Who was that Masked Man?

I watched The Lone Ranger after school on our little black and white TV.  The screen, framed by a dark wood cabinet, was maybe 13” diagonal.  You couldn’t sit too far from it if you wanted to see much detail, but the reception in the early and mid-1960’s was so shaky, at that house on the far north end of Colorado Springs, that we didn’t expect much in terms of picture quality anyway.

The Lone Ranger, of course, competed with Superman for a young boy’s attention on the television.  We had other heroes – G.I. Joe was notable in a military town such as Colorado Springs.  Growing up at the base of NORAD, and with Fort Carson only a few miles up the road, an army figure would be worthy of admiration and imitation. But he hadn’t made it to the small screen for every day viewing. (I did, however, own a G.I. Joe and would take him next door to Aunt Millie and Uncle Chuck’s house and play with him in their sand-pile next to the garage.) I wasn’t into comic books and the heroes that may have been deployed in those pages escaped my attention.

Superman, it seems to me, was a city boy’s hero.  We didn’t have any tall buildings to leap in Colorado Springs – with a single bound or otherwise. Sure, we had Penrose Hospital, the tallest building in the area at 12 floors, but there wasn’t another comparably sized building for 65 miles, in Denver.  The Holly Sugar Building, three miles into downtown from our two acres, hadn’t been built yet.  I didn’t understand superpowers. Speedy enough to outrun a bullet?  More powerful than a locomotive? Change the course of mighty rivers?  I could not relate.  I didn’t understand jumping into a phone booth to change clothes. I’m not sure I had even seen a phone booth or paid attention to them in our weekly trips downtown with Aunt Millie.  Superman’s cityscape didn’t fit me.

I could relate more to The Lone Ranger, though, and daydream about that life far more than I could about Superman.  The landscape in The Lone Ranger was more familiar – the plateaus and plains through which he and Tonto, his faithful Indian companion, rode were scenes from our own drives in southwest Colorado.  The opening credits of the pilot showed a map, stretching up from Texas, through New Mexico, and into Colorado.  It was my landscape.

His powers?  He was daring and resourceful in his effort to bring law and order to the unruly southwest territory. I wanted to be daring.  I didn’t know what resourceful meant, but I wanted that, too.  To me, the Lone Ranger’s ambitions echoed those of Superman in his fight for truth, justice, and the American Way.  But his motive was simple, clean as that white stallion on which he rode: bring justice to the rugged frontier.

He was a fabulous individual (even the credits announced that fact). The Lone Ranger was mysterious.  He wore a mask, damn it, and traveled with an Indian Scout who pieced fragments of broken English into plots and strategies to outwit the bad guy.

Yes, The Lone Ranger shaped my image of boyhood heroes.

One afternoon, my dad came home from Aircraft Mechanics with some gifts in hand.  He had one of the machinists there shape a six-shooter and a rifle out of a nice piece of wood.  He also had a black piece of vinyl that perfectly matched that of the “masked man” on TV.  I put the mask on, tucked the six-shooter into my pants, and roamed the range of our two acres fighting bad guys.

We didn’t live in a neighborhood, though, and I had no Indian companion.  No matter.  Fighting outlaws, bringing justice to the territory laid out at 3250 North Cascade was my mission.

But there weren’t many outlaws to be found.  Phil and Deb were pre-occupied as I rode up on my thin, wooden, horse.  Aunt Millie wasn’t an outlaw.  She was usually good for some ginger ale, and something baked, followed by a “thank you, ma’am” nod of the head as I rode off.  I had no silver bullet to leave behind.  A crumpled napkin.  An empty glass.

I rode the border of our two properties, imagined threats thwarted, justice claimed.  Calm restored.

And here the storyline could take a predictable turn.  The cliché “profound insight” about the drunken father returning home, the polished wood pistol and Winchester impotent against the barrage of taunts and the ambush of emotion. Promises headed off at the pass. The vinyl mask insufficient to hide the hurt.

Variations on a Theme

Georgia O’Keeffe drew, painted, sketched, studied thousands of Calla Lilies.  Hundreds, thousands, of skulls.  She never painted the same lily twice.  Each a different angle.  A new perspective.  A different shade of white.  A Calla Lily situated against a skull.  Another against the robin egg sky over the red New Mexico landscape. When asked, she said she neither liked nor disliked lilies.  She had “no feelings at all, really, toward them.”

And so it is with my father.  I turn him this way for a view in.  A glimpse from this angle.  Place him in the piñon-covered hills in Huerfano County walking where his roots are, roots that for him would never take hold.  Place him here, on the barstool of the Bella Vista, smoke-filled, Anne Murray on the jukebox.  I turn him over in the palm of my mind.  Place him on a Greyhound bus.  Still photos from a restless life.

I hold his image here: the distance from my my mind’s eye to my fingertips.  And it’s this space, this distance, that distinguishes my approach from O’Keeffe’s and her Calla Lily.  I have no feeling at all, really, toward the man.  But this space, this reach between the father and the son, I roll around in the soft light of a pinon-scented, smoke-filled landscape.

Untold Tales at the Tailwaters

Five of us headed to the Arkansas River, to the tailwaters below the dam on Lake Pueblo.  Usually we head toward the Nature Center or Valco Ponds.  This day, we went further downstream instead, more into the city of Pueblo.  Fishing in an urban setting is a different experience than being in the Canyon, or wading at Deckers, or stalking brookies in a small stream.

Oh the people we met.

As we were getting ourselves ready, a Hispanic man pulled into the dirt parking lot in a dark red sedan and began to get ready.  He said hello as he began to get his waders on and get his rod set up.  In a few minutes, he was offering some recommendations.  Obviously a local, he certainly knew the river.  If we were heading upstream, he said, pointing with his rod, fish at a hole just a little ways up. Another hole is by the rocks, further, just around the bend.  He offered the suggestions freely, as if he were talking to a couple of long-time friends.  We thanked him as we headed upstream where we fished for the next couple of hours.

Back at the car having lunch, an old Chevy blazer pulled in: grey, dark windows, hip hop pouring out of the open windows.  Another older model SUV pulled in next to them.  Both cars were packed with Latino and Latina teens and young adults in their early 20s.  Each one had a bottle of beer.  A few got out of the cars and passed around the joint somebody offered.

Before long, one by one they each had put on a light blue t-shirt.  Some of the guys had draped the shirt over their shoulder as they laughed, drank, smoked.

It was amazing how many young people were there so quickly.  One guy came over toward my car where I was sitting.  He had a beer in one hand and cradled a Crown Royal purple box in the other.

“You had any luck?” he asked, his baseball cap pulled down to eyebrow level.

”Caught two,” I said.

”I usually come down for night fishing.  I work ‘til 7, come down at 9 and fish under that bridge until about 11.  I’ve just been having this craving for trout…you know how that goes?  But I haven’t had much luck since Christmas!”

I wondered why he was down there now, with his group of friends.  I don’t know if I asked what was happening or not.  Somehow he told me:  they were there honoring a friend, 19, who had died in the last week.  Had left a party drunk to go get a deck of playing cards.  Took a corner over by Irving School, “you know where that’s at” he asked, pointing east.  I shrugged.  ”Not really.”  ”Yeah, he took a corner down there.  At about 90.  Rolled it.  Killed himself.”  I wondered to myself if he saw the sad irony happening in that dirt parking lot.  ”These are his friends.  So we came down to honor him.”  Now I could see that the blue shirts were a tribute with images of their deceased friend silk-screened on them.

Maybe his need to tell somebody was relieved.  Maybe it was just time to go back to his friends at the grey Blazer.  We shook hands.  I told him to be careful today.  He nodded.  ”We will.”

A few minutes later, my nephew and I were heading upstream again.  An older married couple was behind us, out walking their two dogs.  The man called out “where are you guys going to fish?”  We told him we didn’t know, we’d just pick a spot.  He was a local, too, having moved there from “the Midwest” five years prior.  He told us of some holes and stretches, under the railroad bridge, or down by the culvert feeding the river, and then further up by the spillway.  Conor asked what had brought them to Pueblo.  ”That’s a good question,” the man said. His wife offered, “we visited some friends here and decided to move. Like anyplace, it has its pros and cons.”  We turned off the path and headed down to the river with a “thanks for talking” and a return “good luck.”

I think of the mix here along the banks of the Arkansas.  The friendliness of the locals sharing fishing information.  A steady stream of folks walking and biking along the trails that parallel the river. An incredibly large group of teens — tattooed, stoned, drunk and getting more loaded — sharing their loss, their pain.  A married couple, retired, enjoying their walk along a river bank in a town which somehow became part of their destiny.

At the end of the day, the five of us stripped off our waders, each with our own story, each with our own path that somehow got us here today, our stories converging once again and yet still, here at the Tailwaters.

Sober Mercies … yes, the book moved me.

For those of you who know me, you know that I am neither a woman nor a Christian in the devout Christian sort of way.  But enough about me.  I want to share my thoughts on a forthcoming book, Sober Mercies, by my friend Heather Kopp.  Despite our differences, her book moved me and, despite our differences, she made me consider my own relationship with a Higher Power, my own addictions, and my own path of recovery.

Heather’s book traces her own recovery … and, yes, I have read many of “those kind” of memoirs.  The recovery-story memoir.  Heather’s exploration, though, was new for me.  I’ll put to the side her experience of being a recovering woman;  I think men and women have distinctly different issues in both active addiction and in recovery.  That is not to say we don’t have similarities — self-loathing, deception, secrecy, feeling alone, desperate for help while isolating and distancing ourselves from that very help — but gender does make a difference.  I did get greater insights into the challenges of a woman’s path to recovery, though, so I am grateful for Heather sharing her experience.

What moved me, though, was Heather’s experience as a Christian woman moving toward her path of recovery and her subsequent journey on that path.  With the very foundational competing definitions of alcoholism — is it weak-willed, immoral, sinful behavior or is alcoholism a disease of mind, body, spirit? — Heather confronts conflicting belief systems.  A committed Christian woman entering recovery, Heather not only battles the nature of addiction but also the nature of conviction.  And her path unfolds as a sober Christian woman — or as her sub-title expresses:  How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk.

I think Sober Mercies is a moving and valuable read in the genre of recovery memoirs.  Heather’s story is moving, graceful, and meaningful not only for women who may be entering (or well into) recovery from alcoholism, and not only for Christian women, but for anybody walking the path of recovery and developing a relationship with a Higher Power, a God, of their own understanding.

The Blind Faith of Lola

A few years ago, my daughter brought home a little black and white kitten whom she soon named Lola.  When we stood in the kitchen, Jessica holding Lola in her arms, I noticed that Lola’s pupils were dilated even though it was a brightly lit room.  I questioned whether her eyes functioned correctly.

Sure enough, Lola is blind.  Oh, we can’t tell how blind she is, but she is certainly visually impaired.  She runs into walls.  She pounces on our other, older, wiser cat, Harry, but misses him by several inches.  She pounces on items on the floor — but overshoots them nearly every time.  Jannetta says Lola sees the shadows and traces the movement with her eyes.  I am convinced she can barely see anything.

Lola’s blindness doesn’t make her any less daring, though.  She wants to be like a normally visioned cat.  She will make her way to the top of my desk, or to the window-sill, or to stretch out on the bed.  She slowly, courageously inches her way to the top of my desk, for example, first by getting to the seat of my chair, and then to the top of my desk — using her front feet just as a blind person may use a white cane to judge distance.  She’ll explore the desktop just as Harry does.  She’ll sit in the window-sill enjoying the warmth of the sun.

But then she needs to jump down.  She makes her way around the books, over the papers, across the top of my desk.  And she gets to the edge.  She paws at the air with her white front foot. Then she switches feet — feeling in the air for something of substance.  But it is just air.  She stares out.  Whatever visual impairment she suffers, it includes depth perception.  She knows the firm hardwood floor is there, distant  … but how far of a drop?

Finally, she jumps.  It is some sort of a blend between a tentative jump and one of confidence.  She doesn’t jump down — she jumps out.  Her legs are spread just a little wider. Unless my eyes deceive me, her legs are bent a little at the joints to absorb the impact when she lands.  And her landings, it appears, are an unpredictability to her.  She knows she will land firmly on the firm floor;  it is just a matter of how long will she be in flight.

And she does land.  She steadies herself after the abrupt landing.  She strides away, confident, into the blend of shadow and light.

24 Hour Resolution

I don’t write New Year’s resolutions. Not for over 25 years now.  I made plenty of resolutions before then, but they were resolutions with plenty of words but with neither action nor commitment.  They seemed like good ways to put the past to bed and arise on January 1st of the new year with, well, resolve.  I stole from the self-help book du jour.  They were good resolutions, well intentioned, not overly ambitious but promising to be pay dividends:  get to the gym more; read more;  eat more protein, fewer carbs; be more frugal.

And the resolutions would have a short shelf-life.  Maybe they would life with me through January.  Perhaps to Valentine’s Day.  Rarely would my resolutions see the light of the Spring Equinox. I’m human, after all, and a life-time of steadfast, sheer willpower-driven resolve is hard to sustain.

So I stopped writing resolutions for the new year.  I shifted to daily commitments.  I guess, in essence, I resolve to live each 24 hours to the best of my ability.  To live these next 24 hours with integrity.  To live these next 24 hours a little less selfishly, a little more selflessly.  To live these next 24 hours with a little more God-consciousness (Christ-consciousness, Divine Mind, Buddha Nature), a little less self-consciousness.

I’m human, after all, and if my reflection at the end of the day predictably reveals my humanness, then I get another chance, tomorrow, at sunrise.

A complex problem, a multi-faceted solution

I’ve read the NRA press conference transcript, nearly 2500 words of what Wayne LaPierre, NRA’s Executive Vice President, deems a call for “decisive action” toward securing our schools.

The NRA’s plan of action – to be pursued immediately in order to be in place in January when our kids return from their holiday vacation – is called the National Model School Shield Program.  At the heart of the plan is for an armed police officer to be situated in every school in America.  LaPierre’s plan is to ensure that a “good guy with a gun” is a short minute away from any intrusion from a “bad guy with a gun.”  He argues that despite the strained resources on police departments nationwide – and, I would add, school budgets – Congress should appropriate resources now to ensure that this School Shield Program is in place.  He argues that despite these limited resources, trained and courageous police officers and retired police officers (along with a long list of others) are willing to be “deployed” right now.  In essence, he is calling for an armed peace-keeping force in our nation’s schools.

The NRA’s proposal attacks “the media” as immoral and refusing to look closely at its own contributions to the current social crisis.  The media, he argues, refuse to look at its violent movies, offensive music, blood-spattering video games as causes to our mass murders in public schools.   He argues that “[r]ather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize gun owners.”

He situates the NRA position to be one of taking the moral higher ground – with the cause being to protect our children.  But not once in the nearly 2500 words of his argument does he make one concession that perhaps we should revisit and seriously look at current gun control legislation, or the availability of assault rifles (in fact, he criticizes “the media” for not even getting the terminology correct — but what does it matter what the correct name of the weapon is?), or the availability of ammunition of the weapons. In short, he blasts “the media” for its continued glorification and glamorization of killing through video, song, and games.

No doubt, any single-sighted approach to solving the current social situation is going to be insufficient.  A complex problem requires a multi-faceted solution.  No single condition is sufficient to produce the crisis; no single-pronged solution is going to solve this epidemic of mass killings.

No single party is going to concede or compromise its position if it appears that no other party is willing to compromise its position.  We have created a culture right now of “either/or” rather than “both/and” for working toward any meaningful compromise.  We see the dichotomy as we approach the fiscal cliff; we see it in our rhetoric about gay marriage, religious and spiritual beliefs, gender equity.

So, what might it look like to truly engage in meaningful dialogue in a society which values individual freedoms?  What might it look like to pursue a solution to a complex social crisis – mass murders — in which there are several contributing factors none sufficient in itself to produce a culture in which young males can strafe movie theatres, malls, college campuses and first-grade classrooms?

Our national dialogue must:

• Revisit gun ownership laws:   Yes, let’s protect the Second Amendment.  And let’s not generalize and stereotype all gun-owners of being capable of mass murder.  However, let’s make meaningful laws about ownership and production of assault rifles, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, that are available.  Let’s even look at the term “sport shooting” which seems to be part of the rationale for the availability of these weapons.  The NRA, in its assault on “the media,” should take a reflective look at its own moral and ethical landscape.  Does “sport shooting” with assault rifles do anything but glamorize the ownership of these weapons?

• Renew the conversation about mental health policy and care in our nation:  This conversation should also include education policy and practices in our schools.  The recent mass murder shooters have been described as intelligent, brilliant even, and with mental health issues.  And, again, let’s not generalize these individuals’ behaviors to the whole population of others with mental health issues.  I do think that as we discuss mental health care in the United States, we also need to revisit the legislation for providing education to students with special needs.  Do our public school environments, facilities, and resources effectively meet the needs of our students?  I am sure that my education colleagues who closely serve our special needs population may take issue with this concern.  However, if we are going to have a serious dialogue about a multi-faceted, complex issue, then we need to consider all sides of the issue.  If we are going to look closely at mental health policy in the United States, then we need to consider those policies within our educational system, as well.

• Revitalize our dialogue about being male in our society:  One look at the profile of the mass murderers reveals a police line-up, if you will, of white males in their late teens or early twenties.  As we look at other statistics concerning gender, we see that enrollment of males in our colleges and universities is on the decline.  We see that males are medicated more for such conditions as ADHD and ADD.  This, alone, is a complex issue within a complex issue.  As a society, we have done much in the past 40 years to redefine responsibilities, ambitions, and opportunities for girls, young women, and women in our society.  Have we done enough to support boys, young men, and men in that transformation.  Regardless of how slow this progress may seem for women’s rights and progress, the transformation of our cultural expectations on young men may be revealing itself in unhealthy mental and physical health of our males.  Again, we may be in a position of “either/or” rather than “both/and” thinking for our young males – and females, as a matter of fact – as we look to broaden the ambitions and opportunities for them.  That is, just as young women entering the professional world battle between “either” being a professional woman “or” a mother, we need to become a culture where we can be “both” a professional woman “and” a mother.  Have we effectively addressed a similar dichotomy in the world of masculinity?  We may have made strides for males that it is rewarding to be a “stay at home dad” or for a father to be much more involved in his child’s life than in a generation ago.  But do we do enough to help adolescent males negotiate that emotional and psychological terrain as they are growing into young men?  Do we help them address the competing demands on their lives – as we watch them dropout of high school, fail to attend college, or not enlarge and enrich their late-adolescent lives?

• Address meaningful reform movement in public education:  Has a focus on standardized assessment and achievement in our public schools diminished the most meaningful role that our schools may play in a child’s life?  Have we become a test-prep nation rather a life-prep educational system?  In our efforts to become competitive in the global economy, have we diminished our capacity to be compassionate, empathetic, collaborative in our human economy?

• Rejuvenate our voices toward spiritual health:  We saw a glimmer of what the conversation could be like during the Sunday night, December 16, vigil following the Newtown massacre.  Regardless of the path toward spiritual health – Christian, Muslim, secular humanism, Jewish, New Age – we need to foster the health of our soul regardless of individual belief.  We need a collective consciousness toward a spiritual health in our nation.  Regardless of whether we are a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl,” we need as much attention to our First Amendment rights as we do to our Second Amendment.  What we need are voices in our country to continue to foster a larger Self, a wholeness to our individual lives and our collective lives.  I was moved not only by the spiritual and religious voices at that Sunday night vigil but also by the juxtaposition of the religious and the political.  The religious voices preceded the political voice of President Obama.  What if that were always the case?  How can we meaningfully change the context in which our conversations take place?  How do we change the language to inclusivity, to multiple avenues for a solution, to the handshake of “both/and” rather than the finger-pointing of “either/or” and dichotomous polarization?

• Heal.  Something is wounded in our nation.  Rather than merely call for policy change and a single-sighted solution for complex problems, mournful cries to “fix something” – we need to heal.  But to heal, we need to acknowledge the wound.

At the heart of the issue is not the gun policy, nor the mental health issue, nor the gender issue; those are contributing causes.  Those are factors but they are not, in themselves alone, sufficient causes for the epidemic of mass murders we suffer today. We voice our sorrow but do not change our collective behavior.  Rather than purposeful actions toward deep-rooted, meaningful change, our response is a short-lived emotional sorrow.

Each of us cannot do everything.  But we all can do something.  Let the change begin with me.