coyote: the trickster

The Paiute outlook is less a religion than it is a comprehensive philosophy.

Every Paiute story involves recurring themes. One of these themes is change. Necessary to this change is its agent; a force of chaos which is neither evil nor good. This is coyote, or it is water. Both of these are seen as the essential communicator between worlds, and so they are transitive constants. 

The flows of water shape the landscape through carving the sandstone, just as the chaotic trickster reshapes the world around him through his impartial actions. Similarly, the coyote, as an animal spirit, represents a deeply primal part of the human psyche, capable of both good and bad. Water, the advent of which brings on life, and in so many cultures the transition of which is the final passage to death, symbolizes the intangible links between heavens and earths; this world, the next ones, and the ones before ours.

Regardless... 

Glenn was telling us about how the trees and rocks came to their present state. 

People, animals, and water are able to move over the earth, and to us freedom of movement feels natural, and  inherent in our state of being. 

Long long ago, Glenn said, the rocks and the trees wandered over the earth, much as we are able to do so.

One day, coyote played a trick on these rocks and trees, and they lost their ability to move, and so became permanent fixtures in the landscape. So now they sit, stuck where they were brought into existence.

We know this to be true, because people, animals, trees, and rock; still they drink the water.

today: meet with Glenn and "Beans"

The two are older Paiute Indians. 

Beans is a bit deaf from his tour in Vietnam, so we shout a bit at him so he can understand us. His beard is an inch thick, his hair, equally gray, is long and flowing beneath a floppy hat with beads around the top. When he mumbles, we tell him to speak up, and when he yells, we tell him to quiet down. The process is devoid of emotional investment: nobody takes offense.


Beans knows everything there is to know about the Paiute traditional and medicinal knowledge: about the plants that surround us in this South Western Utah landscape. He knows the 'Anglo' words (as he calls them) and he knows the Paiute words, which he learned from his Grandma, Mama, and the other elders growing up on the reservation.

Glenn is the more gregarious one, which I've been told is really rare for Native Americans. The hair around his ears is bic-ed clean, smooth and stubble free. He has hair that is black and thick which compliments a thin mustache. His eyes peer out inquisitively from behind slightly polarized glasses. When he speaks, he is long-winded but incredibly eloquent and persuasive. 

A few minutes before, he had paused, kneeling in the cracked mud, where he pointed at a deer track. "Doe, passed through four days ago."


Now we were at the top of a lookout, to our east is the proposed trail network, to the west a small town.

"I'm a Mormon," he says, turning to face us as he speaks.

"No way." Glenn's jokes are frequent and funny; so we laugh along with him.

The exchange continues, until we realize, for once, he isn't kidding.

"Yeah, they baptized me when I was eight, back when I didn't really know what they was doing. When I was a teenager, well, before that, when I was even younger, that's when I really first felt angry.  

'I felt really angry because at that stage of your age, you're young and you don't know how to deal with that anger, and your anger is thrown at the white people of what they did and you're really angry, you're frustrated, and you try to take this anger out in different ways on different Anglo people, um I was angry but as I grew into adult, and as years kept going by, I start understanding that that's history and from then to now we have to work with history in order to make our tribe better, the Shivwits band a better tribe and to deal with these issues that was back then, and you learn how to deal with it... even with the pioneers, of what they did.  I'm still angry. I get angry, but I learn to deal with it.  

When I gave up that chip on my shoulder, I rejoined the Church for a bit, really learned all the teachings of Joe Smith, and Brigham Young. That's how I understood, here's this person here, you have to talk to them like this, you have to understand their side because they understand your side, and they're ignorant about your culture and they don't understand it and so it's better to understand them because they're the dominant and you have to use it within your means to deal with them, the pioneers of what they did of how they killed my people off and how they murdered them, and there's a lot of these things that aren't recorded that they were murdered and the tainted food, the blankets... yes I'm angry, but there's nothing I can do about it.  I'm here and now.  The only way I know how to deal with it is to learn by looking at them and to learn how to deal with them in different ways, not only of retaliation but those can be... the retaliation can be solved in different ways... in different ways than how you are angry, like physical anger, so those things can be dealt with...'

Nowadays, I don't go back to the Church but every once in a while, about once a year I reckon. But now I know their ways, the majority white people around here, I got to know them, I understand them, and I see now.  That right, yeah, Beans?"


Beans peers across the group, with a penetrating, blank, and yet inquisitive, stare. His voice is deep, rumbling. "Yeah."


"It's like what I always say. No group gets everything right." Glenn starts up again. "There's folks that say the Indians couldn't do no wrong. Well thats not totally right either. The Mormons, they have a great outlook on family, such that you really can't disrespect them. Their origin story is a little iffy, but overall you can't totally disrespect them."


Glenn pauses next to a low bush. "Beans whats it called, this here, this is ee’see. The Anglo name for ee'see?"


Beans had paused, totally lost in the stillness of the moment. He chews his lip reflexively, staring at the small bushy plant. Far overhead some hawks were circling a cliff. Time seemed to stop, until a small breeze snaps him back into the moment. 


"Squawbush," he says.
_________


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mapnificent

Added a new site to the sidebar. Quite interesting stuff.

exploit: a Petrified Forest Cave story

noun

1. a striking or notable deed; feat; spirited or heroic act: the exploits of Alexander the Great.

verb (used with object)

1. to utilize, especially for profit:  to exploit a business opportunity
2. to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.

Not many words are capable of carrying such binary connotations. 

When used as a noun, it implies bravery and virtue. 

As a verb, the word is more sinister; it suggests subversiveness. 
Money grubbing, gambling, and greedy manipulations. 

Reading this section out of Alfred Stucki's 1966 thesis dissertation 
A HISTORICAL STUDY OF SILVER REEF: SOUTHERN UTAH MINING TOWN
all of these nuances crossed my mind.

Henry Freudenthal and Louis Hassell, chloriders in the Thompson and McNally mine, were putting a hole into unusually bare rock when suddenly the entire face of the drift before them gave way into a black abyss two hundred feet deep. 

Mr. Hassell, who was turning the drill at the time, instantly sprang backward thereby saving himself from being carried downward with the huge mass of rock. 

Two hundred feet overhead could be seen by candlelight, the dome-like ceiling. Two hundred feet below, firm and upright, stood a forest of huge trees. 

Ropes were procured and the chloriders descended into the forest which was found to be petrified.

On some of the trees strange characters were inscribed. Various mosses, also petrifications appearing green and life-like, covered the ground. All of these petrifications carried silver assaying as high as $200 per ton. A number of people visited the cave including Judge A.H. Parker, Mining Engineer. 

The petrifications of course were mined for their silver thus 

destroying the remarkable cave.

Analogy via "Play-Doh Fun Factory"

Peter S. had this great analogy yesterday about his ex-boss, the lesson being a warning to avoid micromanagement.

"Working for an anally retentive boss" he likened "to forcing play-doh through the 1/16 inch star shaped press in your fun factory".

that heart beat... taking deep breath in and out and there it is "momentum"

There is no clear boundary or demarcation across the next region, thus the flow of the trail is as gentle as it is transitory. An initial summary of the ecology is ‘savannah’ like, so similar it is to its African cousin. The gently rolling low grasslands, periodically punctuated by juniper, enhanced this illusion as the iconic landmarks of the past faded from view, stranding the spectator in a sea of sagebrush and sandstone. 

from: "Why the Higgs boson wasn’t discovered in America"

I read the title and thought, "Duh, because the USA didn't invest nine and a half billion into the research". 

Its interesting that the polarized political stances of today, which draw so much legitimacy from icons of the past. If you look at their policy positions... well just read the article and you'll see.

As Ian Sample recount’s in his recent book, Massive, a long history/explanation of the Higgs boson, the Desertron was to be “the largest pure science project ever.” And it’s approval was granted by President Reagan himself after a powerful presentation by Alvin Trivelpiece, the director of the U.S.’ Office of Energy Research.

The initial cost was to be $4.4 billion, which is about $7.5 billion in today’s dollars. For reference, the LHC was budgeted at $9 billion. And, meanwhile, the soon to be defunct Tevatron collider, the U.S.’ rival to the LHC, would have required about $35 million a year to continue to hunt for the Higgs. That requested extension was denied by the Department of Energy last month, leaving the U.S. with nothing to offer anymore in the hunt.

Recounted in Massive and in sci-fi writer John G. Cramer’s brief history of the Desertron here, Reagan wasn’t f*cking around either. His instructions to Trivelpiece and the Department of Energy in 1987 were to “throw deep,” a favorite Reagan football quote that basically translates to “win this thing even if it means taking a risk.”

The Desertron died two administrations later during the belt-tightening years of Clinton. 

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L’homme qui fait le ménage est plus heureux que les autres

I suspected so all along...

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calligraph

rained the whole time

Weird to think I could be wasting months of hard work.

Genuinely a little upset with myself, though my present circumstance is affecting my mood.

Utah

Can't post more because I'm kinda in the middle of nowhere. Also I realized how inconvenient the computer is for me.

Painting is JSSargent - Atlantic Storm (1876)

sheep-o