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Show THE ZEPHYR/ AUGUST-SEPTEMBE R 2004 One summer, returning from walkabout in the west, I found Alison in our (1840s) house, working on a major project.. She had torn out old cracked plaster and split-board lathwork and installed insulation between studs and ceiling joists and was beginning to put up drywall. She had built a pair of wooden supports to hold the heavy 4-by-8 boards against the ceiling while we nailed them. This house was not put together with modern 4-by-8 units in mind; creative cutting of drywall was required. Alison is a master at imagining, measuring and then executing that kind of work. I'm more a rough carpenter type. But together, we got the job done. Hand-and-body work; a misery and a pleasure. I call it adventure. Have you seen the TV ad for a claw on the end of a metal stick that will disturb garden soil, provided that soil is already tilled and sod-free? You don't have to kneel on the ground, you don't touch the ground, you have that stick between yourself and the good earth. Maybe the thing works better than I suspect. If you have one, let me know. At any rate, I'm taking the opportunity to hoist this gadget as a powerful symbol: loss of contact. Same with motorized tools. Witness the harried householder in a rush, pushing or riding the howling lawnmower. There was a time when kids had the job of pushing rotary mowers that went clackety clack. The kid had to push hard if the grass was more than a few inches high. Those were big jobs, they took time. The mower wouldn't move if the kid didn't heave his entire body into the action. Ed Abbey had something to say abut this: "Pushing a lawnmower? Pushing? Nobody, nowhere, nobody in all of America, Japan or western Europe pushes a lawn-mower. They ride them, pushing levers, buttons, horns. Or their gardeners do. Their children, maybe, sometimes." Quoted in Anderson Valley Advertiser, June 9, 2004. Time and motion were allotted differently in "the old days," a fact we could have expanded on, we two old ducks at the digitized gas pump. Materials were different too. Expectations, habits, a whole basket of differences. But when a couple of ancients get to talking about the ways things used to be you might notice that they're not always revisiting an age when everything was hunky dory. I've listened to stories about farm kids learning the innards of tractors, trucks, everything mechanical, in order to dodge the awesome agony of hard physical labor in the fields. I was lectured once by an oldster whose life had gotten much better in modern times: no more sleeping two kids to a bed, in a cold house, not enough food, not enough clothing, not enough money and too much grinding physical labor. Stories from the past, we need those, to help us figure out who we are. I'm speaking here against the awesome presentness of the present, that vacuum, that absence, FOOTPRINTS 121 EAST 100 SOUTH #108 MOAB, UT 84532 800.635.5280 . Top 10 Things Footprints Should do for Grand County... 10 - Donate to the new HSMV animal shelter 9 - Offer FREE water-saving shower heads during ad 3 years of drought... - Provide computer training classes FREE to Moab residents... : 7- Fund, sponsor and support HMK Jr. pope Day 6 - Win the Utah 2004 Excellence in Technology Award for Moab's Utah Smart Site... 5 - Organize, fund and provide materials for Moab and La Sal Kindergarten Summer Reading Program, 4 years onan < 4 - Allow employees paid time off to volunteer in Grand County Schools... 3 - Provide community-wide computer and network repair and support services (at a loss!)... 2 - Donate to the new Moab Regional Medical Center. that amazing non-remembrance of things past. The young woman who happily dashed out of the Mini-Mart to wrassle the gas tank, I Time and motion were allotted differently in the "old days,” a fact we could have expanded upon, we two old ducks at the digitized gas pump. FROM Materials were different too. 1 - Bathing. Already done the last 9 and they look pretty good. EMAIL YOUR FEEDBACK TO THE ZEPHYR Send your comments to: eczephyr@frontiernet.net or moabzephyr@yahoo.com Expectations, habits, a whole basket of differences. see now that the past was with her, whether she knew it or not; she and the rest of us come bouncing and squalling out of the tens of thousands of years of the evolving of humankind, the fine-tuning of muscle, sense and mind. Our bodies do remember; our bodies rebel against the couch potato life and the slow hours standing behind counters passively following routines, handing out burgers and taking in and handing out money and plastic cards. Back-breaking overwork, bodies rebel against that too. Ask any farm worker. Does this, now, in the formidable present, make us more uppity? I hope so. When you put a coin in a slot and signal Diet Coke or Pepsi or Mountain Dew, look carefully at the metal and glass that houses the machines. Oh yes, they're in there. Listen to them humming to themselves. Think about the grand total of such machines, stationed across the continent and overseas, throbbing, extracting from the earth. Do you ever wonder how long such contrivances will endure. I say, "These too will pass.” Turning south from I-80, I got rid of the headwind, drove through Baggs,Wyoming and into Colorado. Along the way, somewhere north of Rifle in pitch black night a big buck mule deer. He stood stock still in the headlights, beautiful, for a half second, making a decision. I was doing that too, steering, braking. He bounded off, I drove on. At the next gas ‘\ 94 West 100 North 259.5333 rimcyclery.com stop the machine told me my credit card was invalid. (Machine error, it turned out, later). I'm so flippin’ I counted the cash in my billfold. Decision time. I remember the deer. He and | adapt to high-speed roads where metal creatures come at you with sudden blinding lights, as best we can. We are fellow mammals on a planet getting stranger all the time. We have to pay attention to what's new, and make decisions. If we don't, we die. Life is that way. Yes, but what happened to put us in the now ... those old stories, memories ... those are with us too, part of the now, important. THE 'F WORD AT RIM??? No way... First, we're too sophisticated. Second, this is Utah. The only F word allowed is: A NOTE ABOUT MAHBU It's been a long time since | got the kind of response that 'Mormons and Heathens for a Better Utah’ (MAHBU) received. (Apr/May 2004) Even with an expanded Feedback, | didn't have space for all the letters that I've received. | hope this idea doesn't fade away. If you read it and thought the story has merits, please passit along. You can find "MAHBU" on the Zephyr web site. Send it fo anyone you think needs to read it--ranchers, enviro groups, ATV clubs, mountain bike groups, the recreation industry---if we're going to have a 'MAHBU Movement,' we need to get the word out... Thanks, JS www.canyoncountryzephyr.com ‘FLIP’ So..."Flip OFF." be PAGE9 a |
