arse poetica

Todos el Sitting Bull

I just had a moment reading the end of this article and thought I'd share.

Restoring Dignity to Sitting Bull, Wherever He Is.

In an office in Fort Yates sits Ron His Horse Is Thunder, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a great-great-great grandson of Sitting Bull. A lawyer by training, tall and lean, he expresses support for the Mobridge effort to honor his ancestor in a manner befitting the man. But when asked whether he believes Sitting Bull is buried on that bluff, he slowly shakes his head no.

Then where is Sitting Bull?

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a tribal historian and storyteller who is overseeing improvements to the Fort Yates grave site, tries to explain. “A person like Sitting Bull was never meant to just die and disappear,” she says.

Yes, but where is he?

Smiling patiently, the woman opens her arms and spreads her hands.

Beautiful. And why not?

The post title comes from a rude-seeming reference (which is not meant to be taken as the gist of my point), but I mean it respectfully, because it, too, harkened to such a beautiful moment that it's imprinted on my mind.

When my pals PM and JM and db and I were in Argentina [::siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh::], we were hiking one day on a remote island in the Beagle Channel, an island uninhabited by humans, a beautiful, pristine, perfect place. At the start of our hike our hike leader was explaining a few things about our three-hour jaunt and at the end of his speech one of our group piped up w/ the quintessential tourist question: where are the bathrooms? The guide looked at us with a smile and said with a sweep of his hand, "Todos el bano."

In other news, Sitting Bull's great-great-great grandson's name is poetry.

"100x Too High" = Buh-Bye!

Oh, great. Have you heard? The federally-allowed level of drinking water contamination by plutonium-239, one of the ingredients of atomic bombs, is 100 times too high. No sh*t, really. Well, alright, I gotta go! See ya!

Time for my "happy place," a concept heretofore unknown to me, a long-time fan of things real. My happy place is so lived in during this madministration's reign of (t)error as to qualify for a capital gains exemption. I simply cannot take their sh*t any longer. It's bad for one's health, so bring on the island in the Beagle Channel on which I spent one of the better days of my life.

[Green Energy Project.]

Ecuador Rapport

Is the Disc0very Institute protesting this?

Ecuador, June 1-12
June 1-8 “In Darwin’s Footsteps” Tour of Galapagos Islands
June 9-12 World Summit on Evolution
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristobal Islas Galapagos, Ecuador
Sponsored by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). Through a series of presentations and discussions, the world’s outstanding leaders in evolution will be brought face-to-face to share their insights on evidence for this theory and to discuss future research horizons. usfq.edu.ec/1NEWS/eeng.htm
Day 1: General Vision of Evolution (The Origins of Life, Evolution in the Archean, Proterozoic , and Phanerozoic Eons, Genetic Basis for Evolution, Microbial Evolution, Human Evolution)
Day 2: Evidence for Evolution (Plant Evolution, Evolution of Animal Behavior, Animal Development and Evolution, Fungi Genomics, Sexual Selection, Darwin Finch Speciation)
Day 3 Field Work led by local scientific experts of the Darwin Station
Day 4: Evolution: History, Present and Future

I'm just sayin'. And in honor of Mr. Darwin's contributions and his travel route, I'd like to thank him for my fine, fine day kayaking in the Beagle Channel off the tippy tip of South America. Utter heaven.

Cheery Chums and Chimichurri

The one-month anniversary of our trip is tomorrow, which spurred us to get it together to invite some pals over for a cookout and slideshow at our pal J's place. He lives on a beautiful farm owned by some lovely folks who've been there for many, many years. It's the perfect venue for outdoor  get-togethers, and tonight's slide show was such a success that we're thinking of hosting regular movie nights out there.

Last night we enjoyed a lazy supper and party planning/prepping session, part of which entailed rigging up this "screen," which is one of P's sheets, on the barn. Fun.

After dark we did a dry run of the slide show and oohed and ahhed at the landscapes as if these were someone else's pix. I'm still amazed by them, and I'm still in awe of digital cameras. We have around 500 pix of our trip, many of which are not particularly evocative, but literally hundreds of which are. Like this one:

 

We'd planned our menu well in advance, trying to replicate an authentic Argentine meal, and I think we got close. But it ain't easy cooking for 30, which meant lots of prep time, including heading to the Farmers' Market Sat. and preparing marinades and making last-minute grocery runs this morning. We met this afternoon a little after 2:00 p.m. to be able to receive guests at 6 p.m. That's 4 folks chopping and marinating and food processing and whisking and chimichurri-making and flower arranging at a pretty good clip. Whew!

It did look purty though when we were finished. On the menu: grilled (marinated) venison steaks, asparagus, and corn on the cob, roasted peppers, salad fixins (lettuce mix, cabbage -- red and green, celery, carrots, cucumber, leeks, red onion, cilantro, peppers, hard-boiled eggs), an amazing stewed carrot dish made by the matriarch of the farm, a dee-lish pasta salad side dish brought by our friend M, and three different kinds of chimichurri. Yum! Plus, 13 or so bottles of Argentine wine, of which only 7 or 8 or 10 were consumed. Wait, did I mention the homemade sweet potatoe pies? It really helps to have a matriarch around, I tell you.

I was on flower arrangement detail, and though I don't know that I have any real aptitude for it, you cannot go wrong on a farm as bountiful as this. Quince, Red Bud, Curly Willow, Honesuckle, Dogwoods, some extravagant pink thing I don't know the name of, and lots of nice, dried flowers and stalks to round it out. Sadly, my and everyone else's favorite arrangement is at the far end of the picture.

Friday Gringo Blogging

If this were your lunch spot following a 1.5-hour horse ride, would you want to come back home and push papers around a desk in a windowless office? I'm just sayin'.

This evening, in efforts to shake ourselves out of the waking dream that we've been in since our return, db, our pal J, and I took a walk around the farm where J lives, doing our best to tramp in the newly cut fields, pretending they were rolling hills, and really looking at the pond and the rocks as if seeing them for the first time (we did see frogs mating for the first time). Birds, crickets, frogs, fresh air. Not even close to Argentina, but wonderful for Chatham Co., NC. And the moon tonight. Gorgeous. 

We shared an easy, delicious meal, which ended, as it should, in giggles and toasts over -- what else -- Argentine wine. By the way, the nicest, smoothest, most versatile, good anytime wine we had down South was the Santa Julia Sangiovese 2003. Mmm mmmm. Their Temperanillo-Malbec fusion was tasty, too. There's another wine that was great -- starts with an 'N' -- but I'm blanking and I don't have my notes near me, so that will have to wait until my next inevitable sad-sack pining entry.

Tunes tonight: Magnetic Fields' "69 Love Songs" was playing in the background, and no matter how many times I've heard it, I'm still amazed by Stephin Merritt's lyrical mojo. Some of it is just damn clever. Highly recommended.   

The Constitution Still Applies, Right?

Might I register a complaint?

We'd just landed at Ezeiza Int'l Airport in Buenos Aires Monday afternoon and were waiting for our baggage when we saw a big Air Force Two-looking 747 pull in with "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" emblazoned across it. Well. One of our group (maybe db) said with some authority that it wasn't Air Force Two, so we surmised it was likely one of two other assholes on the plane: CondoLIEzza or Rummy. While we waited for our luggage, I ran through in my mind both of the mostly-prepared diatribes that I would love to present to either CondoLIEzza or Rummy one day for a frank exchange of views, if you will. The plane taxied out of view.

I was distracted by the baggage handlers who were bringing the luggage in by hand as the carousel was apparently (or should I say 'allegedly'?) inoperative. Didn't think a thing at the time, except to note with chagrin that humans in undirected groups always seem to choose chaos over order as their default operative scheme. Order, of course, is predicated on subordinating one's self-interest. Sheesh. It would have been so easy to have two lines... Ah well, I'll be a baggage frenzy crowd logistics manager in another life.

Bags in hand, we move toward the international gates. Just outside we step off the curb and onto the street to avoid the previously baggage frenzied, now merely get-to-gate frenzied, passajeros, and are ushered back onto the sidewalk by a very serious-faced policia. Okay, no biggie. We get back on the sidewalk, but wait a minute... Ah. Now we see the waiting police van at the gate behind us and a few policia lined along the sidewalk to prevent our walking onto the driveway. And then we see the Air Force whatever # plane. Well, this can mean only one thing: a protest is in order, methinks! It matters not that we do not know who's inside; I'm sure there'll be loathing enough to go around. Besides, it's 3 hours until our flight leaves for the good ol US of A, and when life hands you lemons, you make a protest parade.

So we stand at the curb, looking crossly at the official 747 and waiting for a glimpse of whomever it may be, so we'll know just which epithet to hurl, I suppose. Senor Policia is eyeing us warily at first. Finally, it dawns on one of us to ask him who's on the plane. Without hesitation he tells us it's the Ministre de Defense de los Estados Unidos. Rummy!

My heart is racing now, because, for those who've read my About page, I'm doing a mighty fine (non-Buddhist) job of bringing the hate when it comes to this guy. I do not even entertain the idea for one moment that we will not be standing there on that driveway when that f*cker drives by. Oh, he'll see my face and know he is despised, that his charade of control has no effect on us, that we see right through to his shriveled heart and know his truth: he is an empty, posturing man, a failure, a liar, and the worst kind of power mad, egomaniac there is. We are the United States of America, too, motherf*cker. This is what I expect my expression will say, though I will be silent. I want simply to register my protest. Put it out there into the universe and into Rummy's thick head.

With not a little sarcasm, bitterness, and resignation in our voices, we note that at least in Argentina our rights as US citizens to gather peacefully and voice our discontent will be recognized. Every other peace or protest rally I've attended during dumbyass's reign has relegated us into a "free speech zone" far from the action. But this was our chance, so we did what any self-respecting American would do, we dropped our luggage, dug around in our packs for a ballpoint pen, and fashioned a sign on the backs of the xeroxed copy of the history of Argentina that we'd brought along as a primer. In about 2 minutes we had this sign:

You'll note the mood by the looks on our faces. It was not lost on me that it took being 6,000 miles from home to get within 10 ft. of Donald Rumsfeld to register my disgust, but I got to say my piece to Donald Rumsfeld, may he burn in Hell, as he and his procession drove by. And that made me smile all the way home.

As an added bonus, a wonderful example of global cooperation: when our ballpoint started running out of ink, Senor Policia leaned over and gave us his with a wink. When we pulled out our passports so Rummy & Co. would know we were (Norte) Americans, he beamed at us. I f*cking love Argentina.

Argentina es Muy Hermoso

It ain't easy adjusting back to a normal-sized life after the super-sized landscape mojo of Patagonia. I'll post some thoughts in the coming days when I can come out of this discombobulated fog I'm in. I think because the flight home is an overnight one, I missed a distinct transition point or something, because I'm swimmy-headed w/ the incongruity of looking at familiar little Chapel Hill when the pictures in my head are still of 3000-ft mtns, huge skies, and gorgeous bays.

At 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning I was riding a horse through incredibly beautiful farm landscape overlooking Ushuaia Bay, and at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning I was arriving at RDU. Hunh? My rhythm is off, and I don't mean jet lag. In fact, I don't have jet lag, as we were travelling in the same time zone (Argentina is 2-hrs ahead). I've got spirit lag. What vitamin do I take to alleviate the effects of that?

Patagonia's like Switzerland + New Zealand + the Lake District (UK), and that's just getting close. Lordy. Add the Northern California desert and you're a notch closer. Here's one of my fave pix, taken on Sunday during our two-hour hike along rolling grasslands on an island in the middle of the Beagle Channel. Note: db is not a professional photographer. Looks like something out of National Geographic, doesn't it? Par for the course down there, I assure you.

Argentina is lovely in every measure for travellers -- people, landscape, food, quality of amenities, strong transportation infrastructure. We zipped from place to place with nary a thought or a problem; everyone was unfailingly gracious and hospitable; all of our guides were incredibly knowledgeable; we ate like kings and queens; and we hiked and canoed in pristine places that I can barely believe still exist.

It's not that the US, for example, does not have gorgeous lakes, mountains, and grasslands; it does, of course, and I've seen many of them. It's that all of these elements are together in Patagonia in breathtaking choreography on such a grand scale. And it is no small benefit that you do not experience these wonders amidst packs of loud-ass turistas chugging from one photo-op to another in an SUV (and I say that as a turista -- not loud-ass -- who's chugged from one photo-op to another --not in an SUV). Silence. Imagine it!

It is sad, I suppose, that I had no construct in my mind for such splendor. I mean, I've seen Mirror Lake and been to the Grand Tetons and hiked in Yellowstone, but nothing prepared me for what I experienced in Tierra del Fuego. The whole time I thought, Land of the Lost, Lord of the Rings, the Enchanted Forest. It's so real, it's unreal.

The default setting for Patagonia being extravagant splendor, I fear that rampant development is going to move in. I don't know enough to suggest this is happening, but the perfectness of what's there suggests just what could be lost. The idea that Patagonia could be spoiled is beyond heartbreaking. I see now (if I didn't before) how people chain themselves to trees and lie down in front of bulldozers. To think that a McDonald's (or whatever) could rend its way into a world as unsullied as this is an affront to humanity, and I'm not being dramatic. Seeing Patagonia, all I could think was, This is how it should be.

There's more, of course -- politics, consumerism, a run-in with Donald Rumsfeld -- but I'll save that for later posts.

Me Fui

Woohoo!! Only a couple of hours 'til I board the flight to Ar-hen-teeeenna! I've got butterflies, yaay! Left to pack: pajamas, toiletries, books. Crunch-time decisions. And I need to eat lunch. Must run!

Our flight pattern sure looks very neat. Could it be that straight? Shortest distance between two points...

Tomorrow at this time, I'll be at the Iguazu Falls, and hopefully in the Parque Nacional between Brazil and Argentina, so I can get as many peeks at that gorgeous, one-of-a-kind sight as I can.

My Favorite Office Imp wanted to help me out on my trip, seeing as I do not speak Spanish, save for the bit I learned from Sesame Street. He's provided the following Glossary of Important Phrases to aid me in my communication:

Me fui.
I went away.

Se fue.
She/he/it went away.

Se fueron.
They went away.

Pasame la sangria por favor.
Please pass the sangria.

Ayudame.
Help me!

Donde esta el bano?
I gotta pee.

Creo que la glaciar esta moviendose.
I think the glacier is moving.

Si, me gustaria ayudar tu organization radical laborista.
Yes, I would love to help your radical labor organization.

No puedes hacer este. Soy un cuidadando libre de Canada.
You can't do that. I'm a free citizen of Canada!

Now you can see why he has the illustrious title of My Favorite Office Imp. The 'citizen of Canada' reference will be familiar to all who suffered through the two s/elections of Dim Son. Seeing as how the US has such a tarnished image abroad, MFOI is merely looking out for me by providing me linguistic cover (if not civic). Of course, if I run into trouble helping out that radical labor organization, I may have to employ this tactic.

I will do my best to post from Amerique du Sud, but I don't know what my opportunities will be, and, frankly, it's probably best if I tune in/turn on/drop out for a week. I'm sure the off-line world can sustain me in these circumstances.

Me fui. Adios, amigos y amigas!