Killers of the Flower Moon -- Book Review

On April 17, 2017, I was listening to NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Terry Gross. She was interviewing David Grann about his new book Killers of the Flower Moon, scheduled for release the next day. (To read a transcript of that interview click Killers of the Flower Moon.)

I am from Oklahoma and all public school students get one semester of Oklahoma History in the 9th Grade. I had my one semester. It not only didn't cover all the 'good' stories about Oklahoma, it certainly didn't cover any of the 'bad' stories about Oklahoma.

When I was well out of school and working for the Oklahoma Welfare Department in Logan County, I had the great good fortune of working with a woman from Marshall, Oklahoma, a very small town in the northern part of the county. She had long known a woman named Angie Debo who received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Oklahoma in 1933. Dr. Debo had been writing articles and books on the treatment of Native Americans by local, state, and federal governments. She named names many of whom were still living, which drew the ire of the powers that were and attracted death threats. 

Dr. Debo's books focused on mistreatment of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes -- the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole who had been forcibly moved from the Southeast United States to Oklahoma Territory pre-Civil War. But I knew some of her journalism dealt with the Osage. So I knew a bit about the Osage murders.

I had long entertained the possibility of writing a biography of Dr. Debo. The idea that someone else was writing about those days in Oklahoma and naming names, got my attention. I went right home and ordered David Grann's book, Killers of the Flower Moon. And it did not disappoint. 

Killers of the Flower Moon takes on the situation in the Osage Nation in the 1920's. 

Because the Osage were living in a nation of law, they were, in a way, much better off than most of the Native Americans who had been moved into Indian Territory. The Osage sold their lands in Kansas to the U.S. Government and they bought their lands in Oklahoma. That means there were deeds involved. Not treaties with highfalutin language that was so nonspecific that it could be twisted to fit whatever the U.S. Government wanted it to mean. The surface rights to the land were divvied up among members of the tribe and could be sold, but mineral rights were reserved to the tribe and could not be transferred except by inheritance.

As of 2017 this still means "The Osage Tribe owns all mineral rights located within Osage County and has an income from all oil and gas found in Osage County." according to the Osage Minerals Council. 

Oil was discovered and the Osage became the richest people on earth. Wikipedia says "From 1921-1925 an estimated 60 Osage were killed, and most murders were not solved."

Because local law enforcement was either unwilling or unable to deal with the situation and because it was gaining national notoriety, the nascent Federal Bureau of Investigation was brought in to it. In 1924 J. Edgar Hoover was named director. He came in determined to make the FBI a modern, national police force, free of corruption. The investigation of the Osage murders was "to be a showcase for his bureau." (Grann) 

He assigned a former Texas Ranger to lead the investigation. Tom White was an exemplar of the Old West Hero. Honest, fearless, compassionate. Grann couldn't have invented a better character for the hero.

When I heard they're making a movie of the story, I couldn't imagine why. I was looking at it as history, nonfiction which normally limits entertainment interests. My husband pointed out that it was a perfect Hollywood story -- super wealthy victims, shootings, bombings, poisonings, throwing witnesses off of trains; corruption in high places, and low ones; tall, good-looking FBI agents unraveling the conspiracies -- of course it's perfect for Hollywood.

The same day I heard the interview on NPR an article by Sean Woods in Rolling Stone (April 17, 2017) described Tom White "... born in a log cabin, policing the frontier at a time when justice was pretty raw. There's a picture for me that's so amazing: White's got a cowboy hat, he's riding a horse, and he's got a gun. In a later picture, you see him with a fedora, he's trying to use fingerprints and he's got to file paperwork, which I just always love, because he clearly hated the paperwork." Referring to photographs in the book.

"EXCLUSIVE: In a stunning end to the biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory, Imperative Entertainment has paid $5 million and won the rights to make a movie out of David Grann’s book Killers Of The Flower Moon: An American Crime And The Birth Of The FBI, which Doubleday is publishing next spring." So said Mike Fleming Jr., March 10, 2016, more than a year before the book was published, on deadline.com an online entertainment rag. 

IMDb names  Director: Martin Scorsese; Writers: David Grann (novel), Eric Roth; and Star: Leonardo DiCaprio. Pretty impressive names.

You know, any time a writer cashes in this big, it makes me happy, regardless of Hollywood's dismal record of handling really good books.

Here's hoping the movie is as good as the book.

Lawrence Alvin Weber 05/30/1925 - 10/03/2016

Picture taken February 8, 1944

Lawrence Alvin Weber died in his sleep October 3, 2016 in Aurora, Colorado. He was 91 years old and a long way from home. But he didn’t know it.

 He was born May 30, 1925 in Luther, Oklahoma to Lawrence Leland and Emma Mae Jarvis Weber. He was the second of four children, the only son in this farming family, surrounded by a thriving rural community of 613 according to the 1930 census. And of those, a good many were members of his extended family.

So much of his life’s focus must have come from his beginnings. He was a child during the Great Depression and Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl years. Being a child and busy with school and sports and his family and friends these hard times probably weren’t as much a concern for him as they were for the adults. Because his family farmed, they had food to eat. As long as the weather cooperated and their crops came in. But the national sense of unease, of not knowing where the next meal was coming from, must have filtered down to the children.

He would always be concerned about people having enough to eat. All his life, even when he lived in town, he grew a big garden and produced enough food to can or fill his own freezer and the extra he gave away. You couldn’t visit Momma and Daddy in the summertime without going home with fresh vegetables. After he retired, he volunteered at the Edmond Hope Center where he worked in the Food Room.

On the heels of The Depression and the Dust Bowl came World War II. In October 1943, his senior year in high school, he enlisted in the Navy. The Seabees, the Construction Battalions.

I asked him why the Navy. I knew he couldn’t swim. In fact he never was comfortable swimming even after he learned. He said it was because they were required to provide better food than any of the other services. Plus he liked heavy equipment and they would teach him to use it.

The Navy took him out of the small rural town where he knew everyone and sent him off to Rhode Island where he knew no one. In those days joining the Navy was “for the duration.” And nobody knew how long that duration would last or what the world would look like when the duration was over. The Allies were not necessarily odds-on favorites in the war against Hitler’s Germany. And the survival of any individual member of the armed services was far from guaranteed.

From Rhode Island, which must have felt very foreign compared to Oklahoma, Daddy was sent across the country by train to California.

That was the first time he’d been to Colorado. The trains were still steam locomotives. And they were routed north from Denver into Wyoming then west through the South Pass because the Rockies were too high in Colorado for the trains to pull.

From California, he was shipped out to the Solomon Islands. On April 1st 1945, the 82-day battle for the control of Okinawa started. Daddy was there. In all, the 10th Army had 182,821 men under its command including over 88,000 Marines and 18,000 Navy personnel (mostly Seabees and medical personnel.) Nearly 250,000 people died during that battle. 14,009 American soldiers. More than 149,000 of the island's 300,000 civilians, and more than 77,000 Japanese Soldiers.

His 20th birthday fell two-thirds of the way through that battle, in the midst of such death and destruction.

The only thing, really, that he ever talked about Okinawa was when they were hit by a cyclone. That must have been the one thing like home to a young man from Oklahoma.

When I wanted us to go to Mexico one vacation when we were on the South Texas gulf coast, Daddy said he'd promised himself when he was in the Navy that if he ever got back to the United States, he was never leaving it again. And he didn't.

It’s always frustrated me that he never seemed to feel that the apocalypse was at hand, like I did. Not during the Cold War when the magazines were filled with bomb shelter blue prints and the nation was stock piling water and dried food in public bomb shelters. Not during the most violent days of the Civil Rights Movement when American cities were burning. Not during the war and anti-war days of Vietnam.

I didn’t know that maybe it was because he lived most of his childhood in a world on the verge of disaster. And came of age in the midst of incomprehensible death and destruction.

I don’t think he’d have been too worried about this year’s election cycle even if he’d have understood what was happening.

I did appreciate that when we would move to a new house, if it didn’t have a storm shelter, he had one built and always one that was big enough to accommodate our family and any in the neighborhood who needed a safe place to come.

He grew food and provided safe shelter.

I think the thing I most admire about my Daddy was the way he took care of my mother. During her last years she developed dementia. To the point that toward the end she didn’t know any of us – even Daddy. She’d see him coming up from the barn and she’d ask “Who is that man?” But when he spoke she knew him. She always recognized his voice.

My Daddy concentrated on what needed to be done and did what he could. With grace and good humor.

He enjoyed babies – any kind of babies – calves, puppies, chickens, goats, grandkids and great-grands.

He liked to play. Cards with Momma and friends – the women against the men. Work-up softball in the yard after work with my brother and me and all the kids in the neighborhood. Or a pick-up basketball game at family get-togethers. He put up a basket down by the barn after he retired to his acreage in Logan County. That was so Momma and the grandkids could play HORSE.

And he cooked. And he ate. He was the best person to cook for because he liked everything. And he always appreciated good food.

When my brother and I were growing up, Daddy’d take us either to the Texas Gulf Coast or Colorado for formal vacation. When we moved to Colorado after Mother died Daddy would always comment that he never thought he’d ever live somewhere as beautiful as Colorado.

Oklahoma was always “home,” but his home in Colorado always looked “just like a picture.” And he felt at home there.

Picture taken December 2013

Skies!

Colorado sky

The only thing in Colorado bigger than the mountains and the prairies is the sky.

I know, I know. All the writing teachers that I've had the good fortune to meet tell you not to start your story with a weather report. The old "It was a dark and stormy night" bugaboo. But, you know what? Skies and their weather are facts of nature that we can't ignore no matter how we're surrounded by concrete, glass, and steel.

I lived most of my life in Central Oklahoma where paying attention to the weather can literally save your life. There, people learn early on what the Fujita Scale is. And when the television meteorologist says to get below ground, you're glad you have a storm shelter. Or your neighbor does and they are kind, generous people with whom you have a reasonably good relationship.

The nice thing about meteorologists in Oklahoma is that they have the equipment and trained personnel to track tornadoes. They can tell you what town -- indeed, what intersection -- the storm will be crossing when. So if it's not your neighborhood right now, you're free to enjoy the show. And even when the Oklahoma skies are the most threatening, they are beautiful. And exciting.

Lucky for me, I now live at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, one step above the prairie. 

Tornadoes can happen anywhere in the world. Even in the mountains. But they're small, much less damaging than the big Super Cells that grow over the open plains. Here at the edge of the mountains, storms are born and build as they move east out onto the Colorado prairie. There they can become the monsters I've known in Oklahoma.

But, not here. Lightning and wind are certainly hazards, but with reasonable precautions, the skies are not dangerous. They're just beautiful. 

The sky is a splendid distraction from my life and a balm to my spirit almost anytime I need it to be.

We had two dreary days in a row. Cloudy and a heavy mist. Not a real rain, just soggy air. The kind that collects on your glasses and you have to use the intermittent setting on your car windshield wipers. Until a truck passes you and the splash back blinds you for that less than a second that seems like forever until you can hit the windshield wiper button for an extra swipe to clear your vision. 

Makes you wonder whatever happened to those mud flaps that trucks used to sport. (You know, the ones with the buxom chrome maid on a background of black rubber who might promise more than you're interested in right then, but at least she delivered protection against what that truck's tires merrily kicked up in your face.)

And then. And then. The sun came back. It was stunning. 

I spend a lot of time with my dad. He has dementia and lives in a residential care home. Not the most pleasant way to spend the rest of his life, or even the few hours of my life that I visit there. That afternoon he and I sat out on their back patio and basked. Two turtles in straw hats just glad the sun was back.

As often happens here, the afternoon sun spawned storm clouds. 

They gathered high into the impossibly blue Colorado sky. They were magnificent. And I had my cell phone which takes pretty good pictures. BUT, I was driving in rush hour traffic. I could snag a few shots when I came to a stop light, which is usually pretty often along the first part of my route home.

Not that day. Wouldn't you know, I hit green lights all along Broadway. (When would I ever complain about green lights in rush hour traffic?) Then finally I hit a red one.That's when I got the pic at the top of this blog. There would be rain in the night. And rain on the high plains desert of Colorado is good.

     

Photos taken at the last stop light before the highway becomes a freeway.

The car radio was off. No bad news. The car windows were down. I noticed how many other drivers were enjoying their ride with their windows down and the air washing through their cars and their lives with light and promise.

From one day to the next, we'd gone from gray cloudy mist to sunshine blue skies to glorious life-affirming rain clouds.

Skies! It feels good to remember life ain't so bad.

Zory

Today is the last day of the 2016 April A to Z Blogging Challenge. Writing has always been my most effective way to process events, curiosities, life questions. Sometimes small and easily overlooked, sometimes too big and scary to look at directly.

Today is Z and today's piece is not a story or an essay or any other organized piece of literature. It's just an exploration without making a point or even identifying the point. Maybe some day one or more of these people will become a character I can get inside of and write a story. Or maybe I can do enough research to craft an essay with a point.

Until then let's just wander through my memories and ancillary thoughts, keeping in mind that they are my memories and thoughts and, as such, are flawed.

With the plight of the refugees trying to get out of the middle east, I think of the only refugees that I've known very well.

When I was in high school, Maria, one of my best friends, was a Cuban refugee. (I'll use a fictitious surname for the family.) I don't know exactly when Maria and her family left Cuba or how they ended up in Oklahoma. Maybe she said, but I don't remember.

What I do remember is the story about Zory. Maria, who had two younger sisters, was a year ahead of me in school. Luly was my age, and Zory was the youngest.

When the family left Cuba, they were allowed to bring only the clothes they wore.

While fairly rare in Oklahoma to have girls younger than our mothers' age with pierced ears, it was not uncommon for baby girls in Cuba to. And Zory did. Mrs. Sanchez put her ruby earrings in Zory's ears. They were her engagement gift from Mr. Sanchez and she hoped to be able to keep them.

Officers at the airport took their money. They took Mrs. Sanchez's jewelry including her diamond wedding rings, but did not question the ruby earrings in the baby's ears. They let Maria's mother keep her fur coat, too. I guess the coat wouldn't have been very valuable in Cuba's tropical climate or the new communist mode.

It's the ruby earrings smuggled out in Zory's ears that I most remember about their refugee story. How scary it must have been getting the baby through the officials onto the plane that would take them to the United States and freedom. Even now, just thinking about it conjures fear in my heart.

When I heard the story, my drama-teen mind imagined communist police ripping the earrings out of baby Zory's ears. Maybe that is exactly the thought that sits in my chest today making my breath shallow as I write this.

My today's mind knows that would likely not have happened. A more frightening thought now is that smuggling ruby earrings would have been sufficient cause to stop them getting onto the plane.

Maria's family owned a school in Cuba. I don't know where exactly, but her father ran the school and taught there.

Maria told us that her father originally supported Castro against the dictator Batista. Because her father supported the rebels, the Batista people had him on a list for execution. So they were happy when Castro won. But then Castro turned communist. (That's how we American's saw the events in the early sixties.)

The Sanchezes owned two houses, one in the mountains where they spent the summers because it was cool. Then Castro closed all the private schools. He took the school property and their home in the mountains and began rounding up the country's educated and upper class people. Mr. Sanchez began working against Castro.

Maria told stories about the anti-Castro young people roaming the city at night spray painting anti-communist slogans on walls. She told us about being chased by the police.

When the Sanchezes heard that Mr. Sanchez was on a list to be arrested by the Castro regime, they decided to leave Cuba.

In Oklahoma, the Sanchezes lived in a small frame, two-bedroom, one bath house. Mr. Sanchez, who spoke English, worked in a factory until he was able to get a job teaching at a Black university. Mrs. Sanchez, who did not speak English, did alterations for a department store.

By the time I knew them, which was maybe three years after they left Cuba, the girls spoke English, their only accent -- Oklahoman. I knew they lived differently from most of us. They ate avocados with olive oil. They put beans and rice on to cook for supper every evening after school, because their mother didn't get home from work until after six. (Most of our mothers didn't work.) They weren't allowed to date. Not even after they were sixteen. They only had one car.

Back then I never thought about how different it must have been for the three girls. The Sanchezes were white upper-class Cubans. In Cuba, they had two homes, servants. Their father was a recognized intellectual. They enjoyed status. They had extended family and family friends they'd known all their lives. They celebrated holidays and birthdays with Cuban music and Cuban food and Cuban games. And attended church where they had been christened. All in Spanish.

In Oklahoma, they spoke Spanish only in their home with their family and their little dog Dukey. The Cuban exile community in Oklahoma did come together for celebrations and partied in Cuban style. But then they would all go away again, to their adopted Anglo-Oklahoma lives.

I lost track of them when Luly and I graduated high school, but I know the Sanchezes sent Maria and Luly to college. Maria even joined a sorority, which must have been sort of like the social groups she would have enjoyed in Cuba -- but still no dating.

It's not until now as an adult that I think how lonely Mrs. Sanchez must have been. To work all day, when she'd never worked before. To hear nothing but an alien language from the time she left home in the morning until she came home at night. To know what a privileged life her children could have had, had things not gone so badly wrong in the land of her birth.

I remember her dressing to go to weddings of the children of her Cuban friends and friends of her Cuban American daughters. She always wore her fur coat and the ruby earrings.

If I were writing her story, that coat and the Zory earrings would be declarations of defiance and perseverance and, in the end, victory.

Namaste

When I went to bed last night, I hadn't the slightest idea what I'd write about for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Today is N. "No." Maybe "Never." Definitely something "Negative."

I was tired. I'd spent the day in a hospital ER with my aged father. We were under a Winter Storm Warning with the promise of a two- or three-day snow event. Seven to fourteen inches of the white stuff for our Denver suburb. April is the Second Snowiest Month in Colorado.

A good sleep and waking wrapped "in my sweet baby's arms" with that tell-tale white, early morning snow-light seeping through closed blinds and I had a smile and today's N-word.

Namaste. (NAH-məs-tay)  According to Wikipedia, it's a respectful Hindi greeting meaning "I bow to the divine in you."

Yesterday, as my husband and I were heading home, by way of our favorite Mexican restaurant. We hadn't eaten since breakfast. Anyway, there was a Jeepish vehicle ahead of us with all kinds of stickers on its backside. One touting pet adoption, another outdoor recreation, a "native" bumper sticker, one of those ecumenical bumper stickers like so:

              

By using the standard background for a              I've seen this one in several states
       Colorado license plate, the bearer proclaims       and I like it.                                            

their having been born in Colorado, a rarity.                                                               

And there in the middle of the spare-tire was the biggest. It said Namaste. Even without those magnificent Rocky Mountains rising in the near distance ahead of us, I knew I was in Colorado.

Words are my life! The language we speak, where we learned to speak it, and where we speak it now.

I'm from Oklahoma where license plates say "Native America." Native there refers to Native Americans -- Cherokee, Comanche, Cheyenne, Choctaw, and those are just the C-tribes. According to the the U.S. Census Bureau, Oklahoma has the second highest population of Native Americans of any State in the Union. (Behind California, because I know you wondered.)

Namaste is from those other Indians. I don't think I've ever seen "Namaste" stuck on the side of a vehicle in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma's not exactly The South. It's really more the Southwest. But it's definitely South of Colorado. So I say "y'all." I call my father "Daddy." I drink "pop." I jam words together --  at meal time I might ask "Jeet yet?" and a fellow Oklahoman might answer "No. Joo?" And we might have fried chicken or chicken fried steak. Or a burger. (McDonald's and its golden arches are the same everywhere.)

In Colorado, I've discovered green chili. That's a spicy stew of tomatillos, chili peppers, and pork.

When we lived in southeast Arkansas, they greeted everyone with "Hey," and ate the best fried catfish in the world.

I knew that one of our local police officers there in Crossett, Arkansas was originally from central Texas as soon as he talked about a "tank." He meant a body of water that Oklahoman's call a "pond." Here on the Front Range, Coloradans would call it a "lake."

Just thinking about the intricacies of languages and all the cultures across the world makes me happy.

Let it snow! Namaste, y'all.

Justice -- Reality or Illusion?

I am real. I am typing this right this minute. The letters are appearing on my laptop's screen and forming into words. Into sentences. Forming symbols that will convey my understanding of Justice to anyone who can read English.

Reality or Illusion?

I might be an app and if I am there would be no need for me to use a keyboard. And this minute could have been hours ago. Or days. Or years. The letters may never have appeared on any screen until you started reading this post. And, I can assure you, only I will understand the thoughts I write exactly as I intend them to be understood. And that's just for today. Some tomorrow, I will have forgotten most of today and experienced enough of life to change my understanding of Justice.

Merriam Webster defines Justice as:
1   a :  the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of
           conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments
     b :  judge
     c :  the administration of law; especially :  the establishment or determination of rights according
           to the rules of law or equity
2   a :  the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
     b (1) :  the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2) :  conformity to this principle or
           ideal :  righteousness
     c :  the quality of conforming to law

I want Justice to exist, especially the fair part.

We humans are not alone in this. My husband and I used to have two dogs. Oscar a Dachshund and Bess the Basset Hound. (Actually, we've had many dogs, though never more than three at a time. And cats and birds and fish. And the idea of wanting fair treatment has been observable in all of them. Well, maybe not the fish. I never got well enough acquainted with individual fish to be able to ascribe to them any particular interest in anything other than food and sex.)

Anyway, Oscar and Bess liked to lick our yogurt cups and ice cream bowls. When there was only one for us to share with them, we had to give the other a doggy treat. Even then, they could hardly wait until their sibling finished so they could get a chance at the cup or bowl. They made it quite clear that they did not consider a Milk Bone in lieu of the yogurt cup or ice cream bowl, fair.

I think the desire for Justice is the driving force for the popularity of fictional murder mysteries. Although true crime inspires many nonfiction books and television shows, it's fiction I like. In a novel, TV show, or movie you almost always find out who done it. And the murderer is dealt with, promptly and without regard to their family or financial status. That's fair.

Unless, of course, the accused is innocent, then Justice is served because they are acquitted and the right baddie is identified. We're still talking fiction here.

That's why I write Science Fiction/Murder Mysteries. (Murder on Ceres)

Real life and true crime stories don't work that way. In real life, unless you personally know who done it (or maybe you did it yourself) you can never be sure that the right person is 'brought to justice.' And all too often the application of Justice is capricious and random.

Reality is if you get caught smoking a joint in the privacy of your own home in Denver, you might be considered inhospitable if you don't offer your guest a hit.

Get caught smoking a joint anywhere in Oklahoma and you could face a felony charge and one year in prison. Get caught again, and you could be looking at two to ten years incarceration.

More reality, in Oklahoma, a person can get convicted of First Degree Rape and be sentenced to five years. Or anything up to life without parole. Or the death penalty.

Wait a minute -- step across the Colorado State Line into Oklahoma and get caught more than once smoking a joint and you could be sentenced to more time in jail than someone who gets the minimum sentence for First Degree Rape. That can't be fair.

Ah, the reality of Justice is murky water meandering through a dangerous bog. (That's why lawyers get the big bucks.)

Now, I'm not a lawyer and I sure ain't gonna smoke marijuana in Oklahoma.

Think I'll stick to fiction where Justice is the kind of illusion I want to be real.

My New Hometown

Main Reservoir

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk with a group of people I met in a Silver Sneakers exercise class at Carmody Rec Center in my beautiful hometown of Lakewood, Colorado. Main Reservoir is where our walking group walked today. It is 1.9 miles from my house. If you look really closely that's Green Mountain on the horizon.

I wasn't born here and I wasn't raised here, but this is my hometown. I don't have to go anywhere to be in vacation country. The skies are almost always blue. The snow melt water is clear where it's shallow and blue where it's deep.

Where I was born and raised the water was red -- Oklahoma Red Earth red. You can see those red ponds and lakes and creeks and rivers from high in the sky. Now, don't get me wrong. Oklahoma is beautiful, too. In its own way.

Oklahoma's most beautiful feature is its sky. In an Oklahoma wheat field if you lie down on the ground and look straight up, you'll see nothing but sky. No hills. No trees. You can hear red-winged black birds whistling to each other. And if the wheat is ripe enough, you can hear the wind rattle the grains as it sweeps across the field.

Thunder and lightning and gust fronts can bring you rain in Oklahoma. Or not. If there is rain, you can smell it before it falls on you. And in a hot, dry summer, that is the most glorious scent in the world.

If you live in Oklahoma, you go some-where-else when you go on vacation. When I was growing up we went either to Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast or to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Now I live year-round in the middle of a vacation.

Kountz Lake in Belmar Park

My walking group walked here last Thursday. That's an island out in the middle, favored nesting grounds for Double Crested Cormorants, Snowy Egrets, and Blue Herons. This property was once part of the Bonfils family's estate. They were the Denver Post Bonfils.

The Tuesday before that we were at the Stone House.

                                                       

                          Chickory Plant                                                           Bear Creek.
               It grows wild at Stone House.                       Bear Creek runs through the park at  

               It's identified as a Noxious Weed,                Stone House. The creek heads up near

               but grind its roots and brew with                  Mt. Evans the highest of the Chicago     

               strong coffee, serve with beignets                 Peaks in the Front Range. Those are
               and you have the taste of New Orleans.        the mountains you can see from Denver.

                                                   
All this with easy access to an international airport, an excellent ballet company, a Level I trauma hospital, more professional sports teams than I ever imagined possible, the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, nice people who've moved here from all over the world, Starbucks that will soon be serving beer and wine, The Tattered Cover (my second favorite independent bookstore,) and my favorite husband.

What more could I ask for?!

The Relief of Ignorance and Intolerance by Innocence -- Creative Nonfiction

In November of 1979 Iranian students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days. That was almost twenty-two years before 9/11. Before Homeland Security. Before the TSA. Before we had to take our laptops out of their bags at the airport. In fact, before laptops. Before cell phones.

I was divorced living with my young son in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I had quit my job with the state welfare department because, in that small town, it was too easy for people to find out who and where my son was. And sometimes my workmates and I had to do things that made people angry. Angry enough to threaten us.

My new job was Night Manager at a Taco Bell, in Stillwater, home of Oklahoma State University, some 35 miles away. The pay was only a little less than I made as a Casework Supervisor and I wasn’t involved in taking anything away from anyone. Not their food stamps. Not their income. Not their children. And no one went to bed hungry because the paperwork didn’t get done right or there was a computer glitch at the head office.

Back then, in Oklahoma, we didn’t pay much attention to the problems in the outside world. Vietnam was over. The Oil Crisis following the Iranian Revolution raised the price of oil and Oklahoma’s economy boomed. Ireland and the Middle East, with their seemingly unsolvable conflicts, were little more than unpleasant background noise. And they were far away.

Tuesdays were slow days at the Stillwater Taco Bell. It was located at the end of The Strip, a local term for a stretch of street running south from the University to State Highway 51. Its most plentiful businesses were bars. And their primary custom came from college students. By the time the students made it down to our place, they were in a good mood and hungry. Of course the TV ads for Taco Bell right after the 10:00 o’clock news would bring out those who’d been at home studying or something. More than a few with the munchies.

We knew little and cared less about what was going on in Iran. The Shah was in exile and sick. He was admitted to the United States for medical treatment. Barely a blip in the news.

Americans were not particularly anti-Muslim. Few Americans knew much about them. Other than they hated Jews. And the Israelis hated them back. White Americans despised Black Muslims, people born and raised in this country. Probably more because they were Black than because they were Muslim.

I love college towns. They bring in people from all over the world. And at one time or another, most of those people would end up in our store.

The hostage situation in Tehran changed Americans’ laissez faire attitude toward people they identified as Arabs. Never mind that Iranians are not Arabs.

That Tuesday night a group of six students – two women and four men – made their way into the store at about 11. There were baseball caps and cowboy hats. The men were clean shaven. The women wore the acceptable amount of makeup. They were fresh-faced, all-American kids in a partying mood. A little bit rowdy, but cheerful.

Right after they got their food, two young men came in and ordered food. They had dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. They were quiet, well-mannered, and showed no signs of drinking.

The mood of the room changed. The group of six watched the newcomers silently. The two who were “not from around here” found seats as far away from the locals as they could. In a store that size, those seats were not far enough away. Not far enough that they couldn’t hear the low-level comments.

“Rag-heads.”

The two dark young men stopped talking to each other and studied their food.

“Why don’t they go home?”

We closed at midnight and had only two people working – myself and a 19-year-old. A college student like the group of six. But Lisa spent her evenings working rather than bar-hopping or going to Taco Bell for a quick food fix.

 “Sand n****rs,” someone said too loud.

Lisa stopped stirring the refried beans and watched me. I watched the customers and wondered if I should call the police.

Another customer came in – a tall young white man, a little unsteady on his feet. He took off his cowboy hat and approached the counter.

The room went quiet. All the customers watched the new guy. Unaware of them, he ordered food, “Three tacos and a Pepsi.”

He smiled at Lisa as she filled taco shells with ground beef and the prescribed amount of grated cheese, then carefully wrapped them in paper.

The six stood up. Their sudden movement startled the young man and he turned to look at them. We all looked at them. Unsure of what they were going to do. Unsure of what we would do.

“God bless America,” they sang. They sang that reverential anthem at the top of their lungs with anger and malice and stormed out of the store.

Completely amazed, the tall young man exclaimed, “Damn. They’re drunker than I am.”

Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek -- An Essay

 image from xfinity.comcast.net

Leonard Nimoy

   March 26, 1931 -- February 27, 2015

This is a description of the world as I knew it when Star Trek and its cast came into my life. Leonard Nimoy’s death has given me an opportunity to think about how the world was then and how it’s changed.

I grew up White, Protestant, working class, in Oklahoma.

In 1966 I graduated from high school. Most of my close friends had graduated the year before and my college experiences started when they started college. With them I met Black people and gay people for the first time. “People” isn’t exactly the right word. I met one Black, lesbian woman. Her color was obvious. Her sexual orientation was not, but she neither hid it nor announced it.

And “for the first time” is wrong, too. I spent my first ten or eleven years in small Oklahoma towns where segregation was a part of life. The schools were being integrated one grade at a time beginning with the 12^th grade and working its way down. The towns still had “white” schools and “colored” schools. “Colored” was considered the polite term by my parents. My grandparents used the “n” word. I don’t remember anyone using the word Negro, except the news people on TV. Our towns had one main street – two maybe three blocks long. Some of the stores served White people and some served Black people. I was never in a “colored” store. I’m sure there were Black people on the streets Saturdays, but I don’t remember them. I think kids are just like that. All people belong to one of two groups. They are either grown-ups or kids. And you don’t pay much attention to grown-ups unless they’re kin or authorities. And kids are kids. Color, religion, and language don’t much play into it.

There were very few Catholics, no Jews, no Asians, and no Hispanics. A few people spoke with accents mostly German accents, but they were grown-ups.

Before integration got to the grade I was in, we moved into the Oklahoma City School District which was segregated by residential practices. For those of you who don’t remember that, it means Blacks were not allowed by custom to live in White neighborhoods. No laws had to be enacted to enforce this type of segregation. The general White public did it, some tacitly, some aggressively.

We had one Japanese boy in our class. No other Asians, no Hispanics, and few Native Americans. (We called them “Indians.” We didn’t realize there were any kind of Indians other than Native Americans.) I had never eaten with chop sticks. I’d never eaten avocadoes. And my grandmother’s idea of spaghetti was spaghetti stewed with tomatoes and sugar served over mashed potatoes. Oregano was not in our lexicon. I did meet a Jewish girl at Girl Scout Camp the summer after the sixth grade.  

We were in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and we lived near Tinker Air Force Base. We all knew what number Tinker was on the Soviet hit list. We lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. Magazines had recipes for Jell-O salad and instructions for building a bomb shelter.

When the Oklahoma City School District was ordered to begin busing to integrate its schools, we moved to a college town north of Oklahoma City. A White, college town. Only the college was integrated and that not very much. Still no Black students in the public schools.

It was then that the ugliness of segregation struck me. Because it affected a fellow high school student. He was a year ahead of me. He was bright and funny and kind. And while in The City (that’s what we called Oklahoma City) he was refused service at a lunch counter because they thought he was Black. His ancestors were Italian and he was a life guard at the local swimming pool so he was dark-skinned. Somehow, the fact that they treated him like he was Black when he wasn’t was not the injustice for me. It was the fact that his dark skin could be used against him. That the color of anyone’s skin could be used against them. That was the injustice.

By the time I was in college, I realized that injustice covered a much broader field than just skin color. My friends who didn’t go to college because of finances or academic indifference or legal entanglements were being sent to war. My friends who were gay were being threatened. Black and White people were being killed because they wanted to help Black people vote.

Then Star Trek hit the airwaves. I could see on my little black and white TV screen all kinds of people working together to explore and save the universe. There was a competent Black woman, a half-Vulcan/half-Human man. There was a Japanese guy and a Russian. A Russian good guy. And the combination of people was presented to us as common-place, normal.

We’re part way there. There have been great strides in civil rights in this country. In most places we can be friends with, work with, live next-door to, and marry whomever we choose. The Internet makes it possible to communicate across most borders without needing permission. And in Space, we have the International Space Station and her diversity-rich crews. There’s more to do. There’s always more to do. But we truly are “going where no man has gone before.”

I know that Leonard Nimoy was not Mr. Spock, but he gave life and legend to the character who approached reality rationally and scientifically. His character was treated with love and respect by the other characters showing how it could be among humans (and part-humans.)

Nimoy’s family will miss him, the man they knew. They will know on a daily basis that Leonard Nimoy is gone. But us fans? We’ll soon forget that he is gone, because we’ll continue to see him as we knew him – Spock. We’ll see him whenever we want to. Or whenever we happen to. And he’ll continue to say to us “Live long and prosper.”

image from metalinjection.net

Mr. Spock

September 1967 -- Into the Future

Bess

Elizabeth  2000 - 2014

 

    Our good Bess. We got her as a pup in August 2000. Her people had taken her to a pet shop in Louisiana for sale along with several of her siblings. Lucky for us, she didn't sell and they gave her to us.

 

    Her working title was Scrunch, no doubt because of all that wrinkledy skin. Basset Hounds, in addition to being a full dog long and half a dog high, have enough extra skin to make an extra little dog. In honor of her breed's English heritage, we named her for Good Queen Bess. And the fact that Elizabeth the First had no offspring went right along with our plans for our Bess.

 

   She had the traditional Basset sad face, but she was the most cheerful dog we've ever had. She was completely oblivious to the vagaries of weather. Be it cold or hot, sun, rain, or snow, she loved the outdoors. She bayed 'possums until they passed out from fright and treed 'coons standing watch at the base of the tree until one of her humans could persuade her to come inside for the night.

 

    She was born in Arkansas, moved to Oklahoma, and then to Colorado. She didn't mind the moves as long as she had her family. Over the years, that family included cats and dogs and birds. And her humans -- a mom and dad and grandpa, two brothers and two sisters, a niece, and two nephews.

 

    We miss our Bess.



B is for Blooms

                              

                        April 2, 2014     B  is for  Blooms

 

      We have two blooms today. Our hibiscus is sitting in the front doorway to catch what ever scrap of sunshine comes her way. Alas, no sunshine today.

       My mother didn't keep hibiscus in the house. In Oklahoma she had hardy hibiscus outside. She did have house plants that lived inside in the winter and outside in the summer.

      Momma was very like her plants. She thrived in the sunshine. Cloudy, winter days were not good for her. Daddy built her a dining area that had a wall of windows facing south. There was a big open yard between the house and the barn with woods all around. She had bird feeders and pans of water for the wild animals sharing her living space. They had chickens and rabbits and dairy goats. And sometimes a couple of pigs or steers. One to sell and one to put in the freezer. And Daddy always had a big vegetable garden.

      She would sit at her table smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and watching her world. And she would think. She wasn't much to talk about what she was thinking, but she wrote. Letters, mostly. This was in the days before facebook and blogging.

       Her sister lived two and a half or three hours away, so they didn't often get to visit. Momma didn't like to talk on the phone but she and Aunt Dorothy visited regularly by mail. Long newsy letters about the animals around them, their children, the weather.

      Both were readers so they knew how to tell a story. They evoked the senses. The way the sunlight glinted off the brilliant yellow of the cottonwood tree in the fall when the world around them was going grey and brown.

      The scent of old fashioned roses, of honeysuckle, and lilies of the valley. The deafening clatter of hail on the metal roof. The taste of English peas right out of the pod while she stood in the garden.

      The shock of a bobcat snatching one of her chickens and leaping the fence with it before she could get to it.

      The humor of a squirrel dropping an ear of corn it had stolen out of the garden. The little thief dropped it on the patio and proceeded to quarrel at the humans because they were sitting on that patio and it was afraid to come down and retrieve the corn.

      I don't know what my mother thought about the questions our culture seems obsessed with -- politics or religion or celebrity foibles. If they interested her, I don't remember her ever saying. But I do remember experiencing the world around us through her, and I learned to pay attention to that world myself.