Friday, June 26, 2009

Great-Great-Great Gramps

I started reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States again and it prompted me to do a little research on the reasons why my family left Germany one hundred fifty years ago.




Young Ernest Gottfied in the Midst of Revolution and Civil War

All I know about Ernest Gottfied Schmieding, my great-great-great grampa, are basics: when and where he was born, married and died. Also, that his maternal grandfather was a paper-maker and his paternal grandfather was a merchant. The rest is historical conjecture. He was born in Herne, Germany in the year 1836. Herne is in the Westphalia (roughly translates to Western Plains) region of Northwest Germany, around the same latitude as London, and fairly close to the Netherlands. Herne is on Emscher, a tributary of the Rhein, in the Ruhr Area, which is now the fourth largest urban area in Europe, after London, Moscow and Paris. It has been called an industrial complex. This is what it looks like today:




The Ruhr, at the time of Ernest's birth, was afire in the the Industrial Revolution, with mines and factories sprouting everywhere, mainly coal and steel. Before the Industrial Revolution, people had been farmers for at least eight hundred years. A horse market fair had been established in the 15th century there, and today it has grown into a full-blown carnival fest called Cranger Kirmes, the second biggest fair in Germany after Oktoberfest. Last year, in 2008, 4.7 million people attended the 110,000 square metre fairgrounds, earning it the nickname of "most crowded fair in the world".




Some Pagan Musings

The Pagan Saxons were the ethnic natives of Westphalia, who fought the invading Franks and also the conversion to Christianity. After a hundred years of attempted conversion, they were finally and brutally converted by Charlemagne in the 8th century, who destroyed Irminsul, their giant pillar or world tree, sacred to either Ziu (Tyr) or Wodan (Odin). Bees, whose honey was made into mead, were also sacred in the Irminsul symbol, representing the tree stumps where they made their wild hives.




After a reign of nearly a thousand years, The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation declined and finally dissolved in the Napoleonic Wars thirty years before Ernest's birth. Napoleon raged across Europe and set his youngest brother Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte as puppet King of Westphalia. When Napoleon was defeated by the Prussians and the British, the Congress of Vienna established the German Confederacy, which was a conglomeration of 39 states and 4 city states, the most powerful of which were under the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Others were under the jurisdiction of the Kings of Denmark, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Bavaria, and Saxony along with other lesser German Dukes.


Revolution




Herne was under Prussian rule in the Province of Westphalia when Ernest was born. The people were poor, oppressed and censored. The Industrial Revolution made working conditions terrible. Cholera outbreaks and famine were spreading. When Ernest was twelve years old, in 1848, revolution broke out like fire across all of Europe.

The people of Germany demanded freedom of the press, free elections, a constitution of basic rights, the right to assemble, the right to arm themselves and trial by jury. In February, 1848, news of French Revolutionary victories spread to Germany. In March, the city dwellers demonstrated and the peasants rose against their still feudal states. What came to be called the March Revolution began. In Berlin alone, hundreds of demonstrators were shot. Within months, however, work was begun in Frankfurt on establishing general elections and the drafting of a constitution. The Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches (Constitution of the German Empire) was passed about a year later. However, within a few years, the rights were being undermined and revolutionaries were executed or imprisoned for lengthy terms. Unification was imminent and tensions between the Austrian Empire and the Prussians were rising. In 1866, when Ernest was 30, civil war broke out. The Prussians were at an economic and military advantage, with extensive railroad systems, needle guns and fast loading rifles. Prussian rule was inevitable.


Staten Island




Ernest fled to the United States, reached Staten Island and married nineteen-year-old New-York-born native Anna Ophelia Greene. Hopefully, Ernest didn't have any illusions about the United States. Maybe he wasn't aware that the States were still in the aftermath of American Civil War that ended the year before. True, slavery had been abolished, but working conditions were not a whole lot better. You would work 18-hour-days and get paid maybe $3 a week. They probably lived in overcrowded tenement housing, some of which still had no indoor plumbing and no windows, just a pump and an outhouse for over a hundred people to share. Thousands died from unsanitary conditions.




Ernest and Anna Ophelia started to have children. Workers were granted an eight-hour day after a three month strike of 100,000 in New York. But the rich got richer, Rockefeller founded Standard Oil and became America's first billionaire, and the poor were being laid off, evicted or killed in heaps of trash and sewer by the hundreds and thousands. In 1873 the country slumped into a depression. The following year in New York City workers assembled in protest and police responded with brutality. Women and children were stampeded by fleeing protesters. Bystanders were clubbed. Thousands more went on railroad strikes. Police again attacked, shooting and bludgeoning protesters in the skulls.

Ernest and Ophelia left the country for Ontario, Canada for at least ten years to escape the slums and sweatshops of New York, but eventually came back to settle in the United States in the Shelby Township on the Eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The biggest industry in Shelby was metal. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and working conditions in the iron mines and factories were still unsanitary and inhumane. Ernest and Anna had six kids to feed.

But in 1871, three years after the birth of their first child Charles Thomas, my great-great-grampa, Germany was united under Wilhem I, Emperor of the Prussian Second Reich.

Even though times were tough in the States, Ernest had escaped and spared his grandchildren the horrors of the Third Reich to come decades later.

The Monsoons are upon Zuni

Thunder is galloping in from Defiance Plateau. The wind is whistling between the stucco houses. The rain comes in waves, the sound indistinguishable from the wind-swept trees. It is four-thiry in the afternoon. They are right on time.

I saw the strange centipede again this morning. The yellow goat's beard seedheads, which look like large dandelion seedheads, are in full bloom. I sat behind the corn and squash this morning to draw a charcoal of the mesas behind Blackrock Reservoir, which is dry but verdant. The scanner here doesn't seem to work with the computer, otherwise I would have posted the drawing.

I've been sprouting adzuki and lentils, so I steamed some and made tostadas on fried corn tortillas with cheese, cumin and chili powder. They were tasty-fried-delightful.

Filled with too much caffeine and a bit human-starved (three-and-a-half days since I've interacted with one), I galloped and skipped to Finnish-folk-death metal, giggling and pretending I was a unicorn. I'm laughing out loud recounting this. I must have been inspired by the two or more double sky-wide rainbows that have appeared to me over the past few days.

The rains are subsiding. They'll most likely be back at the same time tomorrow or the next.

The photo was taken by David Bazan about a kilometer south of here. It is a Zuni cemetary.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

and the con-men...

Yesterday a dumpy white dude in jeans knocked on the door.

"Hi! Are you the owner of the house?" He was holding a can of Glade.

"Nope, I'm just house sitting."

"Oh, cuz if you were the owner of the house I could shampoo your carpets!"

I looked at him with puzzlement, wondering how he'd do that exactly with a can of Glade, but I just smiled and shook my head.

"Ok, thanks! Have a good day!"

Later at dusk a young good-looking Zuni knocked on the door. He had tattoos and a CD in his hand. He spoke nervously.

"Hi, I was...I'm wondering if you would like to...I'm selling my paintings."

"You know, I'm house sitting for this family and I don't have any cash."

"Oh. Ok. Can I have a drink of water?"

I wasn't going to deny him a drink of water and, while I was aware of the disparity in that the white family I'm sitting for has thousands of dollars worth of electronics and hundreds of dollars worth of liquor while the local youth go door to door for a little cash, I still wasn't going to let him in the house.

I made an excuse as I shut the screen door behind me. "There's a dog."

I came back out with a glass of water which he finished quickly.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

"Thanks. You too." He didn't hear what I said and was already walking away.

The Double Rainbow Over the Storm and Power Flickers in the Uranium Capital of the World

Last night the edges of Andres, the first named storm of the season, bore all the way up here to Zuni, New Mexico. Andres itself is about 1,200 miles south, off the Pacific coast of Mexico, and may develop in to a full-fledged hurricane. The storm whipped up wind, spattered rain, and dropped strange fiery polyps into the sunset. A titan double rainbow filled the entire sky, while the mesas behind were aflame with the dusklight.

The power flickered and turned on the shorted-out jacuzzi on the back porch. Shevy and Max were over and we didn't know what the sound was at first. We lifted the cover to see the swirling water around the jets. The water was cold and the smell of chlorine was overpowering. We decided that even if the jacuzzi was working, we wouldn't want to expose our bodies to that much chlorine.

It seemed the storm was over and night had fallen, when the power began flickering on and off. Neighbors cheered and whooped war cries every time the power died. After four or five flickers the power went out for good. Shevy informed me that power companies were notorious out around the Reservations. Not surprising.

The power came back on in the middle of the night, blinding me in bed. Luna, the cat was out all night hunting mice so I couldn't sleep, having had explicit instructions from my hosts to keep her in at night from the noisy, roving packs of wild dogs, whose barks (and yelps of the domesticated dogs desiring to join them) kept me up just as much. At sunrise, Luna nonchalantly galloped up near a destroyed and de-limbed mouse as I watered the corn.

Today, I learned that Grants, about 75 miles east of here and around fifty miles from my brother's land, was once the Uranium Capital of the World. I knew the proximity of the Trinity Site, the first atomic blast in the largest military installation in the United States, the White Sands Missile Range. I didn't know that it was (and we are) so close to the largest uranium deposits in the nation. Through the 1950's to the 1980's the area was the largest producer of uranium in the world. The miners were, of course, mostly Navajo, Zuni, Mexican and black. The first one to discover the uranium in 1950, a young Navajo named Paddy Martinez, worked as an impoverished miner scout under the railroad industry until he died, while earning corporations a killing. The operations boomed, busted, saw another boom after the 1973 Oil Embargo, and started winding down in the 1980's with falling uranium prices. The mines have mostly been closed since but in the last couple of years, uranium mining corporations have been trying to move back in to New Mexico. They are meeting a huge opposition from the Tribes, whose sacred sites are in some of the proposed mining areas. In fact, in January, Strathmore Minerals Corp. announced to its shareholders:

Strathmore believes that Roca Honda may be one of the best undeveloped uranium deposits in the United States. The New Mexico Operations office was opened in Santa Fe in 2005 and permitting activities for Roca Honda began in 2006. The project attracted Sumitomo Corporation of Japan and a joint venture agreement was signed in July, 2007. An ongoing permitting effort and feasibility study is underway.

Strathmore and Sumitomo are going in together 60/40, respectively.

And just a few weeks ago, Uranium Resources, Inc. announced intentions to file a petition for a review on whether or not a proposed site in Churchrock, New Mexico is Indian Country and therefore under the jurisdiction of a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Grants, New Mexico is now mostly a prison town, running most of the state's prison systems, but they seem eager to get back into the lucrative business of uranium.

Robert Gallegos, once a miner in Grants, published this poem in the 1982 collection, Ambrosia Lake:

we live and die to mine
to eat as we are eaten

in the mine there is the music
of the train
and the whistle of the miner
as he walks down the track

deep in the stope there is a song
whose verses are buried in the muck
and the slusher keeps humming
while the skips knock on the guiderails
as they go up and down the shaft

it's just a shallow mine
this open grave
wherein will rest a miner
until nothing is left but bone
white as the day moon.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Metal and the Black Night


I've spent my time the last few days humbly, reading in the corn garden overlooking the mesas, writing, or, embarrassingly, on the Internet or working out on my host's Bowflex machine listening to metal. I remember seeing them on infomercials and I always wanted to try one out. They're pretty ingenious and fun, like a whole gym in one machine.

I got hold of a Zuni metal band I found on Myspace called Corrupted Vision that plays around the Reservation and they invited me to a house party next week down in the village. I was so excited that I could hardly sleep. So I set up my typewriter on the dining room table and started writing a fairy tale, The Warlord's Daughter, about a beautiful princess born without a womb who overthrows her father. A good father's day tale.

I tried to go to bed around one in the morning, turned out the light and everything, but Guinness the dog needed to go out to pee, so I got up, put on a pot of coffee and like a true bachelor tore into a half-baked batch of brownies the mother of the house had left me. I opened the door to let Guinness out and the black night sucked me out, even though I was shivering in my briefs. The Milky Way stunned me as if cymbals were crashing through the sky. The dust lane loomed through the heavens like a dark sword surrounded with the gossamer filaments of the Orion Arm. The moon is nearly new. Meteors sparked down the edges of the sky. Star clusters (whose light left them when Pangaea on Earth began to split) appeared to my naked eyes. Jupiter's bright disc looked to truly have girth before the points that were the stars.

As coyotes and wild packs of dogs wailed and yipped in the distant bluffs, I thought again how I truly literally cannot see my place in the universe in the city.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Zuni, A:shiwi


Nestled in the red banded mesas of Northwestern New Mexico is the Zuni Pueblo, largest of New Mexico's nineteen Pueblos and, being geographically isolated, the most traditional. The Zuni, like the Hopi and other Pueblo Peoples, descended from the Ancient People, sometimes known as the Anasazi. Culturally and linguistically, the Zuñi (according to the Spanish) or A:shiwi (their tribal name, Shi'wi, meaning “the flesh”) are unique among the People probably because of their isolation.

The Zuni have lived in this area for at least 1,300 years. When the Spanish invaded around five hundred years ago, led by none other than the tyrant Coronado, the Zuni lived in six different villages, but after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the Zuni retreated to the top of the mesa Dowa Yalanne, Corn Mountain, for twelve years. After the return of the Spanish and a "truce" offered by the general Diego de Varga in charge of the reconquest they came down from Dowa Yalanne and established the present day Pueblo, Halona:wa known simply as the Zuni Pueblo.

Through the continuous attempts of Christianization first by the Catholic Spaniards and later the Mormon and Presbyterian homesteaders, the Zuni have remained autonomous and deeply spiritual. The People of Halonawa are mostly artisans of silver, ceramic and fetishes. The snake and horny toad fetishes my mother bought in Gallup when I told her I was trans were made by a Zuni artist. The snake and horny toad actually appeared to me at dawn the day I was to return to Texas.

Beginning on the full moon, the A:shiwi began their annual fasting in preparation for the summer solstice, called Deshkwi, in which no money can be exchanged. A few days before I arrived, the A:shiwi danced the solstice Rain Dances.

Shevy drove me to Black Rock, a "suburb" of federal housing four miles outside the Zuni Village so called because of the outlying fields of rough volcanic igneous. I will be house sitting for a family who works with the hospital literally up the street. Everything is red except the deep azure of the sky, the ground, the mesas, the houses, the rock half walls and community buildings. From their yard, you can see a dried up reservoir to the East (Yuna:wik'o, Wolf) and to the South (Donashi, Badger) sits the sacred Dowa Yalanne, Corn Mountain, or DY according to the white people. Corn Mountain is a two mile walk from the house.

The father of the household, an osteopath at the hospital, got home late and had to return to the hospital to finish paperwork. He informed me that many of the patients he receives have been beaten to a pulp, mostly from domestic violence, or have complications from alcohol, such as cirrhosis.

At the end of the night, the mother told me that "They really like heavy metal here." Apparently, metal bands play in their garages up and down the street.

I silently rejoiced. How very like home this would be.

The rain woke me this morning, pouring from the downspouts. The midsummer Dances called forth the green. The swallows dipped and glided around the house. I put on coffee and saw young Zuni running through the tall grasses before the red and green mesas, down the foot trails that run throughout the whole area. A Zuni Spirit came to me, a strange centipede with tall spidery legs like an Asian Dragon. The insect clamored toward my toes and then away to the corner of the room.

I pulled a book from the shelf and read of the Spanish Missions, Our Lady of Sorrows, one of which I remember seeing late one night on the way to Candy Kitchen and being spooked like hell. My sister, Sashenka and I had planned to camp in the Manzano Mountains State Park. But it was late at night and the cemetaries and missions that were nestled in with the brown camping signs were haunted with an evil that spooked us so terribly that we decided to drive though the night to Shevy and Max's instead of staying there. This book finally told me why these missions haunted us so. The Native People were enslaved to build these missions, inspired by fear with hanging galleries and whipping posts.

Staring out at dawn on the mesas, I could not help but mourn. But the memories of last night's Rainbow Maidens, sacred also to my Scandinavian ancestors before they too, much longer ago, were subjected as mere savage Pagans, danced in the same sky before the Zuni Mountains. The Rainbow Maidens reminded me of the great Strength.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Flight to New Mexico

Ma and I arrived at the DFW airport, which is literally the size of Manhattan, early enough to get turned around in the clover weave of terminals and not be late for the flight. We finally reached my terminal and I checked my guitar and backpack right on the street. I bid farewell to Ma and went on through Security.

As my Smith Corona passed through Security, the woman screening flagged me down and asked me to step aside with her. The guy behind me joked, "Whatchu got in there? Samurai swords?"

"Yeah, not too many people use these anymore." I replied.



The Security personnel were friendly and curious. "What is that? Oh, a typewriter? How do you open it? Are you a writer? How old is this thing? Do they still sell ink ribbons for these things?"

It passed the time as they wanded it for potential bombs and bullets, all the while the intercom's insipidly pleasant female voice warned of the High Terrorist Threat Level. "All unattended luggage will be confiscated by Airport Police." The disturbing reality of this Big Brother in airports is always surreal for me.

By the time I was finished with Security and reached my Gate, they were already boarding my group. We buckled in for the flight and the soothing female voice on in intercom stated that we would be landing in Albuquerque in about an hour and forty minutes with the lovely temperature of 64 degrees. Having dealt with the first rounds of near 100 degree Texan weather, all passengers in the plane, including myself, sighed contentedly.


Indeed, the clouds were gentle and cool, with Albuquerque subdued and surrounded by blooming desert mountains. The Century cacti are in full gorgeous bloom. On the way to Candy Kitchen, my brothers and I stopped for a while at a rock shop called Mama's Minerals. Shevy had to pick up jewelry supplies, so we spent a good while browsing. Max and I talked him into getting some hand-carved skull for amulets.

The drive home was pleasant and rainy. They have a new wooden sign at the corner of Sunburst Lane. The gardens that I helped plant before I left in the late spring are sprouting up. I met the new kitten, Aspen, who is a little adorable terror. Shevy made beef fajitas and they caught me up on the latest country gossip.



The pop-up camper is Queen Squishy Cat's abode now, which pleases her because she no longer has to share a trailer with two other cats. She slept with me all night and was very satisfied with getting absolutely all the attention.

This morning we ate fresh bread and jam for breakfast. I stepped out of the trailer with my mug of Yuban coffee and smelled the juniper and sand, sagebrush and wild flowers. Fiddles and lilting voices floated out of the trailer, recalling ancestors from across the Atlantic.

Shevy said in earnest that he missed me and Max gave me a Finntroll shirt, his form of affection. Love welled up in me like blood from a mortal wound. More than any place I've been, this place feels like home.

The wind whispers tales from across the Divide through the pines. The wolves howl at night under the piercing stars. Beetles crawl through the shadows of the gnarled trees, through scraggly orchards and rock-lined beds of kale, cabbage and spinach. The flaming wildflowers are firing up all around the rock shrine circle, erected by my brothers for the ancient Norse deities.

Shevy just made me an amulet strung with leather cord out of one of the skulls and fossils he got yesterday.



Tomorrow I go to Zuni to see the house and family where I will be care-taking a garden, a cat and a dog for the next month.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Texas Rangers Game and the Sunday Brunch Culminating in a Motorcycle Ride


Saturday Amanda's dad Brad gave us tickets to the Texas Rangers game in Arlington. The Rangers played the LA Dodgers. I had never been to a baseball game before. Sara, Chris, Amanda and I all drove down together. We pigged out on Sonic beforehand. I had chili cheese tots and felt vaguely poisoned with sodium and meat product. But it was good. The Stadium was huge, and walking up in throngs of Texan sports fans, hearing loudspeakers and the Star Spangled Banner, I was struck by the overwhelming feeling of history. Here I was, a country heathen not so well disguised in the midst of the citizens of the Empire in the Coliseum. Between my obvious queer appearances and Sara's loud remarks making fun of the war and some things about Iranians, the large redneck sitting next to Amanda was squirming in his seat. Amanda told Sara to pipe down, "We're in Texas!"

The game was slow. After four innings no one scored. Sara and I mocked the corn syrup content of the margarita drinks being sold by the walking vendors. She said something to the effect of feeling like she was getting diabetes just watching the people eat. One of the lights wouldn't come on so the game was delayed. We entertained ourselves with paper fans folded out of the baseball program. We bounced an alternating oompa dance to the baseball organ. Finally three scantily clad young girls ran out onto the green to toss free shirts at the restless crowd. More cheers erupted than sounded for the actual game. Sara and I donned elitist musketeer accents and said silly things like, "Unhand your shirt, wench!" But no shirts were tossed our way.

An hour and a half later the lights still weren't on so we became bored and left to go drink at home and watch the lightning to the north. Via internet phone Chris retrieved that the Dodgers won 3 to 1 with one home run each. All in all, we had a fantastic time.

Sunday morning Ma knocked on my door announcing the commencement of brunch-making. I helped her make cheddar biscuits while she cooked off bacon, potatoes and eggs. Her boyfriend Gary joined us to eat. It was delicious. The best meal I've had so far, though I have been sampling some tasty Texas wares such as enchiladas, chicken-fried steak, BBQ and fried catfish. My mouth is still watering.

Mom invited me to take a ride with Gary on the motorcycle. I accepted. With my mother calling "Hold on!" we rode off to see the country roads west of Denton. The wind was cool on the sweltering day. The sun beat down and wafted up from the cycle at every stop. Sweat beaded on my back and chest. We rode through wildflowers and past streams. Butterflies and birds flew around us. We stopped to pick horsemint for Ma. He joked about popping a wheelie and I wished he would have. A great blue heron took off in flight at a stream next to us. On the way home he joked that I should jump off a block before and pretend I fell off to Ma. I hopped off ungracefully and presented the mint to Ma.

A nice end and beginning to the week. A nice farewell to Texas, for in two days I fly to New Mexico.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Sired in Storms


My sister came over last evening with a twelve pack. I'm leaving Texas again in a week. A vague sense of urgency comes over me when I'm about to leave family. I have to keep reminding myself to stay present instead of going over all the things I feel I must do before getting on the plane or the train West.

It was well before dusk when the sky began to darken as we talked over Tecate and through drags of Bugler and Bali Shag. Old fears, old shames, old regrets began to unknot themselves slowly as we spoke. Little whips of wind started up. Lightning flashed in the distance, an odd golden light came from somewhere beyond the clouds. Each flash of lightning left a quick and true smile on my sister's face.

My mother drove up and parked just as we were speaking of the tribulations by fire in which our family was forged. She walked up, sat down. Gramma walked out with the poodle in her arms. Thunder rumbled. We spoke of our blood bond that was smelted in such a furnace that siblings of other families remarked on our powerful alliance with each other. This bond would grow more powerful as we continue to open to one another, as we continue learning to use the hammers and blades we were smithed into for creation rather than destruction or rather than carrying ourselves without use, as if our vigorous inception was a only a burden.

Lightning cracked and the thunderclap came fast behind it. The wind began to rise and out of trees arose the ascending wail of the storm siren. "What does that mean?" my sister vocalized. I said something about a tornado warning. Mom told me to check the weather radar before shutting down the computer. We dashed indoors and there was no tornado, but a wall of high winds and lightning that had already knocked out power, tree limbs and traffic signals. An oil well had been struck by lightning.

We battened down anything that could be blown away, scattering here and there. The rain came down in torrential sheets and the trees began to bow before the wind. I raised my arms to the sky, beamed and yelled out loud, "Now this is rain!" Laughing as the downpour drenched us to the skin, Shannon and I ran around to the back of the house to see the gutter spout cascade an absurd amount of waterfall into the back porch, which was already a few inches deep in water. We came inside sopping wet, slapping drops on the brick floor. We toweled and changed.

The front passed us quickly. We ordered pizza and ran for another twelve pack. Mom announced leaving for her boyfriend's house. She kissed Gramma on the forehead and Gramma mumbled disapprovingly, "Now hurry back." When Mom was driving away, Gramma muttered, "Boyfriends. You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em." Shannon and I laughed.

We ate and drank and smoked, listening to tremors of thunder, watching the storm die down and the sun set. Gramma went to bed. My sister looked into my eyes and in her smile was her heart. The beauty overwhelmed me and I spilled over in gentle tears.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

We Unashamedly Villainous and Wicked Heathens

A talk with a dear friend this morning led to the roots of the word heathen. She had heard the word mostly in a socio-political context without the religious connotations. I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary and reacquainted myself with the etymology. I looked into similar words: heretic, villain, vulgar, wicked and pagan, to be exact. All except heretic (which comes from Greek āίρετικός, meaning able to choose) have roots in words meaning someone from the country, a rustic, a farmer, a peasant.

The word heathen, dating to at least 971, is the oldest as far as being used to mean a non-Christian. From the OED,
A. adj. 1. Applied to persons or races whose religion is neither Christian, Jewish, nor Muslim; pagan; Gentile. In earlier times applied also to Muslims; but in modern usage, for the most part, restricted to those holding polytheistic beliefs, esp. when uncivilized or uncultured.

The word has generally been assumed to be a direct derivative of Gothic hai{th}i, HEATH, as if ‘dweller on the heath’, taken as a kind of loose rendering of L. pāgānus (orig. ‘villager, rustic’, later, after Christianity became the religion of the towns, while the ancient deities were still retained in rural districts, ‘pagan, heathen’).


The first known recording of word pagan as being a non-christian heathen hearkens from around 1440 in Morte Arture. It is from the classical Latin pāgānus, meaning of or belonging to a country community. It's earlier forms are payen and paynim, meaning the same thing, recorded in a Kentish Sermon around 1275. The word itself probably dates from the 4th century, further back than heathen, but was used before in the Roman Empire to mean just a countryman or civilian.

Vulgar(from Latin vulgus, meaning common people) and villain (from Latin villa, country house, i.e. one from a country house) date from the 14th century. The word wicked (derived from OE wíc, town, village or farm) was first found recorded around 1275, not surprisingly, as an adjective for wifman (wickede wifman).

Well, hell, I'm proud to be among cuntry folk!

Saturday, June 6, 2009

The Indigenous Norse

This is a great blog on the indigenous Nordic people called Saami. The music can be overwhelming, but it's incredibly well-researched, though sometimes translated confusingly. It's multi-lingual and packed with references and photos. Fun! I just wish I could read half the links...

The Saami


My brother in New Mexico is practicing Nordic shamanism. Next time someone says "I have a problem with European Pagans practicing shamanism, isn't that appropriating Native American culture?" I shall refer them to this blog, which says among other things, "Rock carvings and rock paintings indicate that Shaman practicing in the Nordic and the rest of the Saami areas go back to the Neolithic period and even further."

They even used a drum, called runebomme, and a striking Thors hammer rune-carved of bone!

Here's the post on shamanism:

Saami Shamans


And just what, you may ask, do these interludes of science and history have to do with Western Rambling? It helps me put the present in context. Then I can look back later and figure out why exactly a week in the Texas Hill Country in a cabin lit with oil lamps and watered with rainwater catchment, while buffalo grunt outside, made me think of my ancient ancestors in Scandinavia...well, really, it makes sense.

Pappy's Guitars and Cypress Valley, Texas

My Ma and I drove down to stay with my brother at Cypress Valley Canopy Tours, where he is so lucky to be running a farm. The Texas roads were exciting.



Cypress Valley is a beautiful place, nestled in the Hill Country west of Austin and near the Pedernales River. The creek bed is overgrown with palm ferns and old growth cypress trees, littered with fossils and quartz.

My brother has a cabin out there in a field next to the buffalo with his own (scorpion and hornet infested) outhouse. We used a shovel to dig holes for our business.






I found myself enamored with the buffalo, as if I was seeing an old friend for the first time in centuries. Zeus, who cannot be seen in all his glory, came down to the field as a buffalo, and I was open-mouthed and paralyzed as this god stood before me.



And the farm: My brother Ariel has planted the Three Sisters: corn, squash and beans, as well as tomatoes, eggplant, and an assortment of other vegetables. He raises chickens, two goslings, four top bar bee hives, and helps care for four horses. Every Saturday he takes his produce to the Austin Farmer's Market. I helped him plant, lay irrigation, feed the animals and mulch some beds.







Bees! Yay!



A thunderstorm moved in the night after Ma left and my brother and I stayed up late talking and listening as the wind thrashed the aluminum roof and thunder rolled through the sky. Ariel has an outdoor shower on his porch which I happily used when he was off running errands.

I got to take a zip line tour of the canopy and jump into the lake like Tarzan on a rope!





On a more personal note, just before we came down to the Hill Country, an old family friend had just returned the heirloom Les Paul guitar that our father had promised to my brother Ariel. In a briefly emotional moment, Ariel got to play the guitar for the first time in years.




Likewise, Ariel had a guitar of our father's that I had always wanted to play, a hollow-bodied electric. Ariel never played it on account of having a handmade Rosas from Spain. Ariel entrusted it to me and I took it back with me on the bus.



Thanks, dude. I love you.