After deciding to reshape my life, the whole world was open to me. So
deciding where to land after leaving Montana was difficult but San Francisco had
a huge advantage. First of all, I had lived there for nearly twenty years
in the past and still knew it well from frequent visits. The other
significant attraction, though, was the Proposition 19 Marijuana legalization
effort that had made it to the 2010 ballot. Helping to finally legalize
this politically maligned plant was irresistible.
In preparation for this new episode of my life, I sold everything owned, with
exception of my car, so moving was relatively inexpensive and
uncomplicated. The primary challenge on the first leg was finding a place
to temporarily land without burdening old friends.
Using Craigslist as a guide, I found a situation on International Boulevard, the
former East 14th Street, in Oakland that billed itself as a sort of downscale
adult summer camp. Photos in the ad made it clear that accommodations were
spare with various bunk bed hostel style arrangements throughout the rooms of a
decaying Victorian mansion.
The price was right and the owner, named "Richard", assured me in a phone call
that every guest was screened for security and had signed an agreement to abide
by stringent rules of cleanliness and respect. I was expected to do the
same. He emailed me a voluminous legal document with detailed house rules
around noise, keys, bathroom and kitchen use. There were specific
instructions about the type and amount of money order required as a deposit and
even the way in which FedEx was to deliver the deposit and signed documents to
him. His email concluded with a digital signature followed by the word,
"Esquire".
After a two day drive with frequent stops to check the straps on my overloaded
roof rack, I was relieved to be near Sacramento where I called Rich in
preparation for my arrival. Someone named Alex answered the phone and told me
Rich was out of town but everything had been arranged, no problem.
It had been many years since I last saw International Boulevard in Oakland.
I'd lived on it in the 1970's when it was East 14th Street and even then
it had a reputation for prostitution, guns and sad addiction. But the reality of
2010 International Boulevard made my memory of 1970's East 14th Street seem
wholesome by comparison.
Time Will Tell
Christmas of 1959 in Butte, Montana, did not hold much hope of being merry. My father had been out of work in a copper mining strike since August and the thirty dollars in picket money he got each week wasn't even covering the cost of food. When Christmas arrived with the strike holding strong, it was clear that the only gift we'd be grateful to get was a single Christmas turkey. Adding to the heavy mood was an uncommonly cold but dry start to winter without a flake of snow to mute the monotonous landscape.
St. Helena’s Catholic Church was the cultural heartbeat of the neighborhood. Though it wasn't much bigger than local houses, its impact was that of a cathedral. From his own working-class childhood, the priest, Father Gannon, understood the entertainment value of a Latin Mass so he included everyone in the drama. Christmas was his most ambitious production.
A near life size manger consumed the altar. Beaming faces of every figure gazed upon the empty crib where the son of God would arrive on a red satin pillow. Draped in white flour sacks trimmed with garland, a host of us angels slowly ferried the savior of the world down the center aisle to the manger. Father Gannon then took the porcelain infant from the pillow to the crib while we hovered nearby shedding glitter.
My father grew up in a local Irish parish where he served as the altar and errand boy for the priests and nuns. As an adult he decided he'd seen enough of what the Church had to offer and didn't need any of it. His role that night was strictly as our driver. He dropped me, along with my sister, mother and aunt off at the church just as a candle light procession was forming to go inside, a bright warm glow in a world of dismal prospects.
When the glorious ceremony came to an end, it was well past one in the morning. Yet everyone was bright and happy. During Mass, fresh clean snow transformed the stark monotony into the glistening echo of a sky filled with stars. We stepped into the set of a perfect Christmas movie.
My father wasn’t there to pick us up when we got out of church. My aunt, who probably loved my father more than my mother did, made excuses for his being late. We waited while my mother accepted that he probably fell asleep and wasn’t coming. Then she said, “It’s a beautiful night. Let's walk.”
My mother and her sister were best friends but daily life didn't allow them much time to recall the past. Now as we made the first tracks over a gleaming white plateau, they reminisced about the Italian version of their own childhood holiday where an old woman called “La Befana” brought gifts on January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. A legend with many variations throughout history, its celebration involved pageantry, bonfires, and lots of singing witches.
A piece of fruit was their usual gift from “La Befana”. At the best of times, it was an orange. During the 1920's in the dead of a northern Winter, Butte was weeks away from the nearest citrus tree. So an orange was indeed a treasure.
Between stories, my sister and I made snow angels and sang Carols that chimed against the crystal air. In the starlite dawn of that Christmas morning, two pairs of sisters across generations became extensions of each other through time. My aunt, who never went beyond a fifth-grade education, looked at my sister and me and said, “This night is a glimpse of eternity that you'll remember for the rest of your lives.” And she was right.
St. Helena’s Catholic Church was the cultural heartbeat of the neighborhood. Though it wasn't much bigger than local houses, its impact was that of a cathedral. From his own working-class childhood, the priest, Father Gannon, understood the entertainment value of a Latin Mass so he included everyone in the drama. Christmas was his most ambitious production.
A near life size manger consumed the altar. Beaming faces of every figure gazed upon the empty crib where the son of God would arrive on a red satin pillow. Draped in white flour sacks trimmed with garland, a host of us angels slowly ferried the savior of the world down the center aisle to the manger. Father Gannon then took the porcelain infant from the pillow to the crib while we hovered nearby shedding glitter.
My father grew up in a local Irish parish where he served as the altar and errand boy for the priests and nuns. As an adult he decided he'd seen enough of what the Church had to offer and didn't need any of it. His role that night was strictly as our driver. He dropped me, along with my sister, mother and aunt off at the church just as a candle light procession was forming to go inside, a bright warm glow in a world of dismal prospects.
When the glorious ceremony came to an end, it was well past one in the morning. Yet everyone was bright and happy. During Mass, fresh clean snow transformed the stark monotony into the glistening echo of a sky filled with stars. We stepped into the set of a perfect Christmas movie.
My father wasn’t there to pick us up when we got out of church. My aunt, who probably loved my father more than my mother did, made excuses for his being late. We waited while my mother accepted that he probably fell asleep and wasn’t coming. Then she said, “It’s a beautiful night. Let's walk.”
My mother and her sister were best friends but daily life didn't allow them much time to recall the past. Now as we made the first tracks over a gleaming white plateau, they reminisced about the Italian version of their own childhood holiday where an old woman called “La Befana” brought gifts on January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. A legend with many variations throughout history, its celebration involved pageantry, bonfires, and lots of singing witches.
A piece of fruit was their usual gift from “La Befana”. At the best of times, it was an orange. During the 1920's in the dead of a northern Winter, Butte was weeks away from the nearest citrus tree. So an orange was indeed a treasure.
Between stories, my sister and I made snow angels and sang Carols that chimed against the crystal air. In the starlite dawn of that Christmas morning, two pairs of sisters across generations became extensions of each other through time. My aunt, who never went beyond a fifth-grade education, looked at my sister and me and said, “This night is a glimpse of eternity that you'll remember for the rest of your lives.” And she was right.
CopperMind
| Inform : to communicate knowledge to : to give character or essence to : to be the characteristic quality of |
Rend : to remove from place by violence : to lacerate mentally or emotionally : to pierce with sound |
Copper Mind is a personal reflection of how landscape informs identity. And how obliterating a landscape rends the identity of those who were raised in it.
This rough draft introduction previews the project theme. It's next phase is in production and has been included in an international multifaceted effort called Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss.
Reared in a Sacrifice Zone
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| Christmas 1961 (my sister) - First Photo with my new Brownie Kodak Camera |
| The place where I grew up
No longer exists Not even on a map. |
| It was buried in the slow consumption
Of Company claimed ore Bought at a cost That only corruption can afford. |
| A landscape that once fed fervent ambition Was crushed without an anchor To hold its place in time. |
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Eaten Alive
Along the route we happened to pass an old man without an arm and my son took note. A short time later, another old man hobbled up the street with the aid of a wooden leg. With that, my son lowered his eyes and said, “it looks to me like Butte just eats people alive”.
A Sense of Self: Memory, The Brain, and Who We Are
Veronica O'Keane
* Patrick Modiano, 'Flowers of Ruin', from Suspended Sentences
Teasing the Truth
Blaine was a beautiful young black man who teased me about having a quickie
every day that we worked together. Monday through Friday he drove a forklift
moving pallets of expensive paper around a warehouse while I balanced the
books for our employer, a small company called “PaperWorld” in the
industrial district of downtown Oakland.
PaperWorld’s manager was a middle-aged gay man named Roy. He lived a drama-laden life with his long-term partner Jack and he loved to hire temptation. Roy offered Blaine a job as soon as he saw him without even filling out an application.
One morning when Blaine made his playful suggestion to me, I said, “Sure. Why not? When do you want to meet?” He was surprised but didn’t hesitate. He said we could take a long lunch in his room at his grandmother’s house. Blaine was nineteen years old and I was twenty-five.
I arrived at our meeting point expecting to get right down to it. But in his grandmother’s house on his own bed, bravado turned to angst and I became a surrogate mother. He said he wanted to talk, then had a difficult time saying anything so I asked him about his room. It was clean and uncluttered. His clothes were all pressed and hung in a tidy closet. It didn’t look like it belonged to a nineteen-year-old. He appreciated that his grandmother dedicated much of her life to providing for him. He said he loved her and was afraid to disappoint her. I told him that was easy to see.
Eventually, he brought up work. He said he knew why Roy had hired him on the spot. That he only hired male help he intended to seduce. All you had to do was keep Roy interested but that in itself was a job.
Chances were good that Blaine was gay and chances were even better that he wasn’t ready to admit it. I listened rather than questioned, then echoed the first thought that entered my head. "A life lived in fear is a life half lived." Which was exactly what I needed to hear.
PaperWorld’s manager was a middle-aged gay man named Roy. He lived a drama-laden life with his long-term partner Jack and he loved to hire temptation. Roy offered Blaine a job as soon as he saw him without even filling out an application.
One morning when Blaine made his playful suggestion to me, I said, “Sure. Why not? When do you want to meet?” He was surprised but didn’t hesitate. He said we could take a long lunch in his room at his grandmother’s house. Blaine was nineteen years old and I was twenty-five.
I arrived at our meeting point expecting to get right down to it. But in his grandmother’s house on his own bed, bravado turned to angst and I became a surrogate mother. He said he wanted to talk, then had a difficult time saying anything so I asked him about his room. It was clean and uncluttered. His clothes were all pressed and hung in a tidy closet. It didn’t look like it belonged to a nineteen-year-old. He appreciated that his grandmother dedicated much of her life to providing for him. He said he loved her and was afraid to disappoint her. I told him that was easy to see.
Eventually, he brought up work. He said he knew why Roy had hired him on the spot. That he only hired male help he intended to seduce. All you had to do was keep Roy interested but that in itself was a job.
Chances were good that Blaine was gay and chances were even better that he wasn’t ready to admit it. I listened rather than questioned, then echoed the first thought that entered my head. "A life lived in fear is a life half lived." Which was exactly what I needed to hear.
Just Play
My father had a cousin named Roweena who could also play by ear. People said she wasn’t quite as good as Mary but all I knew was that Roweena seemed to carry music inside her and the piano let it out so others could hear it too. It seemed to me that piano playing was something you either did automatically or not at all. I'd never met anyone who had to practice.
In fourth grade, I was thrilled when my school offered free piano lessons. This wasn’t a regular program, just something a retired teacher offered on her own. Free was a price my parents could afford so they signed up and bought me an old upright Baldwin for $15 which, on a miner’s wages in 1964, wasn’t that cheap.
The Baldwin was one of the better models when it was new. Its sounding board had fancy hand-carved scrollwork along with the later addition of three bullet holes. The owner told us they were added when he tried to shoot his wife. Luckily, the bullets missed the hammers and strings so the piano sounded fine. As a bonus, he included an old piano stool coated in thick layers of white lead paint. The legs ended in eagle talons gripping clear glass balls. My parents didn’t ask what happened to the wife.
My father and a few relatives rescued the piano with a pickup truck and into the basement of our house. My mother had plans for the basement. Someday it was going to be a fabulous 1960’s Family Circle rumpus room. At the time, though, it was a cold cement hole with only an asbestos-wrapped furnace and two galvanized washtubs with a clothesline hanging in between.
Though my parents had little to spend on repairs, this once grand instrument inspired them to hire Butte’s best piano tuner, Frankie Heffern, to restore its sound. For two days with me watching for most of the time, Frankie refurbished every part that mattered. When it was ready, he finished up by sitting down at the keys and playing for an hour straight. Frankie was blind from birth and played by ear. Like my aunt, the music inside him escaped through the piano.
Maybe because he never got the chance to know what he was missing, Frankie was not bitter about his blindness. He simply did what he needed to do and every once in a while he asked someone to back him up on a detail. I hung around as he worked. He had a physical memory of space that was wonderful to watch. He knew when someone entered a room and, if they had already been introduced, he could recognize them. He didn’t need eyes to see.
While he ate lunch he would talk about how he was raised. His parents never treated him differently than their other children. They each had certain skills and they were all expected to make the most of them. They were all expected to pay their own way through life.
One of his favorite things to do when he was my age was horseback riding. Frankie’s horse was trained to follow the lead of an older horse that his brother would ride. He said they would ride like the wind. He loved the speed. He wasn’t afraid of being out of control.
When Frankie was finished, I sat down at the keys, somewhat expecting to have music pour out of my hands but it didn’t. Sensing my disappointment, he said, “Just keep at it. Most people need to practice some. It’ll be worth in the long run. I promise.”
With the bullet-ridden Baldwin in working order, I started my piano lessons in the middle of a Montana winter. The usual temperature in my basement practice room was just a few degrees above freezing. The keys developed arthritis. A few of the most common notes, like middle C, tended to stick in the down position until manually lifted back up. My fingering began to include quick upward nudges with my thumb, an adaptation that worked its way into all my playing whether or not it was necessary. This went unnoticed by my elderly volunteer instructor. Simply staying awake through an entire lesson demanded her full attention.
With years of keyboard exercises, my hands eventually took over from my brain and I experienced a hint of being graced with a natural conduit. Though I have no desire to play for others, I've seldom been without a piano because its chords are attached to my heart.
They Didn't Give a Shit about Us
"They (the inexorable Anaconda) didn't give a shit about us." This dawned on me when seeing this image as an adult, decades after I'd recorded it as a child.
Christmas '61: My sister got a Chatty Cathy doll. I got a Kodak
Brownie camera. We were grateful and oblivious to the facts of life in
a sacrifice zone.
A sacrifice zone is generally defined as a geographic area that has been permanently impaired by environmental
damage or economic disinvestment. Earth as a whole is now racing
toward that end with a exclusive core of techno-libertarian tyrants in the
driver(less) seat.
So, today when I hear a litany of targeted marketing phrases like "AI (Artificial Intelligence) will Cure Cancer", I know that may be true for a few, but not for the many. We will be devoured by economic cancer, social cancer, psychological cancer, and yes, even physical cancer, in the process. Because underlining the marketing hype is the fact that - They don't give a shit about us.
Martyrs in Training
My father was an accomplished alcoholic in a town that considered this more of a career than a crime.
Every night after school my mother loaded my sister and me into the back seat of our faded green Buick for our drive up the steep hills of Butte to the Steward copper mine where my father worked as a boilermaker.
Arriving just as the shift whistle blew, my mother then squirmed “on pins and needles” until we spotted my father cross the mine yard on his way to the showers. On nights when our wait grew into an empty hour, we knew that he must have left work early and headed straight to his favorite bar.
Usually, though, we’d take him from the mine yard to his mother's house a few blocks away where I my mother and younger sister would spend a tense hour or two in my grandmother's overheated front room while her son drank a quart of beer finished with a pint of whiskey that she’d hidden for him in the bathroom.
My grandmother wasn’t a cruel person, but her life had been hard. Widowed at a young age, she worked as a cleaning woman in Catholic schools for less than a living wage while her mother raised my father and his sister who was born with spina bifida, a common Irish affliction that ended her life early. Grandma never had the privilege of seeing life from a gentler point of view. May father was all she had left in the world and she resented us for taking her son.
My sister and I usually occupied ourselves pretending to cook with ingredients from her large barren pantry. Our concoctions, which may have passed for an actual meal in many local households, always involved boiling water with salt, pepper and an ever-present piece of stale bread. Beneath the pantry shelves, behind brown paper bags filled with other brown paper bags, were my father's empty whiskey bottles. His mother put much more effort into supporting her son’s habit than objecting to it. She was keeping him with her however she could.
From my grandmother’s house, we’d drive straight down Butte's Richest Hill on Earth to the Atlas bar, my father’s favorite haunt. The Atlas had a tarnished chrome Art Deco past out of tune with its current clientele. Though, filled with patrons between shifts, its narrow black interior did resemble a mine tunnel. This was where my father felt most at home. Without us, it probably would have been his home. It was a futile struggle to pull him away.
No matter the season or time of day, we never knew how long we’d be parked in front of the Atlas. After an hour, especially in winter, my mother would start honking the car horn which, of course, did nothing more than vent her frustration. After confirming yet again that the horn had absolutely no influence, she’d send me into the Atlas to get him.
I was about eight years old when she first insisted that I go. She coaxed me by saying he would only come out because I asked him. Quite an ego trip for an eight-year-old so I went with conviction. Eventually though, the reality of my surrogate role became obvious and I refused, saying that I hated the smell of stale whiskey. So my mother plied me with guilt. “Well, at least he’s not a mean drunk”, she’d say, implying that if I were a good daughter, I’d care enough to get him home.
It was clear to me by then, as I attempted to separate him from the thing he loved most, that my father had only one care in the world and it had nothing to do with us. Usually he’d just tell me to tell my mother, “to go to hell”. He’d come out when he was damn ready. Then I'd argue with her about other options like divorce or, at least, leaving him at the Atlas. All this accomplished was to convince her I was a renegade copy of my father and she now had two pig-heads on her hands.
During the horn-blowing segment of this script, one of my father’s friends often stumbled over to the car to impress us with the loveliness of Ireland and the holiness of the Catholic Church. Jimmy Harrington, one of the oldest cronies, had a brogue so heavy we often didn’t understand him. My mother nodded occasionally and he never seemed the wiser.
One frigid night through an open crack at the top of the car window, he told us we had the patience of a Saint and would surely be rewarded in Heaven for such willing acceptance of Hell on Earth. Then he smiled, tipped his cap to the virtues of our martyrdom, and proclaimed what a lucky asshole my father was to have us.
Such sacrifice will surely be worthless on Judgment Day, but it felt good to finally hear someone notice that this was a lot to ask of a child.
Every night after school my mother loaded my sister and me into the back seat of our faded green Buick for our drive up the steep hills of Butte to the Steward copper mine where my father worked as a boilermaker.
Arriving just as the shift whistle blew, my mother then squirmed “on pins and needles” until we spotted my father cross the mine yard on his way to the showers. On nights when our wait grew into an empty hour, we knew that he must have left work early and headed straight to his favorite bar.
Usually, though, we’d take him from the mine yard to his mother's house a few blocks away where I my mother and younger sister would spend a tense hour or two in my grandmother's overheated front room while her son drank a quart of beer finished with a pint of whiskey that she’d hidden for him in the bathroom.
My grandmother wasn’t a cruel person, but her life had been hard. Widowed at a young age, she worked as a cleaning woman in Catholic schools for less than a living wage while her mother raised my father and his sister who was born with spina bifida, a common Irish affliction that ended her life early. Grandma never had the privilege of seeing life from a gentler point of view. May father was all she had left in the world and she resented us for taking her son.
My sister and I usually occupied ourselves pretending to cook with ingredients from her large barren pantry. Our concoctions, which may have passed for an actual meal in many local households, always involved boiling water with salt, pepper and an ever-present piece of stale bread. Beneath the pantry shelves, behind brown paper bags filled with other brown paper bags, were my father's empty whiskey bottles. His mother put much more effort into supporting her son’s habit than objecting to it. She was keeping him with her however she could.
From my grandmother’s house, we’d drive straight down Butte's Richest Hill on Earth to the Atlas bar, my father’s favorite haunt. The Atlas had a tarnished chrome Art Deco past out of tune with its current clientele. Though, filled with patrons between shifts, its narrow black interior did resemble a mine tunnel. This was where my father felt most at home. Without us, it probably would have been his home. It was a futile struggle to pull him away.
No matter the season or time of day, we never knew how long we’d be parked in front of the Atlas. After an hour, especially in winter, my mother would start honking the car horn which, of course, did nothing more than vent her frustration. After confirming yet again that the horn had absolutely no influence, she’d send me into the Atlas to get him.
I was about eight years old when she first insisted that I go. She coaxed me by saying he would only come out because I asked him. Quite an ego trip for an eight-year-old so I went with conviction. Eventually though, the reality of my surrogate role became obvious and I refused, saying that I hated the smell of stale whiskey. So my mother plied me with guilt. “Well, at least he’s not a mean drunk”, she’d say, implying that if I were a good daughter, I’d care enough to get him home.
It was clear to me by then, as I attempted to separate him from the thing he loved most, that my father had only one care in the world and it had nothing to do with us. Usually he’d just tell me to tell my mother, “to go to hell”. He’d come out when he was damn ready. Then I'd argue with her about other options like divorce or, at least, leaving him at the Atlas. All this accomplished was to convince her I was a renegade copy of my father and she now had two pig-heads on her hands.
During the horn-blowing segment of this script, one of my father’s friends often stumbled over to the car to impress us with the loveliness of Ireland and the holiness of the Catholic Church. Jimmy Harrington, one of the oldest cronies, had a brogue so heavy we often didn’t understand him. My mother nodded occasionally and he never seemed the wiser.
One frigid night through an open crack at the top of the car window, he told us we had the patience of a Saint and would surely be rewarded in Heaven for such willing acceptance of Hell on Earth. Then he smiled, tipped his cap to the virtues of our martyrdom, and proclaimed what a lucky asshole my father was to have us.
Such sacrifice will surely be worthless on Judgment Day, but it felt good to finally hear someone notice that this was a lot to ask of a child.
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