Into the Blogosphere

My Last Gig

2011-11-10T23:22:46Z

The last gig I played was a tavern on one of the main streets in Hillsboro,
just a couple of blocks from the farmers market there. It was a band
mostly based around the guitarist and vocalist; 2 guys who had morphed a
relationship and spun off from a flailing garage band that had tried to
succeed by adding more and more members. The vocalist referred to this
former garage arrangement as "The Inbreds". I called them
"The-last-band-to-most recently-fire-me". We parted ways in good company
really, I just didn't want to spend endless Saturdays in a garage in a
suburb knocking out "Sweet Home Alabama" and eating pizza rolls generously
provided by a garbage man's trophy wife.

They were playing Friday nights at this Hillsboro club and the band had
been burning through bass players for a few weeks before I joined the chaos.
On the first Friday I luffed in my 2 basses, took one look at the amp that
was provided and went back out to my Honda to get the basic elements of my
own rig. The bass player(s) before me had apparently been happy to play
through an underpowered Yamaha PA that was coupled with a tiny 10 inch
speaker cabinet - the likes of which would be rejected by second hand
instrument dealers. As I rolled in my Hartke 4 X ten cabinet, a moose of a
cabinet so heavy it needs to be on a dolly, and Behringer amp (lovingly
nick named "The Dish Rattler") the guitar players eyebrows raised just a
little. "We're going to have some fun", I thought.

For a couple of Fridays our out-of-sync, unrehearsed tavern crashers stunk
up the place but had a pretty good time. The drummer quit but we brought
in another and I rehearsed 2 Saturdays with the guitarist in his tiny
apartment, blasting out the neighbors and rattling his wife's dishes with
great satisfaction. Between hidden puffs of what smelled like pretty
cheap marijuana, the guitarist would pop out of the kitchen, bathroom, back
room, or where ever he was clandestinely inhaling and we would carefully hit
the changes and riffs for all the songs he liked to cover. We weren't
quite grooving yet, but we were covering some standards.

The last night of the gig came and we finally got off the ground to some
applause. We played Marshall Tucker's "Can't You See" totally unrehearsed.
I just handed the vocalist the lyrics and started in on the bass line. The
second guitarist, a guy I had played with years before, immediately caught
on, made a smooth dynamic lilt of the 3 chords and we played the song so well we were
bringing in people off the street. Then the drummer got drunk. Recruited
from still yet another former band, he was known to have a "little trouble
drinking". He had drank some the first night he was with us but he laid it
on thick that last night.

After a 3 song non-stop rip the drummer totally faded during "Highway to
Hell" and slumped over his borrowed kit. The disgusted guitarist turned
to me and said (even though I was totally without hope for continuing at
all) "Born to Be Wild" and launched the signature 3 chords that started the
song. The singer, out front of the tavern smoking, was totally caught off
guard and began singing right there on the street in front of the tavern. He
had a wireless microphone (fortunately) and jumped in on time however - much
to the confusion of farmers market passersby and traffic stopped at the
light. The drummer was a goner and we played the last song, of my
last gig, on the last night in June, without drums. As I drove home to
Corvallis that warm evening (morning actually) I savored that last song. We
nailed it, drummer or not. I cruised through the little valley towns
looking at the verdant farms under the nearly full moon. I have not
really had a desire to stand before a room of people and knock out old rock
n roll since then. I think I paid my dues to the demons (and gods) of rock
many times over on those handfuls of Fridays at that old tavern in
Hillsboro. Maybe there weren't any pizza rolls, but I got out of the garage.

--
Online at www.russwoodward.com

6000 Feet

2010-07-06T13:43:27Z

Miscellaneous

I've had some of my best nights sleep at above 6000 feet in the mountains. Where the atmosphere is thin and I find I can sleep very well on a slim foam pad, my tent pitched near a cold glacial Circ. Dreams seem so accessible when they are dreamed in a place nearly touching the stars. The night's sounds are always friendly and no one is near with the exception of my climbing buddies. This is truly a good nights sleep.

Serving me to sleep well are the day's exertions; climbing into the heavens with a heavy pack or running around the ridges in the high country, looking down into valleys yet unexplored. Just about everything we do at that altitude we do to survive. We filter water, we find good camping, wash if we can and cook in tiny pots our essential daily ration. All of these routine tasks are done with exultation as everywhere we look we see high mountain peeks, deep green heather and ancient baked granite. Many of the things we touch through the course of our chores has never been touched by people before, many of the things we see are seldom seen, everything we do feels unique and enriching, it keeps the heart pumping and frees the soul from the mundane things that occur daily in the lower altitudes. As a result, when it comes time to sleep it's a very welcome respite, and we sleep well.

The high country above 5000 feet is a magical place. This is where trees are stunted and heather is preferred over grass. Not much of either of these things grow here however. The air is thin, the soil non-existent and the wind does as it will. Snow packs deep at this altitude in the winter and hides the tiny lakes and rugged scree. The feeling is that this is a place seldom visited by people or animals, those that come are just moving through, transients on the way to their next valley or new hunting ground. It's the high traverse, special in it's altitude and solitude, rare in it's emptiness. Here is peace and beauty of a grand scale. The simplicity of the high country seems to heighten the senses, clear the mind of chaff and elate the soul. To sleep in the high country is to dream of things yet unseen, look forward rather than back, believe rather than to reconcile. Nights are rejuvenating.

People ask me why I climb mountains expecting an easy short answer. I like to think I do it because that's where I live. Down here my heart beats, my job engages me, my work, friends and family share with me and keep me smiling. But it's up on the mountain that I live really. That's where my perspective on the world was formed, that's where I feel truly free and that's where I find self awareness. Up on the mountain I stop to measure my life, I hold a days work in a single view and I feel accomplishment in all of life's pursuits. If you have to ask why I climb mountains you probably aren't going to understand the answer. If I tell you it's to get a good nights sleep you'll probably think I'm being smug. If I told you because they are there you would feel cheated of a real answer - and you would be. I climb mountains because it is a metaphor for life. We are all climbers and we all will get our day of rest in the high country. I get my best night's sleep there.

Living On

2010-04-21T22:57:29Z

We live but a few minutes on this earth compared to the span of all of
humankind. We have great expectations for those few minutes; make the world
a better place, enrich others lives, raise the young (ours and others), be
endearing. But only a few minutes really isn't enough time to do it all to
any great effect. We've got to be happy with our lot in life and then
again, we don't. We spend much of our life in between these 2 states. We
seek to make the world better for being here and at the same time we're
learning to accept what we've been given to work with.

Combine with this the mundane day to day routine of getting up and going to
work, commuting, cleaning the dishes, moving the furniture, unpacking the
groceries, and you have the big picture. Here we are, this is our
life. What's
for dinner? What time do I set the alarm for? I think I need to clean the
windows.

Death comes knocking, shrinking our participation with people one by one
until those that are most successful, those of us who live a long time, are
left alone. Living long is not for the weak of heart. We will outlive our
pets many lives over. We will outlive our parents, our mentors and our
teachers. If we are really successful we will outlive our friends, our
siblings, and all of those we love the most. Wishing someone a long life is
really a curse. We have to endure a life that's lived long as much as we
have to somehow reconcile our shortcomings and still find peace and a reason
to smile. The passing of a friend tells us seriously; "Prepare for a long
life but don't expect it to happen."

So we grieve. It's a selfish act grievance. We think of how we're going to
miss the person that passed. We think of how empty our lives are without
that person. How will we go on without their voice on the phone, their
cute innuendos, their soft sighs or strong words. We think about us when
the other person passes. We grieve for our loss even though we really are
the ones stuck holding out against the onslaught of time - unforgiving time
that will one day take us too, sweeping us away after our few minutes of
life.

We can hope that others will grieve our loss. We can hope that we don't
live so long as to be useless or an imposition and that we are still loved
when we go. It's a small desire but we have to work for it. We have to
spend time in life making the world better in what ways we can. We need to
be happy (to the best of our ability) with our lot in life so we can be an
asset to our friends. That sometimes means we have to tell them we don't
agree with their actions. It sometimes means we have to be the voice of
reason, and the news is not always well received at first. But over the
course of time we have to live with our words after our loved ones are gone..
That is the burden of living long. We have to remember what we said. Those
that pass sure aren't going to have use for our words anymore.

The lucky really die young. The flame that burns twice as bright burns only
half as long. The long lived, methodical, careful, reasonable people burn
their lives carefully and watch those bright flames go out around them.
Maybe it's the lucky people that live life to it's fullest and are gone in a
flash. Maybe this long lived, carefully prescribed life is just a life of
increasing pain, increasing toil, and withering dreams? Why should we have
to endure, when some of those we've loved have gone so quickly, often
choosing death at their own will?

It goes back to what our lives are about. We live long because we are doing
good; making the world better in any way we can, every day trading our lot
in life with the greater good we can produce. Life ain't often easy but it
can be rewarding in spite of the pain.

The Gym

2010-01-05T04:13:35Z

The Gym

Well it's a brand new year and I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes talking to those people who sign up every year at the gym as part of a New Year's resolution to get fit. First let me tell you newbies that you're most likely not going to last. You're going to go at training all wrong, over do it and hurt yourselves. Those of you that make it to the ides of March will be bored by the sameness of the routine and will be lucky to have not injured yourselves. Those that make it to the summer will start exhibiting chronic injuries and will soon be too hurt or too discouraged to continue.

You're essentially doomed so please don't waste your time. People who know what they are doing are patiently waiting to use the equipment and they will be seasoned enough to know to put the weights back and clean the sweat off the machines when they are done. But thanks for paying the gym all that money. It helps pay for the hot water and new equipment.

Seriously just a few things can really help if you're just starting out. So let me fill you in so you have a chance of making it for the first year. Chances are if you can hang for a year, you'll start getting good results and you will be feeling the change. So listen up newbie's:
1.. Get some training. No you don't have to sign up with Buffy and her $300 workout program. Your junior college has a good program and is only about 60 to 70 bucks. You can also get a book. There are many good books on strength training, cardio training and stretching. Note: Getting your buddy from Wrestling team in the 10th grade to spot you is not the same as having a trainer. But if you learn some good stuff be sure to share it with him.
2.. Yes you need cardio. You want to be another fat guy with big arms? No one will even notice you went to the gym. Get 12 to 30 minutes of cardio for every strength workout you do. A strong heart and lungs is the core of a strong body.
3.. Yes sit-ups. Crunches, inverted hangs, whatever you do, just get some strength in your core. No sit-ups won't "burn fat" off of your midsection. If you want be thinner do cardio. But if you're lifting 50 to a hundred pounds and you have flabby stomach muscles you are just asking to screw up your back. Build from the ground up buttercup don't put it all on your poor spine to take the weight.
4.. Start small. Don't rush out to the weight room and pick up the heaviest dumbbell you can lift and start swinging it around. Work in a comfortable weight zone. Lift and carefully lower the weight through full the range described in training. Do three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions. The same with cardio: Start at about 12 minutes and slowly bring up the speed and length of time. The same for all cardio trainers, stair steppers, treadmills, cycles and rowers. Ease into it, set the machine below halfway and see what you can easily do before you start ramping it up.
5.. Unless you want that fresh "I never worked out a day in my life" look, go for sustainable workouts, ones you can repeat every other day. If you get up the next day and you hurt like hell you've overdone it. You've also just convinced yourself that working out hurts and eventually your body is going to win the argument that you should not do things that hurt. My motto: no pain - good! A good workout should have you feeling a little stiff once in awhile, but you'll be back. I've been in the gym over 2 years now and I've seen hundreds of people come and go and I can count on my 2 hands the number of people who still are there.
6.. Lastly, do it for you. Quit looking in the mirror you dumb poser, everybody just thinks you're an egotistical nut bag. Breath the air, feel the movements and try to understand the muscles you're using when you lift, (or run, bike, push, pull etcetera). The next time you move the sofa to vacuum or climb a ladder think about how much easier it is because you spent some time in the gym. That's the payoff. Trying to out macho the other guys at the gym by picking up too large a weight just makes you look like a fat undertrained dork. The pay off is personal. Recognize that and you will be a pleasant person in and out of the gym and your workouts will have a big effect on your self esteem.
Well I lost many readers with the third paragraph because they saw on the internet that they could be ripped and get that great 6 pack in only 3 weeks if they took a drug or did 3 easy workout recommendations (purchased for about 20 to 30 bucks). Good luck with that guys. Did you notice that the before and after examples of guys who did this were both equally as unpleasant before they got "ripped" as they were after? Somehow going from an angry marshmallow to an even angrier looking injured guy with a six pack set of abs really sort of misses the point doesn't it? Unless your goal is to be an evil man in a mask on the WWF channel, and those guys on WWF have real muscle tone and they'll kick your ass if you tell them you drank Bob's Super Goo to get muscles, just on basic principle. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Good luck. See you at the gym, and puh-lease, will you put the damn weights back on the rack when you're done? Your mama doesn't work here.

The Gym

2009-11-22T04:48:26Z

The Gym

I go to the gym. It's warm there, the lighting is great and there are things to do and plenty of hot water. I run on the tread mill and do strength training on alternate days. I had some training on how to lift weights and how to run in junior college. I remember those torturous days fondly now that I use exercise as an escape. I also specifically use that training to keep from hurting myself while I stay somehow miraculously active.

Since the things I do for fun all require getting out doors and being active and strong, my hours at the gym keep me ready for having some fun. I have an iPod that plays podcasts and lots of inspiring music and the surroundings are now familiar to me and somewhat comforting. But let me tell you there are some really odd ball people there. I'm sometimes astounded by the kookiness. Here are a couple of the characters I've "Met":

Blow Dry Man
This guy is hairy, has a beard and is a nice noble shade of grey all over. I have no idea what his workout is. I've never seen him but in the locker room drying off his entire body with a blow dryer. Think of Santa Klaus but with no red suit or pointy hat or towel or well, any clothes at all. He blow dries his entire body. I think he has a membership just to save electricity. He's got to be losing that in burned out hair dryers though...

Bad Work Out Guy
Well there are many of these guys. They all sign up on January 1 and are mostly gone by the end of March. They are a chiropractor's dream these guys. But the guy I'm thinking of in particular is a tall thin African American Man who over extends himself on the stretching machine then when he's hurting real bad he goes to the weight room and picks up the heaviest weights he can lift. The rest of his workout consists of swinging these around, very little actual lifting occurs, then he slams them down with a grunt. He started out with a knee brace on one knee, now he has stretch bandages on almost everything that we can pull one over. He hurts so bad putting on his shirt after a shower I hurt for him. Come to thing of it I have not seen him for awhile..

80s Guy
His hair is perfect, combed up to a top-of-the-head wave, he wears his T shirt tucked into his shorts and he checks these 2 things frequently to be sure he's got them just so. His work out is carefully measured to be sure he doesn't sweat - I even heard him convincing another member of the gym that sweating is bad! 80s Guy always looks good, if it were indeed 1985 anyway. Fortunately he only sees himself in the mirror so he's totally unaware that fashion, even in the gym, has changed in 25 years. Yes, 80s Guy is sometimes there with his girl friend, she's right out of a Flock of Seagulls video and she also follows the rigid, never sweat at the gym philosphy too.

I'm Back

2009-11-22T04:30:04Z

Misc

Testing a better way to access my blog by emailing my entries!

Dear Danni, One Year Out

2009-01-04T03:24:00Z

Dear Danni,

More than a year has passed since you left the world. Your obituary is gone from the local news paper. Your room is occupied by a young grad student and your former roommate has packed and gone to Chicago to continue her work as a biologist and farmer. It would seem to be a good time to let you go now. Although I came late to the story of Danielle maybe I should move on?

I hold in my possession just a few of the things you left and only a thin piece of other peoples memories about your time in this world. But Danielle your death triggered a chain of events that greatly effected my life. We hold a very near and dear friend in common. People who know little of you, know you from my writings now and they know just how my life will never be the same.

I cooked once for the caterer you once cooked for. I heard your name muttered quietly in the back kitchen; "If only Danni were here", or "Danni would love that." I meet more and more the people you used to hang around with. I jog down the streets you used to jog, walk across your old living room and smell the same smells of spring you did as they waft through your room. Your friends use your car now and it's still parked out front of the house from time to time. Plants you used to own still grow here where you used to live. You somehow can't be gone from this world entirely as things you arranged remain in the same familiar pattern.

Sleeping at night just across the hall from your old room, your ghost does not haunt me Danni, but images of your life do. I own the picture called "The Hug" which you held so dear. I see you, through others eyes, running down the hill, playing the guitar, smiling in the sun. Your picture may be gone from the fridge, your guitar from the bedroom, and your body from this world, but I still look for you. I still wonder and I still think how different things would have been with you still here. I am in a strange place, not bemoaning your loss but being appreciative of your existence. Usually when people meet they are, after all, both alive. Yet we've never met in that sense. I know you and wonder how things would have been had you known me.

If you had lived longer, would we have ever met you and I? Well, maybe in some way I guess we did meet. It was a chance encounter. I experienced you as a memory and you will only know me from what I tell others of you. Maybe you are gone in some ways Danni, but I will always know you and be grateful for it.

Yours,

Russ

Ruminations About Water Across the West While on Vacation

2009-01-04T03:08:00Z

Ruminations About Water Across the West While on Vacation

There is nothing like having time to ponder. It's when all those little tails of thoughts, those unresolved endings, finally get tied off. It relieves stress, at least in my mind, by not having to tow around all of these things that make me wonder. I can put them to rest as largely foregone conclusions and finally move on in forming new thoughts.

And so this vacation I find, as I look out the window of the car, the plane, and the bus, that we are indeed visibly running out of water in this part of the world. I see low reservoirs, dry farmland and dead grass. I see bricks in the motel toilets and turned off drinking fountains at the rest stops. The city of Hanford California is drilling it's wells deeper to provide (as stated in the little newspaper, The San Joaquin) "another 15 years of drinking water." My friend who owns 70 acres explains to me that farmers in the San Joaquin are primarily watering their perennial crops as predicted shortages of water may not support their usual output of tomatoes and cotton. Lake Shasta is visibly lower than I've ever seen it. Lake Tahoe is also low. It's early in the dry season and big parts of California are burning from wild fires.

Coming out of the reasonably water-flush Willamette River Valley I find it hard to absorb the obvious evidence of the lack of water. But it sure hits home when I go out for a jog and the air is so full of smoke that my eyes tear up. I very quickly call it a day and give up on the jog. Back in the house I get a drink from a water jug that's delivered by a truck twice a month because the tap water is sulfuric and therefore undrinkable. Now the Hanford locals are worried about fertilizer pollutants from decades of farming. We drink water from someplace else.

We now live in a time when commodities we once took for granted like cheap food, plentiful water and cheap gas are going away. Golf courses and other play grounds of the wealthy will now get their water at the expense of people going thirsty. In the San Joaquin, golf courses will be green at the expense of people eating. We're backed into a corner by high fuel prices because we can't simply transport more water from someplace else. As a matter of fact, we're out of "someplace else" to get that water from anyway.

This is the San Joaquin, a place I've written about before, calling it "The Place Where Food Comes From." It is one of the most artificially fertile places on earth. The rivers run dry here. They are sand beds and repositories of trash for those who can't afford the prices of the landfill. When someplace as important to industrialized food and sub-urbanization as the San Joaquin goes dry. it gives everyone in contact with the land a sense of dysfunction. The people drink alcohol and do drugs, it's no wonder the California prisons are so full. People also escape in movies and in cyberspace, believing their fake landscapes in shopping malls and amusement parks are the reality. They turn away and don't quite know why.

I've seen, not only on this vacation, but in other places in the last 3 months, other San Joaquins. They are in Illinois, in Ohio, in Oregon and Idaho. Millions of people will see the new wells, the empty reservoirs, the dry rivers and think little of it. It's not being reported on Fox news. The lack of water is not as exciting as Jennifer Anniston's love life, or Bill O'Rielly telling carefully set-up liberals to shut up. As long as we can buy a bottle of water at the vending machine or get something, drinkable or not, from the tap, we're apparently fine. At least until the wells run dry.

The lack of water is only an indicator of the underlying issue. We're giving up as a people, not wanting to make conclusions from the evidence. We want to be spoon fed everything that is knowledge. We want to trust the government and the news and the papers and everything that is fabricated there so that we don't have to think. We're giving it over. We've fallen as a society. We can't even see that the Earth is drying out under our feet without someone else to show us. We run around the planet touting a thin agenda believing science or religion or government or something else will save us. Like a woman dying of thirst in the desert, we are hallucinating an oasis of our own creation while walking farther and farther away from the source of our next drink.

This Is Not The Rain

2008-11-22T00:07:21Z

This is not the rain

This is not the rain.
This is not the rain that I knew before.
This is not that warm wet shower from the skys of
scattered white clouds.
It is not the salty clear waters that dappled my freckled
face like tears.
This is not that rain.
This rain falls coldly on a noisy land, on dead fallen
leaves of unnatural color.
It clogs the drains and turns the ground black with a
stain so dark no light returns.
This rain is not that rain I know, it comes from another
land and another time.
Not my time. Not any time that I can foresee or recall.
Not my land, not the land where I was born, the land I
learned to touch or the land I can see in my minds eye.
Yet this thing called rain continues.
It is endless and for days.
It is bitter and darkening.
But this is not the rain.

Oregon State Marine Board Letter

2008-06-19T22:21:00Z

Ms. Letart,

I understand that as a canoe paddler my influence over the Marine Board is very small. Since the type of boating I do does not pay the Marine board a fee you probably will not consider my opinion. But consider this before you read any further. The Marine Board is about to close the river to canoeing, kayaking, drift boating and even fishing to allow a noisy, wasteful and, some will say, obscene practice. You are about to insult every environmentally sensitive person who uses the Willamette and Santiam rivers. Furthermore, you are about to isolate canoeists and kayakers forever from ever being in favor of operating their human powered craft as licensed watercraft. If this is your goal in closing the Willamette river in May to operate the river as a NASCAR racing course for hyped up power boats than you should know in advance this will be the damage you are about to incur.

The presence of 20 safety boats, dive teams and increased marine patrols to enforce the closure of the river is not increasing safety at all. It is an insult. Turning the into cordoned off area protected by armed public officials to be used exclusively by private individuals for their exclusive pleasure should not be the function of the Oregon State Marine Board or any marine board or public agency.

I am deeply disappointed that the Marine board would even consider using pristine stretches of the Willamette as a common race course. Eagles, Red Tail Hawks and Great Blue Herons live here. The water is clean and the rural backdrop is perfect for afternoons of fishing and paddling. There are campgrounds along this route that are a joy to spend the night at. This area has a fantastic remote feel and needs to be protected as such. Both the Santiam and Willamette rivers are treasures we should cherish and protect.

We don't allow ATV racing in pristine remote areas of forest. Why is the peace of the upper to be victim of this powered polluting assault? I understand the Marine Board would entertain this idea to encourage more power boating. More licensed power boats means increased revenues for you. Great. But the message the Marine Board would send to boaters on the river otherwise is clear; the Oregon State Marine Board wants only to increase revenues and does not care at what expense to the environment or to the non-motorized people who get enjoyment from it. Only money talks at the State Marine Board.

Does the Marine Board actually believe that encouraging racing on the river is a benefit to the regular users of the river and the environment? Gasoline is going to be near 3 dollars a gallon; do we really need to encourage the waste of fuel at the expense of wild life habitat? Do we really want to send a message to power boaters in general that unsafe operation of boats on the river anywhere is okay? This is what the Oregon State Marine Board should be taking into consideration when deciding to close the .

Regards,

Russ Woodward

Day Break

2008-01-25T18:56:00Z

Dear Danni,

I saw the day break this morning Danni. The sun broke out beautifully while I patted down the road on my morning run. I was thinking just how miserable your life must have been this time last year. I was also thinking that this time last year you were alive. Alive not as a memory, as a thought or and idea, but as a living breathing person. I was thinking how much you would have loved this cold winter morning, so full of hope with the inkling of a longer day, with the big blue sky and the cold clear runners air. I was thinking about you. Again.

Why it is I can't let this drop I'm not going to be baffled about any more. Our mutual friend is in Australia, same as she was this time last year. This winter is nothing special. There is no comparison between this winter season and last years. The cold came with freezing rain and snow last year. This year it is dry. Your life was in turmoil this time last year, mine is smoothing out some. Oh it's still troubled in it's own way but nothing like yours was a year ago.

So the sunrise was nice. I've seen it rise before. I've seen it rise since I've started writing you. But I've never seen it rise and thought about you. Where is the association there? How is it you've inserted yourself in my subconscious like that, only to come out when the planet lines up a certain way?

Well you're not unwelcome here Danni. Come back again will you? The day can still break for you. The sun will still rise for you. From from time to time I'll let you know how it all turns out.

Peace,

Russ~

In The Desert

2007-12-28T19:41:00Z

It was May of 2007, just days from my 50th birthday, that I climbed up a narrow precarious gulley in the Utah desert. Although I was alone during the climb I felt as if I was in a place as inhabited as any city. The presence of people was strong there because logic told me this was the only way to go and had been for centuries. When humans lived here before, this is the route they took. There may as well have been a sidewalk or a set of stairs leading up the sandstone wash.

Morning broke into full light and I stumbled out onto a plateau in the desert. High cliffs raised to my left and narrow tracks ran off across the dried catabolic soil to my right. Some of these tracks were centuries old, directing me to a huge monolithic butte called Turks Head. A raven landed on the rocks nearby and called to me mockingly. He rocked back and forth with impatience and seemed intelligent far beyond what his tiny bird head could be capable of. I moved out onto the plain ahead of me feeling as comfortable as if I was jogging in my own suburban neighborhood. To the southeast I looked into The Labyrinth. A series of interwoven canyons in the middle of the Canyonland National Park. It was like looking directly into the inside of the Earth with her red ribs jutting up to the sky. I jogged up past Turks Head, my raven friend noisily flapping about, keeping his distance, and came to the edge of the cliffs that overlooked the green river. A lush delta stood out below me and built into the cliffs at my feet were homes. People, ancient ones, had built cliff dwellings overlooking what must have been their little farms below.

There in the desert something in my mind went click. My perspective of the world was altered. I walked into a place so familiar yet so unexpected that I simply could not grasp it. There was just too much to take in at so many levels. I had to change my thinking to grasp the significance. I became somebody different in that moment. Somebody who for which the world no longer existed as a separate reality. It was if I had stepped into my own body and it had been there standing in the desert all along.

His protest finished, the raven flew away. I checked my watch and realized that my party of river travelers was leaving soon. I realized I was only one of millions of men and women throughout time who had that feeling - that feeling that we needed to get back - even though that just meant back to the place we would soon be leaving. In a few hours I would be swept away by the rivers current, taking my place in the stern of my canoe, bantering with others in my party-clan-family, heading off to new explorations and new adventures. This moment was gone in time but forever frozen inside me.

Since then I have taken my place in more than my canoe. I've learned to live closer to my beliefs, and to look at and live in the world outside of that Utah desert. I live in my own city just as if it were the ancient home of other peoples. Indeed, I know that it is. I have examined the influence of people now gone 1500 years and people gone 6 months and I have found that their effect on my present life is more than tangible. I've learned that we are all people, interlocked in time, passing along our existence through each other as a warm echo, a wave through humanity. We have only the one gulley to ascend into the desert. It's the same one used for centuries by many strangers but not people necessarily strange to us. It's the way we rise, guided by the raven, to see deeply into the heart of the Earth, to find our place, and see (just a glimpse) of what is in our own hearts. It is there that we first step into and take up residence in our own bodies, only to realize we have been standing there not only for our lifetimes, but for many lifetimes before.

Russ Woodward

Why I Write You

2007-12-12T03:48:00Z

Dear Danni,

So here it is that life has come full circle and I find myself living in this old house with a girl and her big friendly dog. I never would have dreamed that things would have turned out this way just a few months ago when I first learned your story. I thought at the time I first heard of you that I was a harbinger. That I had come to usher in something new to your friends life. A sign of a new beginning, a person brought in by fate, or by God to initiate a change. I thought I was supposed to help to heal after your loss. But I was wrong about that. It was my life that changed. I was mistaken now I know. Not about harbingers in peoples lives. I really do think they exist. But the harbinger was you Danielle. You started a chain reaction that brought your friends into my life. Then my life changed and continues to be changing. Your story was the part of the wave that sticks up out of the water while the real forces from your life were working beneath the surface of the sea, beneath the surface of my relationships with your friends, making changes in my life.

Today I sit in my own bed, your blanket is now my comforter. I sleep alone here and I no longer wonder why I write you; why I write someone who can not read my letters. It's because these letters are not for you. These are letters written about you, intended for those who wish to hear of your life. These letters address the issue of a life, how it is lived, celebrated, reveled, and eventually lost; only to be picked up again by others and carried on. These letters are about the echo of life left after we all go. These letters are about your presence that remained and how it is being incorporated into those who live on. Those who love you, those who hear of you, those whose lives are imitations of yours, we've all been changed by you Danni. We all carry your message, say your little sayings, wonder about what you would think. In us you live now. We're sad you're gone, but grateful for your being here.

Love,

Russ

Happy Birthday

2007-11-11T04:04:00Z

Dear Danielle,

Happy birthday. A group of your friends are at the coast today, on the beach where you last ran, wishing you a happy birthday.

I am not real big on astrology but I am interested to learn that you are yet another Scorpio in my life. This does not surprise me, in fact it brings a smile.

Miss you,
Russ~

At the Beach

2007-11-05T18:20:00Z

Dear Danni,

It is November. I'm at the coast in the same neighborhood where you took your life. I'm sitting here wearing your jeans, your friend is near, typing on her computer. A fire burns in the fireplace. It is a brilliant November day and the waves curl in the distance.

There can be no asking you how you've been. I can't say that something here waits for you when you get back. I can't embellish a relationship you and I never had, or speak nostalgically of things that we used to do together. All I know of you is an echo of your life. A quiet wave that swept through time and proceeded through the lives of those that remained. As I sit here waves wash up on the beach and scatter themselves across the sand. It is quiet here, your friend and I came here for some peace.

Driving out this morning I learned that your birthday is Saturday November 10th. I learned that you would have loved to have known me, with exception that my indecision would sometimes drive you nuts. You liked older men, I'm told. This is a coldly exciting notion.

I also learned that perhaps killing yourself was not such a bad thing. We're all killing ourselves. Drunks do it with drink, smokers with cigarettes, most of our country is digging it's own grave with a fork. The great thing (or not so great) is that we all get to choose just how we die. For most of us death just takes a little longer. We can opt out if we want.

Just let me say this one more thing Danni. I wish you had taken a slower path to death. I wish you were here damn it. I wish I did not have to write this letter so disappointed because I sit next to a wonderful person who had her heart broken when you suddenly and irrevocably left her and this world. Yes she is getting over it, yes she will be fine. Yes these things will make your friend and I stronger people and we will not prolong the pain by wishing for these things forever. But I have been thrust right into the little world where you lived your last hours and I feel all at once relieved and sort of shocked. I don't need details of your death Danni. I want to know about your life and there is nothing new to write about your life. Nothing to ask you about last week, or last month or last whatever. I only know that like like a wave, you once swept through here. You caused a ripple I feel, like sand on the beach. Now you're gone.

Russ~

Eating Away

2007-11-05T18:03:00Z

We are sensitive eaters. Every time we lift a fork we are part of an agricultural act that began long before food got to our dinner table. But we don't give eating much thought as it would ruin our appetites. We don't consider where food comes from, how it is produced or how it came to be a part of our daily routines. We don't want to know how animals are slaughtered for us, how families are being displaced to make room for large mechanized farms or how fragile ecosystems are being raped to provide us with simple foods. These facts would make food difficult to digest and we are sensitive eaters.

We are over eaters. So much high energy food is available to us that we eat it constantly. We eat more calories of food than our bodies need. Food is eaten while watching TV, or while driving in the car. I see people eating while crossing the street or waiting in line at the grocery store. We have convenience stores full of snacks, Big Gulps and sports energy drinks (even though we don't do anything more energetic than walk to the car). We have drive-up fast food, food sold in theatres, at ball parks, events and by vending machines. Food is so readily available we can't help but be over eaters.

We are eaters of crap. Food has become so industrialized, commoditized, marketed, processed and reprocessed we often don't recognize the ingredients on the package. We recognize a bag of Dorritos, we know a candy bar, or a soft drink, but we don't know how those things were made or what those ingrediants are. These are highly processed foods that are actually designed by chemists. These are not necessary things for us to eat, they have no dietary value, yet are in the daily diet of most everyone. This is not food, it is crap.

We eat the world. Food, is necessary and needs to be cheap and available for the long chain of grocers, truckers, chemists, food processors, and farm operators to be employed. We get food from Chili, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Viet Nam, China, Japan and the list goes on and on. We eat without looking at the package, knowing where our food came from, or without knowledge of ingredients. The story of the importation of Bananas, a daily food for most of us, represents one of the most reprehensible stories of exploitation of farm workers that has ever taken place. For a morning drink we've supported the cutting of rain forests to grow coffee. By lifting our forks we've supported the act of uprooting small subsistence farmers to have their lands turned to factory farms to feed us. Almost half the food on our plate is from someplace else. We are eating the rest of the world out of a home. We're eating the rain forest, the family subsistence farms, the precious fertile lowlands of South America and homes of small local farms in our own country as well. It's all being plowed under so we can eat. We're eating the world.

Living in October

2007-10-11T19:23:00Z

Dear Danni,

The world goes on without you. Sadly sometimes, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes happily, but it goes on.

It has only been 8 months since you left us. Since you chose to leave us because of the depression and un-livability of your own life. I learned of how you died just last week. I was a bit shocked truthfully. I saw the dirty car that had once been yours, driven by your friend, going away from the park-and-ride. It was dark and the account of your death came without warning. I would have never thought that that car was a tool in your death. I never ask any details of your death. I never ask that your dear friend relive any part of your life that is not a celebration. But I am normally curious. I do want to know things about you. Knowing how you died was not one of them.

I found that you are a runner. No wonder your jeans fit me so well. No wonder I have stepped so comfortably into your friends life. She used to run with you, hike with you and be by your side much as she has been by mine. Last summer I even ran through your neighborhood in your old Nike running shorts; not knowing that those shorts have done that many times before.

So it has come about that I am approaching the world as you once did. Rising in the morning to greet the dawn, drink in the cool air and clip clop down the empty streets. In the afternoons sometimes I run (your friend's favorite time to run) and I see the colors changing to fall. I smell wood smoke in the air and get sprinkled on by October's clouds. This time of year is in synchronicity with this time of my life. If my life were to be lived in one year Danni, this would be my October. It is bittersweet. I enjoy the pretty colors, and the clear October air, but the cool twinge of winter and the shortness of daylight are strongly felt. Soon it will be winter. A winter you will never see.

Now, because the chill is upon me I wonder about the extent of your tragedy. Were you really meant to live as long as I have now? Were you really meant to feel this October of life creeping in on your bones and making you sore and slow. Although your death was self induced Danni, maybe it was timely and forgiving. You avoided much pain in life, much of the deep sad realization that we can't avoid, trapped indoors in the long evenings of the fall. We outlive our parents, our pets, many relationships, and if we live a good long time, many of our friends. Were you ever really supposed to do this or was your life predestined to end when it did? I will never know.

I do know that I've never met you and yet I miss you. I do know that the void you left has been partially filled by me. Uncomfortably sometimes, awkwardly most of the time, and always with reluctance, but here I am. I am living in October without you.

Love,

Russ

In the Land Where Food Comes From

2007-10-11T17:05:00Z

It's Monday afternoon in the San Joaquin Valley of central California. It would be a sunny afternoon but the atmosphere is grey with dust, diesel exhaust and smoke. Workers burn trash and dead weeds along the road while large cotton harvesting machines dredge up plumes of dust and cotton to the air. The smell of manure from feedlots is ever present. Welcome to the Land Where Food Comes From.

Truckloads of Roma tomatoes, open at the top, roar down Highway 43 heading to food processors. The trucks have large fiberglass tubs that are rigged to dump the tomatoes into a hopper and be easily rinsed out by hoses. Looking into the hoppers I see tomatoes in all states of ripening and decomposition, all destined to be made into tomato sauce, tomato soup, tomato paste and the myriad of other processed food products that render the tomato. All will be thrown in together in one happy processed gelatinous glob, the hopper rinsed (if the driver has time) and the truck will make it's trip back up the valley to get more.

Highway 43 connects with High 99 at an interchange surrounded by strip malls. We head north up the valley along a full irrigation canal. After a while the highway begins to cross dry riverbeds. Sadly, the names of the extinct rivers are posted on the bridges. These are not rivers any longer, they're just convenient alleys for run-off if the irrigation canals overflow. The signs now are tombstones. The Kings River, the Kern, even the San Joaquin River itself are all dead.

Spilled tomatoes periodically dot the edge of the highway. We pass rows and rows of grapes. Most of them are picked now, lying on the ground between the rows of vines on brown paper waiting to become "sun ripened" raisons. Since it is late afternoon I see in the distance the hundred or so workers that picked grapes all day being herded onto buses in the center of a stripped cotton field. Their shoulders are stooped from the labor, they are tired and dirty and cotton clings to their boots as they shuffle onto the busses. They don't seem to notice. A tired oily crow picks at the drying grapes.

Dotting the fallow fields are bright piles of yellow and white chemicals. The imported chemicals wait to be tilled into the overused earth, artificially inducing the dull sandy loam to produce another crop. Blue plastic industrial drums are being dumped from a pickup along fields where dark brown workers connect aluminum irrigation pipes. The snow white pickup truck eases between the rows with the windows rolled up tight and two overweight white men in John Deer hats in the cab. No one smiles. None of the irrigation workers even look up. A brown worker rolls the drums off the back of the truck intermittently. The truck does not stop.

This is the land we created. Every time we go to the grocery store and pass the local fruit stand, the farmers market or our community garden we choose to support this bleak industrial aberration of farming. This dirty, polluted and unnatural environment that produces our food is our all our making. While we are greeted in the grocery store by bright packages with pictures of lovely little family farms, the reality is we don't get food from there at all. Food comes from this dismal place. It next goes to a factory run by chemists and engineers whose scope of production extends out into the natural world in the form of factory farms. Most chickens never see the sun. Most cattle never leave a pen. Everything grown in the San Joaquin is in soil that would not support a cactus were it not for imported chemicals and fertilizer made from imported oil. We never stop to ask ourselves how safe is food grown in polluted air? How safe is food grown in soil that would not support any life if not for imported sewage sludge from San Francisco? We see the nice picture of a barn and a chicken on the meat package and put it in our shopping cart, believing in the lie.

Unfortunately our capitalist economy supports this lie very well. Strong distribution pipelines, heavily subsidized farms (ironically the San Joaquin is politically conservative in light of the numerous hand outs), efficient food processing and mechanization make for good economic partners. But if any part of this pipeline breaks, the fragile San Joaquin agri-superstore will be useless and as a result you will not be fed. Twenty-five percent of the nations agriculture is from California. Most of that food is produced right here in the San Joaquin.

Any interruption in petroleum production would not just stop the transportation of your food coming from the San Joaquin. It would stop the production. Those bright blue drums of nitrogen fertilizer were not magically made at the local farm co-op. They came from petroleum refineries. The bright colored piles of chemicals introduced to the dry desert loam were first created in factories in other parts of the country (and world) and transported. Everything that is food that comes out of the San Joaquin is made of raw ingrediants going into the San Joaquin. A long distribution chain fed by oil that starts in another desert in far off Saudi Arabia.

Every time we buy food, every time we eat, we are part of the agricultural process. It is far reaching, drawing from distant lands and issuing from places we are not often aware of. Agriculture has gone beyond the family friendly farm and backyard garden and is being controlled by giant businesses, government regulations, and very long supply chains. Agriculture is us. We are what we eat and we are eating some pretty strange things these days. Things from dark and dirty parts of the earth. Things that, given a choice, I don't think we would eat if we knew about them.

Driving With the Radio Off

2007-09-04T19:07:00Z

Driving With the Radio Off

We are in danger of turning our lives over to strangers for the sake of entertainment. We watch TV, listen to the radio, surf the internet and are otherwise plugged into something almost all of our waking hours. We are not getting this entertainment for free. The media we are tuned into is rife with commercials, loaded with innuendo, and full of subtle propaganda. Yes, we get to choose the radio station, web site, or TV channel, but how much of the content is what we tuned in for, and how much of it is the message we are being forced to listen to? A one hour TV show has 20 minutes of commercials. One hour of radio is about the same, and the internet is not only going to provide you with pop-ups, your computer has to swallow a bunch of cookies that will report your surfing habits to whomever is clever enough to ask.

More dangerous yet, it's not just retail sellers who are tying up your time with commercials. Politicians advertise, government agencies advertise, religions advertise, anyone-with-an-idea-to-promote and in-want-of-your-ear will advertise and you will be forced to listen. (Ever wonder why the commercials on your TV blare out yet you have to turn up the regular programming?) But wait, there's more! At the end of your favorite TV show, watch the credits. One of the first lists you will see is the sponsors who had products displayed on the show itself. The auto maker, the medical company, the appliance maker, just whoever wanted to have their product or service prominently displayed for you to ogle and wish for.

Listen to your own mind. Listen to what people told you today and ponder those things. Those things that real people in your life told you last night were important. Did you give them a second thought on the way to work this morning or were you listening to a couple of people on the radio nattering on about the weather? What was the last thing you said to your best friend? Did it matter to them? Have you given your last serious discussion any thought? If not, why not? Have you been too busy watching TV to think about it? If the radio is always on, the TV always on, the computer always on, just when will you take the time to think about what real people, people you have chosen to be in your life, have to say in your life?

It comes down to a battle for your time. Producers of media would like to have it all. They would like your whole life to be involved with listening to them. They don't want you to sit quietly in the car on the way home from work and ponder. They are going to provide just enough entertainment to hold your interest so you will listen to their thoughts (or their advertisers anyway). They have billions of dollars and you've bought all the latest equipment so that their message is much easier to get than, say, a suggestion from a real person. Heck you knew what equipment to buy because the advertisers told you! You never really stood a chance.

There is a constant battle for your eyes and ears, a giant industry is doing the fighting, burning millions of wasted dollars to influence your thought and I think it's time we all stopped the waste. It's time to stop the fighting, time to stop the incessant wrangling over the measure of time we have to use in our short lives. It's time we ended this. It's time to turn off your TVs, shut down your computers ( this article is just about done), and learn to drive with the radio off.

Sweet Dreams

2007-09-02T16:07:00Z

Dear Danni,

I have spent the last night sleeping in your little bed in what was once your room there on Debord Street. The few times I slept there I never saw your ghost, never was awaken by uneasy dreams and I never felt anything but warm and secure. Perhaps I really did feel your gentle spirit in that way. Now your room is let and is filling with odds and ends. A microwave oven sits on the floor, there are boxes stacked near the closet and strange clothes hanging there. Someone new will occupy your old bed on a full time basis. My existence in this place will go elsewhere as did yours.

I played your guitar, looking at the words you had written down for "House of the Rising Sun," (Even though I knew them by heart). You see, that song you were learning at what was to be the end of your life, was the first song I ever learned, way back at the beginning of my life. It's an odd symmetry, one I think may bear some deeper hidden meaning than I can not grasp. But that's okay, not everything important in this world is meant to be easy to understand. If it was I would not find it necessary to write you a letter that your worldly self will never read.

I entertained some of your friends with your guitar. I started with the song I've been writing for you, playing it unannounced, then moving on into little quiet finger picked melodies. I love your guitar. It is a nice instrument. I intend to restring it with the proper strings (the current ones are cheap and corroded). I can see from the wear on the neck you played mostly open chords, the kind a person plays to accompany their own singing. So I will learn a song or two for you, just of that kind. How about some Neil Young?

I live in a single room in an old house now. Not much different than the one you last lived in. I sleep through the warm summer nights wrapped in your old blanket on top of the bed spread, warm and happy as if I was in my mummy bag on a mountain someplace. I sleep peacefully for the most part. Thinking of your cherished friends, pondering a lyric for your song, composing little pieces of this letter and maybe others yet to come.

Thank you for being in the world Danni. Thank you for the peaceful dreams. I hope your present dream is as peaceful.

Love and respect,

Russ~