Colestin Countdown 2016

It's that time of year when the Colestin Camp Out blog finally turns its attention to the Colestin Camp Out. We're 10 days out friends! August 5-7.  Very exciting.  And yes, the rumors are true: Miz Kiva and Mr. David are getting hitched in the meadow on Saturday afternoon, the first wedding in Colestin Camp Out history.

Here are a few things to know for 2016.

Wedding - The wedding takes place on Saturday, August 6.  I suspect the ceremony will start around 5:00 p.m. Colestin time, which is, as we all know, fluid. This is definitely not a black tie affair; the mother of the bride may wear tie dye.  Be sure to complete your ensemble with comfortable shoes. I also suspect that the ceremony will be short and sweet. Everyone is welcome to attend, even if you don't know the bride and groom.

Weather -  It is hotter than the hinges of hell in southern Oregon this week.  The long range forecast shows no rain, but a slight cool down in temps, which would be a blessing.

Fire - With this hot weather, the fire danger is extreme. I'm sorry to say that we will NOT have a campfire this year, it's too dangerous. Scoutmaster Sequoia will make a game day decision about rigging up some kind of contained burner.

Road Work.  The I-5 overpass in Hilt is under construction.  It was supposed to done by August 5th, but that seems doubtful. Thus far, they have only closed one side of the overpass at a time.  If the construction isn't finished, you may possibly have to take one of these  two detours:

• I-5 south from Ashland, take the Bailey Hill Road exit, 3 miles south of Hilt. Cross the freeway and take the I-5 north entrance. Adds 5-10 minutes to the trip. 
• I-5 north from California, take the Siskiyou Summit exit, one mile north of Hilt. Make a U-turn and return back across the freeway onto I-5 south.   Adds 5-10 minutes to the trip. NOTE: The official detour sign directs you to the Mt. Ashland Ski Road, 5 miles north of Hilt.  Siskiyou Summit is the "locals only" shortcut and much faster.

Here's hoping the work is finished before the wedding.

Food - We will grill a large fish on Friday and red meat on Saturday, make a big salad, and buy a keg.  The bride has requested Lowell's Tangy Noodles. Contributions of meats, salads, sides, bread, corn, potatoes, fruit, desserts, hot dishes, cold dishes and drinks are greatly appreciated. We can always use more ice.  Charcoal grills and a propane burner will be available. There is usually too much food.

The Usual - Come for a couple of hours or stay the whole weekend. Family, friends, kids and dogs all welcome. Breakfast and lunch are on your own, potluck dinner is served around 7:00.  Disc golf usually tees off around 10 a.m. We play music all hours of the day and night, bring an instrument and sing along. There is an outhouse near the meadow and indoor plumbing at the house, about a 10 minute walk up the hill.  Expect bugs, snakes, stickers and cold nights. Smokers, please be extremely careful with your butts!  Finally, and most importantly, D.I.Y.

Colestine or Colestin? Both are correct. I use them interchangeably just to keep y'all on your toes.

Surely I'm forgetting something. Camp Out vets, weigh in if you think of anything.

Mazel tov campers!

July 4th

I just finished reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton, which I might not have picked up were it not for the musical Hamilton.  After visiting Philadelphia, I realized how very little I know about the American Revolution and the early history of the United States. Plus, I do love a good biography.  This one is a ripper, an 800-page beast of a book and a real page turner. Hamilton was a fascinating cat, no doubt, a rare combination of genius and will power, of brilliant mind and astonishing work ethic. He was probably a little unstable and more than a little manic (I mean, come on, the dude died in a friggin' duel with the friggin' vice president), but the great ones often are.

In reading the book, I was struck by the fact that America's partisans fractures were baked in right from the very beginning of the republic. There were those who advocated for a strong, central government and universal human rights and there were those who advocated for states rights and individual liberties. Sound familiar?

Hamilton and the Federalists were proponents of a strong central government with taxing authority, a central bank, national currency, and a standing military force. As a result, they were characterized as covert Monarchists who secretly plotted to elevate George Washington to the status of King. When I was growing up, I was taught that Hamilton was a ruthless capitalist and cultural elite, the very essence of what we now call the one-percent.  I was taught that Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton's political foe, was the democratic ideal, the man of the people. And yet, Hamilton was born a penniless pauper and a bastard to boot. He was an ardent abolitionist and fiercely meritocratic.  He engineered his rise in the world with nothing but his considerable talents and charm. He sought to establish an orderly, fair system of governance, knowing that peace and prosperity are the best guarantors of liberty and justice for all.

When I was growing up, I was taught that Jefferson, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was a democratic genius, a real man of the people. In reality, much of Jefferson's political philosophy was designed to protect his life, his liberty, his property.  Jefferson was born into wealth, owned huge tracts of land and dozens of slaves. Jefferson didn't just inherit slaves, he traded in slaves, kept a slave-concubine and allowed the children he sired with her to remain in slavery. When he died, he did not free his slaves in his will, they were sold at auction.

Jefferson despised the very idea of a central government and vehemently opposed the establishment of a national Constitution and Bill of Rights. He believed in life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but only for white men with money.  He helped to pass a law proclaiming slaves to be 3/5ths of a human being; not human enough to qualify for basic rights or dignity, but human enough to be partially counted in the census, thus increasing southern states' representation in Congress.  He is remembered as the genius who engineered the Louisiana Purchase, but no-one remembers his intention to convert that vast tract of land into slave-holding states. Throughout his career, Jefferson's chief political concern was to protect his right to hold slaves and profit from their labor.

Hamilton was the self-made man who is remembered as an elitist. Jefferson was an obscenely wealthy and unrepentant slaver who is remembered as a man of the people. Fascinating.

The Jeffersonians were right about at least one thing: strong central governments do tend towards tyranny. Police shootings on the street, the prison-industrial complex, drones indiscriminately raining death from the skies above Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, all are strong evidence of the tyranny of strong central governments. Even something as petty as opacity and impenetrability of government bureaucracies, even that is a form of tyrany. Like everything in life, there is no black and white. Where do we as a society draw the line between between freedom and security?

The question of strong, central authority versus individual liberties has been much on my mind lately as I've watched the rise of Donald Trump, a billionaire blowhard who styles himself as avatar of the common people. I don't believe he has the least interest in the common people, or in anything at all other than himself, but apparently many of my white, working class brothers and sisters do. He is a demagogue who appeals not to the better angels of our nature, but to our basest fears and prejudices. Trust me, I know Trump is nothing like Jefferson; for all his faults, Jefferson was a great intellect and no-one has ever said that about Trump. But, Trump is smart enough to take a page out of Jefferson's playbook.

Many of Trump's supporters live in mortal fear of a strong central government, which they equate with tyranny. A strong central government gave us things like the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act, protections that we now take for granted; protections that make us a better  people and this a better world. However, a strong central government also gives us things like mass incarceration and police brutality.   It's ironic to me that Trump's mostly white, middle class, male supporters are terrified of tyranny and yet they make up a majority of police, prison guards and military personnel.  Who is tyrannizing whom?

The world is full of assholes. The strong will always prey on the weak, the many will oppress the few. Which is worse? The tyranny of the one percenters or the tyranny of the masses?

White Privilege

A rash of ugly, racist incidents have shaken my little town, my white, wealthy, upscale, little town with its entitled artists, aging hippies and self-satisfied liberals. Oh, trust me, I know, I’m one of them; one of the white, (comparatively) wealthy, artist-hippie-liberals. We tell ourselves that our little town, our little Brigadoon bubble, is open, loving, kind, inclusive, enlightened.  Racism here? We are better than that. 

Well, my white privilege bubble of denial has been pierced by the reality of what my friends and co-workers are experiencing, horrible incidents of name calling and threats. They are speaking out and it's high time I listened.

I believe that I have always stood up and spoken out against racism, sexism, oppression, injustice, hate of any kind. I have worked for equal rights and justice.   But, I have also been willfully blind to what’s going on in front of me. It's time to see the truth in front of my face.  It's time to acknowledge my complicity.

I choose to live in beautiful southern Oregon and I love it here. I also recognize that it is extremely white, probably one of the whitest places in the United States.  I live in a Congressional district where most residents are deeply conservative, Christian, and so right wing, they make mainstream Republicans look like the Trotskyites. It’s a vast district, the seventh largest in the country, rural, isolated, the kind of place that attracts Trump-loving gun nuts and Info-Wars addicts.  Hell, a bunch of right wing, red neck "patriots" recently declared themselves a militia and took over a freaking bird refuge out in Malheur County. Yes friends, that happened in my Congressional district. Don't even get me started on the long, racist history of this area and the state of Oregon as a whole, we will be here all day. As a wealthy college and tourist town, Ashland is an outlier in this district, but it's still almost exclusively white. And yet, I chose to live here.   

Why do some white people fear and hate Black and Brown people, LBGTQ people, Muslims and Jews? I’ve never understood and never will.  It baffles me. It makes me nauseous. 

I chose to live in my little, liberal, hippie bubble, never realizing that it is the kind of place where people of color, my friends and colleagues, are regularly called the “n” word.  (And no, I won’t write it out; I won’t even capitalize the “n”.)  One of the revered founding artists of my theatre told me that, when he first came to town, he and his fellow theater geeks were regularly referred to as "Shakes-queers." There were certain bars they avoided for their own safety. I didn't realize that all of that is still happening to Black people.   I didn’t know, and that is nobody’s fault but mine.  If I had bothered to ask, my friends and colleagues would have set me straight.

And, there it is, right there: my white privilege, my racism. I didn’t know because I didn’t ask. 

...and sometimes they are dreadfully lazy and eat fruit

"Create your Reality"

I thought this toxic meme had finally faded out, but it popped up again on my Facebook today.  This bullshit "gets my red up" every time. Of course, it comes to us courtesy of the "new age" movement.  Ever notice how the so-called new age, alternative-spirituality community is almost exclusively white and wealthy?  Of course it is.  Who else would gravitate to a system that justifies and validates class and racial privilege while scapegoating victims of systemic oppression?

Does the rape victim create her rape? Does the kid born in a third world garbage dump create his poverty? Does the slave create her bondage? Obviously not. Victims of injustice do not create the injustice that victimizes them. The opposite is also true: the great majority of those who live in privilege did not create their privilege. That's a terrifying thought for those of us who are lucky enough to live in our first world bubble. We want to believe that we earned our privilege, that we created and deserve it, but 99% of the time, our privilege is wholly attributable to dumb luck and genetics.  The greatest predictor of wealth is not our intelligence, talent or perseverance, it is our parents' wealth.  There is even a term for this:  the "birth lottery."

Shit happens. Sometimes we create it, sometimes it is beyond our control. The one thing we can control is how we react to that shit, how we choose to let shit change and shape us. 

Sorry for the harangue, but it's one of my pet peeves. I once got into a war of words on this subject with a woman who was doing "communication training" at OSF. I get hot under the collar when some highly paid, Ivy League-educated consultant tells underpaid, working class employees that their oppression is their own fault because they "create their own reality." 

Disco Did Not Suck

Advertisements have started popping up for a big, last-gasp rock festival scheduled later this year. Three nights of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Who, Neil Young, Roger Waters, the last of the rock gods. Decades beyond any hint of relevance, these old,white multi-millionaires, one-percenters all, charge nostalgic boomers hundreds of dollars per ticket to play their forty year old hits at half speed. It's like a gathering of dinosaurs before the final mass extinction event; at least, I hope so.

I was talking to a friend today, a woman who sings with some local bands, and I went off on a bit of a rant about a certain class of local musicians I call the “classic rock guys.”  We don’t have big stars out here in the sticks, but a few of these guys had respectable careers as touring or session musicians. Most are just hometown heroes, rock stars in their own minds. They pound out the anthems and the power ballads with their Flying V Stratocasters and oversized amps.   The singer and I were talking about how you almost never see them play with women musicians.  They occasionally allow a woman to sing a few songs, but only if she looks good in a short skirt.  They might have a couple of gals singing back up, but playing an instrument? Almost never.

God bless you Chryssie Hynde, I don't know how you survived. Sister Rosetta Tharp is turning over in her grave.

Rock and roll holds almost no appeal to me anymore. I had a great time going to rock shows back in the day, I loved to dance to the hits as much as anyone. But, looking back, I see the scene for what it was: deeply sexist and racist. The “classic rock” of the 60s and 70s was overwhelmingly white and male. These offensively over-privileged white men with their mansions and their classic cars and their private jets, treating women like interchangeable sex toys.  Don’t get me wrong, being a sex toy can be big fun in the right circumstances.  I have absolutely no objection to fun and games between equals, but no-one wants to be interchangeable. That’s what was fucked up about it: the power dynamic.  It was all about the rock god, his low slung pants hanging off his hipbones, shaking his dick at the girls in the front row. Later, they crowd around the backstage door, lined up like virgins at the foot of a volcano, hoping that they will be adjudged worthy to enter. Fuck that.

I read something recently about the embedded racism of the “Disco Sucks” movement, remember that?  White deejays denigrating and destroying disco music that was created primarily by African American artists and celebrating the sausage rock of white artists.  And, don't even get me started about the deep, dark, rock closet.  Poor Freddie Mercury never had a chance. It’s all so repellent to me now.

Tulum, Cancun and the Blue, Blue Caribbean

I wish I had visited Tulum about 20 years ago before the vegans, yoga studios and eco-retreats took over . It's still incredibly beautiful, but crowded and expensive. But take a look at the color of the sea; what's not to love?

We arrived in the evening. 

The next morning, we took in the Tulum ruins. 

The Tulum ruins were fascinating, but not nearly as impressive as the other sites we visited. Ah, but what it had over the other sites was beach access.  Finally, the bright blue Caribbean.

The next day, we drove to Akamal Bay, where we snorkeled with sea turtles, sting rays and every kind of candy colored fish imaginable.  As we were leaving Akamal, we got caught in a street protest blocking the only road. The only way out of our parking area was through this tiny little opening. We had less than an inch clearance on each side of the car.  Sequoia deserved a medal for squeezing us through.

Unfortunately, after we squeezed through, we were still stuck behind this makeshift barricade for about 90 minutes in the pouring rain.  The police  were watching from the other side of the barricade doing absolutely nothing. 

Someone finally bribed the protesters to move their barricade and let us through. We had planned to go on another adventure but decided to go back to the condo and chill out by the pool. Somehow in all the excitement, Sequoia fell and tore up  his foot pretty badly. 

At long last: the beach. There is nothing I love better in the whole world than to lay on a beach, but a white sand beach and the turquoise blue Caribbean? I've never seen anything so beautiful.  Sublime. 

The drove south out of Tulum intending to check out a nature preserve.  There was supposed to be a visitors center, but after about an hour of navigating a terrible road full of bone crunching potholes, we turned back.  We later found that the visitors center had been closed for a couple of years but no-one had bothered to update the guidebooks or signs. On the way back towards Tulum, we saw an older gentleman sitting by the side of the road. We stopped to talk to him and it turned out he had a boat and was willing to take us out on a tour of the mangrove swamp.  We walked about a kilometer through the swamp, wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into.

Our guide Josme and his boat the Chocolatera!

Amazing birds

Bromeliads in the wild.

The beautiful jade green swamp and the turquoise sea.

A ruin in the middle of the water, an old  Mayan trading post.  Josme told us that there is a cenote under the water that divers visit.

Back in Tulum, picnicking on the beach.

On our last day in Mexico, we stayed in Cancun so that we could catch an early morning flight. Cancun is everything I feared: 10 miles of high rise hotels crowded cheek by jowl on a narrow strip of sand. Babes, bros, and beach volleyball.  Chain restaurants and rush hour traffic. But, when you walk down between the massive hotels towards the beach, this is what you see.

And, when you turn your back on the strip, you're looking at this:

Mama needed to go swimming

Arly and Paul set up their shade structure.

It's too late to save Sequoia and me from sun damage. Plus, we're both Vitamin D junkies.

Goodbye to Cancun.  Wonder where our next adventure will take us?

We now return you to our regularly scheduled Colestin Camp Out programming...