Nostalgia- a resistance to mourning

Sitting beside the CEO of a local bank on a plane to NYC we got to talking about how things had changed, and how we remembered the way things used to be, la de da. We both became quiet after that. And then I said that I believed nostalgia was a resistance to mourning. That it was good to look back and reflect. And his reaction of this successful man gave me notice. He nearly gasp, saying, "Yes, I believe you are right." Repeating what I'd said as if for us both to remember.

Considering the Hoover Dam we may wish to look back to a time when there a washed out desert as the Colorado ran free, that is now a mass of irrigated fields. Those were days of free surrender from a river so bold that is no more. And it may be sad this has changed, only because it once was.

Then again, remembering the dam and how the workers at the site felt when they were building it, we become nostalgic for that time because it happened with a certain beginning and ending. To think of the dam in this way, i.e.; what happened as it was built, we resist mourning. We look at the past in its greatness. Even if the past was "wrong" in many ways. We see the people, the place as it was changing before our very eyes. It helps, this nostalgia. It helps us to keep the faith as we direct our courses out into the future.

Trip to Hoover dam ( Music by Pepe Mogt )

Tents of life

Living in a tent...it's something not everyone does. Yet those who do or have in the past understand the reality of simple pleasures. Water, food, being clean...and yes, the thought is again of people "down on their luck" or experiencing "hard luck". Not "campers" who have someplace else they can go.

When times are tough there has always been alternatives. It's just that we make living so hard that if we must endure greater hardships than we "expect" we feel sorry for ourselves instead of seeing the moment for what it is. We call "unfair" only because we compare our lives we've made so hard with other lives. Sure some people want to give up living for whatever reason, but those who can embrace the alternatives seem to have a resilience at their core.

On the other end of this spectrum, consider the workers on the Hoover Dam who went to work for $4 bucks a day (even in 1931 this was not a lot.) They got used to the wage, they pushed themselves harder at their jobs for small raises and to prove their worth. Getting themselves and their families out of the Hoovervilles or tent cities seem to mean the work provided a better life. As if there was shame in living in tents.

The tragedy then is not that a man dies but that he fought so hard to stay alive.
We fight today to stay alive when perhaps we should instead just fight to live.

Live as in being so present in the moment we don't see work as work. We see our needs, we live our needs so our wants become these needs. And we thus circle back to the simple pleasures of food, water, being clean...

The State of Power

Water is power. Always has been always will be. Water is rarely free but rather owned, depending on where it comes from and where it goes. The Colorado River is a fluid source of revenue, ha. Yet it's true. What is worth fighting for is to see the water used for more than development, ie; households and businesses, and be able to flow long enough and strong enough to make it back to the sea.

This connection of fresh water to sea water is powerful. It provides a circle of replenishment.

Why we break circles and cycles must be because we feel we can have power over the very thing that is power. We say this is a "Man's world." But that's a cop out. It is a greedy, corporate world that we're all a part of yet want nothing to do with. And those that seek to make changes away from the greed find themselves paddling up a dry river.

Will the madness ever stop? Can we live with the promise of more diversion, greater loss, disrespecting the power of water by wanting to control it all?

Time will tell, dear friends. Meanwhile, let us drink the sacred and share in its ability to quench our ever-alive bodies.

Ragtown Mother's Day May 1931

Ragtown, near the Colorado River and Black Canyon, where the dam is starting to be built, has become too hot to be outside, yet too hot to go inside. A mother and her child's new dog briefly pose for a photo on a day like most others. Except this day a celebration will ensue at sundown.

The child's father is returning from the hospital. He's been there for two weeks, near death, diagnosed with what everyone says is pneumonia. However, he could be sick from something else; something no one is willing to speak of.

Working inside the diversion tunnels, the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning is high. It is a known truth, it's a risk that every worker faces, that every worker will try and forget about.

When her husband arrives he is too weak to even hold the dog, not to mention his child, too heavy for his arms. Yet he is alive. And mother and child (and now dog) are depending on him for their survival.

When they first arrived in Ragtown, they were without any other family, without insurance, without anything but what they could carry in their arms. No one thought their lives would turn like this. And now, for the first time, it's understood the importance and value of celebrations.

Even when staring death in the face, survival depends on resilience. It's true, they know, bouncing back from tragedy brings great joy and necessary hope.

Women of Boulder City

The Boulder Dam Hotel was a needed addition to the town of Boulder City as the dam (Boulder/Hoover) was being built. It served the many who came to the dam as tourists, but also provided employment for residents of the town. Naturally, since many of the men worked at the dam, the jobs were filled by women.

Often, the jobs the women took became a bone of contention with the men. Some still believed a woman's place was in the home. Just as some men today believe women should carry the responsibility of a job. Regardless of the times, the forces of the status quo made people question necessity. And necessity is something that can always be questioned.

Nevertheless, Boulder City was known for it's friendliness, cleanliness, near-holiness among its residents and it made it easy for women to move about, establishing businesses, schools, parks and hospitals to again, having a menial job that gave them some economic freedom.

It's here at the Boulder Dam Hotel, comfortable, spacious and immaculate that became a place where some women for the first time in their lives could begin to take responsibility for their own life. Such menial tasks as housekeeping could mean economic freedom for a woman. She could further her education to become a doctor, teacher or architect. She could afford to pay her own way east and visit family. For often time, she had already up and left behind everything on behalf of her husband's last ditch effort for a job working on the dam.

The women of Boulder City, many torn from their past, would keep on choosing to add new life to their future. Like the Colorado River on a course altered by the dam, they were also destined in their direction all along.

Boulder City

Receiving a haircut, outside the barber shop in Boulder city 1935...By now, the nearby dam is nearly built. And Boulder City, also known as a reservation (since this is government land) is a pretty little town, with schools and churches, parks and shops along a main street. A town as much a part of the dam as the workers themselves, a celebrated city for its so-called cleanliness (no booze, no gambling, no prostitution...supposedly). And the city would try and remain this way even with the permissive Las Vegas so near.

How and why? The residents either obeyed the reservation rules, set and enforced mainly by a city controller named Sims Ely, or they had to get out. A gate at the entrance of the city meant everyone was checked for booze in each car. If caught, they were kicked out, never to be welcomed in the city again.

Sims Ely, an older character, noble in his efforts, demanded the town start clean and remain clean, without any "outside" influence.

However, as nice as things looked from the outside, the town was built fast and furious. Much of the building materials weren't of good quality. Some folks were hit by heat prostration right inside their own houses, as if they'd spent all day without water in the desert. Still, no one wanted to complain for fear of being kicked out. Families did not want to go back to the Hoovervilles outside the city, where cardboard was used for walls.

During the time the town was new, its reputation for civility was a national sensation. And it held this reputation shadowing the entire dam project.

Perhaps it's true that what one builds is often exaggerated in the mind of its creator. Yet this label of safe living made the place that much more friendly, and some would say more valuable, for keeping the town "clean".

We may argue that the rules were too tight, that prohibition had ended so being in the possession of liquor was no big deal, but isn't it true that bending or breaking rules do have ramifications, consequences that affect everyone? There seems a fine line between "following" and "living" the rules...