Did Anyone Else Notice...

Did Anyone Else Notice...that getting together every now and then to talk about dung beetles could help knit our divided and fragmented society together?

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 18:12:11 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that getting together every now and then to talk about dung beetles could help knit our divided and fragmented society together? Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/15/2021 - 12:12

In these times of division and polarization, if we are going to get anywhere in remembering what it is that we still have in common, we are going to have to get back to basics.

I mean, really basic.

On the evening of June 10, 2021, in a program at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, dung beetles were the center of attention, interest, enlightenment, and maybe even of enchantment. The improbable, the inspirational, and the icky came together in a unity that I believe is without parallel or precedent.

A sizable group of us had gathered for a book launching. Hilary Whiton (whose name I fear I might be mispronouncing), is a wondrously energetic teacher with perfect aim when it comes to engaging and holding the attention of the under-12 set.

It was Hilary’s ambition to create a children’s book that would spotlight the charisma and charm that characterize some (though not all) bugs. Her vision was to write a story that would teach children about the complexity of ecosystems, where cycles of eating and excreting keep nutrition in constant motion.

Last Thursday evening, with twenty or thirty children gathered before her, Hilary Whiton led a peppy discussion of the Great Plains ecosystem, back in the era when very visible bison found abundant grass, and less visible dung beetles found proportionately abundant droppings.

(And yes, I did flinch a time or two when the author referred to this food source as “poop patties.” But then I made a sensible choice to refuse to take this personally.)

The lively exchange between the teacher and the children was wondrous to watch. When Hilary asked a question, a sea of hands went up in response. When she read the book aloud, the romance of Cozmo and Rose held everyone’s attention; the pair were, after all, rainbow scarab beetles, and thereby certifiably colorful characters. (The book’s illustrator Stephen Stone made their color very vibrant indeed.) And, at the end, a young bison and her mother conveyed their appreciation for the nutrient recycling (and also the reduction in the annoying fly population) that the lead couple and their relatives willingly performed.

And just how will the discussion of dung beetles knit our fractured society together?

Transforming her vision into a reality, Hilary recruited Dr. Frank Krell, Senior Curator of Entomology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, as her comrade, ally, and collaborator. As the second speaker in the Thursday night program, Dr. Krell—whose area of study includes dung beetles—quickly built a sturdy bridge over the oft-lamented canyon separating scientific experts from the general public. Perhaps because his area of expertise requires him to speak comfortably in public about the functioning of digestive systems, he is entirely at ease with an audience of people who are not his equals in scientific sophistication.

Having spent plenty of time in conversations with people seeking ways to enhance the effectiveness of science communication, I now have six evidence-based words to add to that discussion: “Watch how Dr. Krell does it.”

The dung beetle discussion also presented a model of intergenerational communication, dealing with a subject matter in which children and their elders could find equal amusement. The children didn’t waste a minute: as soon as Hilary Whiton joined them, they pitched into asking rather graphic and indelicate questions. Dramatically more self-conscious and inhibited, the adults at first attempted to maintain a stance of amused distance. But they were soon transformed into enthusiastic listeners learning about a topic---hmmm, how to put this—familiar to, if not entirely understood by, all organisms fortunate enough to find food to consume.

In the course of last Thursday evening, science and society joined together, and very young people and much older people united.

So why wouldn’t this work with Republicans and Democrats?

When excrement is the topic, antagonists simply lose their bearings. Revealed to themselves and to each other as creatures whose existence depends on the full functioning of start-to-finish digestive tracts, people on either side of the well-established divisions of our time suddenly have to say to each other, “Well, we do have this in common.”

I conclude with advice from Dr. Krell, responding to a challenge very specific to his profession, but also useful—with only a little stretching—to practitioners in every imaginable profession.

“Always carry handwipes when hunting dung beetles.”

In other words, make every effort not to step in it, but do keep the handwipes nearby just in case you do.

And keep your copy of Hilary Whiton’s The Poopicorn ready to read aloud when discussions get heated.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that “The Era of Improbable Comfort Made Possible by a Taken-for-Granted but Truly Astonishing Infrastructure” is losing its “taken-for-granted” part?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 18:49:18 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that “The Era of Improbable Comfort Made Possible by a Taken-for-Granted but Truly Astonishing Infrastructure” is losing its “taken-for-granted” part? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/07/2021 - 12:49

A decade ago, I took up a campaign to popularize this phrase because it offered an accurate framework for thinking about how the majority of Americans had been living for the better part of a century.

It was my hope that “The Era of Improbable Comfort Made Possible by a Taken-for-Granted but Truly Astonishing Infrastructure” would acquire the status of a familiar household phrase.

So far, success has been limited. Worse, the relevance of this phrase is getting very shaky.

The infrastructure on which our comfort relies is still truly astonishing, but the taken-for-granted part is fading fast.

Here are several of the elements of our infrastructure-supported comfort that we can no longer take for granted:

Sufficient water in Western streams, rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers.
A supply of fossil fuel, produced without opposition or controversy, to power conventional automobiles and also to produce electricity.
Supply chains of products ranging from rare earth minerals for renewable energy to lumber for home construction (we’ll return to alarm over the supplies of rental cars and chicken wings on another occasion).
A postponement of the urgent demand for the maintenance of roads, bridges, and dams, coupled with the emerging need for careful, foresighted planning for the future of urban office buildings.
The existence of sufficient agreement among citizens on the role of government in coordinating and supporting the shared enterprises necessary to adapt infrastructure to changing times.

Worst of all, in the decade since I coined my unwieldy phrase, a disturbing peril has emerged: the vulnerability of the systems that supply us with essential goods and services to hacking by malicious entities worldwide.

The scale and intensity of these challenges, you might think, would have persuaded me to stop pleading with the public to adopt the phrase, “The Era of Improbable Comfort Made Possible by a Taken-for-Granted but Truly Astonishing Infrastructure.”

On the contrary, as eras shift around us, it becomes even more important to persuade people to adopt that phrase—because it makes it possible to contemplate the big picture of what would otherwise appear as a cluttered and chaotic set of vexations, and because it reminds us that, since human beings built this “truly astonishing infrastructure,” human beings can figure out how to design its future without the “taken-for-granted” part.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that every time you try to uproot a dandelion, your admiration for environmental historians soars?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 18:12:01 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that every time you try to uproot a dandelion, your admiration for environmental historians soars? Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/02/2021 - 12:12

In what must have been a much simpler era of my life, dandelions were the principal target of my rage. Spring arrived, and soon those spiky leaves, arranged as spokes around a creepy hub, overran the earth. Their treacherous attempt at cuteness—the brief phase when cheery little yellow flowers form the hub—makes a quick transition to a much more honestly ugly arrangement of fuzzballs spewing seeds in every direction.

As I struggled to exterminate these botanical vermin, inevitably passersby would pause on the sidewalk to tell me—officiously and condescendingly—that my efforts would be pointless unless I could dig out the whole root.

Since the most energetic and deft user of a dandelion fork still can only get at the top one-or-two inches of the root, the passersby were stopping to tell me that I was defeated before I had started. Of course, this was true, but when strangers stopped to tell me this truth, I could become almost as angry at them as I was at the dandelions.

Over the years, while I have never surrendered my dandelion forks (at present, I have three), I have grown much more temperate, refusing to give dandelions the satisfaction of knowing they have upset me. Moreover, for reasons that I cannot guess, it has been years since a single passerby thought that I needed to be reminded of the futility of my undertaking.

But what changed me forever was the 1986 publication of Alfred W. Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900.

Whipping up his readers’ interest in the crucial role that invasive plants and imported livestock played in the European conquest of North America, South America, Australia, and New Zealand, Crosby wrote a spectacular “Prologue” to his book. If the Pulitzer Prize Board were to concede ground to the short attention span of readers today and to create a new Pulitzer Prize for the Best Sentence written in any given year, then I believe Al Crosby’s sentence would receive that prize retroactively.

This award-deserving sentence comes as the answer to the question, why did European colonization have such striking success in areas so remote from Europe geographically and so plentifully populated by other societies?

Here is Crosby’s response to that question:

Perhaps European humans have triumphed because of their superiority in arms, organization, and fanaticism, but what in heaven’s name is the reason that the sun never sets on the empire of the dandelion [my italics]?

If I were a swooning sort of person, when I encountered that sentence thirty-five years ago, I would have swooned from pure envy. Instead, I wrote Al Crosby a fan letter, celebrating the whole book, but honestly admitting that I would have given anything to have been the author of those eighteen perfectly chosen and perfectly arranged words.

Join me in contemplating them one more time: What in heaven’s name is the reason that the sun never sets on the empire of the dandelion?

With those words inscribed in my mind, when I went to Alaska and when I visited Australia, I hoped against hope that I would travel beyond the borders of the empire of the dandelion.

Surely winters in Fairbanks would be so intense that the dandelion would have to recognize that its empire had finally reached its limits?

Ha.

The midnight sun in the far north had whipped the dandelions into a complete frenzy of growth, turning them into towering forests.

So now, when I take dandelion fork in hand, I feel grateful that I will be up against only short, stubby plants that do not tower over (or near) my head.

But most of all, while I still yearn to prevail over these intruders into my yard, I yearn a lot more for the company of Al Crosby, a very good soul who died in 2018 at age 87, and who wrote history books that changed his readers.

If you want to see why I make that claim with confidence, pick up Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism and find the answer to that perfectly phrased question—"what in heaven’s name is the reason that the sun never sets on the empire of the dandelion?”

The task of weeding your yard will double as your chance to understand the planet.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice… that experienced K-12 teachers—if we unleashed their energy and originality—could infuse a whole new vitality into classroom teaching as schools open up in the post-pandemic era?

Anonymous — Mon, 24 May 2021 19:24:00 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice… that experienced K-12 teachers—if we unleashed their energy and originality—could infuse a whole new vitality into classroom teaching as schools open up in the post-pandemic era? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/24/2021 - 13:24

Here is how I became aware of this vast resource of creativity and innovation waiting to happen.

In the public schools of Banning, California, I had many fine teachers who sent me out into the world with the skills I would need to rise to every challenge and to seize every opportunity. So I have long been perfectly aware of the difference that teachers can make in the lives of individual young people.

But until I spoke at a conference for social studies teachers at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, thirty or more years ago, I had only a faint idea of the impact that taking the restraints off the liveliest teachers could have on the whole educational system.

The organizers of this conference had done their work well, and all the speakers proved to be worth hearing. I had planned to skip the banquet speaker, but the unbroken streak of great talks during the day made me change my mind.

So I went to the banquet, where my luck ran out.

After dinner, a couple of hundred K-12 teachers and I settled in for what proved to be an extraordinarily dull speech. Paradoxically, the speaker’s topic was “orality,” a word which was unfamiliar to most of us on the receiving end of this talk. But we were quick learners, and we soon figured that “orality” was the spoken counterpart to literacy.

So we had reasons to expect that we would hear a speaker who would deepen our appreciation of the power of the spoken word.

Didn’t happen.

This was a jargon-saturated talk, delivered in the style of orality that is usually called “droning.” (Remember, this event took place long ago, so “droning” meant that the banquet room was filled with monotonous sound waves, not with erratic flying devices.)

The speaker meandered and wandered along; and, for more than half an hour, we all complied rigorously with the training in politeness and respect that our mothers and fathers had given us.

And then, as the length of the speech seemed to approach eternity, we all reached the recognition that the social contract between speaker and audience had been broken, and we were free to be fully ourselves.

Ordinarily, when speakers stand before audiences, everyone in the room has consented to an agreement: the speaker will give a speech worth hearing, and the audience will be respectful and attentive.

When the speaker does not live up to her side of the contract, the contract dissolves, and the audience is unleashed.

So the teachers went all-in for a creative and spirited rebellion.

At first, they passed notes to each other, and chuckled quietly when they read those notes. Then they escalated and whispered to each other, with subdued giggling as the result. They stacked plates, cups, and silverware as if they were building rock cairns in the outdoors. They folded their napkins into funny shapes, and a menagerie of animals (accompanied by certain indelicate representations of human anatomy) soon enlivened the tables.

Once the social contract between speaker and audience was irreparably broken, the evening became extremely enjoyable, as the very people who maintained order in classrooms demonstrated how much they had learned from their charges. In the years since, I have attended innumerable conference banquets, but this one still holds first place as the most instructive.

Here’s what I learned.

If we could set teachers free of some of the constraints and strictures of professional tedium, all sorts of creative approaches to individual expression and to group activity would suddenly be in play.

Here’s where we could start.

The pause in in-person education has undermined the foundation that once kept standardized testing in place. So the time is right to reduce the burden on teachers to prepare children for those “one-size-does-not-fit-all” tests.

If we give this a try, it seems entirely possible that the dynamism, pep, humor, and joy of that banquet room in Cody will transform classrooms across the nation, maybe especially—given the talent pool I got to observe for myself—in the great state of Wyoming.

Teachers know the established educational system from the inside, and they are thereby particularly well-equipped to know where it needs to be refreshed.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that getting people riled up and defensive is not the best way to inspire, persuade, and encourage them?

Anonymous — Mon, 17 May 2021 19:28:35 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that getting people riled up and defensive is not the best way to inspire, persuade, and encourage them? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/17/2021 - 13:28

Given the riled-up state of our civic culture, my misadventure at a conference at Utah State University in Logan qualifies as a story worth retelling. As I prepared to speak at this 1992 conference, it was not my plan to stage a public performance of the reasons why we cannot expect vexation and irritation to work well as forms of persuasion.

Quite the contrary: I thought I had conjured up a clever technique to motivate young historians to be innovative and brave.

The failure of my technique was so dazzling that the event became a lasting memory in the minds of many in the audience. For a decade or two, I had repeated encounters that followed a set pattern. I would run into people who I thought I had met somewhere. Upon seeing me, these people would look stricken, shaken, and unnerved. Initially speechless, they would finally get out these haunted words: “I was in Logan in 1992.”

Here is how I pulled off this extraordinary achievement in unforgettable failure.

The conference at Utah State featured presentations from young scholars who had been assigned to present original, thought-provoking, and eye-opening statements about the state of knowledge of Western American history. After they gave their speeches, they were to receive comments from more established scholars, and then they were to revise their statements for publication.

These young scholars had accepted a tough assignment. Understandably, given the allocations of authority and power in the academic world, the young scholars were more inclined to provide overviews of recent books and articles, and less inclined to set forth bold assertions and status-quo-rattling interpretations.

Having somehow infiltrated the ranks of “more established scholars,” I planned to use my spoken comments to persuade the younger folks to unleash more in the way of bravery, originality, and fresh thinking.

How would I offer this persuasion?

I would rile them up!

I did not waste a moment on diplomacy and tact. The statements presented by the young scholars, I said bluntly in my public remarks, were not lighting up the world. For perfectly sensible reasons, rather than breaking free of established thinking and challenging their elders, the young presenters chose to be cautious, deferential, and even timid.

Alas, history records a striking mishap in word choice: I ensured the complete failure of my attempt at persuasion by throwing in the word “wimpy.”

What on earth did I expect this abrasive approach to achieve?

Here was my plan: with my forthright criticism, I would incite the young to prove me wrong. Sequentially, with neurons goaded into hyperactivity by a rush of the excellent (and entirely natural!) chemical adrenaline, they would leap to their feet to set me straight.

Here is what I expected them to say to me:

You called us “timid, deferential, and cautious.” Well, OK, if you think we aren’t capable of offering fresh and original insights, then fasten your seatbelt. Listen closely, because you are about to hear a bunch of dynamic perspectives on the American West, powered by a spirit of originality that you never saw coming.

No one followed this script, but at least part of my hoped-for scenario did work out.

I got the young scholars riled up.

“Where does Patty Limerick get off in thinking that she has the power to set the standards for this field?” was only one of many remarks that seared their way into the audience’s memories. And into mine.

So now you have a sense of why, over the next few years, so many people said to me, “I was in Logan.”

And yet there were two important outcomes of that conference that the audience members didn’t get to witness.

First, they didn’t get to see the “de-riling” that took place later that day. Maybe I would go too far if I called what happened afterward an evening of reconciliation, but something pretty darned close to that took place soon after the collision.

Second, I left Logan with a recognition that does not seem to be universally shared in the United States these days: I had noticed that getting people riled up and defensive is not the best way to inspire, persuade, and encourage them.

I hope that this is a recognition that is recruiting converts as I type.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that The New York Times may be planning to open a retirement home for old words?

Anonymous — Mon, 03 May 2021 19:21:25 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that The New York Times may be planning to open a retirement home for old words? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/03/2021 - 13:21

“Why We’re Retiring the Term ‘Op-ed’”: that was the headline that appeared, ironically enough, on the Op-Ed pages of The Times on April 27, 2021.

Kathleen Kingsbury, the Opinion Editor at The Times, was the author of the statement that followed this headline. But before I comment on her statement, honesty requires me to admit that Ms. Kingsbury made me aware of a lifelong error.

I have always believed that the “op” in “Op-Ed” was short for “opinion.”

Wrong.

It turns out that “op” has no kinship at all with “opinion.” Instead, I have now learned, the Op-Ed page “was so named because it was [placed] opposite the editorial page” in the conventional layout of a print newspaper.

Well, who knew?

Not me.

But Kathleen Kingsbury and her colleagues knew. And that is why the term Op-Ed must retire: because, for readers of the digital version of The Times, the spatial arrangement of two pages, positioned “opposite” to each other, has entirely lost its meaning.

Thus, Op-Ed must become the first resident in The New York Times Retirement Community for Words that No Longer Have a Home in the Digital World.

That place is going to fill up fast.

Well, maybe.

We don’t yet know if Op-Ed has been singled out as an exceptionally and urgently outmoded term, or if The Times has compiled a long list of terms that will soon receive their own notices of termination.

And another question also hangs in the air: what lucky term will have the privilege of taking the job that used to belong to Op-Ed?

Surely it will be a phrase that radiates vitality and freshness, vigor and animation, with an equal claim on both immediate relevance and lasting endurance!

Ready?

The new term will be “Guest Essay.”

“Readers,” Kathleen Kingsbury assures us, “instantly grasped this term during research sessions and intuitively understood what it said about the relationship between the writer and The Times.”

Heaven knows, I’ve attended a few “research sessions” in my time, but none with the subdued spirit and the depleted energy of the sessions that brought forth “Guest Essay.”

At this point, readers are surely wondering if I am stepping forward as a candidate for the leadership of the Movement to Postpone Op-ed’s Retirement.

In truth, I have the bedrock qualification.

Clinging to the language of a departing time, I will declare that I have written a monthly column for The Denver Post’s Sunday Op-Ed page for nearly ten years.

I am going to keep saying that.

In a contest that seems certain to be recognized as this year’s most inconsequential dispute, The New York Times and I will be unyielding in our loyalty to our preferred terms.

But here is my prediction: neither The Times nor I will prevail in this showdown.

Instead, with the decline of conventional journalism and especially of print newspapers, while I keep saying Op-Ed and The Times keeps saying Guest Essay, another term entirely is going to win.

Either the word “Relic” or the word “Vestige” is going to emerge as the term of choice for a form of expression that is equally valued by the Opinion Editor at the New York Times and by me.

But I will at least have the grace to pay an occasional visit to the well-populated Retirement Community for Words that No Longer Have a Home in the Digital World, so I can assure those old-timers that a few of us still remember who they are.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that the CEO of the Walt Disney Company had better get in touch with me fast if he is going to resolve his pressing problems with pirates?

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:20:31 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that the CEO of the Walt Disney Company had better get in touch with me fast if he is going to resolve his pressing problems with pirates? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/26/2021 - 14:20

This will require a little background.

“Pirates of the Caribbean” is a popular ride at many �鶹ӰԺs and Disneyworlds around the planet. In one episode on that ride, the pirates held a kind of fundraiser, auctioning off some women as brides.

In the mid-2010s, Disney decided to respond to criticism and rework that scene. In a change that I cannot say I completely follow, one of the women who was going to be sold got “repurposed” as a female pirate, who seizes and sells “the most prized possessions and goods” of some besieged townspeople.

In line with the temper of our times, this revision has now driven some of our fellow citizens, who preferred the auction in its original form, into a rage.

Well, now it should be obvious: Robert Chapek, Chief Executive Officer of the Walt Disney Company, could be a global pacesetter in solving otherwise hopeless problems—if he accepted help from my people, Applied Historians.

In other words, this corporate leader is making a very big mistake by not getting in touch with me.

It could be that this still needs a little more explanation.

In the mid-2010s, when I was President of the Organization of American Historians, I got to serve as a judge for the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book written by a young American historian. After reading many excellent books, my fellow judges (Albert Broussard at Texas AM University and Brett Rushforth at the University of Oregon) united in giving the Turner Prize to Mark Hanna at the University of California, San Diego.

Here is the title of his wonderfully researched and very well-written book: Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740 (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

Here is a central finding of Mark Hanna’s research.

Quite a number of pirates, who were operating along the Atlantic Coast married into families in the British colonies, settled into successful, post-pirate well-being, and became pillars of their communities.

So the Walt Disney Company is now finding that the revision of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” did more to heighten controversy than to resolve it.

I can help with that.

Here’s your chance, Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Chapek. Write me a quick message (patricia.limerick@centerwest.org), and I will instantly introduce you to the author of Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire.

If Mark Hanna chooses to share his expertise with you and your teammates, the pirates can take a break from their more stereotyped activities. Aligning themselves with history, they can plan, attend, and dance at weddings, and then, several months later, they can return for the christenings and baptisms of children who may or may not follow in their fathers’ footsteps.

It is a particular piece of luck that Professor Hanna is also the winner of the UC San Diego Academic Senate Distinguished Teacher Award. So, Walt Disney Company executives, you will have the particular good luck to learn from and ask questions of a person recognized and admired for his grace and energy in sharing his expertise.

As it happens, this is not my own first rodeo when it comes to commentary on the rattled relationship between history professors and the Walt Disney Company. In my book, Something in the Soil, you can find an essay called “The Adventures of the Frontier in the Twentieth Century,” in which I express both wonder and befuddlement over the portrayal of Western history in Disney’s “Frontierland” (see pages 74-79). Since the last line in that essay seems pretty darned relevant to this commentary, I will conclude by quoting it here:

The work of academic historians has had virtually no impact either on �鶹ӰԺ’s version of [history] or on the thinking of �鶹ӰԺ’s visitors.

Working with Mark Hanna, Walt Disney CEO Robert Chepak is about to change that.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice… that we would gain useful insights on our troubled times if we were to reread Harold Frederic’s novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware?

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice… that we would gain useful insights on our troubled times if we were to reread Harold Frederic’s novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/19/2021 - 00:00

The timing is perfect for a couple of reasons.

The year 2021 is the 125^th anniversary of the publication of The Damnation of Theron Ware. On this anniversary, this book’s relevance is making a commemorative surge, even if I am the only person who is noticing this, and maybe the only person on the planet who has reread this book several times.

Theron Ware is a young Methodist minister from humble origins who is trying to launch his career. He is naïve, ambitious, and curious, and that turns out to be a combination that makes him very susceptible to unconstrained enchantment when he encounters aspects of life that are entirely new to him: Science! Catholicism! Art!

As Theron Ware has exhilarating experiences he had never before imagined, he thinks he is getting more sophisticated and also more adept at manipulating audiences. As the prominent word “damnation” in the book’s title would suggest, he is not doing a great job at appraising the changes he is undergoing.

But why on earth am I urging you to read a book about an innocent, enterprising young minister in upstate New York at the end of the nineteenth century?

*Because this book is an intense and haunting exploration of American innocence, and the mishaps and missteps that can occur when the hazy, dreamy version of that innocence collides with the solid world of human complexity.

*Because the book is wonderfully creepy in its undertones and undercurrents (wait till you read the part where the scientist Dr. Ledmsar names his lizard; this occurs at the end of Chapter 21, but don’t look ahead).

*Because Sister Soulsby and Brother Soulsby are two fictional characters who you will yearn to have as your next-door neighbors, or at least as friends you frequently chat with on Zoom.

*Because the book, at the end, suddenly evokes the American West.

After bringing miseries upon himself and upon everyone in his proximity, Theron Ware regains his dangerously innocent ambition and directs it westward. In a “daydream,” he imagines himself relocated to “a formless sort of place” in the West, where a vast audience responds to his words and gestures “with a mighty roar of applause, in volume like an ocean tempest.”

Intoxicated by this vision, Theron Ware then speaks these ominous words to his beleaguered wife Alice and to the Soulsbys, the two good folks who rescued him from his innocence-driven folly:

Who knows? I may turn up in Washington a full-blown senator before I’m forty. Stranger things have happened than that, out West!

Now for the last reasons why we should this book:

*Because it permits us to place our well-based anxieties—about our nation and its character—in a longer reach of time by contemplating a historical era that seems both remote and immediate.

*Because we would all find relief in thinking about and talking about a calamity that somebody made up and put in a novel, rather thinking about and talking about a calamity that occurred in real life.

If you read The Damnation of Theron Ware and want to join in a discussion, write me at pnl@centerwest.org.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice...that some of us will need retraining and reconditioning workshops if we are going to regain the passivity, submissiveness, and general squishing of the soul that made air travel tolerable?

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 19:08:20 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice...that some of us will need retraining and reconditioning workshops if we are going to regain the passivity, submissiveness, and general squishing of the soul that made air travel tolerable? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/12/2021 - 13:08

When I landed at DIA on March 9, 2020, I surrendered my role as a frequent flier. After a year as an entirely terrestrial creature, I realize how poorly suited I was to the conduct required of denizens of the cultural and social habitats of the airport and the airplane.

Plodding, slogging, and lumbering have never been my preferred practices when it comes to moving through space. But airports require exactly that form of locomotion. I fear I will never entirely lose the memory of several grim times when the DIA security lines wrapped around to the baggage area. Enrollment in TSA Precheck eased some of this misery, but there were occasions when even that privilege offered no relief from long, slow trudging.

I am very fond of human beings, but that fondness is suspended when they are wrestling heavy bags into what are called overhead compartments, and when the head at risk is my own. And yet empathy is a powerful force in life, and my misery sometimes escalated when the heads located beneath those unwieldy belonged to people who were often oblivious to the peril taking shape above them.

And then, with boarding complete, it was time for me to get reacquainted with this fact: sitting for hours in a confined space has never been my strong suit in life.

Why did I keep returning to airports and airplanes?

Like an effectively trained and conditioned animal, I knew that there was an intensely appealing reward that would be mine if I stayed docile and compliant. If I kept myself properly subdued, in several hours, I would get off the plane, and “subdued” would disappear from the picture.

I would be greeted at baggage claim by delightful people who would welcome me, ferry me to and from hotels and nice restaurants, and then take me to lecture halls and classrooms where I would have joyous experiences giving guest lectures and public speeches, with those performances always followed by a return to the nice restaurants.

At some point, my hosts would be stern and merciless and deliver me back to the airport. But now I would carry with me a new supply of memories of recent good times that I could contemplate as I moseyed along in the line and submitted to hours of sitting still.

Alert readers will have noticed that I am dodging a historical question: Did air travel become more trying, unpleasant, and uncomfortable in the last couple of decades?

Even as I have heard many repetitions of this lament, I can’t break the habit of placing the inconveniences of air travel in the broad framework of human suffering. Tedium in security lines and restlessness with enforced immobility, and even coping with delayed flights announced with very sketchy explanations and even sketchier predictions of anticipated take-off times, have never qualified for my “oh, poor me!” category of human experience.

Plus, I have my own odd twist in historical timing. Airplane seats have unquestionably gotten smaller and more tightly packed. But this historically documented shrinkage coincided with another historically documented shrinkage, as my mid-life conversion into an exercise nut created a noticeably smaller version of me, requiring a much more modest allocation of space.

Thus, I do not think that, by any serious measure of human misery, air travel became significantly more difficult to endure in the last decade or two.

And yet airline executives are surely aware that, in the last year, a sizable percentage of one-time frequent fliers have awakened to the mismatch between their intrinsic character traits and the concessions air travel requires. I can only assume that those executives are pursuing conversations with psychologists, neurologists, and other professionals in mental health, commissioning them to design and offer workshops that would restore people like me to the state of passivity and submissiveness that we had once cultivated and maintained.

Should those workshops become available, we will still have a choice.

We can sign up for the workshops and return to the airport.

Or we can refuse the retraining and reconditioning and stay grounded at home.

I think I know which way I will go.

Putting up with airplanes and airports has given me enormous holdings in treasured memories. Over and over, when I landed, I was rewarded with great company, treated to hours and hours of stimulating conversation and storytelling.

So where do I sign up for that workshop?

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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Did Anyone Else Notice…that the landscapes of the American West make a weird fit with the universal custom of referring to the environmental campaigns and causes as “Green”?

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 19:24:54 +0000

Did Anyone Else Notice…that the landscapes of the American West make a weird fit with the universal custom of referring to the environmental campaigns and causes as “Green”? Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/05/2021 - 13:24

Throughout the region, the color scheme of deserts, plains, plateaus, and rock canyons tends toward tan or brown or gray. (And, yes, forests do stand out in this crowd.) In many Western locales, green does flourish in the spring, but even then the greenness usually registers closer to the “olive” variety than the “emerald.”

So here is the element of humor built into the advocacy of “green” causes in the West: when you come upon a Western locale that radiates bright green, you are most likely seeing evidence that a network of dams, reservoirs, canals, pipes, and sprinklers has been at work, sustaining plants that are exotic imports from distant places.

In one common pattern, the color green is testimony that the Bureau of Reclamation has been up to its usual tricks of transforming the location and allocation of water that was initially flowing in streams and rivers.

To bring this closer to home, the lovely green that is slowly recoloring our lawns will only last while the water lasts.

So Westerners, whatever your positions on environmental issues, let’s come together in a moment of regional self-assertion. When we hear an endorsement of President Joe Biden’s “green” energy plans, or when we hear a reference to the “Green New Deal,” let’s pose a gentle question to those who are taking this odd word choice for granted:

At some point, do you think you might want to include the arrangements of water in the American West when you think about what is “nature rearranged by human intention and action” and what is “untouched nature”?

Referring to people who were new to the West and constantly demonstrating that they didn’t know where they were, the term greenhorn got a lot more use in earlier phases of regional history. But now, in 2021, the word “greenhorn” is positioned for a revival: why not put it to use to prod the folks—who think “bright green” is the color of undisturbed nature—to question old assumptions and to join in a reckoning with the workings of water in the West?

Loosening up the assumption that nature is colored green, Western landscapes continue their tradition of inviting human beings to reconsider their taken-for-granted assumptions about nature.

So, greenhorns, here’s your chance. Even as spring seems to be painting the Northern Hemisphere in green, let’s resolve to keep nature’s full spectrum in our minds, and, whenever possible, let’s use that spectrum to rattle old habits of mind and to question conventional notions of the way things simply must be.

If you also noticed this, or have any other reflections you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you. Please email us at patricia.limerick@centerwest.org.

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