These are some essays I've written. Some were op-ed pieces that appeared in local publications, others on various blogs. Coming soon will be video clips of video scripts I've written.
Note: The Red-light camera essay was originally written 6-11-07. Note how all the things I questioned have been revealed to be significant problems with the system.
Red-light Cameras: Safety or Revenue?
Copyright Susan Blumenthal
It’s
no surprise the Albuquerque City Council voted to lower the red light camera
citation fines. It’s part of the City’s on-going PR strategy that the cameras
really are all stopping dangerous red light runners, not fines. On closer
examination, the safety hype is dwarfed the real agenda: high traffic
intersections as profit centers for an off-shore company that gives the City a
small cut of the economic action.
While camera provider RedFlex
markets itself as “an Arizona company”, it is really RedFlex Holdings
Ltd., a Delaware corporation that is the American subsidiary of an Australian
company.
If the recent spate of articles in the local media pooh-poohing red-light camera “myths”; the City’s feel-good “Focus on Safety” red-light camera webpage touting safety statistics; the governor’s sudden flip-flop veto regarding the State pocketing a share of the red-light camera fines seem like a well-orchestrated lobbying effort maybe that’s because Redflex has a major incentive to fund one. Typically Redflex receives at least 75% of the fines in cities where its cameras are installed and, according to a headline in the 8/16/06 Australian, “Plunging Stock Makes Redflex Desperate for Revenue: Redflex is desperate to expand red light camera operations in the US to shore up a tumbling stock price.”
To justify the City’s argument that safety trumps the right of due process its website lists a litany of statistics related to a reduction in traffic accidents at red light camera intersections. But have these statistics been confirmed by any independent group? When the Washington Post investigated claims that red-light cameras made Washington D.C. safer, three outside traffic specialists independently reviewed the data and discovered that the number of accidents had actually gone up at intersections with the cameras. Inflated safety statistics were debunked in Cleveland when NewsChannel5 investigated that city’s claim of a reduced accident rate at red light camera intersections. And speaking of independent review, have any independent citizen groups reviewed the City’s contract with RedFlex? Maybe the governor did and discovered: wow, if the State takes its cut of the fines like it does for other traffic citations, it will put Albuquerque in a financial hole to keep its contractual obligations to RedFlex.
And, while the red light cameras may be making millions for the City now, it may be cost the City later if outraged citizens decide they’d like their right of due process back. Red light camera systems have been the target of costly lawsuits in other cities. In Ohio, a class action lawsuit is pending before that state’s supreme court claims that photo-enforcement violates the Ohio law that a motorist must be cited by a police officer who witnesses the traffic violation. As a result of lawsuits, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina terminated its red light camera programs after the North Carolina State Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. The same thing happened in Minnesota with that state’s supreme court stating: “Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."”
A lawsuit pending against Knoxville, Tennessee, its city officials and the officer that signed a red light camera citation seeks $1million in punitive damages and return of all fines collected. It challenges both the accuracy of the video capture—alleging a reduced frames captured rate for all but the first second of the violation— and the fact that the video can only be played back, not downloaded. A key point for anyone seeking to defend themselves by challenging the accuracy of the video.
Most significant is the Knoxville lawsuit challenges the mysterious website that provides the “proof” of traffic transgressions: “Ownership of the web site www.photonotice.com has not been determined and the nature of the relationship, and form of control or ownership by Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., of www.photonotice.com, is unknown.”
Indeed, this is the most troubling aspect of the red light camera system. A few minutes of Internet research reveals that the www.photonotice.com website is registered to Domains by Proxy, Inc., an Arizona company that conceals the true ownership of websites. The photonotice.com servers, PARK5.SECURESERVER.NET and PARK6.SECURESERVER.NET, are mentioned in a number of message board complaints related to phishing (a technique of using fraudulent email to gain personal information), spam and phoney eBay transactions. So if red light cameras are supposed to be all about safety, what about the safety of the data when an entity with murky ties to RedFlex —photonotice.com—stores massive amounts of vehicle data that can be linked to personal data via motor vehicle records?
Traffic safety is a complex issue. Red-light cameras are not going to make Albuquerque a safer place to drive any more than talking urinal cakes are going to decrease drunk driving accidents. These are simplistic smiley-face public relations campaigns not comprehensive public safety policy. Red light cameras will not solve fundamental traffic safety problems. They will not improve the focus of a person with the attention span of a squirrel on crack, or the get people who can’t master basic driving skills off the road. Nor will traffic cameras change accident-waiting-to-happen circumstances like a mini-van full of squabbling children; a sleep-deprived truck driver; the bravado of a teenager with too much car and too little judgment; poorly maintained vehicles and the myriad other situations that result in “accidents”.
Rather than trampling the due process rights of its citizens by morphing criminal violations into civil matters that enrich the coffers of an off-shore company Albuquerque should look at real solutions to traffic problems: better intersection engineering and traffic light timing, and more police officers that protect all aspects of citizen safety. Unfortunately, real solutions cost money…they don’t make money.
——Note: I wrote this piece in November 2005. It's ironic how the hot topic of bird flu just died away and how prophetic this essay is today.—
Tamiflu: The new Cipro?
Copyright 2005 Susan Blumenthal
Close on the heels of 9/11 came the infamous anthrax attacks that sent Americans scrambling for Cipro, an expensive, obscure, antibiotic used to treat bladder infections. To hear news reports then, anthrax was a potential threat to everyone: a terrorist-concocted disease sent through the mail. There were dire warnings to watch for powdery substances and envelopes with bad handwriting from unknown senders. The anthrax attacks had killed—gasp- five people. Who knew how fast it could spread—just like the panic du jour, Bird Flu.
The
anthrax “attack” proved to be boon for beleaguered drug manufacturer Bayer
which was suffering from its own “attack” of diminishing profits.
Practically overnight Bayer went from scrambling in search of a buy-out partner
to scrambling to ramp up production of Cipro in order to jump aboard the Bush
administration’s $643 million antibiotic stockpile train.
Ultimately, Cipro would be a pox on Bayer. The same year Cipro’s
patent expired—2003—Bayer agreed to pay the government $257 million and pled
guilty to a criminal charge in what federal prosecutors said was a scheme
to overcharge for the antibiotic Cipro in the largest-ever Medicaid fraud
settlement. The five-year scheme actually predated the 2001 anthrax scare and
was disclosed by a former Bayer executive who blew the whistle on the cozy
deal between Bayer and Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's
largest health care organizations.
Fast-Forward
to 2005 and the new Bird Flu threat. This time the savior is alleged to
be Tamiflu yet another outrageously expensive drug manufactured by yet another
European big-pharma company, Roche. Not only does Roche stand to reap
windfall profits from the bird flu scare so does Donald Rumsfeld and other
politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech
company that actually owns the rights to Tamiflu.
According
to a recent article in Fortune, Rumsfeld served as Gilead
(Research)'s
chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and still
holds a stake in Gilead valued at between $5 million and $25 million.
Learning from the mistakes of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and his seeing
eye trust, Rumsfeld sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the SEC and
the federal Office of Government Ethics and finally a private securities
lawyer, who advised him that it was safer to hold on to the stock. Selflessly,
Rumsfeld had the Pentagon's general counsel issue instructions detailing how he
could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the
Pentagon had to respond. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, a member of
Gilead's board, unburdened by such inconvenient conflicts of interest, has sold
more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005
Despite
Rumsfeld’s recusal from all things Tamiflu, the Pentagon ordered $58
million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress
is considering a multi-billion dollar purchase making the federal government
one of the world's biggest customers for Tamiflu. Roche expected 2005 sales for
Tamiflu to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004. Not bad for
a drug with disappointing sales since its introduction in 1999.
Predictably,
when a brand name is repeated over and over there’s a consumer stampede to get
it—especially if it’s supposed to protect from the latest biological
bogeygerm. Scoring some Tamiflu has become the latest drug craze with
Internet websites springing up to cater to desperately worried well. In fact, Roche claims
that a run on Tamiflu was the reason the company suddenly decided to stop
distribution, supposedly to prevent hoarding by increasing its own
inventory. Maybe that’s because in order to keep its deal with the U.S.
government, it’s going to have to stockpile the drug. By Roche’s own
account it’s not exactly pharmacology 101 to make Tamiflu. The primary
ingredient is Chinese star anise, a plant used in eastern medicine for
centuries, a plant that is difficult to cultivate and matures at a glacial pace
requiring six years of growth before it flowers. Not only that, it is
grown in only four provinces in China and can only be harvested between March and
May. Roche has already used some ninety per cent of the world's supply of
star anise in manufacturing Tamiflu, and scientists have estimated that
it will take 10 years to gather the number of fruits needed to produce enough
to treat a fifth of the world's population.
With
murmurings that other companies should be allowed to manufacture Tamiflu, Roche
went on the defensive proclaiming that only they and their selected partners
had the expertise to manufacture it. For “security reasons” Roche
spokesman, Alexander Klauser, said the company wouldn't disclose the
names of the manufacturers it planned to work with. "The production of
Tamiflu is a complex, 10-step process, which takes about a year," Klauser
said. "From the beginning, we've been working closely with outside
manufacturers who have the expertise to ensure the quality of the
product."
Enter
the outsource champion, technology whiz kid and patent busting renegade India
and one company’s claim “We can make that drug in a month.” What
about a shortage of nearly unavailable star anis? Pooh, pooh. According
to Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of Cipla Ltd. “We have been able to synthesize
it.” Not only that Hamied said his company’s generic version, oseltamivir,
would be much cheaper than Tamiflu. Hamied didn't say how and where he
plans to sell his product, but insisted he won't "break the law.”
Predictably,
Roche declined a direct comment on Cipla's announcement.
Ironically,
it was India that raced to “generasize” Cipro during the anthrax
scare. The Bayer monopoly price for a course of Cipro necessary to
treat anthrax was $350. The cost of the Indian generic? About $20.
Regardless
of availability and price the real question is how effective would
Tamiflu be should there actually be a bird flu epidemic and not just talk of
the possibility of one. According to a brief article in the Oct. 20, 2005
journal Nature, a young girl, provided with a prophylactic dose of
Tamiflu after experiencing mild influenza symptoms, developed a strain of the
virus that was highly resistant to the drug. Hmmmm. That doesn’t sound
promising.
Corporate
media ominously announce that bird flu has killed between 50 and 60 people in
Asia. Those killed were in close contact with birds that are characteristically
raised in cramped filthy conditions. In terms of death from other
diseases in the region from such things as simple diarrhea, 60 people is not
even a nanosecond bleep on the health radar.
So
the real question seems to be, is bird flu yet another media event and
opportunity for big pharma to reap largesse from out-of-proportion-panic to a
situation that doesn’t exist and may never exist, or is it a legitimate
concern? Even more chilling, how many MacNews nugget nibblers
rushed to eBay or an online pharmacy to score Tamiflu after hearing president
Bush describe the intelligent design version of Bird Flu: “Not only does the
reporting need to be on birds that have fallen ill but also tracing the
capacity of the virus to go from bird to person. Uhh…that’s when it gets
dangerous…when it goes bird, person, person.”
Then again,
maybe anthrax will make a comeback so the government can use up all the
stores of Cipro to make room for Tamiflu.
New Mexico Trilogy
copyright
Susan Blumenthal
Green Grass, The Ocean, British Cathedrals
and
Chaco Canyon
Some
people spend years moving from one place to another, searching for just the
right environment that makes them feel content and at peace with their
surroundings. Although it took me
many years to realize it, I am one of those lucky people who was fortunate
enough to be born in the right place.
The searching I did was inside myself. First, wondering why it took me
so long to figure it out and then pondering how to justify my satisfaction to
skeptics—or if I even needed to.
For
many years, the fact of being born and living all my life in New Mexico was a
source of embarrassment. “You
still live here?” a former classmate
at a high school class reunion gasped, incredulous. I stared at the floor and nodded.
What
could I say? Were my
accomplishments somehow negated by living in New Mexico? It was the first time I had been
equated with the place I chose to live.
I didn’t know exactly why I didn’t want to move. I couldn’t tell my former classmate
what it was that kept me in New Mexico because I didn’t really understand
myself. It was just a gut feeling
I was supposed to be here, maybe
that I was supposed to learn something.
Certainly, I hadn’t always felt content
about where I lived. When I was a
teenager I hated New Mexico, it
seemed so lifeless, so dry, so well. . . different. And for teenagers, different is not the thing to be.
At
age fourteen I’d never been out of
New Mexico until I flew to West Virginia to visit my aunt and uncle. I’d lived my whole life seeing only
desert—we called it mesa—against a backdrop of blue mountains, jutting up like
massive islands rising from a sea of sand and dry, brittle grass. The rolling hills of West Virginia
captivated me. It was green
there. Green everywhere. As far as the eye could see—green. In Albuquerque the only green was in
the carefully -tended miniature
oases of yards and parks.
There was no sand in the West Virginia landscape, only grass, vigorous
green grass. Grass nobody had to
plant. Grass that just grew. And most amazing of all, grass that
survived without sprinklers.
It
was astonishing to me that my uncle had no reverence for this miracle of
verdant growth. Sitting on his
battered Sears garden tractor, double-martini in hand, psyching himself up to
mow the vast expanse of lawn
surrounding their country home, he muttered, “Damn stuff just keeps growing and growing and growing. Every week it’s the same. I hate it.”
Damn
Stuff? How could he say that? Sacrilege. This was precious stuff. When I was a child I watched my father struggle for our
little patches of green, defying the desert that continually tried to reclaim our lawn when we first moved
into our house on the edge of the mesa.
He was a relentless foot-soldier in a war against enemy sand. But instead of digging trenches he
built walls: block, six feet high
around the back yard; board, one foot high around the front. After average spring dust storms he
tenaciously washed the sand back with a high-pressure nozzle on the garden
hose. After severe dust storms he
brought out the big gun—an industrial air-compressor towed home from work
behind his ’53 Ford panel truck.
Zealously he strafed the enemy with blasts of air from the bellowing
machine to expose the fragile green shoots struggling for survival like the
last cherished hairs on the head of a balding man.
Grass was no damn stuff.
I
reveled at the beauty of the grass.
I was in paradise. I was
Dorothy, transported by jet aircraft from black and white New Mexico, to
emerald Oz.
I
was blind to the faults of my paradise.
Faults like humidity, a strange atmospheric condition that had me
gasping for air the moment I stepped off the airplane into the steamy night at
the Pittsburgh airport . The sky
wasn’t blue in West Virginia, but rather, a very pale, colorless gray. The sun didn’t set at the end of the
day; the light just faded out. No
technicolor extravaganzas as the sun blazed behind the volcanoes. No watercolor wash sunsets painting the
sky with subtle pastels, trees india-inked silhouettes on the horizon. Oh well, sunsets aren’t that important when you’re fourteen. The clouds and rain were different
too. One morning a dingy gray haze
spread across the sky, blotting out the sun. These were not like New Mexico clouds; these clouds wept
steadily for hours. The hours
turned into days.
New
Mexico clouds were billowing white, pewter-bottomed vapor towers, rolling off
the mountains, bulging with lightening and thunder and maybe a little rain,
maybe lots of rain. You just never
knew. If the clouds were filled
with rain, it might fall for an hour, accompanied by the pyrotechnic
extravaganza of thunder and lightning.
When it was over my brother and I, and sometimes the whole family,
sometimes the whole neighborhood walked down to watch the arroyo run. A normally dry wash suddenly
churning with chocolaty-brown water, the arroyo carried a fascinating
assortment of debris: logs from the mountains, discarded furniture, junk, and even the occasional
automobile. We watched mesmerized,
at a safe distance back since the banks sometimes cracked off and crashed into
the water in house-size chunks. If
the clouds carried only a little rain, there was still that smell, the indescribable
sweet scent of desert rain.
Rain in New Mexico was an event; in West Virginia it burdened the sodden
earth and drowned the flowers.
Still,
I ignored these faults and begged my parents to let me stay with my aunt and
uncle in the Emerald City of Bethany, West Virginia. I was crushed when they refused. How could they drag me back to that awful desert? Worse, how could they be so stupid as
to want to live there when, being
adults, they could choose to live where it was always green?
I
didn’t appreciate New Mexico then.
Its deep and subtle beauty
requires a certain maturity of character to appreciate, maturity I didn’t have
when I was fourteen. And
each year, at first without my being aware of it, New Mexico grew on me, grew
in me.
When
I left home at eighteen, I began to travel. I saw the ocean for the first time then and it enchanted
me. Of course I didn’t recognize
it at first, it was so different from anything I’d ever seen before, and so
unlike what I expected. “Where is
it?” I asked in disappointment as we stood on the dune and stared through a
chainlink fence at the sea. We had run two blocks, my young husband and I,
because I was so intoxicated by the strange and exotic smell of the ocean that I
couldn’t wait to see it. But when
I gazed out over it, it just
looked like part of the hazy gray-green sky. When my husband pointed out the subtle differences of color,
the movement, the white foam, then I saw the ocean. I fell in love with it too, the way I had
fallen in love with the rolling green hills of West Virginia. I explored the beach for hours
marveling over all the strange and mysterious plants and creatures. A child of the desert who had never
seen the sea, I felt like an alien being, yet this was my own planet.
We slept on the beach and I awoke one
night to see a large fishing ship, covered with tiny lights glowing in the
mist. Smaller boats were tethered
to it by ropes of beaded light. It
floated out on the sea like a magical island of light in a story book. Maybe this is where we should live, I
suggested to my new husband. But
we never moved from New Mexico.
Over
the years there were many more trips, around the country and finally to
Europe. I knew my soul would
forever belong to New Mexico when I gazed at the splendor of a medieval
cathedral in Chester, England—carved stone, marble statues, enormous
buttresses, vaulted arches, jewel-like stained glass windows. It was beautiful and awe-inspiring. “Isn’t this incredible?” My British friend reverently whispered,
“so much more magnificent than anything
I ever saw in New Mexico.”
I looked around and merely sighed.
I didn’t want to offend her but,
magnificent and beautiful as it was, the cathedral didn’t impress me as
much as the great kiva of Casa Rinconada at Chaco Canyon.
Why? Perhaps because of the vastly different
circumstances of their creation and the people who built them, perhaps because
you recognize beauty first through your heart and then through your eyes.
Like the Chester Cathedral, the great
kiva of Casa Rinconada was built to be a spiritual place. The masons of
Chester, England cut and carved the marble and stone with metal tools. The stone was hauled in wheeled carts
pulled by draft animals. The
masons and laborers probably went home at night to warm beds and hearty meals.
The
Anasazi of Chaco Canyon dug the kiva modern Americans call Casa Rinconada by
hand. No shovels. No pick-axes. No wheel barrows.
Just bare hands and digging sticks or stones, clawing out a sacred
ceremonial chamber 130 feet across and nearly 20 feet deep, hauling the
earth out in baskets and pottery
bowls. The stone for the interior
walls was cut and shaped by hand, using other stones as tools. Some think this
work was probably done by women and children. Roof timbers were fashioned from mighty Ponderosa pines, cut
with stone axes in the Chuska mountains and carried by hand over 70 miles
through the desert. The Anasazi
celebrated the earth and its
creatures as sacred in their religious ceremonies in this kiva, seeking to live
in balance and harmony with nature.
The incredible effort required to create this spiritual center is all
the more remarkable considering how much energy it took just to survive in the
high desert of northwest New Mexico where perhaps only seven inches of rain
fall in a year. The mosaic-like
precision of the stone-work, the reverence for the earth, the Anasazi
appreciation of beauty and their persistence to include it in everyday things
made the great kiva more impressive to me than the lavish British
cathedral. But my friend would
never understand. She grew up in a
different background, imbued with a different sense of beauty, a different set
of values. The beauty of Chester
cathedral was as much a part of her soul as Casa Rinconada was of mine. She had lived in New Mexico, but just
didn’t like it. She was trying to
convince me how wonderful it would be to live in England “just for a couple of
years.” “New Mexico is so dry, too
desolate,” she argued. I could only
smile at the irony. I was
finally beginning to understand
where I was supposed to be.
Over
the years the strange, difficult-to-understand-beauty, the weird, only-in-New
Mexico incidents, have accumulated in me, have layered inside me, an
inpeneratable stone of loyalty, an anchor of belonging. A personal introspective “geological”
analysis identifies some of the layers: Here are all the sunsets and summer
thunderstorms. Here is the pale
winter light that turns dry buffalo grass to a carpet of pure gold. Here are the skies that can be a
heartbreakingly deep and pure blue.
Here are all the ancient ruins I’ve wandered through. Here are the petroglyphs carved by the
“ancient ones”—lizards and snakes, spirals and deer, sunflowers and the
mysterious hump-backed flute player, silent stories, communicating the
mysteries of life. Here are all
the ghost towns I’ve explored, places where others left their dreams
behind. Here are the backpacking
trips through the Gila, the Pecos, the Jemez. Here are the people who have lived here for
generations, that have marked me deep inside with their unique traditions.
When
I went to my twenty-year high school class reunion, I was greeted with the same
question, “You’re still here?”
But, older and wiser, I said, “Yes, and I love it. It just keeps getting better and
better.”
II
Visit
of the Bear Man
I
wish there was some sort of time-warp fairy godmother that would allow us to go
back in time and relive an incident from our youth. We wouldn’t be able to change anything, or do anything
different. We would only be
allowed to pay attention this time and remember all the details. If such a fairy godmother were to perch
on my desk, grant me three incidents and wave her cosmic wand, I’d
probably choose first to go back
in time to the day the bear-man knocked on my door. I can remember many of the details, but as I look back on
the incident I’m appalled I can’t recall more parts, dismayed that I was too
ignorant to realize something remarkable was happening to me.
I
was 21. It was sometime in the
spring. The year was 1971. I don’t remember why I was home in the
middle of the day and not in class at the University of New Mexico or at work
at my job as a clerk at Zimmerman library. Was I getting over a cold? Studying for an exam?
Working on a project for one of my art studio classes? Goofing off?
There
was a knock at the door, tentative, almost apologetic. I pulled it open without even looking
out the window. Hey, it was 1971
in the ‘student ghetto.’ Peace.
Love. Brotherhood. Right on man. Sometimes the visitors were a little weird—like the Hare
Krishnas that came to bum some firewood for the stove in their brightly-painted
school bus and left in exchange two Gatorade bottles; one filled with brown
rice, the other salt—but strangers were not something to fear.
Standing
on the front porch was an Indian man —they were Indians then, not Native
Americans. He was about 50 or 60
years old. Short and slightly
pot-bellied, he was dressed in the manner the Indian people call
“traditional”—faded jeans, plaid flannel shirt, bandana wrapped around his
forehead and long hair knotted back in a red, woven sash, leather moccasins
with silver buttons. Without
greeting, he said, “I need money
for the bus to get back home to Jemez.”
Peace -and-brotherhood hippie that I was, this was still, like, pretty
weird man. I stood in the doorway
speechless. It wasn’t that I
didn’t know how to deal with common panhandlers. Yale Park was crawling with the “you got any spare change,
sister” types. My reply was
always, “no, do you?” But this was different, very different. As I stood in stunned silence he spoke
again. “I guess you don’t want to
just give me a dollar.”
“Uh,
well, no. I mean, a dollar is a
lot of money.” And it was for a
poor student in 1971.
“Yes,”
he said thoughtfully. “It is a lot
of money, but what if I do something for it? What if I tell you some stories?”
“Stories?” Was he putting me on? What was the deal here?
“Yeah,
I really need to get back to Jemez and I really need a buck.”
Perhaps
if I distracted him by changing the subject he might forget about the
dollar. “My dad had a good friend
from Jemez once,” I mentioned the
name of a man renown for running ability so extraordinary, he was said to have
chased deer, a man, for the purposes of this story I’ll call Deer Chaser. “Did you know him?” I asked.
Many
times I heard the stories of the legendary Deer Chaser. He was a laborer, a wheel barrow jockey
and general all-around helper for the Chaco Canyon field school where my father
was an anthropology graduate student.
There was the story of the foot race: The Jemez people are renown for their phenomenal endurance
as long-distance runners. Deer
Chaser agreed to run in a cross-country race between the students and the
Indian laborers. When the race was
about to begin Deer Chaser was still washing the dishes. “Go ahead and start without me,” he is
said to have insisted. And so the
race began, and later along came Deer Chaser, passing all the other runners,
striding effortlessly on to the finish line a quarter mile ahead of the closest
contender. There was the story of
Deer Chaser’s mother serving my father chile: “Nobody can make chile too hot for me,” my father foolishly
bragged, so Deer Chaser took him home to Jemez for a feast day to sample his
mother’s chile. With sweat
trickling off his forehead and tears streaming down his cheeks, my father
admitted defeat to the Jemez chile.
And then, there was the story of Deer Chaser’s death: Hunting alone in
the winter, he somehow fell and broke his leg. Unable crawl to safety, he froze to death.
“Yes, I knew him.” my visitor said. A faint smile crept across his mouth
and he looked me straight in the eye without speaking. We stood that way for a long time.
Nervously
I looked away and said something
stupid like, “Were you friends?”
Maybe he told me they were of the same clan; I don’t remember. But it was then he told me his
name so I invited him in. Even
though I can recall his name to this day, I always think of him as the Bear
Man.
There
was no more mention of the dollar.
My guest just settled down on our worn Goodwill sofa and began to tell
stories. Now, this is the part
where I wish the cosmic time-warp fairy godmother would appear. What were the stories? I
remember they were Indian myths, maybe folk tales. At the time it just didn’t occur to me that I might be having an extraordinary
experience. I remember the stories
fascinated me and I do recall his last story, which was more of a natural
history lesson. He began it by
telling me bears were sacred animals, very special animals. Did I know that?
“Yes,”
I said. I knew bears were pretty
amazing. He told me they are the
animal most like man. That jogged
an old memory from my childhood.
“I’ve heard they cry like a person,” I said.
“And
how do you know that?”
“My
mother told me about a bear hunter, someone from the town where she grew up,
who cornered a bear he had been tracking.
When he raised his rifle and sighted on the bear it sat down on its
haunches, put its paws over its face and cried like a human.”
The
Bear Man just looked at me and smiled.
“You do know about
bears. They are like that. But did you know nearly all bears are
left-handed, a mirror image of man?”
I
said no, I didn’t know that.
Somehow that really fascinated me—that bears were left-handed. Then he told me about watching bears,
the way they move and the way they behave, the way they like to fish in streams with their paws, the way
they play. That’s the part I
remember, him telling me about the bears and how they are left-handed.
About
this time my husband arrived home from school. He was rather startled by my guest, but took it in stride
when I introduced him. My
storytelling guest stood up and it was then I noticed there was something about
him, maybe it was the way he moved or stood, or his physique, but somehow he looked like a small
bear.
“Can
I have my dollar now?”
My
husband looked even more confused.
“He needs a dollar for the bus,” I explained going for my purse. Digging around, I found only some
change and some food stamps. “Got
a dollar?” I asked my husband.
Reluctantly
he pulled out his wallet and handed the Bear Man a dollar. He didn’t say thanks, only nodded and
said, “Whenever you’re in Jemez, come look for me I’ll tell you some more
stories.”
“How
do we find you?”
He
headed for the door. “Everybody
knows me,” he said with a mysterious smile. “Just ask anybody you see at Jemez. They’ll tell you how to find me.”
And
then he was gone.
At
the time it didn’t seem any stranger than the Hare Krishnas coming to the door
to trade salt and brown rice for firewood. But many years later, after studying Native American
culture, I realized what an amazing event it had been. The Indian people don’t share those
things with just anyone. And with
good reason. Those beliefs were
belittled and ridiculed for generations by our culture and they learned to keep
quiet, to keep the stories alive only in their own communities and even there sometimes
the stories died because the young people didn’t listen, just as I didn’t
listen carefully enough.
Now
why can I only remember that bears are left-handed? What other things did he tell me? It was a reverse of the old Sufi axiom: “when the student is
ready, the teacher appears.” Only
in this case, the teacher appeared and I, the student, wasn’t ready. Or maybe all I was supposed to learn
was that bears are left-handed and to always leave the door open for the unusual possibilities.
III
The
South Valley Revisited
Most
of the cars in New Mexico go to the South Valley to die. Like skeletons in the fabled elephant
graveyards, the carcasses of spent automobiles, with web cracked windows,
bleach and fade in the sun. Mined
of still-usable parts, the hulks await the final journey to automobile soul
recycler, the karma of the crusher.
In the meantime the pack rats steal stuffing from the seats to line
their nests and teenage boys, like my son Aaron, scavenge the remains looking
for the oddball salvageable part.
In this case he’s looking for an organ donor to prolong the life
expectancy of our 1960 Ford pickup.
He wants the rolled steel wings of adolescence--his own vehicle.
Unfortunately
Aaron doesn’t have a driver’s license yet so he is forced into the ultimate
humiliation of having his mother drive him around to look for truck parts. Our first stop is a small wrecking yard
he’s targeted from phone calls as “maybe” having a couple of trucks of compatible
tissue types, that is, 1957-60 Ford half-tons. I park out in front and kind of around the corner so as not
to embarrass him too much while he goes inside to scope things out. I sit in our middle class Volvo and
watch the South Valley go by.
Most
people feel awkward or uncomfortable if they have to venture into the South
Valley, the alleged home of gangs, thieves, thugs, and— if you’re the average,
upper-middle class Albuquerquean—those other people. You know, the ones that aren’t uh…
white. Well, I love the South Valley. I lived there for four years and I know that while it may
have a disproportionately larger number of rough types of people, it also has a
special kind of charm, a distinct personality of rugged, gritty
individualism. It is not like the
homogenized sections of Albuquerque with entire neighborhoods
of the same income folks, with the same lifestyles and tastes, the same cars,
clothes and customs. There’s only
one thing the people share in common--a love of rural living and not having
anybody tell them what they can do with their property. The South Valley is a mix, a potpourri,
a hodgepodge that drives relators bonkers. You can have the expensive quarter horse breeding farm with
a roping arena, 12 stall barn, three irrigated acres and 3800 square foot house
with electric garage door opener and Jacuzzi spa next to a battered house
trailer where a 22 year-old welfare mother lives with a biker boyfriend and her
four kids.
Yes,
the South Valley is unique, distinct and funky. And it has never been considered status to live there. When my former husband and I announced
plans to buy a house on half an
acre in the South Valley, my father fairly exploded in perplexed disbelief. “What??!! Your grandparents and I worked to get out of the South
Valley, to move up to the heights, and you want to move back?” But move we did. We raised chickens and goats and had a
huge vegetable garden. I canned
fruit from the nearby orchards and vegetables from our garden. It was peaceful there, and quiet. The neighbors were down-to-earth friendly people, traditional
Hispanic families who had lived there for generations, or the solid pillars of
the 4-H and FFA community types.
It
was that variety that I liked—the different people— and I could accept the good
and the bad. In the northeast
heights your neighbors are not likely to have a matanza—a feast of butchering
an animal—and offer you some fresh chicharones, fried to the traditional color
of perfection— “the color of red ants.”
Nor is one of your neighbors likely to bring you a freshly slaughtered,
fully- dressed goose as a Christmas gift.
Then again, a northeast heights neighbor is not likely to shoot your dog
for getting into his pig pen or run a midnight auto parts operation out of his
garage.
I
live in the North Valley now, not necessarily because I wanted to leave the
South Valley but because, after my divorce, I found a house that was a very
shrewd real estate investment. Our
rural neighborhood isn’t exactly homogenized middle-class, but I still feel a nostalgia for the South Valley and all its weirdness
particularly as I sit in the dusty parking lot of a seedy auto salvage yard.
The
culture of the car prevails here; they are much more than just a mode of
transportation, they are an expression of personal and sometimes cultural
identity. I watch the low riders
bump and bounce by, some primer-gray, some kandy-kolored, and one— a ‘62
Impala—with Our Lady of Guadalupe elegantly air-brushed on the trunk. The macho trucks roar past too,
towering monsters full of sound and fury with chrome and extra lights
everywhere. Jacked -up, they call
these trucks. Appropriate, I
suppose, for the some of the young men who own them. Drive your erection around for everyone to see. And then there are the pathetic heaps
held together with baling wire, and a prayer. Heaps that would mysteriously
fall apart if the saint was removed from the dashboard.
A
strange kind of undefinable incident lent a poignant weirdness to the wait, the
sort of incident that makes you feel really sad without knowing exactly
why. I watched a young boy, maybe
11 or 12 years old walking toward me down the road. From a distance I could see he had something in his arms and
he was leading a fat dog on a long chain.
As he got close enough I saw he was carrying a large, long-haired
cat. They were an odd trio, the
dog occasionally wrapping his chain around the boy’s ankles the way dumb dogs
have a tendency to do, the cat placid in his arms despite the roaring trucks
speeding down the road. As the boy
passed my car I tried to catch his attention, to share a smile with him. It was then I saw the blank eyes, the
face that said, ‘something is wrong, I am not a normal kid.’ It saddened me, but of course there was
nothing I could do in the few minutes it took him to walk past my car. Shuffling into the sunset, he turned onto the ditch bank,
patiently untangling the fat old
dog from his ankles and vanished from my sight.
About
this time my son returned.
Plunking his tool box down on the floor (at South Valley salvage yards
you bring your own tools and salvage your own parts) he sighed, “No luck. Somebody already took the steering box
out of the ‘59 they had.” I back
out and start down the road. “It
was pretty weird though,” he continued.
I
smile and reply, “the South Valley is always weird.”
“No
, I mean like I, you know, interrupted something. When I came in these biker dudes were sort of sitting around
in a circle in this back room bent over something. I shuffled my feet
to sort of let them know they had a customer and they all looked up real
nervous like.”
So
he walked in on some bikers tooting up a few lines. Maybe Mom better go in with him the next time, embarrassing
as that may be. Aging hippies know
how to deal with these things more easily than awkward adolescents.
We
cruise past a vast array of houses on our way to the next place on the
list. Elaborate brick homes.
Humble adobes, some with a precariously tipped out-house behind. Average, middle class -looking
houses. Lots of house trailers—not
the euphemistically labeled “mobile home” —genuine old-fashioned house
trailers. The kind where, in
winter, the water will freeze in the cat’s bowl on the floor and the butter on
the table will melt. Disguising
the house trailer is a favorite South Valley remodeling project. Sometimes it’s done with ersatz
clapboards with maybe a tar-papered extra room or two stuck on. I’ve even seen it done with adobes. In any case the lowly house trailer is
encased in some sort of building material in an attempt to make in look like a
regular middle class house. But
the distinctive shoe box shape always gives it away. My favorites are the ones that are left plain, the ones in
the faded‘50s deco colors of
lipstick pink or swimming pool-bottom turquoise or buttercup
yellow. We pass such a classic as
we search out another salvage yard.
This is a white over faded pink, ‘Northern’. Definitely a ’50s model. Out front is a bath tub shrine wreathed with sun-bleached
red plastic roses. It shelters a
statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Pink plastic flamingos mince across the dusty front yard accompanied by
a yellow plastic duck. One
of my South Valley neighbors once confided to me that you don’t see any really
good bathtub shrines anymore because the old claw foot bathtubs—which make the
best shrines— are worth too much as trendy decorator items now. Either the tubs get stolen right off
the poor Virgin’s head or a family gets in financial trouble and sells it to a
Junque shop.
We
arrive at Chavez Auto Salvage, which would be more aptly named Cheech and
Chong’s auto salvage. It addition
to your spare parts you get to listen to the Chavez brothers comedy
routine. We inquire about our holy
grail of truck parts, the illusive steering gear box. One of the Chavez’ takes us out back. “Go down this way and turn right at the
rolled maroon mini-van. Go down
past the Pintos and you’ll see the trucks. It’s on the end of the row, a red and white one. It’s pretty cherry man. Maybe you can find you some other stuff
on it.” He slaps Aaron on the
back. “But hurry your ass up ‘cuz
we’re closin’ soon.”
Aaron
and I wander among the smashed hulks in the twilight until we discover the red
and white truck. Wrong year. Its’s a ’61. None of the parts will fit. As we head back we hear, “Time for use to go home, customers. Come back in.” The voice must come from some invisible
PA speaker somewhere, but it sounds as if one of the anonymous wrecked cars is
shouting in a tinny electronic voice.
When
we get back inside we discuss the problem of the steering box with Cheech. “EEeee man, I’m sorry. I thought we had one. . .” His partner /brother Chong
interjects: “Bro, we got one. I tell you man it’s on the seat of that
black ’58. Took it out myself.”
“No,
man I sold it to some dude.”
“No,
bro it’s still there. I seen it
this morning.” Chong disappears
out into the yard.
Cheech
gets on the PA. “Hey man, you out
there, takin’ the wipers off the Buick.
It’s after closing and we’re lettin’ the dogs out.”
Chong
returns, proudly bearing a steering box.
“See bro, I told you it was there man.” Aaron examines it carefully and frowns; it’s even worse than
the one he took out of our truck.
Sensing Aaron is not a satisfied customer, Chong says, “I’m sorry man it looks like it’s used
up pretty bad. If you want, I’ll
call my bro down at El Mexicano on Coors and see if he gots one. I want to make it right by you man, for
your trip down here and everything.”
El
Mexicano draws a blank so we turn to leave. Chong Chavez shuts off the lights and clicks on the PA again. “To our customer who didn’t come in from the yard: Good luck to you man. We ain’t fed the dogs yet.”
Driving
up Isleta Boulevard, the main drag of the South Valley, Aaron remarks, “So you and dad used to live down here
when you were married.
“Yes,”
I reply, musing at how much things in the old neighborhood had changed. Instead of the funky little shopping
plaza with a Safeway and a laundromat that used to be the commercial hub of the
far South Valley there’s a trendy-looking pseudo Scottsdale type mini-mall with
fashionable muted pink stucco and Spanish tile accents. Somehow though, the South Valley has
still managed to remain a distinctive place, with unique, distinctive
people. It’s the kind of place
that is the essence of New Mexico, but a place where the people who gush about
how they moved here for the unique ‘tri-cultural’ experience are afraid to
venture.
“You
and your sister lived there for awhile too you know, after your dad and I split
up. But since you were babies you
don’t remember any of it.” I remark.
“Pretty
weird. I’m glad we don’t live here
now.”
.