I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam, nostalgic for noble causes, aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages— ah—! Uncas shall never leave the reservation, except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store. The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: there is a way around every treaty. We will turn the tides of the restless Caribbean, the sun will rise, and set on our hotel balconies as we see fit. The natives will have nothing to complain about, indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. They will learn to defer gratification and save up for things, like we do.
Oh, yes. They will. We have only to make an offer they cannot refuse.
Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.
In the early 1970s, I worked with Dr. Larry J. Bailey, my friend, and mentor, on the Career Development for Children Project (CDCP). Several of us worked on the project to produced a career development curriculum for elementary school children. In 1973 I went to work at McKnight Publishing Company to help produce project materials. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for living, but rather it is a process of experiencing living.
Before leaving CDCP, I prepared a paper titled, “A Theory of the Functional Self.” The paper reviewed self-theory that explores self a being a product of social interactions. From this theory, we have seen that self-information is a developmental process that takes place within the social system. A social system may be a peer group, a single classroom, school, community, occupational establishment, or any other organized group of individuals.
It is also assumed that a social system has two dimensions, the individual and the institution, and the patterns resulting from the interaction of these dimensions are social behavior. The individual’s inferences from his behavior define his self-concept, and a self-concept that has career relevance is the functional self.
The functional self, like the self-concept, is a self-process, a process of being and becoming. It is the functional self’s developmental process that should enable educators to develop a process career developmental curriculum, rather than a content occupational information curriculum. Career development is not obtaining knowledge in preparation for a living; rather, it is a process of experiencing living.
— kenne
“I think every man is his own Pygmalion and spends his life fashioning himself. And in fashioning himself, for good or ill, he fashions the human race and its future.”
“Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us—grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends.”
My father dead now for interminable years. Won’t leave me in peace, doesn’t want to go. I see him every day. My old man hides in trees, in water, in clouds of smoke escaping from secretary cigarettes, or he enters like a thief through my windows and he steals my food.
He’s a live wire. He’s capable of hiding himself on the moon and he tells me, son, nothing remains. Nothing remains.
My father planted in his Mexican soil, laying roots into the dark meadow of forget, shines. When I turn off the lamp, his face throws sparks in the corner. When I make love, he comes running. When I step out to the street, he pursues me through the eyes of homeless children. He wears heels of gold. He smells my coffee. I see him without seeing him and he says, son, nothing remains. Nothing remains.
My father dead already and turned to dust, cries tears of clay. With the voice of stones, he shouts, he sings, his final advice.
Son, your life is one coin. Spend yourself well for nothing remains. Nothing remains of me.
Despairing of God, I came to the desert seeking saints.
The tongue of the tribe sleeping in my family
whispers spiny songs: chumpaco / place where they killed
the dogs: huirives / bird: bacochibampo / the water of the
serpents: bajeribampo / water of the lizards: cuirimpo /
the place of the drummers.
American poet Wallace Stevens constantly spoke in his poetry about the creation of art. This sort of “art looking at itself” move has a danger of being too self-referential and one might fear that it would sit with the reader as unresolved as being between two mirrors. I think today’s subtle poem works, despite those risks, and we’ll see if my performance of it brings out something that you may not have noticed in it.
Stevens, though wordier than Emily Dickinson*, often has his poetry seem like a riddle or puzzle, and though his poems have a surface beauty one can see right off, they also sometimes work like a lawyerly contract with the reader, full of obscure words and fine-print sub-clauses that you may not fully understand.
Let’s listen to Stevens read his poem himself.
One can hear background noises outside the room in this recording, so Stevens’ voice…
Once the process of bringing forth new life passes, leaves fall, vines become brittle to the touch, and seeds are transported to new lands where life can begin anew when the rains return.
There is reason to believe that the rains will not return, or at least with so little only the hardiest of the hardy will survive when the heat of the new normal bakes the already dry land.
What will come of this wasteland? A land where the winds carry a deadly virus bringing death to weakest of the weak, where many feel they are not accomplices to what caused the suffering.
Mountain Wildflowers of Southern Arizona — A Field Guide to the Santa Catalina Mountains and Other Nearby Ranges by Frank S. Rose
When I began hiking the mountains of southern Arizona, I always had my camera with me. If you follower of this blog, you know there are many photos of beautiful mountain wildflowers, most of which I could not identify. However, Frank S. Rose made it easy for me to put names with the photos with the publication of his field guide in 2011.
For years before the guide’s publication, Frank spent summers painting watercolor images of the wildflowers. But, much like myself, he experienced difficulty identifying the wildflowers. It wasn’t until Frank got to know Joan Tedford, Bob Porter and other Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists spending time with them on their weekly nature walks, that he began to work on his photographic field guide.
Thank you, Frank, for your many hours and miles of walking, searching, photographing and learning about flowers from which so many of us have benefited.
— kenne
Joan Tedford, Debbie Bird, Edi Moore, Heather Murphy, and Frank Rose (May 2, 2016) — Images by kenne
In this video, Frank Rose tells the story of how he met Joan Tedford.
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Sonoran Desert Sunrise — Image by kenne
