Silence in the Snow

I was standing on the roof of my bakery in Santa Fe as I saw a man approaching in the snow, dressed in a long black robe with a little black cap with a red cross embroidered on it. Long white beard, old, but obviously full of live/light. After I had decended from a thin and long ladder, it turned out that his name is Father Elias, hermit of a tiny Greek Orthodox Monastery in Northern New Mexico, south of Abiqui lake.

He was collecting some of the day old Cloud Cliff bread. I gave him what was on hand, and then he asked me for a little it of the sourdough 'mama' culture from which all the Cloud Cliff artisano nativo breads come forth. The mama culture is about 35 years old now, and it goes back to my own days living as a lay monk in the Tassajara Zen Monastery, the place where I started to understand bread baking. Without further thinking I gave him some of the sticky and moist live mother dough.

A few days later I started to worry. In a way, a 'self-made' healthy sourdough culture consisting of at least 5 different micro-organisms (some say it is more like a hundred or so),

that lives on for many years (as long as it is nourished properly) is the most prized possession for a baker. Inadvertent destruction of the culture is nothing less than a disaster.

I wanted to make sure that my brief instructions for the care of the mother dough, the 'Levain', en francais, were clear enough, so I tried to call Father Elias, and when that was unsuccessful, I impulsively announced that I would make the trip up North and bring some supplies for baking bread, in particular rye, and of course, inspect the mother dough.

Shortly after I arrived --about 2 hours from Santa Fe in an intimate New Mexican valley with a year round river, Indian ruins, cattle and forests -- it began snowing..... hard.

Meanwhile in the comfortable guest kitchen, Father Elias and Father Cristian, and myself were addressing the fine points of bread baking. In a glass jar, the sourdough mama seemed happy, bubbly and very alive. I had been worried for nothing.

My car couldn't make it out somehow -- it just went up a little ways on this tiny frozen incline and then it would slide backwards, towards the monastery entrance. There were a few other distractions that I won't go into here, but to make a long story short.... I got stuck two days.

Over time I gathered all kinds of excuses.... to see some beautiful Greek Orthodox Icons and to find silence in the snow.

Gonzo Patriotism is coming

My 16 year old daughter has discovered the work of writer, journalist and gun-owner Hunter S. Thompson in earnest.

Together we watched the documentary "Gonzo" about Hunter's live (recommended!!), and I fell into a dizzying state of mournful remembrances.

That magical moment seemingly outside of time and history --the Sixties-- which shaped so many of us in one way or another, has dimmed and perhaps faded forever. The sense of infinite possibility, the promise of love, of communion in peace with other cultures through music and expression, the fascination with nature and consciousness, etc. etc. --they all died under the boot of corporate militarism and megalomaniac control fantasies.

No matter how much my teenage child is trying to find joy and innocent adventures, I can see a deep sadness in her eyes, and in that of her generation. A broken heartedness. They subconsciously know that something as big as anything was stolen from them --their future-- leaving them with a ungraspable sense of loss and defeat -- even before they can articulate that or have entered adulthood.









(...this is one of her paintings 3' X 5'
--click on it for enlargement)

Obama's promise of "Change" has thus far proven nothing else than one more generational betrayal: his words have become hollow within a year, while the twilight darkens. Granted that "Change" was kind of like a Rorschach inkblot -- but after years of Clinton's sellouts and Bush' wars, and against the background of Global Warming, what can "Change" mean other than stopping torture, stopping war, nuclear disarmament, universal healthcare, alternative energy, racial equality and economic justice ? Everyone understood Obama's "Change" that way. It even motivated a new generation to become politically engaged and work for Obama -- but none of this is happening in the Obama administration --quite the opposite--.

Many, in particular the young, now feel a loss of trust, because they sense that they have been bamboozled by a juggernaut of corporate and military interests, which found in Obama a person of great oratory and ability to communicate -- who at the same time was willing to do the arcane dirty work of Empire, and pull the wagon of State into the abyss of "corporacracy" -- a 21 century type fascism in the footsteps of Mussolini.

This kind of betrayal seems to have been at the heart of the conflicted life of Hunter Thomson himself and I think that is why my daughter suddenly is interested in him: she recognizes the tragedy.

Whereas Hunter's arch-nemesis Nixon, clothed himself in the mantle of middle class American moralism, nationalism and patriotism while committing all his atrocious crimes (particularly the brutal Vietnam war), "vile immoral outlaw" writer and journalist Hunter Thompson pushed the boundaries of freedom of expression and consciousness. Hunter understood those values to be at the heart of the American dream and constitution. In that sense all of his outrageous, occassionally bizarre misbehaviors and irreverent tearing at the mask of the power elite, were in their own way acts of patriotism.

If it is this kind of desperate Gonzo Patriotism that is striking a chord and resonates in the children of the children of the sixties........Now What ?