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Posted November 2003

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"Pen Points" Column by Geoffrey Platts

Foothills Sentinel (publication date unknown)

Benches say much about adjustment to the desert 

  I suppose you have to walk a lot to notice certain things. The perspective of a free-limbed walker is different than that of a driver encased in steel. For instance, there’s an awful dearth of public seating in Carefree -- those benches that do exist are courtesy of the shops along, say, Easy Street. I don’t know that the town provides even a single bench outside or in. The motoring mentality prevails -- which implies that people want to rush from chore to chore, driving hither and yon -- without a thought to resting awhile and even pondering the natural beauty of the environs. Hardly a carefree outlook.

  Even Bashas’, provider of taxes to our community (unlike Albertson’s) and which no true Foothillster would ever dream of abandoning, has not a single place to park one’s posterior. Think how a pleasant sitting nook would add to the well-being of the customer -- all the more so in an area of older residents. It wouldn’t cost Bashas’ that much -- and it would be a gracious and obliging gesture to the customers that remain faithful to them. Simply somewhere to sit down for a few minutes -- not a lot to ask of the store. England’s supermarkets are now ahead of the U.S. in comforts and conveniences, ranging from small lounges to clean toilets, baby care cubicles, inside pay phones and direct lines to taxis.

  A Bashas’ scouting trip to Britain would pay great dividends for company and shoppers alike. Not being choosy personally, I fling my fundament wherever fancy takes me -- though with a firm preference for boulder over barrel cactus. I don’t really need any benches, at least at this stage of my life, but I’m convinced that if the Town of Carefree invested in some they’d be greatly valued by the many visitors in the winter months.

  A widespread custom in England is to use the bench as a special memorial for departed friends and family. The bench, elaborate and simple, is purchased privately -- and then, with permission, positioned publicly. A loving remembrance is then inscribed in brass for all to see for a very long time.

  In my hometown of Harrogate, Yorkshire these “In Memoriam” resting spots are not only everywhere -- but are appreciatively used too. This is a superb idea - especially as England is a country of avid walkers (of all ages). In the summer of ’96, wandering through the Yorkshire Dales, my friend and I came across just such a bench, bearing the maiden name (Stirk) of our generous-spirited hostess Jane Holmes. It turned out to be in memory of her own mother -- but she hadn’t known of that particular bench. As I write, the idea strongly emerges of making memorial seats for our late-lamented friends Wendy DuPont and Ralph Sullivan. We would need to collect funds (or have them donated), agree on the design and hardiness, choose locations -- and then get permission to install. Does the WD/RS memorial bench idea appeal to anyone?

  In addition to seats, an even more woeful lack in Carefree is shade. It’s pretty obvious that Anglo-Saxons from the North have historically had little understanding of how to live feasibly with the Sun. Had the Carefree founders had any sun-sense, they would have quickly created a central plaza dense with shade trees (as I have seen in Mexico where they comprehend living with the Sun), and sprinkled with miniature fountains and benches aplenty. The upshot would have been a cool and desirable desert oasis. Nature’s refuge from the hammering heat. No such luck, the vision wasn’t there but they meant well did Bert Snow, H.T. Palmer and Tom Darlington (all of whom I knew from the Carefree Inn’s original days).

  The fantasy of the verdant oasis plaza fades -- and in its place we have today’s raw reality of a stripped, bleak dirt parking lot with just on brave bush struck in the middle of it. A mini-Sahara to hurry across between buildings.

  The scattered desert trees -- palo verde, mesquite, etc. do their best to throw shade -- and can do quite well if left alone. But they’re not any more -- the landscapers (landscrapers, did I hear you say?) hack and prune away at them unrelentingly until they’re a skeleton of their former splendid selves. Why? When that slashing thins shade for people -- and exposes their trunks to solar damage? Simple -- they must keep justifying their jobs -- so shade-givers and shade-seekers, beware the dreaded Disney-deserteers.

  Alas, even the buildings are not designed to provide shade. They were not built with any Sun-consciousness. Then, why not add colorful awnings?  They’d do the job of blocking the Sun -- and aesthetically, too. No, sorry, Continental awnings and Cinzano parasols haven’t quite made it to Carefree yet.

  So, from nowhere to sit, our bums go numb and with nowhere to run, we broil in the sun. If we have no idea how to live harmoniously in the South, why did our tribe ever leave the North?

Posted July 2002

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"Pen Points" Column by Geoffrey Platts

Foothills Sentinel, 15 June 1988

"Slow summer burn"

"On the brightest and warmest days my desert is most itself because the sunshine and warmth lambent with light: the caressing warmth envelops everything in its ardent embrace. Even when the outlanders complain that the sun is too dazzling and too hot, we desert lovers are prone to reply at worst, that is only too much of a good thing. Joseph Wood Krutch. The Voice of the Desert.

  Summer is upon us. In the sun's timeless journey towards solstice, it daily climbs higher to its zenith in the sky. The Sonoran Desert shimmers beneath its radiance. And as the heat intensifies, so does my gladness at being in a "desert place." Precious few others hold this view since, while I am clasping the heat to me like a lover, most are seeking to flee it. So be it. Each to their own.
The summer is a special time for the desert. All its intricate systems evolved over the millennia to evade, temper or endure the sun's rays are in full force. Yes, the desert's flora and fauna come steadfastly into their own in this season of swelter. It is nothing short of miraculous that desert plants day after dry day, week after rainless week can withstand the sort of heat that would strike dead a human being exposed to it without water for one day alone.
  Are not all such plants, stately or humble, deserving of our deep respect, then?   And all desert creatures great and small, too?
  Shamefully, tragically, though, these life-forms and their habitat which comprise our living desert we eliminate with hardly a thought. By our collective silence, we condone the desolation (or sad sanitization) of portions of an ecosystem, unique on the face of this earth, that has taken 10,000 years to evolve. And for what compelling reason? Oh, for just one local example, the building of yet another shopping center that, if we're lucky, may get us groceries at a few cents less.
It is high time that Nature's inherent right to exist is acknowledged both with the mind and heart of people and in their courts of law. I mean granting Nature "legal standing" so that where necessary she could be defended (from, say, a potential developer-rape) by lawyer's representation.
  Wouldn't that just shake things up in this anthropocentric world of ours? Earth advocate Mike Roselle pulled no punches on this emerging issue of equal rights for all species. He said, "Dammit, the natural world does have a legal right to exist, and if we don't start screaming it from every mountain top and every courtroom in the land, we could be guilty of complicity in the most horrible holocaust imaginable - the willful destruction of entire ecosystems for short-term profits."
  But back to the bold and beautiful heat... For four months out of the year, it gives the desert a respite from those who plunder it - the "weekend warriors," the dirt bikers, the miners, the shooters, the hunters, the woodcutters and so on. It restores tranquility to an ancient and serene land. It brings back the proud primeval wildness "in which," said Henry David Thoreau, "lies the preservation of the world."
  And frankly I'm a bit of a beneficiary of all this good. Because, by going deep into the desert when the sun's at its fiercest, I'm guaranteed that rarest of gifts in this modern world - perfect peace and quiet. Silence. Stillness.
This I no longer have in my own day to day environment. But I do have it out there in that tremendous, trackless desert. Which is why, on Memorial Day, 1988, I sit beneath the shade of a juniper tree - far removed from "Homo Noise-ius" and his maddening machines and gunshots. All is calm.
  So, burn on, Old Sol, burn on!

Posted March 2002
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"Pen Points" Column by Geoffrey Platts

Foothills Sentinel, date of publication not known
 

'Vultural reality' vacation

Old turkey buzzard and I have lived with one another for several summer weeks - simply because the overnight roost of him and his far-flying friends overlooked my wilderness camp. They were less eager about my proximity than I was about theirs - though, for a few days, high up there on their sycamore deadwood perches, they didn't seem to be much bothered by my solitary padding around. Even so, I always could feel those legendary eyes on me.

I wasn't of interest because I wasn't dead, of course. What a morsel I would've been otherwise! Vultures, of course, are birds of death. They're silent, black-cloaked and red-visaged - and their job is death. Yet they're not death-dealing hawks, for example. They never kill.

They wait for death to happen and then, near miraculously, they happen upon the fatal scene. How do they foregather in such great numbers? They can go from five to 50 in no time. It is said they are strung out way up there in the heavens, some miles apart but within sight of one another. Like a sky telegraph, when one makes a sighting with those extraordinary eyes and begins to dive, the others in line of sight follow the leader, as it were. And thus the sudden and spectacular assembly.

When they eat they gorge because they don't get to eat often - particularly in the more sanitized U.S. of A. Sonora, Mexico, is rife with vultures (two species, the black and red-necked) because livestock kills are everywhere and there is no removal. And so, the scavenging's good.

Essentially, the zopilotes do the work there that the county health department would do here - organically and much more cheaply.

I often wondered where they nested and it was only by sheer chance that that knowledge came to me. I was climbing out of a remote canyon, again in Sonora, Mexico, where a huge black bird flew out of a crevice - almost upending me. Recovering composure, I peered into the cliff recess and saw two large, blotched and dirty eggs lying in the dust - with a twig or two around them. Small wonder the vultures' nests are rarely encountered!

Though the resident vultures did eventually move down creek a couple of trees, they continued to come back in the first hours of the morning to the same lofty forked perch. And once, as the rays of the rising sun were striking them, they - the four of them - did the most fabulous thing. They spread their wings fully open and held them there motionless - with their pale cream underfeathers aglow from the first rays. Splendorously "spread-vultured" - a never forgotten sight.

Their polished red heads with the curved tearing beak glistened in the sun, too.

I had previously thought that the early morning "feathers aspread" were only seen in the first chill of fall - that it was literally a warm-up technique. Not necessarily so - they're feather spreading in the full warmth of a desert summer.

The more I neighbored with them, the more I came to appreciate them -- especially for their remarkable silence. They flap and jostle for optimum position on their night perches but once pleasingly placed, there's not a sound out of them throughout the darkness. Imagine a treeful of rooks!

Some see them as a lugubrious bird, a harbinger of death. On the contrary, I see them as a bearer of hope and new life - for do they not bring the spring back with them to the desert in mid-March?

They say that no bird on earth can fly higher into the firmament than the vulture -- a lesson for us there.
¡Viva Zopilote!

“Pen Points” Column by Geoffrey Platts

Foothills Sentinel, Wed., Jan. 19, 1994
 

God of growth is false idol.

Quote from a letter to Supervisor “George Campbell, Maricopa County, May 1, 1985:

“Growth must, at the very least, be questioned by the powers-that-be. It simply cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over the social, individual and environmental sensibilities of the present and future.

Granted it will take the civic fortitude and political gumption to challenge that which has been undisputed for so very long in these parts. Yet it must be done to provide a healthy balance between economic and eco-sociological needs.

If a bold start is not made soon by state, county and city governments, then the seeds of chaos will germinate and Arizonans in the none-too-distant future will reap a bitter harvest.” G.P.

“Progress, growth, industry - everything that the chamber of commerce and the politicians love, I’m against. I think it’s destroying Arizona and I don’t think it will survive.” Edward Abbey, April 1983

“Growth is good, growth is God! Growth is good, growth is God!” Yes, we hear that feverish chant, consciously, subconsciously day in, day out. The politicos prattle it, the media reinforce it, the people swallow it.

Instead of getting irate when the B.A.C. (Bruner and Drinkwater*) boys push for a new road through our public lands (to Beeline Highway), we say nothing - believing when we’re meant to believe - that growth is good, growth is God!

Incomprehensively, we neither look around us nor up into the dirty air. And even if we do, we may mutter or moan - but we do nothing. We see ourselves as impotent in the face of unassailable power.

Meanwhile, knowing our timidity all too well, the politicians and their builder-bedfellows rub their hands, cackle with unholy glee...and hatch more plots for more growth. Oh yes, growth is good, growth is God!

They have to, they must keep going, poor souls, for they themselves are an outgrowth of The Growth. The blind, unbridled, unquestioned growth. Without it, they would wither away. So they build ‘til all is killed. Just like L.A.

Never mind that the fair face of the Sonoran Desert is skinned off - and with its skinning is lost that which gives the people here their spirit of place, their sense of belonging in and to this lonely, lovely land of little rain.

Gone is the wildness, tamed and shamed by the despoilers. And the first residents, the singular Sonoran fauna, are driven further back - fleeing from the juggernaut called Growth.

Growth is good, growth is God! But is it? The Random House dictionary doesn’t seem to think so: “Def. 7 Pathol. - An abnormal increase in a mass of tissue, as a tumor. “Growth for growth’s is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Edward Abbey’s startling medical metaphor is very apt. The healthy body of the ancient desert is indeed getting eaten up by the terrible tumor of galloping growth. Which is now gnawing at the very fringes of the Foothills (e.g., Terra Vita = Earth Life. Doublespeak right out of Orwell’s”1984.” - and, of course, Tatum Ranch-of-the-Touching-Desert-Billboards.)

Actually it’s in the Foothills - with the soon-to-be-five green golf excrescences of Desert Mountain.

So when the President tells you next time that he is “promoting growth” (as with NAFTA), and the Arizona governor and county Supervisor Bruner seem anxious to install a baseball stadium (= growth) and want you to tax-pay for the tumor yourselves, wait for a break in the “Growth is good, growth is God!” chants...and tell ‘em, “No!”

Tell them that more is less and less is more. Tell them that life is more than just lucre, that you and the land you’re on have had it with their greed-driven growth. And that the desert is special - and so are you. And that, “Growth is bad, growth is crud.”

“Excessive growth is an unhealthy, pathological and, finally, a cancerous condition. There is nothing to be gained in striving to make Tucson a foul mess like Phoenix. A few people profit - the land speculator, the tract slum builders, the shopping mall hustlers - but the majority of us lose. More growth means more crime, more smog, more traffic, more noise, more political corruption, more polluted wells, and less peace, less order, less nature, less freedom, less democracy.” Edward Abbey.

* * *

Platts will present “Nature’s Own Penmen,” a reading of works by John Muir, Edward Abbey and others, on Sunday, Jan. 23 [1994] at 7 p.m. at Changing Hands Books, Tempe.

Cost is $5; refreshments will be served.

"Of This and That" by Geoffrey Platts

Foothills Sentinel, Wed., Aug. 6, 1986.
 

Foothills world traveler contemplates
 differences in cultures

Today finds me in England's 'green and pleasant land." I came here from Phoenix by a circuitous route - Newark, N.J., North Carolina and Hamburg, West Germany!

In North Carolina I learned more about the sanguinary Civil War, saw picturesque tobacco barns (those four-chimneyed, earth-chinked log huts for drying the aromatic broad leaves) and found out that a "pig-picking" is the Southern term for a suckling roast-in-the-pit.

It was azalea time - and the beckoning Blue Ridge Mountains were vivid with those pink and fragrant bushes.

In the center of Reidsville, N.C., where I stayed with hospitable friends, the monument to the Confederate dead read - "God Bless North Carolina and R.E. Lee."

The silent soldier on his weather-pitted pedestal faced southwards. It was with considerable pleasure that I relished the pace and grace of the South.

From there via Kennedy I flew to "London Town," arriving in drizzle - not surprisingly! The dismal climate - was amply made up for by the speed and efficiency with which I passed through U.K. Customs.

The British have an honor system. Those who have goods to declare pass through the Red Exit. Those who do not, simply walk out with their luggage through the green. The latter are occasionally spot-checked by customs officers. There aren't the dreary hour-long waits experienced regularly in, say, New York.

To make matters even more easy, hand-carts are available, free of charge, to baggage-burdened travelers. All very civilized, I thought.

In spite of all the current brouhaha about bombs, I didn't lay eyes on a single armed policeman at Heathrow Airport. That reassured me that England is not under a state of siege.

On the contrary, the British seem to be even blase about the bomber brigade. After recent explosions on Spain's Costa del Sol, one vacationer was quoted as saying, "No way, I'm not going on holiday. That's just what these terrorists want. To hell with 'em!"

Significantly, these incidents have caused no dent in the trend of sharply increased bookings to Spain. People in Britain find it hard to understand why Americans should want to cancel their summer vacations in Europe.

A newspaper editorial put it tellingly... "If terrorist attacks on American targets continue at the present rate, another five American citizens will die in the next four months. That would leave Western Europe almost 100 times safer than New York City where in 1985, an average of 464 people were murdered every four months."

The American public needs to show the same robust attitude as passers-by in Oxford Street, London, did after the recent bombing. We cannot become cowed and intimidated y terrorism. As long as Americans refuse to travel to Europe, they will be surrendering to Qaddafi.

On the road I met a worldly American couple from Boston, Mass. They told me that they'd been in Egypt the day after the Libyan bombardment - and didn't have the slightest trouble.

I asked the feisty little lady's views on the mass U.S. Cancellations. 'Ridiculous!," she snorted. In short then, dear Foothills readers, your chances of surviving a European vacation are excellent!

I didn't linger long in London. Just an overnight stay with friends and then off to the continent. I was bound for Hamburg.

A sudden Belgian rail strike sent me off on a travel tangent. Instead of crossing the channel by jetfoil at Dover, I took a boat from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. Fair stood the wind for Holland! The sailing was smooth - and I satisfied an ancient urge to be on the high sea again.

A Dutch train connecting with the Sea Link ferry sped directly to Hamburg, dropping me off on a desert platform at 3 a.m. I simply couldn't bring myself to call my German friends at that dreadful hour. Besides I didn't have the correct "Kleingeld" to even make that call.

So, in company with some poor dazed derelicts, I loitered at the station for two hours - until the city began to stir to life. Then I 'phoned.

The four days in Hamburg, that riverport city of many trees, were memorable. My charitable friends -and their friends - spared no effort in making them so.

We talked of many things, marveling at the irony of having been on different sides of the 1939-45 war when we were young. Once "enemies," now fast friends. Time makes a mockery of man's warring tendencies and fervent politics.

Gerhard and Kathe took me to Luneburg Heath (a large expanse of commonland) to Lubeck, the old and graceful city where once my father spent time with the post-war occupation forces.

There was a pleasing absence of those abominable ATCs on Luneburg. I was advised that they were banned in Germany - because of their danger to life and limb. If only U.S. authorities would do similarly!

From Hamburg to Hampstead in North London. Another satisfying sojourn with old and cherished friends. I took much joy in wandering over Hampstead Heath - a vast and rambling stretch of wildland, which is protected from the predations of development forever.

One can walk for miles on the Heath with no sense of the great city surrounding it. Its special beauty lies in its wildness. Because of that, it could never be described as a park.

Characterful pubs, several centuries old, dot its periphery. There the weary walker can quench a thirst with an imperial pint of good English ale...

The elegant township of Hampstead reeks of history. It was once a country venue for artists, philosophers and writers.

Even old Karl Marx wandered these parks - and is, in fact, buried nearby in Highgate Cemetery. Painter John Constable, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, poet John Keats, novelist D.H. Lawrence, author George Orwell, writer Katherine Mansfield. All these luminaries lived here at some time or other. Blue porcelain plaques mark their erstwhile residences.

One cannot help treading these time-honored streets without a certain reference. Perhaps most curious of all, historically, was the polished brass plate reading as follows: "This building was erected by voluntary contribution for a dispensary and soup kitchen. It was intended as a thanks offering to Almighty God for his special mercy in sparing this parish during the visitation of cholera in the year 1849. Site was purchased in 1850 and the building completed in 1853. He shall deliver thee from the noisome pestilence."

As I finish writing this column, it occurs to me that since the middle of April I've experienced (at an intimate level) four decidedly different cultures - the Mexican, the American, the German and the English. They all have their pluses and minuses, their pros and cons.
And each way of life is distinct in its approach to the living of it. To that I say, "Vive la difference!"

There is a unifying principle, however, which is held in common by all cultures mentioned: the lovely capacity for the people's kindness and warmth towards the traveler.
That form of hospitableness, as old as the human race itself, transcends all political, national and linguistic barriers. And, if it continues to be cultivated in good heart and spirit, may well hold the key to "Peace on earth and goodwill to all men."