before I left home at 18, in '64... We moved, as a family, mainly for business/economic reasons. At least one move, though, the last, back to NM was expressly a "Start over," both for my parents and for me.

Including those, then, I've "lived"--resided for more than six months--in one 'foreign' country, and no fewer than 15 cities in 10 different states. I landed back here ('Burque) 12 years ago, and will probably stay here, if the water holds out.

To enumerate: I left home and joined the USAF--to 'get away!' I was stationed at San Antonio and Wichita Falls, Tx.  Next I was nearly 3 years in Germany, all of it at one base, though I went on a couple of brief TDY assignments. Then back to the USofA, tidewater Virginia.

On separation, I moved to 'Burque (something new: UNM), and then back to Santa Fe again (something new: jobs). Eventually, I moved to Cal, and lived in LA, and the East Bay, and thence to Seattle. All for "something new": jobs, scenery, life, world changes...

"Chasing love" got me to Santa Barbara, and on to Baton Rouge, LA and Norman, OK. But just about every stop along the way has involved "Starting over."

So now here I am: settled. I'm okay with it.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Media Cannot Be Blamed For Following Owners' Orders*



(*Unless at a war-crimes tribunal.)

Elsewhere today, yer ol' perf' saw repeated another iteration of a constant, common complaint that the "media" are responsible for all our ills, because they don't present 'our' side of the stories as sympathetically as those of the (in this case) 'education deformers.'

And it occurred to me to repeat my customary reply: They're "just doing their jobs."

The 'media' is/are wholly owned subsidiaries of huge, enormous, globe-spanning, wealthy corporate enterprises which gobbled them up like jellybeans during the Raygoon years. The 'media' print, publish, broadcast, and otherwise disseminate what they are TOLD to publish, etc.

The "press" unself-consciously constitutes itself as gatekeepers. The best way to exert thought-control is not directly, by telling folks WHAT to believe. It is by influencing what they think ABOUT--the narrative--and the language and vocabulary of images with which they think about it. That's what 'the media' does.

Control over the gate-keeping function--directing the narrative, vocabulary, and syntax of the 'public mind' and the power it implies--is what is at stake in the debate (such as it is) about who can CALL themselves 'journalists.'

It is worth recalling, too, Upton Sinclair's admonition: "It's hard to get a man to understand what his paycheck depends on him not understanding."

Worth remembering, as well, as we wade ever deeper into the morass of the Big Muddy/CorpoRat State: In the corporate state, corporate media are State Media.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Stone and Bone: The basic bits of carpentry and joinery




Yer ol carpenter has a treat: Here's a gay-ron-teed Joiners and Carpenters NERDGASM. I LOVE stuff like this.
"Primitive" people aren't intellectually less competent than civilized ones. They just haven't had the need or the occasion to think THOSE thoughts.  That's why there are no "superior" or "inferior" languages--or morality systems, either. They all do only and exactly what the people who usae them need them to do.
The take-away, for me  --the ex-journeyman ClassA spike spitter: Basically, all the cuts, joints, channels, mortices, and the other tricks of wood-working were already in use 7, 8, mebbe 10 THOUSAND years ago. Done with stone-and-bone, alone; and intuition gained from experience, of course.
I could go on...
I won't....
Enjoy!

Friday, October 17, 2014

"Selfie" -- 10/17/14




For someone approaching their 69th birth anniversary (in six months), having been run relatively hard and put up wet a few times, veteran of one war, three marriages and countless close encounters, and a dozen or more careers, to say NOTHING of the bales of cannabis, gallons of beer and whisky, and the other drugs I eagerly sought and consumed, this (I think an unbiased observer might remark) is an amazingly un-lined, un-wrinkled, un-scarred, UN-careworn countenance, nest paw?

(There is, I should say, I room we don't enter, wherein hangs a portrait we don't discuss...)

I had the extremely good fortune to be born at a time when my race, gender, family class location and historical moment made it possible for me to do just about whatever I ever wanted to do.
Not that I ever WANTED to do much of anything. I am lazy as paint. Indolence is my life-long avocation
But that same 'fortune'/location that could have propelled me into high echelons of anything I'd cared to work hard at also made it possible for me to simply do whatever came along well enough to get along.
I'm not now wealthy, though I'm not 'poor.' I endured my parents (lord love 'em) long enough to have earned a small inheritance, with Soc. Sec, and a (much diminished, thanks to 2007-09) small stash I put away during the last two decades of my working life when I was steadily and gainfully (and for by far the longest durations) employed as a paid, professional scholar, distorting and distressing the placid certainties of complacent, bourgeois, college kids in two states. I don't think I'll out-live it, ceteris paribus.
But I don't lack for anything I really want, that much, these days. I got a roof over me and Budreaux, food for us, and wheels to get us around (e.g., a trip to the groomer last evening to get nails trimmed). It's not bad...

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Dr. Woody'z "Iron-Clad Lawz," Rulez, Maximz and Operational Definitionz For "Binnezz" and Politicz



Dr. Woody'z "Iron-Clad Lawz," Rulez, Maximz and Operational Definitionz
Dr. Woody'z Iron Clad Law of Congressional Compromise:
If compromise is unavoidablly required in order to pass legislation, no compromise may be proposed or accepted which does NOT maximize ass-fucking the poor and helpless.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Law of Political Economy
 It is futile, if not indeed impossible, to try to conduct a meaningful political democracy within the structure of a totalitarian economy.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Law of Political Succession:
The apparent ease with which power transfers is an accurate index how little of it actually changes hands.

Dr. Woody'z Operational Definition of Racism:
There is ONLY one kind of 'racism:"Structural racism. It's almost redundant. Individuals may be biased, bigoted, discriminatory, prejudiced. There are such individuals in EVERY group. But they are not necessarily "racist." For such attitdes/behaviors to become "racism," they must occur in a system which (even tacitly) approves of, authorizes and empowers such behaviors as means to interrupt, exclude, or deny the fair and equal participation in a society's "cultural goods" to people deemed "inferiors" to the dominant group. Racism requires "structural" complicity and acquiescence.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad  Rule of Racial Ressentiment:
Low-ranking members of racial majorities will endure a small diminution of their own condition or reduction in their benefits if, by doing so, they believe they can ensure those whom they detest as inferiors will suffer greater reduction and discomfort.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-clad Law of  Human Regulators:
If there is ANY possibility for abuse and/or corruption to occur, abuse and/or corruption WILL occur.
Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rule of Media-State Relations
In the Corporate State, corporate media are State Media.

Dr. Woody'z Operational Definition of Propaganda.
The purposes of propaganda, in no particular order, are: One: to gin up--create a climate of-- hatred and fear against external--or/and designated internal--enemies/antagonists
Another: to shape popular compliance with large, 'national' or even international agendae.
Again: to construct and disseminate the dominant 'national' creed/mythology/narrative, and make that dissemination ubiquitous and invisible.
A further one: to normalize and/or rationalize purposeful, manifest falsehoods: The Big Lie is a famed and famously successful 'propaganda' tool.
And yet another: (possibly the culminating and final purpose of propaganda) to create public narratives that legitimize existing power relations and structures. The easiest to propagandize are those who have the most invested in its 'truth.'

Dr. Woody'z Inviolable Revolutionary Maxim:
When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Revolution is 'rational.'
But when you have anything, you have EVERYTHING to lose. Revolution becomes 'irrational.'
The 'genius' of the present system is to make sure EVERYBODY (nearly) has SOMETHING to lose.

Dr Woody'z Second Law of Revolutionz:
Regime change does no more or less than what it says it does: changes the regime, like a wardrobe, or tires. One group of oligarchs, technocrats and lickspittles gets replaced by another group of oligarchs, technocrats and bootlickers; with the additional caveat that the replacements won't be any better than the replacees at the things they were replaced for not doing well, and may well be MORE venal and corrupt because they'll be the more eager to replace the wealth spent to gain power.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rule of  Political Civility:
Civility is the shit-soaked ball-gag the Bosses force into the mouths of workers to deprive the workers of their only real weapon: Their rage...When they tell you to be "civil," they're saying you're not ENTITLED to your rage, to your resentment at being screwed yet again, to your resistance. When they tell you you have to be "civil" to speak, they're really telling you to shut the fuck up!
Don't. 

Dr. Woody'z Five Unbreakable Rules of Business:
1) Buy low; sell high.
2) There are three necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for success: Location, location, and location.
3) A fool and his money are soon parted, and there's a fool born every minute.
4) There's an ass for every seat, so never give a sucker an even break.
5) You CAN cheat an honest man; it's not even that hard. 

Prof. Wombat's Ancillary Commandments of Finance:
1. Always use other people's money.
2. When conducting trades of securities worth as much as toilet paper, take your commissions in real cash money.
3. Speculation is far more lucrative than providing actual goods and services that are worth something in themselves.
4. An excessive concentration on product and customer reveals a lack of managerial expertise.
5. The proper definition of 'long term' is two quarters from now.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rules of Understanding the Rich:
1) No large fortune was ever made without an equivalent crime ("You'll find it in Balzac!").
2) When the wealthy say they got their money through hard work, ask WHOSE.
3) No "self-made" person ever really is.
4) The wealthy do not discriminate between truth and falsehood.
5) There is no such thing as a "free market"; everything has its price.

Dr. Woody'z Revolutionary Haiku:
Tumbrels lie, discarded.
Dull'd with age, disuse: the blade.
Still, roses may grow.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Hitting a Child IS "Child Abuse." Period!




One thing I'd bet dollahs to quatloos: Someone who beats a child was beaten AS a child.
You NEVER forget...(Woody blushes, autobiographically)...
Ask anybody.
There's never any ambiguity: you were beaten (spanked, whipped, call it what you will) by someone who was supposed and pretended to protect you (a parent); you remember.
If it happened more than once, there is no "why." It's just a fact of life: When you get home, yer gonna GIT it!
Abusers were abused. It's not an "excuse" It's what happens. Even when there's a realization that it might be "wrong," the abuser finds rationales for their actions, which also function to excuse their abusive parent.
Did you see/watch that Hannity clip where he's smacking the crap outta his desk with a belt while explaining how he'd bee3n beaten by his father, and HE was okay?
Funny how that works.
Oh, yeah, no doubt: It's probably the main reason I NEVER wanted children.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/adrian-peterson-nflspankingchildrencorporalpunishment.html

Monday, September 1, 2014

Labor Day: The USer Middle Class IS Closed

Labor Day


How yer ol' Perfesser seezit, applicationz to the middle class in the USofA, as a function of mobility dependent upon advancing status of workers, are closed, til further notice.

"The Middle Class," itself, has been the most significant USer 'export' for the last 30 years.

Prosperity--'the Middle Class'-- is what has been sent overseas with all those millions of USer jobs that went along with the industries which the Gummint--BOTH "Parties"--encouraged, via tax incentives, etc., to relocate to Asia and Latin America...

In the early '80s, "IT" began to take over, and it taught GlobalCorpoRatz that increased productivity did not NEED to be shared with mere workers; the proceeds could and should be funneled to execs and shareholders. With "IT" it was no longer necessary that workers be "literate." All that was taken care of in the programming of the work/machines. All they had to be was "trainable." And this reduced the need to educate workers, and hence undercut the "Middle Class" aspirations of labor.

The world-corpoRatz learned that they didn't really need a relatively affluent USer middle class--which had grown 'spoiled,' and 'too demanding,' and unruly in it's acquisitions, unions, and privileges.

So the JOBS were exported to 'newly developing' economies where the workers would be 1) (more) grateful for their jobs, 2) less demanding about pay and conditions and 3) less careful about regulation and pollution, and where developing STATES could reap financial benefits and social stability.

Moving the jobs CREATED markets in the newly developing locales by making consumers out of the locals, willing to purchase and use the international "brands." Cars, refrigerators, cell-fones, computers! Suddenly brands like Marlboro took OFF!

To the optimists, I caution: The jobs won't be returning to the USofA anytime soon; not as long as there are environmental regs, unions, and "high" corpoRat taxes. Not, that is, until USer workers are willing to be recompensed like their counterparts in the 'developing world.'

Friday, August 22, 2014

A Biblical Tempest...


This got me thinking (seldom a good idea):
Ancient Bible in Aramaic dialected Syriac rediscovered in Turkey
This discovery turns modern Christianity on its head! This bible, dating as far back as 2,000 years, details the Gospel of Barnabas, a disciple of Jesus Christ, which shows that Jesus wasn’t actually crucified and doesn’t claim him to be the son of God, but instead a prophet. The book charges that Apostle Paul was “The Impostor.” The story is completely different. In the Book of Barnabas, Jesus wasn’t crucified, but ascended to heaven alive, and Judas Iscariot was crucified instead.
Read more at http://higherperspective.com/2014/05/1500-year-old-bible.html?utm_source=HP
What could ever be the actual, real, concrete consequences of such a debate? Even if PAUL was an "impostor? " So fucking what?

Since there are no contemporaneous records of EITHER "His" alleged birth or the the alleged death of any such person as "Jesus"--the rebellious, miracle-working, dead-raising, leprosy-curing, water-into-wine-changing, mystic carpenter, and his jolly band of devout catamites, in Roman Judea of that period, or any OTHER period--yer ol' perfesser regards the manner of "His" alleged demise is just as spurious a concern as the manner of "His" alleged birth.

This prompted a further thought, not consequential, but possibly explanatory: 
Christianity did not persist in the West and become the dominant cult for all those centuries because of the soundness of its doctrines, or the generosity of its institutions, or the wisdom of its saints.

It persisted because of its utility in keeping peasant hordes pacified (usually; though there were lapses) from the fall of the Roman empire until the beginning of the 19th Century, Common Era.

Marx famously observed that religion is the opiate of the masses. Christianity indeed is. Opiate's don't dull pain, they relieve mental anguish and anxiety ABOUT pain...Which was what the "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" rhetoric of the Church, and still all its scion cults proclaim (except the prosperity preachers). Be patient, endure, offer your suffering up for the souls in purgatory, and when YOU die, there's gonna be the Baby Jeebus waiting at those pearly gates.

This was an extraordinarily persuasive epistemology for 1500 years, in the west.
And the West was where they had perfected, and then linked together, metallurgy, gun-powder, and square-rigging, and set out to conquer the world. Christianity, as interpreted in Rome in the Middle Ages onward, provided the 'ethical' justification for the conquests which the emergent technologies permitted and eventually demanded.

Evangelizing the Word, while collecting slaves, booty and territory? Who could complain with that?

Just as, at the end of the 'Christian" era, and the beginning of the Industrial Age, Utilitarianism appeared--via Bentham and Mill, partly Jevons-- to rationalize and give 'spiritual' weight to--and a priori, to excuse, to shreve--the emergent demons of Capital.

Utulitarianism seeks the "greatest good for the greatest number."
Which really DOES "beg the question": What is "good?"
What counts as the "greatest number?"

In the 1970s, John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher, proposed a theory by which behavior would not be evaluated by the standard of the "greatest good," but that of the "least harm." A sort of social equivalent to the Hippocratic oath: First do no harm!; or the Precautionary Principle, in science. Both are analogous.

It is the same sort of argument which would urge that, if you can discern the lesser evil, and there is no OTHER way to assure the least harm, there would be an affirmative 'duty' to, e.g., vote for it.

Friday, July 11, 2014

REAL "Steam Punk!"

The 1923 reproduction of the 1829 Stephenson "Rocket." for the film "Our Hospitality."
Uncovered/discovered by my ol' SMHS runnin' buddy, Mike Lord.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Eulogy For Hanna-Stella



(Albuqueruqe, May 5, 2014):A Tail for the Dogs: Farewell, Hanna Stella

Sad to report, I think it's time to do 'the right thing' for Hanna Stella. This foto was made 6 or 7 years ago. She's been with me since 2003. You can see how robust she was. But she's a shadow of that now. She's not eating, and has not taken nourishment in any noticeable quantities for several days. She's barely drinking any water. Her excretions are fluid, and it appears bloody. She was so weak this morning I had to lift her onto her hind-quarters, and she has advanced rheumatism in the spine, so she walks only with difficulty. There's none of her former spring there. Her coat's gotten dull, too.

I don't know her exact age as, when she literally followed me home 11 years ago, she was already an adult. Had been spayed, in fact. I was walking other dogs (Mischief and Dixie) along the acequia when Hanna strolled up with about 6 feet of clearly chewed-through of stout, manila rope around her neck and trailing along behind her, while we were crossing a busy thoroughfare (Griegos NW). She met no resistance from the other two when she attached herself to us and followed along back to the casita/perrara.


No leash, no tag, no chip. I tried to find her people, or to find her a home, neither successfully. There's an old adage I've heard all my life: Don't have more dogs than you have hands. She was a dog too far, as it turned out.


Hannah-Stella, I called her: black as pitch, head to toe to tip of tail. She's a Lab mix, with hound proportions. She loved to cavort; she seemed to dance, as she sprang and spun when the dinner pan showed up.


She was not at first aggressive, but eventually she and Dixiebelle (foto#2) didn't get along. I think it's because Hanna grew very possessive of me, but Dixie was "senior" dog. They battled any time they happened to not be separated. Between them, they inflicted a couple dozen puncture wounds to my hands and lower arms. When Dix passed, Hanna transferred her hostility, jealousy and animosity toward Budreaux, the Pink-Nosed-Pittie (see last foto). I had to separate them, too, though not with the loss of so much blood.


She was a very loving girl, though reserved. She didn't seem to need to be close all the time. I named "Walled-In Pond" for her. I had to fence my fish-pond in to keep her out, because she leapt in to chase the fish, if I didn't keep her out. She was assiduous in her subsequent "job": To patrol the edge pond and prevent the escape of any of the fish. She was serious about it, and none ever escaped past her that I know of...


I've called the Vet. She'll be here tomorrow. Hanna's not in pain, or even serious discomfort, that I can tell. But they have their ways of telling you when it's time. And it is.


When consoling others in similar straits, I always refer them to Robinson Jeffer's masterful, haunting elegy: The House Dog's Grave.  Here it is:



The House Dog’s Grave 
(Haig, an English bulldog)
I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through
I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read- and I fear often grieving for me-
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided….
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.
Robinson Jeffers, 1941

(The Next Day) Yer ol' Perfesser is quite touched and moved by the out-pouring of sympathy from some several hundred of you on the news that I have had to send my good, ol' grrrl- dog, Hanna-Stella, dancing queen of the night, on ahead. Her systems all seem to have failed simultaneously, and she went from robust, vibrant health to so completely debilitated a state, in about a month, so it seemed a kindness, and a necessity to let her go..

Again: I cannot say thank you enough to all those who sent good wishes and sympathies. Yer a great bunch!
Really! No shit...

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Do You Hit Your Kids?

 

Woody's intrigued by the sentiment expressed here.
When people say "I was spanked/hit as a kid, and I turned out alright, I wanna ask: Compared to what? How do you know?
There seems to be the implication that, unless the "memerist' had been beaten as a child, he (presumably) would NOT have developed the "psychological condition known as 'respect for others'."
Does does it mean that if "your" parents had NOT beaten "you, you'd" now have NO 'respect' for others?
I don't know how "I turned out," or even if I did, but I was beaten when I was young. A lot.
My mother laid into me at every opportunity, hard, with her open hand to my face, mainly. Slaps. Any occasion on which I disappointed expectations or did any damage to anything, I caught hell for it, got slapped.
I got slapped around if I came home with grass-stains on my pants. I got slapped around if I broke a plate. I got slapped around for bad grades. I got slapped around for breaking a tooth (which were ALL things I got slapped around for).
I made a game of it, eventually.
I had no way to not be struck, if the mood took her, so I made it a point, eventually, to take it without showing any emotion. Stoically.
She required me to stand and take it. I couldn't raise a hand to deflect a blow. I had to just endure it.
This went on for about 8 years, starting right after I recovered from polio, and continuing until I was old enough to spend most of my life away from the house, at age 16 or so.
I know now she was driven effectively crazy by the effects of the steroids she was taking for a serious, debilitating medical condition. It was prednisone, which now has a bad reputation, but then was in wide use. Knowing about it LATER made my eventually being able to understand easier, but it had no effect on my experience at the time.
She could wail on me with all the crazed ferocity she could muster, and I took it, without so much as a flinch or a whimper. I would NOT weep.
It took a long time to get past that one.
And, though I cared for her carefully and lovingly as she was dying, I didn't weep at her death, either.


This Be the Verse, by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, yer mum and dad.
They do not mean to, but they do.
They take all the faults they had,
And add some special, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By folks on old-style hats and coats
Who half the time were sloppy stern
And half at one another's throats.
Life hands on misery to man;
It deepens like the ocean's shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.


Friday, February 14, 2014

Don't Pray For Me: A brief phenomenology


---Prayer, as with any sort of meditative act, is not engaged in for the benefit of any external object or person, izzit?
---Zen meditation, as I understand it, is to empty oneself of all external attachments.
---"Prayer," the way it's commonly understood by most Murkins, involves begging for some sort of theosophical interference or indulgence
---Prayer the way monks and so forth do it is a kind of mantric chant which induces endorphins and calms their souls.
---Right now, I don't need any of that. And I appreciate the thought.
---But don't pray for me.
---Buy me a beer. Roll me a joint. Get us some burgers. Spot me $50. Gimme a ride to the welfare office...
---That'd be GREAT! Thanks...

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

In The Vecinidad..."Black Mesa, San Ildefonso Pueblo"

Image made by Kent Hansen, the Second of February, 2014, from his house in La Mesilla NM.
The mammoth object in the distance is known locally as "Black Mesa." It is on and is sacred to the people of San Ildefonso pueblo. In their legends, it is the only earthly remains of an Ogre which preyed on the people until the "Sacred Twins" were born, who were devoured by the Ogre, but killed it from within. It is the Ogre's black heart, still decaying...Fruitful for all sorts of hermeneutics. It is where the famed potters of the pueblo mine the clay for their distinctive, black pottery. Here's the link.
There is a geological term of the formation which I once knew, but have forgotten and cannot find.
This vista was obstructed from my family's place in Nambe, but is only about 10 miles, as the raven rambles, and it's shape is part of my geographical DNA.

Friday, January 31, 2014

The Happy Couple, My Parents, On The Day of Their Wedding: Jan 31, 1943

Ladies and Gentlemen, the happy couple: Ensign John O. ("Jack") Konopak and his bride, the former Joan Pace. She passed in 2000, he in 2001. Today would be their 71st Anniversary. R.I.P. 

These were my folks on their wedding day, waiting for a train to Santa Fe: Jan 31, 1943. Ensign John O. ("Jack") Konopak and his new bride, Joan (Pace, until a few hours before). He was on his way to his ship, the USS Litchfield, home-ported in Pearl Harbor. She would accompany him as far as San Francisco. While he was gone, she finished her bachelors degree at the University of Chicago. They had full, busy lives. Grand kids, and job fulfillment. Momma passed in 2000, Daddy in 2001. Cigarettes killed them both. Their kids (4) and their friends (hundreds) miss 'em both... (Coincidentally, today is also the 20th Anniversary of my quitting tobacco, altogether.)

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Throw-back Thursday: Jauary 9, 2014

The Konopak sibs, circa 1986, at Pop's retirement. From the left: Pete, Joanie, Cary, and moi...

The Konopak Family, Nambe homestead, circa 1962. From the left: Joanie, Pete, Cary, me, Mom and Pop...