Erosion, volcanic eruption, earthquakes, floods, tectonic grinding, landslides, and other natural forces act continuously on the earth’s crustal rock, creating various types of debris: gravel deposits, mudflats in the tidal estuaries of creeks, cobble terraces, and beaches of black lava sand. When chemical agents such as phosphorus and nitrogen infuse this debris, and biological entities including microbes and earthworms work material into it organic enough to support plants, it becomes soil. A soil that is chemically or organically exhausted, that has been pulverized or become deeply parched, that has been invaded by decomposing rock, or that has been fouled by sewage or industrial pollution to the point where it can not support plant life is called dirt. Barry Lopez in Home Ground /Language for an American Landscape, a very nice book of very short essays pretending to be definitions. Thanks JR ! 
Category Archives: Americana
A couple of thoughts on the Boston Marathon
Any event with multiple explosive devices – as this appears to be – is clearly an act of terror, and will be approached as an act of terror. White House
Sitting here, nice and safe – looking at my computer monitor – I realize that my only real relationship with this Boston massacre is what I read and see on the screen. There is blood and carnage everywhere and every shot of that carnage has a person helping (usually several people). Every shot of terror also is a shot of Love.
I know that it is smart not to jump to conclusions because any conclusion includes a direction which may be a misdirection – believing IS seeing afterall – and I want so much for there to be conclusions. I want answers, and not just any answers, I want this to be a terrorist act by a Timothy McVeigh, not some Muslim and that makes my thinking and conclusions pretty unreliable.
As I read that the bombs were made from pressure cookers filled with carpet nails and ball-bearings, I wonder how anybody can hate that much and hold that hate long enough to do this. Hold the hate long enough to plan it in detail: to buy daypacks and pressure cookers, hold the hate long enough to assemble everything, hold the hate long enough to bring it to the finish line and look around at the people who will be killed or maimed. It is easy for me to say that They must be nuts. because I want them to be nuts.
I also realize how lucky it is that Trooper Charlie Hanger stopped McVeigh. It is possible that he would never have been caught and it is possible that who ever did this will never be caught. I don’t think so – with all the resources being poured into this case – and I hope not, but it is possible.
What sticks with me is how small the bomb seemed on television and how much damage it did and I hope they catch the Sons of a Bitches.
Rodger Ebert R.I.P.
I just learned that Rodger Ebert died. The world is a lesser without him. I have never met him, and I am not sure that I ever saw him on TV, but his writings were a big influence in my love of movies.
In the very early 70’s, I subscribed to The New Yorker to read Pauline Kael’s reviews but it wasn’t until I started reading Ebert that I found somebody who whole-heartily, unabashedly, loved movies. His reviews echoed that love. I think that alot of people say that they love movies, but they really only love certain kinds of movies, they only love movies that agree with them. Ebert seemed to love all kinds of movies.
American movies are a collective, most American Art. They cost alot of money to make, even cheap ones, so they – by and large – have to be directed towards the mainstream, meaning they can’t afford the personal indulgences of, say, painting or photography. I think that Ebert loved American Movies because he loved America, because he had a generosity of spirit toward the American quilt. He had his complaints he wanted things to be better, but he seemed to embrace America, warts and all.
Anybody who loves movies will miss him. My heart goes out to Chaz, his wife. Rest In Peace.
A couple of Immigration Ceremony photographs
Yesterday, there was a picture gallery of new US Citizens in The Guardian. They had just been sworn in as naturalized citizens and it reminded me of the only Immigration Ceremony that I have seen. It was in November of 2006. Michele and I had gone to see Marianne Nannestad become an United States Citizen. A United States Citizen having all the rights that I was born with and often don’t appreciate.
The Ceremony started out much differently than I expected. It was instructive, informative and legalistic with lots of detailed instruction rather than celebratory; it bordered on being jingoistic.
I have read that an organization is dead when it worries more about keeping people out more than it worries about trying to get more people in. While there are people in our country who feel that way, they are in a – shrinking, I hope – minority.
Towards the ceremony’s climax, the presenter, read a list of countries – in alphabetical order from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe including Great Britain from which there seemed to be a surprising (to me) number of people – that the immigrants were from. As the country was named the immigrants from that country stood and remained standing until the whole class -group? – was standing. Then the soon to be Citizens repeated the Oath of Citizenship that has remained unchanged since George Washington wrote it.
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.
In the end, it was very very moving. I left thrilled that I live in this great country that doesn’t just tolerate immigrants but still wants them.
Fossilized hubris
This morning, I heard somebody on the radio talk about fossilized hubris, but then I realized that was not what they said. It was only what I heard, connecting audio dots that weren’t there. Now I have fallen in love with that term, even if it is imaginary. It reminds me of the ruins of an old Mississippi plantation that Michele and I visited in 2008. The plantation had been captured by the Union during General U. S. Grant’s Vicksburg campaign and that campaign has been on my mind because it started about 150 years ago, in April 1863.
Michele and I went to Vicksburg in 2008 to see some Civil War Battlefields in which Grant had been the Union commander. Grant chose to not to attack the citadel of Vicksburg directly, instead going down river to a location near the, now, abandoned plantation. Standing on the parapets of Vicksburg – The Gibraltar of the West – overlooking the Mississippi, it was easy to see why.
Later, standing in the empty, quiet, ruins of the Plantation, sweating in the late spring sun, and surrounded by what would be called jungle anywhere else, we could feel how difficult even that road of attack must have been. But, standing in the abandoned ruins, the year that Barack Obama, a black man, would be elected President of the United States – in 2008 – was a very good feeling. It was like standing in fossilized hubris.