Jane Morris: 

Resident Associate 
Editor                         

Mairen Magee: 

Corresponding
Associate Editor

Jack Stryker:

Communications and
Oracular Pronouncements

Dew Drop Inn

Editor's Note

(The following is an essay by Robert R Ward, originally appearing in the July/August 2003 issue of Bellowing Ark reprinted here.)

It has been a fine summer, abundant sun, days whose temperatures held the high 80s; a summer much like, in fact, summers I remember from my boyhood. Fecund summers, strawberries luscious, redolent, red jewels hidden beneath green leaves; bean vines heavily laden with dactyls, fat pods filled and tasty. The heat driving the whole process forward: the sun’s energy powering the photosynthetic process, making the sugars that bring fruit to ripeness, provide the food that makes our lives possible.

Isn’t it interesting that rather than the bountiful harvests approaching, talk here, at least, concerns itself with concern: fire danger, drought, exposure to sunlight leading to cancer, heat stroke, madness. Indeed, the glass seems not half-full but broken. Hardly anyone seems to practice initiative; somehow, those who act on their own seem to be open to criticism as being without social conscience, or selfish, or greedy.

This seems to me to be held especially true of those people who, in one way or another, work for themselves. Here in the state of Washington every possible obstacle is placed in the path of small businessmen, farmers, loggers, indeed, all those folks who inhabit flyover country. Farmers out in the Carnation valley are engaged in a protracted battle with upscale settlers who moved out from Seattle to enjoy pastoral living, not realizing that pastures naturally stink. Offended by the smell, these invaders are essaying in their favorite venue—the courts—to have the cows removed from the farms.  Did I miss something?  Another law that is being tried, lawsuits in every level of court, requires that all property within 250 feet of a “salmon” stream or “wetland” remain forever undeveloped. Considering that the average city lot is about 60 feet across the front and 120 feet deep, we’re talking about some weird limits here.

And shall we speak of spotted owls?  Or the marbled murrelet? I think of the young woman working for WASHPIRG (a “public” interest group) who came to my door one evening, a few years ago, soliciting signatures for a petition to close down the Hanford nuclear facility.  The first argument that she advanced—and I quote— “radiation from Hanford is responsible for the extinction of more than 2000 species of plants and animals.” And who, when I asked her to name two of those species, lost her temper and became rather verbally abusive.  A spiritual sister to the person, now a professor in a Graduate School at the University of Washington, who once told me—and in all seriousness, I must add—I was losing brain cells every time I picked up a tool. A statement of such Import that it comes to mind every time I fire up my trusty chain saw, or run a bead with my welding torch. One wonders why a keyboard is not considered a tool...though I hardly ever break a sweat when typing.

What we have here, I believe, is two ways of viewing the world. One comprises a society of two classes: a small elite which determines what is done, and to whom; the other, those to whom things are done, and who perform all the work, but only at the direction of their rulers who dispose of the workers’ production as they, the rulers decide. The other, and I believe the only acceptable way of living, sees the results of a person’s labor as that person’s to dispose as the producer wishes. (Notice here the convoluted diction. In a world that was sane, I could write: a man’s labor—meaning the generic sense of man, a person—and his results. We have become so enslaved at this point that to be heard I must resort to circumlocutions so as not to disturb anyone’s sensibilities, sensibilities that have been inflamed deliberately, making direct discourse almost impossible—in the same way that we speak only of possible disasters and not what a wonderfully wonderful and fecund summer it has been).

Let me come at this from another direction. What does your senator, representative, or any college professor do that is more important than the lineman who repairs the electrical transmission line to the hospital that contains the respirator keeping your mother, father, wife, husband or child alive after a storm? Can they, those hierarchical elite, repair a break in the water pipe that supplies your city? Yes, they, those faceless drone (flyover people all) have dirty hands and do not wear suits to work; how is it that what they know and do is held in such little regard?

Understand, please, the same people that find nothing good to say, that find threat and terror in everything—or would like us to—despise people who can do. That most wise of men, C.S. Lewis, called them the men with hollow chests; they are indeed without any really human characteristics for they do not believe in man at all. In truth, their only belief is that they believe in nothing. The same people who believe that a poem should not mean but be. These are not people who would climb 70 flights of stairs in a doomed building to rescue people they don’t know, they are not the sort who would carry sand bags through a monsoon to repair a crumbling levee; these are the people who sit behind desks and make rules that put farmers out of business, who advocate destroying dams that provide power to light peoples’ lives and provide useful and necessary industries the energy to act; they are the same people who dispense “arts” grants to “projects” that they deem worthy, although no thinking or feeling person would, or does. Indeed, they do not like actors, doers, at all; in some unimaginable way, they seem to believe that things just happen, that creation goes on without creators, otherwise they could not despise as they do the very people upon who their lives and livelihoods depend; those people who create and maintain the foundations and well-springs of civilization.

Jeremiad? Yes. But someone has to declare that the emperor has no clothing, that naked is naked. When it comes down to bloody teeth and fingernails—as a good friend once said to me—I’d rather have Hugh Glass standing beside me than Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Does it make any sense to have someone who knows nothing of a process directing that process? Whatever it is? Well, we have come to a point in our culture where that is the rule, not the exception; no culture can long survive when it comes to despise, disrespect and disregard its artisans, its makers and doers.