• About

northierthanthou

northierthanthou

Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas: A Very NSFW Review

29 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Las Vegas, Museums

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

Education, Erotic, Erotic Heritage Museum, Gender, Institute for the Advanced Study of Human sexualit, Las Vegas, Museums, Pornography, Sex

050There is a certain kind of pornography that presents itself as a documentary film. It’s been awhile since I’ve watched one of these mondo films, but let’s just say that I learned things about lesbians from that flick that would, …well, probably surprise a lot of lesbians.

…yep.

The Erotic Heritage Museum reminds me a bit of such movies. Oh, I didn’t notice any outright disinformation, but it has that same odd fusion of license and libido, the same sense that an excuse no longer necessary has been turned into its own kink. It’s not just sex, it’s education.

…only it isn’t.

It’s is a damned shame, because a serious effort would have been interesting.

Let’s just take a tour, shall we?

I first noticed the museum in my quest for street art, and I must say that I like a number of the murals on the buildings exterior. Here, at least I have to give the place props for creativity. It is interesting that they had to cover the nipples on a couple of these pieces, as if that would really reduce the funkination passers by will witness upon even the most casual viewing. But of course the letter of the law can be as dull as it is senseless, and the girls had to be covered. …a little.

(Embiggen, …if you dare!)

Couple murals near the back door. …or is it the front door?
Apt poster
Window Manikins

Interesting Mural
Quite the Promise
The Grope

Elegant Curves
Youngish
Creepy Sexy

Well Hung, but what is he?
Beautiful and faceless
Naked and shy, …yep!

censored
Kinda posty-porn
Diggin the dumpster wall

Bored Manikins

Once inside, things get a little more interesting, or perhaps a little less, depending on your sense of perspective. One enters into a gift shop, which itself contains two private library collections and an Erotic Wedding chapel. They haven’t quite worked out access to the libraries, so that’s an interesting though currently unfulfilling part of the experience. One might even call it tantalizing! The staff is friendly and helpful, and they seem prepared to emphasize either the educational or the titillating aspects of the museum, perhaps shifting their approach according to the tastes of the customers.

The museum is curated by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, an unaccredited institution based in San Francisco, California.

According to the Museum’s “About us” page, it is the creation of the Rev. Ted McIlvenna and Harry Mohney, founder of Déjà Vu, a highly successful chain of strip clubs. Money is also a longtime friend and associate of Larry Flynt, of Hustler Magazine fame. His role in creating the museum helps to explain the degree to which ‘erotic heritage’ seems to mean ‘mainstream pornography’ in much of the museum’s presentation. In and of itself, this needn’t be a problem. Located as it is on Industrial Ave., the museum would be a fine fit with much of the adult businesses in the area. And why shouldn’t it be? The problem as I see it is the pretense to commenting on larger issues, only to deliver a sort of ode to the adult entertainment industry. Take for example the following quote from the Museum’s website:

The EHM houses more than 17,000 square feet of permanent and featured exhibits designed to preserve wonders of the erotic imagination as depicted through the artistic expression of acts of sex and love. It is dedicated to the belief that sexual pleasure and fun are natural aspects of the human experience, that such pleasure must be made available to all, and that our individual sexuality belongs to each of us.

The Museum is dedicated to the preservation of great erotic heritage that is typically undervalued, yet is of tremendous importance. The EHM is owned and managed by the Exodus Trust, a non-profit California Trust that has as its sole purpose to perform educational, scientific and literary functions relating to sexual, emotional, mental and physical health. Historical and contemporary erotic materials donated to the Exodus Trust are tax deductible as charitable donations in accordance with federal law. For more information regarding charitable donations, please visit our DONATE page.

What fascinates me about this text is tension between a vision of sexuality as a natural part of life and one which must be shared. …the latter part strikes me as a bit of a euphemism, because I don’t think they are talking about the kind of sharing between a man and a woman in their own bedroom, or even of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or two men with 4 women in front of twenty others for that matter. No, the point of the sharing is in this instance the creation of some medium by which this sexuality can be exchanged, and somewhere in here that in itself gives way to the commodification of sexuality. Hence, the broad beautiful mandate for sharing of sexual freedom becomes a function of market values, and the themes explored in that sexuality quickly become a function of ownership and corporate capital.

Of course such commodification happens all around, and I’m not particularly shocked to find it happening with sexuality. But let’s just say that a little self-awareness helps, and when folks promise a museum dedicated to sexuality at large, it is little irritating to find that they have little to say about sex occurring outside of a men’s magazine or a xxx movie theater.

That said, let’s have a look at the Gift Shop (Click to embiggen):

Wedding Chapel
Institute
The staff are not normally dressed like this.

Yep!
Actually digging this.
This reminds me of a story from Richard Drinnon’s book on the Metaphysics of Indian hating. It’s not a very pleasant story.

Okay, I know it’s an alarm, but after all that cognitive priming…
Pornalized Clothing!
Okay, I actually like some of these prints.

Poster
Inside the dicks!
Sacrilegious Supper

After paying a very reasonable $10.00 entrance fee, one moves through a simulated red light district on the way to the main gallery. The red light district falls completely flat for me. Simply put, a red light district is not a red light district without people. All the store fronts and simulated sex businesses in the world will never convey the sense of such a place, and so this part of the museum more than any other simply fails on all levels.

I would add that the big poster on First Amendment issues is simply too high to be read in the dark, at least by people without superior cat-eye magic-vision. So, that too is lost on the customer. It’s place in the museum is also at least a little odd. Of course the connection comes from the tension between erotic expression and censorship. This is not entirely limited to the porn industry, though they have played a key role in defending such expression. The bottom line here is that there is certainly a place for this content in a discussion of erotic expression, but one has to wonder if the context for it has been well framed, especially when posters like this one are just dropped into a collection that is otherwise on the surface at least a-political. One has to wonder if the rhetoric of free speech hasn’t become an essential part of sexuality for the museum’s curators and staff. …as opposed to a historically situated feature of sexuality as filtered through the conflict between the particular powers of the industrialized West.

In any event, this is the red light district:

He has a tie
Red Light
Neon Girl

Red Light again
Moar Red Light!
Red Light Again

Okay, this is funny.
First Amendment

The main room actually comes in two floors, both essentially arranged into one large round presentation floor. The top floor is a private collection, and I don’t have any pictures of its content. The bottom floor has an amazing quantity of interesting materials. Unfortunately, the arrangement leaves a lot to be desired. Many of the more exotic items are left almost entirely without explanation, while images associated with the mainstream porn industry and its political battles dominate the outer walls.

For example, we get very little information about sundry deflowering devices scattered throughout display cases, but the sections describing developments in pornography get much fuller treatment, as do numerous celebrity sex scandals. So, a practice that the average customer will not understand without some presentation to put it in context gets nothing in the way of an explanation while stories many of us have seen before get plenty of coverage. This works fine if the point of museum is to promote the pornography industry; it does not work at all when the declared point of the museum is something much broader and more enlightening.

And here, we have an interesting question, what does all the exotic cultural material mean to the average customer as opposed to those for whom these items were originally developed? Indeed, just how sexual is all this sexual memorabilia in its original context? How does a customer interpret an African deflowering device, for example, in the absence of any reason to believe it isn’t just another sex toy?  I can’t help but think that – presented as it is, with so little explanation – the sole lesson that many customers will take away from the ethnographic materials will be that other peoples are damned kinky. There just isn’t enough context to compete with the sexual background of the museum itself and the likely skewing off all things by an emergent narrative emphasizing sex and strangeness.

…it’s a bit like looking through old copies of national Geographic just to see pictures of the naked natives.

Note the uninformative caption
Statuette
Okay, this was all created by one guy, as I recall.

Erotic Art
REALLY uninformative caption card.
Interesting Statuettes

An Old Deflowering Device
Damned Disappointing

Could we be just a little more specific?
Red Tip
Forever fucking!

Interesting Barrels
Japanese Deflowering Instrument
Indian deflowering Instrument

More from Japan
Reproduction
Not sure what “primitive” means here, or what the scare quotes mean in this instance

Sexy Figurines
African fan
Sex

Some of more the playful aspects of the exhibit are quite wonderful. The million penny penis is pure gold! …or, copper, really, but the point is, I approve! The bathroom with all its graffiti (pens are provided) is at least a little interesting, but honestly it looks like it’s time to paint it over and let people start again. Other amusing displays certainly can be found, but they are jammed together in such a haphazard fashion, and with so little explanation, that is can be really difficult to make heads or tails of what one is looking at.

Strangely, a number of displays are given to various sexual scandals, and the treatment is (ironically) quite punitive. It makes sense of course for those interested in free sexual expression to feel a little vindicated when various anti-porn crusaders or seemingly repressed right wing cultural warriors get caught with their pants down (sometimes quite literally), but some of the folks appearing on the wall of shame just don’t fit that most. More importantly, at least some level, one ought to appreciate that this is to be expected. Rather than ‘haha’ might one say “welcome back to humanity?”

In any event, the museum never does give us any context in which to elevate the “Wall of Shame” beyond the level of pointing and laughing. That doesn’t strike me as worthy of a museum, and if I am going to laugh, I would rather laugh at a penny penis than people proving themselves all-to-human, …even those who may have wished otherwise.

Wall of Shame
Clergy
Celebrity

Other

So, once again the museum presents an odd blending of politics and sexuality, one if which the curators seem to have let the one skew their sense of the other a bit too much in my estimation. In any event, here is the bulk of the first floor stuff (if you click on the pictures, they get bigger, …really!)

The Sister’s of Perpetual Indulgence are definitely worth a google.
Art and Larry Flynt
Free Speech Coalition

Hidden Narrative
I wish I could remember where this was, but it’s unfortunate.
Does the world really need another derivative decalog?

Chicken Ranch
Does anyone else remember that awful song?
Personally, I prefer… nevermind.

Y’all should go over to A Knitt Societ and ask Sarah if she has anymore pictures of this display.
Information Panels
They actually had quite a few gag-stills from movies

Okay, this is at least interesting
…alright
Flyntobelia

Erotic Art
Erotic Art II
Sundry Sexy Stuff

I wonder if the designer was aware of the torture device he was emulating?
Moar sex Stuff)
You might wonder what some of that stuff had to do with women’s health…

Ah here is the health content.
Just a little disturbing.
More venting about scandals

Hustler
Million Penny Penis
Stuff

Moar Stuff
All Hail Flynt!
Transgendered folks

Actually, I would have loved to have seen a lot of of this kind of stuff.
Old Devices
You needed a closer look, didn’t you?

They had a few more of these old devices, and the info. on them wasn’t terrible.
On the way to the bathroom
bathroom

Before signing off, I want to say thank you to Sarah from the blog, A Knitty Society. She and her husband accompanied me through the museum. I very much enjoyed discussing the materials with them, and I look forward to reading her own post on the museum. Y’all should definitely check out her blog.

And let’s finish with a bit of zoological interest:

Animal Penises)
Raccoon Penis
These are common sources of artwork up North

I suppose I should add that I actually think there is a lot of potential in this museum, which is what makes its present state all that much more disappointing. The staff certainly have a diverse range of talents, and they have a fantastic collection of interesting materials on display. What no-one seems to have done at the Erotic Heritage Museum is thought through the kind of effect the want to produce and just how much the museum is intended to promote education as opposed to titillation. Frankly, I think they could manage both a lot better than they presently have. One has only to get past the point where a momentary glimpse of things-sexual is enough to satisfy the mind and the libido all by itself. All of this stuff has context; the folks at this museum really ought to provide that.

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Brief Lapse in Sarcasm and a Moment of Unabashed Provincialism

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Bad Photography

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Clouds, Depression, Las Vegas, Photograph, Photos, Skies, Sun

ChicagoaginI spent 3 years in Chicago. I well remember how miserable that first few months happened to be. I had plenty of cause to gripe, but truth be told that didn’t quite explain my mood. I couldn’t quite get a handle on what had me so down, but I learned a thing about the matter when I stepped off the plane in Corpus Christi, Texas, and suddenly felt better. I remember just standing there on the tarmac, trying to figure out what was different.

Then I saw it. Only it wasn’t anything specific, but I saw it just the same.

For the first time in months, I could see for miles. In Chicago my view of the skies had been blocked by sky-scrappers, and dense cloud-cover had blocked what little was left of the skies. I hadn’t seen much of the sun in close to a month, but there it was, right where I had grown accustomed to seeing it, along with all that space. And that alone seemed quite sufficient to lift a load off my back.

It was a lesson well learned, though it certainly surprised to me at the time. Place mattered to me, and open skies seemed to be a big part of what gave a place it’s worth in my estimation.

***

I had recently forgotten how much I miss the Southwestern skies. The clouds always seem so much further up in the sky than they do in Alaska. Now that I am down here again, I remember just how beautiful the sunsets can be in these parts. Whether the day went well or worse, they can certainly put a warm finish on it.

(Simon says “Click to embiggen!”)

 

Santa Fe
Denver Skyline
Denver Again

Denver Trees
Clouds Over Denver
Vegas

Vegas II
Vegas III
Santa Fe Train Station

Of course now that I am down here I also miss the arctic skies. The clouds always seem so near the ground, it feels like you could just reach out and touch them. Time and again, I have taken pictures of something else, only to find the Alaskan sky has stolen the show. I will see these skies again soon.

I can’t wait.

 

I was going for the bit of snow graffiti, but I got a sunset pic instead.
Red House
Thick fog, rolling in off the sea.

Clouds over a pond.
Barrow on a May night
These clouds remind me of dried salmon flesh.

Clouds over the ocean.
Hauling in the last whale of the season.
The final whale harvest of the season.

Deadhorse

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Casinos Kinda Bore Me (So Let’s Hang with the Street Performers)

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Las Vegas

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Comedy, Homelessness, Las Vegas, Magic, Music, Nevada, Street Performers

(161)I never go down to the strip. By ‘never’ I really mean ‘almost’, but anyway, this trip was one of those exceptions. I came down a couple times to give my money to these guys (much better than dropping it in a slot machine. …seriously, you walk in a casino and look at all the people playing slots. If you see one person smiling, then you’re beating the odds on that one. But anyway…

There seems to be a fair range of different people working the strip. Some folks appear to be in desperate straights, doing what they can to hustle up some cash. Others have made a genuine profession out of it. …and no, I don’t figure those are mutually exclusive narratives.

The range of performances vary as well. Some folks have reasonably well-developed acts. Others simply dress up in a costume and pose for a dollar a pic. All of them appear to work for tips. They can get rather aggressive about that dollar too; don’t even try to snap one without paying the guy in the costume. No-one looks cool when they are getting their ass kicked by a guy in costume.

Of course the streets are also filled with folks handing out small business cards. They only offer these to the guys, for some unknown reason (cough), but they give you a whole bunch at once. I don’t want to go into details, but let’s just say that apparently a girl named Jackie is just waiting to hear from me, and Heather makes house-calls. Candy might even bring a friend!

Anyway, I have a couple videos below. …click to embiggen.

I’m not sure what a Statue of Liberty means in this context, but I’m pretty sure there is at least an ironic implication or three,
Meet Constant
I’m really disappointed, my video of this act didn’t come through. He’s quite remarkable.

Constant
Living Statue
Ace, Paul, and Peter were nowhere to be found.

Okay, so I think this is how these pictures are supposed to go.
Equipment just left there.
These guys were in town for a comic book convention.

Living Placard.
He plays and plays…
Almost lured me in, she did.

I think these girls may have been the real thing; they were, um, …flexible.
Guess these guys are in town again.
This Elvis made a point to find out where I was from.

He’s Batman!
He posed for the picture.
See, this bastard is the reason Vegas is so dry!!!

I really like this kitty!
Hello Kitty!
Moon and Tower

Transformers!
So, were is Gorp or the Asteroids Ship?
Comedy-gician

Hey look; a Gold Guy!
Elvis after he has left the building.
More Vegas Buildings

Card Hawker!
Yeah, …Vegas has one.
Yep, there is a person in there.

I wanted to get a complete video of one of these.
There is a bad joke in this picture. I won’t write it, but I’m a terrible person for thinking it.
They look so much bigger in person.

Colorful …yep.
Just Random Buildings. …they don’t do tricks or sing or anything!
Spider People Flash a Peace Sign!

I didn’t have anyone to buy a flower for, so he just posed for a picture.
Don’t leave!

.

.

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Not Raised by Wolves, but Damned Close!

14 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Animals, Childhood

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

Baby-Sitters, Cats, Childhood, Dogs, Horses, Navajo, Nostalgia, Parrot, Pets

Legs, Rover, and Spooner

Legs, Rover, and Spooner

The worst thing Johnny Cash’s dad ever did to him was to name him ‘Sue’; the worst thing my Dad ever did to me was to teach the family parrot my name.

Okay, so one of those is a fictional event; the other taught me just how far the voice of a young parrot can reach. All the way down the block, it would seem, and ‘Ginger’ could keep it up for hours.

It was in some small way, poetic justice to learn that Ginger would attack Dad whenever he came near me as I was sleeping. I used to put her on the couch when I took a nap so she would be quiet. She allowed no-one near me, especially not Dad. It’s hardly the first time an animal had appointed itself my protector, but there was something especially impressive about that little green bird charging full tilt at someone umpteen times her size. Lessons in loyalty, huh?

In the end Ginger turned out to be a guy-parrot, and he became unmanageable when he finally reached maturity. We found him a home better prepared to take care of him. I can only hope he is still doing well today. …and yes, I still think of him as a her; it’s kinda weird, I know.

(Click to embiggen)

Ginger and I, 1988
Playful, just like a kitten
Really Playful

She wouldn’t let us near her toys either.

What has me thinking about this is a notion I recently had about my days in Navajo country. I often heard from older folks that sheep used to raise the children out there. This theme was usually mixed in with one of those declensionist narratives about the loss of culture and those gosh-darned kids! Older folks always have such stories, but some of them are more interesting than others.

I always thought the livestock-as-nanny theme was an interesting twist on this kind of story, not the least of reasons being that the difference between the adults I spoke with and the younger generation did seem to include this one very real difference. Many of the older folks (and here I would include people in their 30s and 40s as well as ‘elders’) out there really had grown-up herding sheep and goats, and evidently they found this to be a valuable learning experience. Few if any of the younger kids out there in the mid 90s had had this experience. Hell, they likely had the same baby-sitter I did as a kid, …the TV. That was one very real difference between different generations of Diné, and it always struck me as a big one.

Listening to folks tell me this story, I could well imagine a lone child (or perhaps a few cousin-brothers) out alone with a flock, responsible for its welfare. I could imagine hours of time spent with sheep and goats for company, and I couldn’t help but wonder how that might shape a developing young mind. I still wonder how very different childhood must have been for a generation growing up without it.

A sheep may be an odd baby-sitter, but so is a television.

The notion that animals could help to raise a person always struck me as a profound lesson, but it always seemed to me a lesson about the lives of others. It was only recently that I came to think of this as more generally applicable, perhaps even something that might shed a little light on my own life. A few weeks back I was studying the many scars on my hands, most of which I got from playing with a pair of Siamese-mixed Kittens (‘Boots’ and ‘Rover’) we got when I was a kid. I hadn’t even earned the majority of these scars due to anger, just from many hours of play. Like most boys my age, my elbows were bloody from about the age of 6 to maybe 12 or so. But my hands also had little claw scars for most of that time as well. Most of them were small and shallow, just enough to tell me ‘gotcha’ with a sort of wink, but some were big and deep, because sometimes a cat is done playing. Anyway, I always seemed to have such scars on my hands when I was younger.

RanchinColorado2The point is that I spent a lot of time with the family pets, especially between the ages of 4 and 8, when for some reason my family moved to a ranch in Southern Colorado. I had no human playmates within walking distance, well except for a trio of girls that lived down the way for a couple years, but they were, well, …girls! I preferred to ride my horse or play with the cats. Recently, I’ve come to wonder just what kind of marks they have left on me?

…besides the literal ones, I mean.

Is there any sense in which the family pets raised me? If I had to guess, I would say that my sense of humor is to some degree the legacy of those cats, right down to the moments when it fails me. My verbal play is in some ways a reflection of my days playing with those cats. In particular, I am thinking about the way a cat will assess your intent, the way it trusts a playmate up to a point. …and the way things can get ugly fast when you’ve reached that point. Wrestling with a cat is a real test of goodwill, and you are always one menacing gesture away from one of those deep scars, so to speak. I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing on those terms, and I suppose I have internalized them. So, maybe Boots and Rover did raise me.

…or would it be more accurate to say that we grew up together? Either way; they left their mark.

Me with either Boots or Rover.
Boots
Rover coming through the curtains.

Rover Sitting Up.
Rover being beautiful
Rover on a couch.

We also had a small pack of dogs on that ranch, and kept the pack for many years after, but I honestly don’t think these guys had quite the same impact on me. I understood the big dogs and how to keep on their good side, and the little ones were always good company. I loved each of the family pets, and I always felt a little more comfortable in their presence, but my interactions with the family dogs were nowhere near as intense as those with my cats.

Thai Ling

Thai Ling, August of 66

Of course we also had an older Siamese, named Thai Ling. This cat was beautiful, but he had quite a temper. My older brother and sister still tell stories about a terrible event involving a dresser drawer and plenty of blood spilled upon opening it. No-one disputes that the cat had been stuffed in the drawer. Who put him there is still up for debate.As I understand it, poor Thai Ling may have helped one of my siblings with a few experiments testing the nature of gravity and cat-reflexes.

I never held it against Thai Ling that he was so cranky. Mostly, I left him alone, or stuck to petting him, which was dangerous enough. It is entirely possible that Thai Ling is responsible for at least a few of the scars on my hand. I certainly didn’t play much with that old guy.

Just what I did to earn my parents wrath, I will never know, but I am fairly convinced that the Shetland Pony was an attempt to do me in. I couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6 when this creature came into my life, and the worst thing about him was the child-like reins that I was given to ride him with. These reins had a closed loop at the end, presumably so that it would stay on his neck whenever I let go of them. The problem was that I never did let go of them, even when ‘Scooper’ would suddenly drop his head down to eat some grass. The reigns weren’t that long, and so I would inevitably go tumbling over Scooper’s head and onto the grass in front of him, coming up with my cowboy hat down around my then bawling eyes, asking someone to help me up.

…and this tragedy would repeat itself until the adults in my life grew tired of watching it.

Meonapony

Me on a Pony, Neither Scooper nor Little Bit.

Later, my parents bought got a Welsh Morgan for me. I wanted to call her her ‘Blacky’, but somehow she ended up with the name ‘Little Bit’. I had completely forgotten that name as I wrote this, btw, had to come back and edit the post). Little Bit was a good horse. …except when she decided to head to the barn. If she and I had a dispute over which direction to go, Little Bit always won. My brother once gave me a stick to use as incentive, but I wouldn’t have it. So, I continued to lose the argument with Little Bit until we moved to California and gave her away.

One lesson Little did teach me was how to make the best of a bad situation. If I could coax her all the way to the far corner of the ranch, taking advantage of all the twists and turns in our fence line, then I could point her towards the barn, give her a quick giddy-up kick, and enjoy the ride of my life.

Now THAT was fun!

In time, I got a couple dogs of my own. There was ‘Legs’. Someone brought Legs to my family announcing that he was a Doberman Pincher that had been hit by a car. He was wrapped in a blanket, so we didn’t see much at first. The ears on legs seemed rather large, but none of us knew how big an uncut Dobbie’s ears were supposed to be anyway. He never did outgrow the limp that earned him that name. Legs became my dog as time went on, and mostly I remember playing chase with him for hours. He limped, but he could manage speed when he needed to. …or wanted to. Damned if that dog did not wasn’t an expert at tripping me; then he’d run away cause then I was ‘it’ so to speak. We learned one very important detail about him that first night though. He dragged himself to the door and began howling at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, the big floppy ears made a bit more sense.

…and Dad said; “that’s no doberman.”

Another of the pack that came to be mine was a Peekapoo (Pekinese-Poodle combination) named “Midget.” …okay, some of these names suck, but that wasn’t her fault. Anyway this dog was the closest to a pure-breed that I ever owned. Mom and Dad bought her at a pet store, something I would never do in a million years today (give me a pound-mutt any day, dog or cat, …no offense to Midget). She was a sweetie, and I taught her to play fetch. …she taught me never to do that again. Seriously, that dog would try and play fetch with me for hours on end. Course I may have let that lesson slip with Auto-Kitty. She’s rather fond of fetch.

In fact, I swear to the Invisible Pink Unicorn that Auto-Kitty used to play catch with me. She could toss a toy right to me, and for awhile she did. Now she makes me come get it. And I guess it’s okay that she fetches, because she doesn’t wear me out with the game. If only she didn’t choose 3am as her favorite time to play it.

I would be remiss if I left out one other significant non-human from my childhood, the truck. We never gave it a name, and I never did learn it’s gender, but I recall learning to drive on this thing. Dad would put me in the driver’s seat as he and my siblings tossed bails of hay into the back. They’d shout; “stand on the pedal” and “stand on the brake” as we moved down the row of hay, then someone would get in and turn it around to go back the other way, and I would go back into the driver’s seat.

Love this old truck.

Love this old truck.

Later, Dad would have me drive the truck on the dirt roads to the dump. I used to love going to the dump, partly because I would get to drive and partly because we always went shooting for awhile afterward. Dump-day was the highlight of the week.

We still had the truck when I started college. I still remember driving around with a couple classmates, chattering away as we descended down some hill. One friend kept trying to interrupt me, his tone getting progressively more urgent; ‘Dan! …Dan!” I was too busy making some point about who knows what. Finally, my friend shouted out, “Dan, seriously, is this thing going to stop?” …I hadn’t even thought about it. I was pumping the brakes, which is what I had to to before any stop. My poor friend saw me doing this as we approached an intersection and became convinced he was about to die. Had to flutter the gas pedal to get it to start, too, and that freaked him out a little more. For me it was just another drive; for that friend it was like a horror-show.

Anyway, that truck had personality; it was a family member for a couple decades.

Still can’t believe Dad sold it!

Midget
Midget with another dog; I think it’s name was Quayle.
Lady was the grand matriarch of our pack.

Lady, Lindon (the black mutt) and Sessy (the weiner doggish mutt)
Harietta
Sessy and Lindon

Waiting Patiently for me to let them in.

So, what have we learned today? Well, I suppose we’ve learned that family pictures can lead to a serious bout of nostalgia. We also learned that a dog will wear you out playing fetch, but a cat will just wait till you fall asleep to initiate the game…and well, I suppose I was trying for something more profound.

I’m afraid most of my anecdotes don’t quite live up to the promise of the initial question. I do think that most of us underestimate the impact that animals have on us. We may care for them, but we don’t quite give them credit for shaping our personalities. Typically, most people talk about raising and training dogs and cats, or about putting up with their behavior. We may jokingly refer to a pet training us in some way, but folks seldom take the prospect all that seriously. But pets leave their marks on us in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it’s a scar on your hands; sometimes it’s a sense of responsibility for caring for them, and sometimes their legacy is a little more intangible.

The pets you grow up with would seem to be especially important; jut as you are learning how to relate to other people, you are also learning how to relate to them. This gives the four-legged critters and even the flying ones a little say in our development, I think. We don’t just teach them how to behave; sometimes they are the ones doing the teaching.

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Time Heals All Wounds …Unless it Doesn’t

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in History, Narrative VIolence, Native American Themes

≈ 40 Comments

Tags

Accidental Racist, American Indians, History, Holocaust, Memory, Native Americans, The Long Walk, Time, Tragedy

http://www.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails.php?fileID=494

http://www.newmexicohistory.org

A career in Native American studies makes you the grammatical equivalent of a time machine. No sooner do people learn where you work, what you study, or what specific things you happen to be working on than they suddenly switch to past tense. Often this will be accompanied by sad tones and slightly downcast eyes. Seriously, I’ve lost track of the number of times a few comments from me have led people to great moments of reflection about “what we have done to them.”

These moments of introspective time-travel usually leave me with a bit of motion sickness. See, the thing is that people go back to the past like this when I am actually talking about perfectly contemporary issues. When I worked on the Navajo Nation, simply telling folks what I do for a living was often enough to send their souls searching through history for resolution of collective sins, real or imagined. In most cases I don’t think folks had any real sense of the specifics in question, no real idea of just what Anglos had done to Navajos, for example. In most cases, I suspect the sudden trip to the past tense was filled with thoughts of generic cowboys and even more generic Indians, …who probably looked more like Lakota than Navajos anyway. In any event, the problem is simple enough; for far too many people Native Americans simply belong in the past.

…and yes, I do wonder just how often Native Americans get this? Perhaps it’s a white thing after all. I don’t remember getting this effect in the presence of natives, just when it’s me talking to my own, so to speak.

Anyway, I figure it makes it a Hell of a lot easier to be sorry about something if it happened a few generations back. Try to talk to people about issues such as uranium poisoning, forced relocation, or any number of contemporary issues, and they are less certain that what ‘we’ are doing to ‘them’ isn’t somehow justified, or at least necessary, or at least.

But folks are happy to talk about Custer.

Wasn’t he a bastard!?!

Rarely do I get the sense that this sort of time warp is meant to provide historical perspective; often it strikes me as just one more way of changing the subject.

Of course somber regrets for crimes long forgotten are only the nice-guy half of this coin. Flip the quarter over and you get a range of narratives effectively using time to disclaim responsibility for these same crimes, perhaps even a comment to the effect that it’s best for Native Americans to put the past behind them. Occasionally people will actually tell me that reservations or casinos, etc. are attempts to pay for what ‘our ancestors’ did, and of course the point is always to suggest that such concessions are unfair to the rest of us here in the present.

And no, this time-to-forget theme is not limited to Native Americans. One has only to suffer his way through “The Accidental Racist” to hear Brad Paisley play precisely this shell game with history. I don’t have the stomach to parse the details of this terrible tune, but let’s just say that Brad is apparently paying for the mistakes of a southern past, and L.L. Cool Jay is happy to let bygones be bygones.

…Seriously, both of them should have known better.

It’s funny those who support the rebel flag are always prepared to discuss its significance in the civil war. Rarely do they want to comment on its use in opposition to the civil rights movement.  History textbooks probably don’t make this much easier, telling us that slavery ended with the close of the civil war. Sure they note the existence of debt peonage and Jim Crow Laws, etc., but that is a more complex story. The morality tale for most people ends at Appomattox. I suspect it is the story of slavery that many will imagine when they ask why African-Americans have trouble putting the past behind them. The notion that some folks can still remember when there was real danger in looking a white person in the eye just seems to escape a lot of people.

…most of them white.

But what’s past isn’t equally past for all people. I learned this very clearly out in Navajo country. The nadir or their historical narratives begins with the story of the Long Walk. In 1864 Kit Carson burned marched through Navajo country, burned their crops and destroyed their homes. He then waited for winter to bring them to him.

It worked.

The result was 4 years of internment at a place called Fort Sumner in Southeastern New Mexico. Many of those who started the “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner didn’t make it to the end.

When my friends, students, and coworkers told me their stories about the long walk, what struck me most about their narratives was the way they always began.  They almost always began with a clear reference to some family member. These weren’t simply stories about something that happened to their ancestors; they were stories about the death of a Great Aunt or the trials of a Great Great Grandmother. People telling me these stories consistently anchored narratives of the long walk in their own relationship to one of those who had been through it. These were not stories about an event over a hundred years ago; they were intensely personal stories of family tragedy.

I’ve heard similar stories, …from my high school history teacher, for example. A native of Georgia, her account of Sherman’s march included a great grandmother’s efforts to save a family heirloom (she stuck it on a wall in the hopes Union troops wouldn’t notice). When I taught briefly at a Jewish private school in Houston, I heard such stories from survivors of the Holocaust. More importantly, my students heard those stories. They hear them every year, directly from the survivors, and in countless other contexts throughout the year. I’ve heard such tragic narratives from Inupiat speaking about the horrors of influenza epidemics brought by whalers and the trials of the boarding schools. Exposure to virgin soil epidemics is hardly ancient history on the North slope, and most any native can tell you about some elder who was punished for speaking her own language at the schools. What all these narratives have in common isn’t simply tragedy; it’s direct personal connection to the suffering.

Of course, the suffering in some of those stories is greater than that in others.

People don’t just forget these sorts of events. They keep them alive; they keep them personal. The suffering becomes part of the meaning of history, and part of the personal identity of those that have been through it, of their children, and their children’s children.

Whether or not such stories should be kept alive in that way is a whole other question, and a rather ironic one at that. The suggestion that people subjected to injustice ought somehow to simply move on has more than a trace of might-makes-right in it. It is an attempt to suggest that certain horrors are simply an accomplished fact, as are the long-term consequences of those horrors; land lost, buildings and nations built for the benefit of someone else, and whole scores of missing family – aunts and uncles not present and cousins never born, all of it, so the argument goes is just a done deal. Yet some people say that it would be best to just move on; accept all of this and focus on the future.

Best for whom?

Your land is ours now, but let’s not dwell on how that happened. Your grandmother’s language is gone now, but let’s not think too much about that. Cities wrecked? Whole populations wiped out? What’s past is past, so some say; let’s look to the future.

But if the long-term consequences of such atrocities might be thought an accomplished fact, then so are the bitter narratives.

…and the bitterness itself.

It seems those with such tragedy in their past rarely (if ever) take such advice. They remember! They remember with a passion. Here we have at least a trace of poetic justice. It seems to me quite fitting that those hoping the descendants of tragedy would accept the consequences and simply move on should run square up against one other uncomfortable and very stubborn fact, namely that folks just don’t forget such things.

They really don’t.

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Wandering in Place

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by danielwalldammit in Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Blogging, Creative Writing, Dead-Air, Genres, Nonsense, Stream of Consciousness, Writer's Block

Fido hiding with my thoughts

Fido must be hiding with my thoughts. Little bastard, bring me my thoughts back!

There once was a boy named Dan. He sat down in front of his computer and thought real hard. But on this day, he had nothing really to say. Dan thought, and he frowned, and he even tapped out a word or two, but nothing much came to mind. The big bad delete button ate all his work. Dan pouted and said; “foo on you, bad button.” But the bad delete button just laughed and told Dan it was his own fault.

Silly Dan. Only a Dummy-Butt sits at a computer with nothing to say.

The blank page mocked Mr. Dammit as he sat in silence contemplating this new quandary. Where had the words made off to? China-town? The casino down by the back alley? Perhaps they were sitting right now with a hot dame having a laugh on Dan’s behalf? There may have been a million stale stories to tell in this sinful city, but not one of them planned on spending a moment in this blogger’s thick skull, not today. What happened, Mr. Dammit wondered? And why in the Hell had he taken to referring to himself in the third person?

Three clues presented themselves to Mr. Dammit’s attention, a giant sucking sound somewhere in his head, or perhaps his heart, a sick feeling in his gut, and silly succotash filling the veranda with purple sounds and pie-happy smiles just like it was Thursday. Dan wasn’t entirely sure about the third clue, but he was pretty sure that it meant something.

Perhaps that something was an iconic relationship to the thoughtful imaginary which in its apparent absence effectively alluded to the very discursive framework which had given rise to its formation, completely over-determining the salient features of this particularly subjectivity so as to elide the general significance of the mundane and occlude the purple succotash in a manner consonant with racist/sexist/heterosexist/picodegalloist ontologies firmly rooted in the praxis of neo-corporatist brownie projection.

Dan thought real hard. What was the line?

“You put hot butter on your brownie and you be havin’ a party in your mouth.”

Her breathing quickened as she responded; “will juicy flavors rave all over my taste buds?”

“They will indeed, baby,” he stood over her XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX well, XXXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXXX yes, yes! XXXXXXX XXXX XXXXX YES!!!!

XXXXXX XX XXXX but never in these pants XXXXXXX XX XXXXXXXXXX XXX XXXX

…sadly, these memories did little to help Dan find a thought worth inflicting on his own computer. Strangely, his fingers moved without thought across the keyboard anyway. Words appeared as ghosts upon his screen, words lacking thought, like bodies without a soul. The irony, Dan thought, the irony!

Irony Hell!

Irony is a fricking hot-buttered brownie.

71.271549 -156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Top Posts & Pages

  • About
    About
  • Master and Commander Kinda Queered
    Master and Commander Kinda Queered
  • An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
    An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
  • Great Movie Villains, Vol. III: Nevermind the Nazgûl, Fear the Fellowship!
    Great Movie Villains, Vol. III: Nevermind the Nazgûl, Fear the Fellowship!
  • The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
    The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
  • Time Heals All Wounds ...Unless it Doesn't
    Time Heals All Wounds ...Unless it Doesn't
  • Epithets and Implicatures, and History as Damage Control
    Epithets and Implicatures, and History as Damage Control
  • Oh Come On!
    Oh Come On!

Topics

  • Alaska
  • Animals
  • Anthropology
  • atheism
  • Bad Photography
  • Books
  • Childhood
  • Education
  • Gaming
  • General
  • History
  • Irritation Meditation
  • Justice
  • Las Vegas
  • Minis
  • Movie Villainy
  • Movies
  • Museums
  • Music
  • Narrative VIolence
  • Native American Themes
  • Philosophy
  • Politics
  • Public History
  • Re-Creations
  • Religion
  • Street Art
  • The Bullet Point Mind
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Uncommonday
  • White Indians
  • Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

Blogroll

  • American Creation
  • An Historian Goes to the Movies
  • Aunt Phil's Trunk
  • Bob's Blog
  • Dr. Gerald Stein
  • Hinterlogics
  • Ignorance WIthout Arrogance
  • Im-North
  • Insta-North
  • Just a Girl from Homer
  • Multo (Ghost)
  • Native America
  • Norbert Haupt
  • Northwest History
  • Northy Pins
  • Northy-Tok
  • Nunawhaa
  • Religion in American History
  • The History Blog
  • The History Chicks
  • What Do I Know?

Archives

  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011

My Twitter Feed

Follow @Brimshack

RSS Feed

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 8,099 other subscribers

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • northierthanthou
    • Join 8,099 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • northierthanthou
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: