Tag: #Southwest

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Can Facebook Teach the World to Sing?

Coke comes to Monument Valley. Photo by Worldmark Films via Twitter

In 1971, Coca Cola aired its famous ad that featured a gathering of young folks from all corners of the earth, each with a Coke in hand, all singing blissfully on a hilltop outside of Rome. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” sang the bright-eyed young citizens of the world. “I’d like to give the world a Coke to keep it company.” The award-winning spot was a moment of nirvana in the advertising age and became the iconic ending of the TV series Mad Men. (4/1/20 Author’s Note: The ad was actually the brainchild of Harvey Gabor, then art director at McCann-Erickson. Mr. Gabor is nothing at all like the Matthew Weiner’s bad boys of Sterling Cooper. Big thank you to Miriam Danar and the illustrious and genteel Mr. Gabor their comments on this piece!)

In 2018, at the age of 64, I had a moment of nirvana while meandering on horseback in Monument Valley at sunset. And I did what so many do these days when overcome with awe. I whipped my iPhone out of my jacket pocket and, steadying the phone with one hand while gripping the reins with the other, I tried to capture the moment to store in the cloud for posterity.

Now, in 2020, I am retired from my day job and back at work on the blog that I started after that 2018 trip to the Southwest. Part reminiscence, part current observations, the blog is really my reconnection to the act of writing for pleasure instead of for a paycheck in the corporate world. Monument Valley is just about as far from cubicle life as anyone could imagine, which is why it serves so well as a muse.

A shot I took from atop a horse in Monument Valley, 2018

Because writing for myself just doesn’t get my juices going, in resurrecting the blog after retirement, I took the step of launching it into the social media reality show universe. I tossed a few bucks over to Facebook’s ad managers to spread the news via a Facebook page. That was a week ago.

The response (i.e., the accumulating likes and shares and comments) has been uplifting, eye opening and mystifying.

A tenuous handshake reached on topic of cultural appropriation. Photo courtesy of JenKVieira.com

Facebook keeps congratulating me about how many “likes” I have, and my blog itself, which sat dormant for so long, is making the rounds from Queens to Hong Kong and other places I couldn’t have fathomed. The blog has pleased some, amused some, confused some, and enraged some. Comments on one post hurled the cultural appropriation debate forcefully into my lap, initiating an offline exchange that ended with a handshake. It was a tenuous handshake between a boomer and a millennial, but a handshake nonetheless.

There have been a couple of ugly comments (one guy labeled me an “entitled little rich girl”), but, hey, if a grey-haired retiree can’t stand the social media heat, then there’s a button called “delete.” I draw the line at racism, but otherwise, I was raised by a father who’d say “everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” Negative comments are part of the territory like rattlesnakes in the desert. And Facebook is taking its own heat these days for spreading fake news.

But it’s the gathering of likes on my page that floors me.

Motorcycle at Monument Valley. Photo by Steve Ohlsen

The likes represent all races, many religions, and all sides of the political divide. They represent environmentalists, resistors, 2nd Amendment crusaders, anti-Trumpers, pro-Trumpers, Navajos, African Americans, Mexicans, New Mexicans, Texans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, Alabamans, Californians, Georgians, Muslims, Hindus, Baptists, Catholics, Jews, artists, bikers, preachers, professors, knitters, rodeo riders, doormen . . . .

Though featuring reminiscences of the Southwest, and especially Navajoland, my page and my blog have been “liked” by a couple folks whose Facebook pages are all in Arabic. I have a like from someone whose page is in Armenian.

What is it? What are the Facebook algorithms that spread the word to such a diverse community? What is the impulse to hit “like” of the unknown and untried? I hope some of my “likers” will tell me, because the answer may be an ingredient in a secret sauce yet to be conjured to smooth our divisions.

Pictures on the rocks: Ancient social media in Canyon de Chelly

The likes may just be summoned by my original blog site cover image of Monument Valley, harkening back to the days when rocks told stories, when petroglyphs were the social media of the ancient ones.

Or maybe it’s because one of my blogs is about basketball, published after Kobe Bryant went down in the helicopter. Maybe the theme of cultural appropriation struck a chord amidst the cacophony surrounding the bestselling novel American Dirt. Or maybe it’s a shot of Bandelier National Monument I published that speaks of ancient days when life was all about survival and not much else.

Or maybe it’s simply what I thought when I looked out at Monument Valley from the saddle . . . that this is all a dream.

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Denny’s is the Best Restaurant in Town

Rock formation in Canyon de Chelly kissing the midday sun
Canyon de Chelly: A Light Shines on the Navajo Past and Present

When we saw “Salisbury Steak” listed on the cafeteria “Specials” board at the Thunderbird Lodge near Canyon de Chelly, my sister logged into Trip Advisor for restaurant recommendations.

This wasn’t my first time in Chinle, so I was rather amused at the oxymoronic concept that Chinle appeared in the headline of  anyone’s “Best Restaurants” list. The last time I was in this small town in Navajoland, the restaurant of choice for the locals was the A&W.

Based on Trip Advisor ranking, my sister, niece and I went to The Junction, and we ate what we ordered until our hunger subsided. We’d had a full breakfast in Cortez, been on the road since morning, and it was now after 7 PM. There isn’t much to say about the restaurant Trip Advisor designated as No. 1 in Chinle except for one remarkable thing. Earlier in the day, a friend had read us a poem about the disappearance of black hairnets, but it was clear at The Junction that black hairnets hadn’t disappeared at all from Navajoland. Rather, they had swarmed onto the heads of the restaurant’s busy servers like delegates at a national hairnet convention.

In the morning, Dave Wilson, our Navajo guide into Canyon de Chelly, pointed out the new Denny’s sign on the way to the park. Denny’s  beamed out its shiny red and yellow welcome high above the essential emptiness that is Chinle.

“It opened last year,” Dave Wilson said. Though his tone betrayed no excitement, the fact that he mentioned it at all gave us a clue that perhaps we should go there before leaving town.

Exterior photo of Denny's in Chinle, Navajoland
Denny’s in Chinle, Navajoland

“You know, the good Mexican place closed down,” Dave said, and I wondered if the Mexican place he was talking about was where I had a Navajo taco back in 1980.

Dave Wilson and his family have a long history in Chinle and in the Canyon. They were the cultural consultants on the video shown at the Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center. Dave still nurtures fruit trees on the canyon floor—“peaches, pears, apples . . .couldn’t do grapefruit or oranges, though. Not enough year round heat.” He pointed out his house on a small rise in town.

Dave’s father lived to the ripe old age of 102. Dave sighed after he told us this, betraying that reaching a milestone like that didn’t happen much anymore. “We didn’t know about drugs back then. Drugs and alcohol . . . that’s what the kids know.” In the canyon, Dave explained that the tribe had to take down the wooden ladders that tourists used to climb to the ruins in the rocks. “We got to protect,” he said. “There’s vandalism. We got to protect the homes of the ancients.”

My niece asked Dave about Kit Carson and the atrocities he led against the Navajo in the canyon in the 1860s. “He was a friend to a lot of tribes,” Dave said. “Cheyenne, Arapaho. He was a scout. Then the US government paid him a lot of money to round us up. He starved us. He blocked us off in the winter with boulders.”

I tried to wrap my head around the fact that Canyon de Chelly, one of the most spectacular and spiritual places on earth, had been the Navajos’ Warsaw Ghetto.

“He retired comfortably up in Taos, you know,” Dave continued about old Kit. “He settled down, had fun, watched his videos.”

Petroglyphs on a sunlit rock in Canyon de Chelly
The rocks with tell their tales long after we’re gone

The Navajo signed a treaty and made it back to their borders marked by the four sacred mountains in 1868.

And now there’s a Denny’s as bright as day in Chinle. We had lunch there. Its hostess was cheerful and cheering. “I need to tell you it may take 30 minutes for your food to come out, because we’re so busy,” she said. We assured her that was fine.

The patrons were mostly Navajo. A health care worker sat at the table across from us. She wore a crisp, colorful uniform designed to brighten a patient’s mood. She was wearing a red ribbon HIV awareness pin. The health center in Chinle is a big employer. “160 beds,” Dave told us.

Our Denny’s server was energetic and eager to please. I had a club sandwich, and, compared to my hamburger at The Junction, my Denny’s sandwich was a piece of heaven. Make note: Denny’s now sits at No. 4 on the Trip Advisor’s “Chinle’s Best” list.

Red Beautyway Tours jeep and my niece in Canyon de Chelly
My niece ponders the dramatic history of the canyon

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A Senior Citizen Returns to Navajoland

The author in her youth, sitting in the shade in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland
Me, age 20 something, resting in the shade in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland, 1980

After graduating from Vassar College in 1975 with a degree in Sociology, I moved to a village on the Navajo Nation outside of Gallup, New Mexico to teach at an elementary school. After leaving the village, I moved around New Mexico and Arizona, always remaining within day-trip distance from Navajoland and its sacred spaces, for several years more.

During my itinerant time in the Southwest, I was an editor at a regional press, a contributor to a curriculum project led by Gloria Emerson for Navajo Nation elementary schools, and an employee of a marginally dubious publishing brainchild of Forrest Fenn (of recent “Fenn Treasure” fame).

I reluctantly but abruptly left the region in 1982 to head back East. But Navajoland, and the Navajo people who’ve called it home for over 1000 years, have remained my muses to this day. I’ve written about the region (published a “Santa Fe” novel back in the day), but in my elder years, I find myself focussing on Navajoland and its people, who first inspired me to take pen to paper.

Nearing the age of 65 in the spring of 2018,  I travelled to Navajoland to reconnect with old Navajo friends and old feelings about what I have come to understand is as this Jewish American girl’s Jerusalem. It is in this parched yet glorious part of the United States where I am touched by an eternal landscape that breathes its ancient power, where I am touched by the Navajo people who  continue to live up to its challenge and strive to reflect its holiness.

Petroglyphs on a sunlit rock in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland
The rocks tell their stories

A confession:  I am a privileged visitor who can bask in the sacred spaces of Navajoland,  physically and psychically, at my pleasure.  But Diné, the Navajo people, struggle to maintain balance, harmony, and beauty, the Navajo ideal of sa’ah naaghai bik’eh hozho (long life happiness) in their parched homeland.

The Navajo are plagued with diseases relatively new to them, like cancer and diabetes, from their uranium mining past and the drastic lifestyle changes of today. There is little for their livestock to eat, little opportunity to see beyond a day to day struggle. 

I write now in prayer and love and hope that the beautiful and indeed holy Navajo people can dwell in sa’ah naaghai bik’eh hozho far into the future.

The author on horseback today, in Monument Valley, Navajoland
In Monument Valley, 2018, reconnecting . . .