Saturday, February 21, 2009

Party!!

Thanks to my friends Michelle Bonner and Fae Ellsworth, and with the help of Tim Campbell and Kayla Koeber, we're going to have a dessert party and you're invited! Here's the details:

Dessert Party!
Saturday, March 21
7 - 9 p.m.
DeZion Gallery, 1051 Zion Park Boulevard
An Artist's Benefit for Greer's 1000 Mile End to End U.K. Ride
A delectable collection of desserts from gourmet restaurants and local bakers to tantalize your palette!
Suggested Donation $10/person (a penny a mile!)
For party information call Michelle Bonner at 435-901-3227

March 21 is the day of the annual Springdale St. Patrick's Day Celebration, parade, and green-jello contest. So come for the whole fun day and stay for the dessert party!

Updates!

There is so much to report, I'm overwhelmed. It's been happening so fast, it's hard to keep up myself! Let's see:

Vyv Wood-Gee (Lockerbie, Scotland--and who rode End to End in 2006) and I were exchanging page-long emails two and three times a day for a couple weeks. We had such fun! She is currently out-of-touch on the Hebrides, planning trails, and so I can get something else, like this blog, done! It turns out Vyv owns Marion's (the cat that owns me) twin brother Spider. She has a number of pups (like Minnie and Bo), a few horses and a fantastic farm called Shortrigg. I'll post a photo she sent as soon as I reconstruct my email folders (wiped out in a recent Microsoft meltdown--yes, it was Microsoft's fault). Vyv invited me to accompany her on a ten-day ride from Lockerbie across the Borders into England for a talk she is giving on trail riding on May 17. Soooo, that means I need to be at Vyv's in Lockerbie by May 10, which means that to try and find a horse I need to be in England by May 1. If I'm unsuccessful at first, I'll ride one of Vyv's wonderful Fell Ponies for our trip, then go back to horse hunting.

Hope do a couple rides around the Borders (like to Appleby Horse Fair and a Common Riding) in early June, and be at John O'Groats by mid-June to begin the End to End ride. I am so happy to be riding with Vyv for that ten days. It will be a great English shake-down cruise when I can absorb Vyv's great knowledge of riding and place.

WWW.Hackinghorses.com or www.safecobs.com. I'm also ecstatic to report that I have found a reputable dealer willing to take back my trusty steed at trip's end and sell him/her on to a good home. I have spent HOURS on the web NIGHTLY looking for good horses. I've also spent what seems like EONS trying to find a dealer not only interested in the trip, who understood what I'm trying to do, but who was also willing to work with me at trip's end to place the horse in a good home. I have written any number of emails only to be insulted and dissed by one seller (who I later discovered has been shut down three times), and politely refused by others, until I became gun-shy about revealing my intentions. I began saying I was "looking for a weight-carrying horse for distance riding," and leaving it at that. But then I found Lia at Hacking Horses (right near Gatwick) who is excited, positive and helpful! What a switch! She may or may not have the horse for me when I arrive in May, but we will stay in touch and keep our fingers crossed. This is just a HUGE relief. Visit her websites listed above.

Kathleen Birch, Rowdy's former owner and my good friend, is donating 5,000 miles I still need for a "free" ticket. Thank you Kathleen!!! Kathleen has been my best horsey friend for years now (along with Lisa), giving me my wonderful pony-boy Rowdy and my great pals Hannah and Madeline (her girls--Grey is great too--the third of the triplets, I just rarely see him!). This "free" ticket will end up costing $300 ($100 to "donate" the miles, $100 in taxes and fees, and $100 to change the return date if I need to--the airlines get you coming and going, it seems.)

Kathleen is making a FANTASTIC costume for Rowdy to wear in the St. Pat's Day Parade in Springdale. I'd tell you what it is, but it's a SURPRISE! You'll just have to be there (or watch this blogspot after March 21). Thank you, thank you Kathleen, for making this possible and for all the fun!

The Birches just lost their friendly, joyous yellow lab Kali, who I always called Mrs. Kallister or Kali Byrnison, and who looked just like Yorik Byrnison (the Armored Bear in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series). We are all grieving.

BARBY-DOLL!! One of my longest and dearest friends, Barby Graves, lately of Beulah, Michigan, has agreed to pet- and house-sit at the homestead whilst I'm on the ride!! This is such a gift to me I can't tell you. My heart's companion, Bo, is now almost 15 years old and pretty deaf, nearly blind, and awfully gimpy. I have, for the last 15 years, hated leaving her even for a for a weekend, and now there's Minnie, Marion, Baby and Rowdy! Our family keeps expanding. Needless to say, when I wanted the best person I could possibly get to live with the girls and boys, and I went to Barb. She readily accepted, for which I am eternally grateful. I know no matter what happens, Barb will have tried everything. I can rest assured.

AND Barb just got an interpretive job for the summer at Zion National Park!!! Barb is a hydrogeologist, artist, master gardener and extreme handy person. I hope my Utah friends will make her feel as at home here as they have me. She'll be here mid-March and work mid-April through mid-September. I know by then you'll join with me in trying to pursuade her to stay.

Thank You Chixies!

My wonderful friend Fae Ellsworth took me to the quarterly meeting of the Dixie Chixies last night. The Chixies are a great group of southern Utah women who meet for "unabashed networking" to promote their businesses, arts, and selves (and have fun doing it). Fae "outed" me during the introduction session, explaining the E2E trip. During the "Wants and Needs" session I screwed up my courage and tried to explain the art/trip connection (see below posts), the importance of doing this trip now (regardless of economic crisis and numerous obstacles) and the importance of writing a book about our environmental connections. I asked for their support and, low and behold, thanks to Kayla Koeber and the Chixies, left with a $200 donation! Wow!!! It was quite a fun evening--great food, wonderful women. It feels so good to have the support of other women!

Thank you especially to Fae Ellsworth who not only arranged our participation but also got 100 coconut macaroons donated by Farmers Market in LaVerkin (THANK YOU!), arranged each cookie in an individual cup with an invitation to the upcoming BENEFIT (see above), placed one at each woman's plate, and personally talked to every person in the room (I swear) about coming to the benefit. She is AMAZING! I could not do any of this without Fae. Thank you Fae, you're the best.

YOU MUST READ THIS

Howdy Amigo~Re: your recent discussions/posts/explorations on arts and their importance and the need for radical alterations...here's a potent article just posted to members of our Flagstaff Symphony, following a pretty poignant statement last night in rehearsal to the whole orchestra by our conductor, Elizabeth Schulze. It takes on the seeming "trivialities" of music and makes an eloquent statement regarding the vital connection of arts in general to helping find a way through the bigger murk. Tears, fears, & cheers, Glen Bessonette

Welcome Address to Freshman at Boston Conservatory
Given by Karl Paulnack
Pianist and Director of Music Division at Boston Conservatory

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

"The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

"One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

"Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, 'I am alive, and my life has meaning.'

"On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on 2 of the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

"And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

"At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

"From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

"Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

"I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings—people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

"I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

"I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

"Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

"When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot.

"The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

"What he told us was this: 'During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?'

"Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

"What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“'If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two a.m. someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 p.m. someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

"'You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

"'Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.'”

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Alter Your Imagination

From The Ashden Directory ("bringing together environmentalism and the arts"):

"In The Black Swan, Taleb writes: 'You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember ... Ideas come and go, stories stay.'

"It's another version of Buckminster Fuller's remark that you don’t change things by fighting the existing reality, you change things by building a new model that makes the existing one obsolete. (H-t.
Theatre Ideas) It's why the arts have a key role to play in the way we come to terms with man-made climate change.

"Two weeks ago, this blog noted that the New York Times had
expanded its environment desk to bring in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks. One day they'll bring in an arts correspondent too. It's not an add-on, the arts are critical. To quote Ted Hughes, 'What alters the imagination, alters everything.'"

Radical Alterations

From one of my favorite writers, Robert Macfarland:
"Green politics are sometimes described as unconcerned with 'real-world' problems of poverty and hunger: the lynx and the blue whale are loved over the starving child. The MEA report [Millennium Ecosystem Assessment] proves the nonsense of such a description. It shows the deep interconnection of environmental and human well-being. 'Any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty, hunger eradication, and improved health,' the report stated, in an admirably forthright conclusion, 'is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem services on which humanity relies continue to be degraded ... The pressures on ecosystems will increase ... unless human attitudes and actions change. Achieving this [change], however, will require radical alterations in the way nature is treated at every level of decision-making, and new ways of cooperation between government, business and civil society. The warning signs are there for all of us to see. The future lies in our hands.'" The Guardian, Saturday 30 July 2005

Why Care about the Arts?

Notice the new article listed under the Great Reads blog section (to your left). Great article from the Boston Globe. Here's the gist:

"Art creates a kind of sanctuary that, even at its most topical, takes us outside of such everyday concerns as the economic downturn, whether anyone has texted us recently, or how the Patriots could have blown the Super Bowl last year.

"The idea isn't to escape those concerns, it's to give us the wherewithal to put all those other matters in perspective. That's as true of a Lichtenstein painting as much as a Beethoven quartet.

"I can't prove it, but my bet is that wall drawings were as important as the invention of fire to getting out of those caves. That's why we talk about arts and sciences in the same breath. No person is complete without a grounding in both creativity and logic, which is one of the primary lessons anyone learns in college." {I would say grade school!}

You Call That ART?

Ordered the new saddlebags; turned out to cost $250 instead of $140 as predicted. But I'm excited to get them. Also received the picket stake, rope and hobble I ordered two days ago. It might be too heavy to carry--heavier than I expected, although it comes in a lovely pack bag. Also ordered regular hobbles--haven't got those yet, but will be much lighter. I just don't like hobbles all that much, but I like loosing horses less!

I'm hearing through the grapevine that a number of folks don't get my trip's art connection. Easy to understand. So many writers, artists, etc., can sit home and create out of their heads, without getting out into the real world. I can't. Gotta get out there and do. See. Record. Interpret. My best writing has always come from immersion in the world, from experience with place. All my books to date have focused on the Southwest; regional books which I try to extrapolate to the larger world, but read by few. I have long wanted to do a book with larger scope, focusing on more international environmental issues--the purpose of this trip and resultant book.


Larger projects are always beyond most artists--financially, strategically, logistically--that's why we, as a culture, have long supported the arts. Many people say, "oh, I wish I could..." and when encountering a project's logistical and financial realities, talk themselves out of it. I am determined to do this project, and know I will go into debt doing it. But I'm committed to the idea. The ultimate purpose is a book that will, with hope, make a difference for the natural world. All of my efforts are focused on that, always have been, whether working for a Michigan nature center, the National Park Service, or as a freelance writer--
it may sound corny and you may not believe me, but everything I attempt is in service to the natural world.

Some people focus on human health issues, some on human equality and justice, some on peace and political equanimity. My focus is health, equality, justice, peace and political consideration for the place that sustains us and its other-than-human occupants--for the place and beings that cannot speak for themselves. It may sound a lofty goal, and perhaps I am not up to the task, perhaps my efforts go unnoticed, are unappreciated or unheeded. So be it. I still have to make the effort.

In this time of economic disaster and worldwide upheaval, when we daily hear counts of the bombing dead, of invasions, kidnappings, starvation, disease and growing unrest, a project such as mine may seem trivial, a lark. But, as Pulitzer-winning author Jared Diamond so aptly explains, much of this misery results from underlying environmental problems. If all our political, economic and social ills were miraculously cured, we would still be faced with the coming plague of environmental change. I want to add another step on the stairway up from what many now call ecological despair, a step of hope, encouragement, understanding and action.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

More Packing

Here we are all packed and ready to go. Essentials languishing on the floor fit into purple saddle bags on right which fit in front of the saddle for easy access. This is where the brownies go. Found some fantastic packing cubes at DI (Deseret Industries for the uninitiated--the Mormon version of Goodwill). I think they were originally for someone's contacts and solutions, anyway they are waterproof inside and out and fit a pound of coffee plus individual disposable coffee filters perfectly!! My HotShot cook stove fits perfectly in another one. Two for a dollar!! Gotta go back for more. I have most of the big ticket gear I need (sans horse).
Still need a camera (I've been using my I Phone). Checked them out at about $300. Yipes. Still need waterproof saddle bags (those in photo are the cheapy southwestern version--i.e., canvas--I'm using to test size. They cost a whopping $25; waterproofs are about $140. Need to find a backup battery for the IPhone ($50) and Ordinance Survey Maps (a huge cost for me--about $250), but getting much closer. Also still looking for adventure insurance. Tried a few "travel" insurance companies on the web, but they don't insure folks like me, so have now approached high risk companies that insure diplomats against terrorists, etc. We'll see what THAT costs!!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Packing

I am updating my blog today from the Asus computer I will carry on my trip to see if it works. The Asus only weighs 2 lbs., and is drop proof. Well, drop resistant. I doubt it's horse proof. I'm going to have to get used to its very tiny keypad. Doing my first dry run today, in terms of gear. Have everything I've accumuated spread on the living room floor, and am packing to see if it fits in the saddle bags, and how much it all weighs. Notice nicely packed pouches on right, mess of unpacked gear on left, empty saddle bags on rocking chair, and Bo nicely plopped between gear and front door. She always does this when I pack. "I AM going with you."

Realized yesterday I needed a suitcase just for all the gear, so went to Sportsman's Warehouse and bought a huge wheeled duffle, a backup headlamp (Petzl), some packing cubes, and a few other misc. necessities, like neatly folded duct tape, all of which, with the exception of the duffel, fit in my pocket: $135. Amazing how fast stuff adds up. I had only been in SW once before, and left in shock, a tad appalled by all the fishing, shooting, and four-wheeling gear (along with the token women's clothing section). So I decided to give them a second chance by asking if they ever make donations/give discounts to nonprofit folk. "Why, yes," said the manager, "nonprofit SPORTS groups." "Well," I said, "I just happen to be one." "No," he replied, "I mean like Ducks Unlimited, etc., etc." Anyway, I did't fit the bill. I rarely do!