Hurricane Ike, three years later

This week, while everyone else I knew was preoccupied with the 9/11 anniversary, I found myself thinking back to a different anniversary and a different pile of debris.

Three years ago last night, Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas coast- my end of the Texas coast. Home.

I rode out the storm's landfall on a sailboat on a lake on the north end of Houston with my best friend, surrogate big brother, EMS colleague, real-life hero, and partner-in-lunacy, David. We were crazy stupid kids, I guess; one of us mostly grew out of it, and the other died of it.

This week, I keep thinking of the crazy, scary, awesome stormy night I spent on a sailboat with an old friend, and the days afterward doing the most challenging and rewarding work I've ever done, with a group of people (and dogs) I will always be proud to know and to have worked alongside.

I think I'm going to post a series of hurricane-recovery stories here for as long as they last.

Here's a start, reposted from my old LiveJournal- the post I wrote on returning from the one-year anniversary memorial in Crystal Beach, where we spent a few days searching the debris for those still missing after the storm.

"Last Saturday, my SAR teammates and I had the privelege of attending the anniversary memorial service for hurricane victims at Crystal Beach.

We arrived by way of Winnie that afternoon, driving in from a fundraiser for the CHASER foundation in Conroe, to have dinner with a friend of my teammates before the memorial. On arriving, we found a pair of FEMA trailers parked next to a partially-reconstructed home surrounded by a dozen or so relatives and neighbors all working busily. The friend who had kindly invited us emerged from one of the trailers, where she had been cooking for the workers all day-- lunch, she told us, had been seafood enchiladas, and the kitchen table when we entered was piled high with freshly baked cookies. She was clearly tired, but bright and full of enthusiasm and energy, which seemed to be the general attitude.

Everyone was gathering around the table set up out back as we emerged from the trailer, and the friend cheerfully announced us as one of the teams that did SAR work here after the storm. We were greeted with applause and a couple comments along the lines, "Hey, we love you guys!" and all did our professional best not to get all teary-eyed. That had been an emotional enough bit of work for those of us who were there, and that day was in some ways the culmination of it.

We all joined hands for prayer-- a teammate on one side of me, a friendly stranger on the other-- and I snuck a peek or two around and thought to myself that this was the Texas Gulf Coast at its best, this was the spirit of those who survived the storm, and I realized anew how proud I was to have called this place home once and to have come back to serve these people. There was mud everywhere, still smelling as it did after the storm-- pungent and probably contaminated-- and debris still littered all the land in view, but here was determination and togetherness and laughter and a pile of delicious food. Here was life, and I found myself grinning a little at that before the prayer was over.

Dinner was beyond incredible-- softshell crab, boudin, shrimp, and gator-kabobs, the latter two of which had been swimming around that morning. Nothing like fresh-caught seafood to remind you that life is still worth living.

We listened to our friend talk of how high the water had gotten, the damage to homes in the area, the process of rebuilding. We were introduced to one of the neighbors, a smiling elderly lady whose home had been completely taken by the storm; our friend informed us that she'd found only a single fork. Yet there she was, bustling around making sure everyone had napkins, telling fishing stories from her younger days, smiling.

I lost track of who was related to whom and how, but one of the relatives, a man introduced to us as the provider of the gator, had found some bones washed ashore next to the channel and wondered if they might be human. Four people from Bolivar were still missing, and their fate lingers in the constant awareness of the residents and rebuilding crews. "I'm an anthropologist," I said, "Not the best, but I can take a look if you like." I left it to my teammates to volunteer the dogs, and we all piled back into the car-- three people and four dogs-- to follow the relatives down to the channel.

Said channel is really the ICW where it passes between Bolivar Peninsula and Goat Island north of Crystal Beach. Those of us who were there after Ike like to tell people that there are only two houses on Goat Island... and before the storm, there were none. Further Ike-deposited contents of the island included a refrigerator trailer full of something very rotten by the time we got there, dozens of dead cows (which we kept making poor Pete check, to his disgust), and literally tons of debris. It was a miserable day's slog across that place-- someday I'll write about it, there's a helicopter story, even-- and my team leader and I were only too glad to curse that godforsaken piece of real estate from across the water.

The bones-- according a committee consisting of an anthropologist, an animal science M.S., and three HRD dogs-- were not human. We all figured they had most likely been dragged ashore by the alligator the relatives told us hung out nearby. It seemed likely that they'd come from its underwater stash, since the relatives also reported seeing a hole dug out in the bottom at low tide. Personally I don't doubt that there might be some human bits in there somewhere-- if not from this storm, then from some of the hundreds they never found after 1900 or from other individual cases over the years-- but these were none of the above. As with our work there last fall, this was as much about putting people's minds at ease as it was about actually finding the victims, and in that sense we did good solid work.

That little adventure involved a short slog through the mud down to the water and back. I have Gulf Coast mud on my boots again, and somehow I feel better about life with that reminder of who I am and why I'm here.

We all made it to the memorial just in time to sneak in a few minutes late. The event was held, much to the surprise of my team leader and I, in the gym of the elementary school we'd stayed at the previous fall. The generator trucks and the small city of temporary showers and porta-johns was gone, and the handful of vehicles smashed up against the pilings in the parking area below the school had been cleared away. The debris that had covered the field across the street (I remember too well standing on the porch in the evenings, looking across at that wondering if it held the victims we had spent all day searching for) had been cleared away too.

The air conditioner was back up and running full blast as well, in the whole school instead of just the set of rooms we'd occupied a year ago, and as I shivered through the service I thought, "I remember this gym when it was almost too hot to move and we were in here playing kickball with the firefighters!" If one is willing to stretch the definition of kickball to include strining a volleyball net across the gym, pulling out every ball the school owned (at least a hundred) and trying to see how many we could keep in the air at one time. Bonus points for hitting each other.

The service itself was part reminsiscence, part memorial for those lost, and part celebration of survival and rebuilding. I found myself in awe yet again of the spirit and resilience and determination of these people. I'd seen the destruction and understood as well as any outsider could how much they had lost and endured, and their attitude in the face of that along with the progress they had made in a year were truly inspiring. No one here was asking for a handout. No one here was protesting because they hadn't received enough help. They were helping themselves, helping each other, and being thankful for the outside help they had received.

Very thankful, in fact-- we were all stunned speechless to receive a standing ovation when we were introduced as recovery volunteers. Again, we all did our professional best to not get all teary-eyed, with mixed success.

The memorial portion was beautifully done, and in the accepted tradition for those lost at sea, included a bell tolled once for each of the dead and missing as their names were read. I don't handle bells so well since Medic 9's funeral, but with the help of a cuddly border collie I managed to sit through it. Two of the residents had recovered the bell itself from the debris several months ago.

As my teammates and I rode the ferry back to Galveston after the service, we stood at the rail and watched the fireworks over Galveston. There had been no one lost from Galveston, either dead or missing, and their service must have taken on a slightly different tone. I thought about what we had just been given the honor of sharing with the people of Crystal Beach, and I saw the fireworks as a sign of hope.

There's a folk singer from Fort Worth named Brian Burns, and he wrote a song about the 1900 storm that I had stuck in my head for most of hurricane callout last year. As we drove home Saturday night, I caught myself humming it again:

"I came here to bury the lost souls who perished that day
When the ocean rose twenty miles onto the prairie
And washed it all into the Bay.

And nothing that stood could escape the concussion
Of an angry wave riding on a hurricane wind..." "

Brief moment on the soapbox

I dislike bringing politics into anything at all, though I grudgingly recognize its necessity from time to time.

This will probably cost me what few readers I have, but I feel compelled to respond to the American Anthropological Association's recent decision to boycott Arizona and Georgia as potential conference locations because of their legislative action to combat illegal entry into the United States. I realize that the AAA doesn't care what I have to say, because professionally and academically I am essentially nobody, but the benefit of having my own blog is that I'm going to say it anyway and maybe someone, somewhere, will at least notice for a moment.

Absolutely nothing in an anthropologically-informed worldview compels denial of a nation's right to enforce its own laws or to define and subsequently protect its own borders. Rather, the historical perspective that should accompany a background in anthropology (remembering that the holistic perspective is temporal as well) should reinforce the validity of those rights. As an anthropologist, I find it frustrating that so many of my colleagues overlook this.

There is also nothing in an anthropologically-informed worldview that should compel and individual to feel that access to social services in a country one has entered illegally, from a government to whom one contributes no taxes, are a basic human right. The social contract works in two directions- government's end of the deal involves maintaining order, peace, and essential security; the people's end of the deal involves abiding by the laws passed by their representatives, working within the system to change them as needed, and paying for certain services by way of taxation. If the social contract has been breached by one party- someone who chooses to disregard this country's laws and enter it illegally, continue to reside here illegally, and pay no taxes- then there is no obligation on the part of the government at any level to uphold its end of the contract for that individual, up to an including permitting them to remain in the country.

I object to one anthropologist's (whose work I respect greatly but who I disagree with on this matter) characterization of Arizona's laws as "draconian." As a lifelong border-state resident, I have had ample opportunity to observe the worsening effects of the rise in illegal immigration, in the form of increased crime rates, drastic overburdening of social services, and increased competition for already-scarce employment; having seen and experienced the realities of the situation, I applaud Arizona for acting in its citizens' interest. How many of the AAA's board members have descended from the ivory tower recently to conduct some honest, open-minded participant observation, especially in the border states, to gain a more informed understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political realities on the ground before passing their resolutions? If the answer is less than "all of us," then the AAA board acted very irresponsibly and not at all like thoughtful, serious anthropologists.

By the way, any and all members of the AAA have an open invitation to visit my husband and I once we complete our PCS move to El Paso (where, by the way, many members of my husband's unit are not taking their spouses and children because they consider the crime rate and risks of Mexico's overflowing drug war too great) to conduct such observation.

Neither Georgia nor Arizona nor the overwhelming majority of those speaking out against ILLEGAL immigration is seeking to close this country's borders entirely to LEGAL entry, ban or repress Hispanic culture, etc. The issue here isn't one of racism or cultural sensitivity; it's a simple matter of not permitting, rewarding, and encouraging violation of this country's laws, and of not tolerating people who want to reap the benefits of a system they aren't willing to contribute to and whose rules they aren't willing to abide by (where I grew up we called that freeloading). Anthropologists, and any other enlightened and decent people, have an ethical and moral obligation to oppose cultural oppression, racial discrimination or subjugation, and other social injustices- but treating people who break our country's law like people who have broken a law instead of like honored guests is none of those things.

Cool Note About Peat Bogs and Local Crafts

Cross-posted on my personal blog, One Day at a Time.

A recent post about bog bodies on Bones Don't Lie reminded me how awesome and interesting peat bogs are. The part of me that will always think of myself of an archaeologist is fascinated by their preservation potential.

On his way home for R&R just before our wedding last year, Greg's flight stopped in Ireland, and he brought home this gorgeous carving.

It was made by these people by kiln-firing and carving bog turf that's several thousand years old- older than some of the finds in that post I linked. My inner archaeologist had a "Squeee!" moment over that, and locally-crafted products are something else I'm a fan of.

I had a professor in college whose home office was decorated entirely with souvenirs his students had brought him over the years from their trips abroad; someday I imagine us having a similar room full of things Greg has brought back from these "business trips" the Army keeps sending him on.

This is EXACTLY What I Mean! Smurfs and Gender Identity

This is exactly what I meant in my previous rant about gender biases in children's media.

Philip N. Cohen posted a great article on Family Inequality about Smurfette.

I'm told that there are valid backstory reasons for having only one female Smurf (if you actually want to talk about validity and backstories and canon in reference to The Smurfs), and honestly it just struck me as the kind of careless world-design you can get away with in cartoons for very small children- look at the original Transformers cartoons for another good example of that. I never gave the Smurfs much thought beyond that bit of silliness; they didn't seem worth it, especially since children's culture really isn't my cup of tea and I'm much busier being a Transformers fangirl-in-training. As an interesting note about how Internet browsing works, I followed a link from Powered by Osteons on Twitter to an interesting article about hilariously misinterpreted demographic data, and from that I followed the link to the Smurfette article.

Dr. Cohen posted an image of the poster being used to advertise the Smurfs Happy Meals (yes, I love my gender-biased messages with a side order of grease and fat).

"This one likes to cook, this one is smart, this one is athletic, and this one is a girl. That's who she is and what she does." That's the message here.

This seems to be a recurring theme in children's toys and media; one gender gets to define itself in ways not tied to a gender identity- interests, hobbies, goals, skills- and the other is continually encouraged to define itself solely based on its gender identity.

Followup thoughts on gender

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

As soon as I finished my last post, the resulting discussion with my husband (who is much more thorough and detail-oriented than I am, and who therefore read all the comments on that Edmonton Journal article I linked) led me to find the link to this article in the sidebar. It features another Canadian couple who, beginning in the early 1990s, made a decision to that of Storm's parents to keep the sexes of their two children (both daughters, both now in their late teens) a private matter.

I rather sadly wish that I had found it before I published that last post, and I've spent the last few minutes debating whether to go back and revise.

Despite the fact that I am sitting in the emergency room at the moment, waiting for my accident-prone-Army-wife friend to get herself X-rayed (yes, the ER on post has wireless internet; I can't decide whether to be quietly grateful for this fact or alarmed that I've been here enough to know it), this article made me want to hop out of my chair and do a happy-dance.

Highlights:

"The couple also made other decisions to keep gender stereotypes out of their household while the kids were growing up. Gender-specific toys, such as Barbie dolls, were not found in the girls' toy box.

"That came more naturally, since our priority was to provide them with toys that encouraged creativity and thought (and) stereotypical toys tend not to," he said. 'In dressing them . . . the goal was not to be somehow generic, but to put them into sensible and attractive clothing in the colours we (and later they) wanted, which meant picking such clothes off whatever rack we happened to find them on.'"

Yes!

Toward the end of the article, an American psychologist named Judith Rich Harris saying "Their philosophy seems to be based on the idea that male and female are artificial categories imposed by society."

Well... exactly, in a certain sense. Denying biological gender difference, including some evolutionarily programmed behavioral tendencies, would be ludicrous, but the cultural roles we define as "male" and "female" are largely (albeit not entirely) artificial creations, and I see little point in imposing them as if they were biologically unavoidable.

Some thoughts on gender.

Reposted from One Day at a Time.

I am not as prolific a reader of blogs as many of my fellow-bloggers seem to be, which seems a little hypocritical, but I am picky about what I read and somewhat inconsistent about keeping up with things even when I mean to; my blog reading, much like my comic reading, tends to happen in fits and spurts of long neglect and catch-up marathons. Now that I think of it, that also characterizes my writing habits, so maybe it is not so hypocritical after all. Despite that, though, Powered by Osteons is a regular favorite of mine, and I was delighted today (while looking for something to do with the last hour or so of my afternoon at work now that all the work to do is done and my Dean Koontz novel is finished, much to my dismay) to find this post.

I remember the Berenstain Bears fondly from my own childhood; they were favorites whose characters were almost like friends, and remained so well after my reading level progressed past picture books. Looking back as an adult, particularly as an adult with an anthropology degree and decidedly liberal humanist ideas about gender roles and identity, I can definitely see and agree with Dr. Killgrove's point. Examined critically enough, the fact the characters are named by their roles in adult and child version of a gender dichotomy- Mama/Papa, Brother/Sister- instead of with actual names seems a little creepy.

That might be a little too critical, though. I was an avid reader of the Berenstain Bears as a child, and if there was a gender-polarized message in the books or their characters, I think anyone who knows me today would attest that I apparently missed it even on a subconscious level. I grew up with Sister Bear and her frilly pink overalls and Mama Bear and her constant long dresses- but I also grew up with me in my shorts and t-shirts and Mom in similar attire, and looking back, I think that I interpreted the Bears as what they were- fiction. Real people didn't dress that way on a regular basis any more than real anthropomorphic bears wore clothes at all or went to school (everyone knows that anthropomorphic bears are naked and illiterate). It didn't impact my worldview on any level.

If I were a parent, I would definitely be concerned about the lessons learned from, and the behaviors and norms modeled by, the Berenstain Bears and other heavily gendered children's media. I respect and admire- and would like to think that I would, if ever forced into such a situation, emulate- Dr. Killgrove's approach to dealing with those concerns. Censorship of ideas is more dangerous and more reprehensible than the ideas themselves in any case, and merely hiding children's eyes from things only leaves them naive and sheltered, rather than teaching and equipping them to evaluate ideas with their own reasoning minds. Her decision to share the books with her daughter but engage the child in critical discussion of its contents is, in my mind, brilliant and responsible.

Children's books may contain less gender-stereotyping than their toys, however. A while back, I read this article by Crystal Smith on the gendered use of vocabulary in toy advertisements. Some concerns were raised by several commenters about the author's methodology in collecting and structuring her data, and I have some concerns about her classification system, but personally, I found the study's subjective observations far more compelling than its quantitative aspects anyway.

The author notes that toys clearly marketed at boys- toys with primarily or solely boys in their commercials, for instance- tend to be related to non-domestic work roles (dump trucks, construction and tool playsets), driving, or fighting (action figures, toy guns), while toys clearly marketed toward girls- toys with primarily or solely girls in their commercials, for instance- tend to be related to domestic work roles (toy vacuums, kitchen playsets), fashion and cosmetics, or nurturing (baby dolls). Smith, author of The Achilles Effect (which, as a disclaimer, I have not read), writes from the perspective of concern that this sort of marketing is harmful because it promotes aggression to young boys, so she touches only lightly on its effect on girls.

The issue for me is that most of what she classifies as "fighting" toys are either linked to TV shows or movies with actual storylines and at least somewhat developed characters, meant to be used in active play (chasing each other around with Nerf guns, for instance), or both. The girls' toys, in contrast, are mostly sedentary (vacuuming notwithstanding) and seldom linked to a familiar plot or developed characters. Boys, therefore, gain some things from their conventionally encouraged forms of play that girls are being steered away from.

Smith's reply to a comment on her article accurately observes that "The characteristics of these toys, which are masculinised by names and pronouns, also hew to stereotypes—they are about fighting and working (although the Big Rigs do sing and dance, which are not actions one would expect from a big bulky truck.) Compare the “purpose” of these toys with that of the girls’ toys who are predominantly female and designed to be accessorized or cuddled, but not much else. Most do not have jobs and they don’t fight."

The stereotype at work here seems to extend into adult life. In the workplace, women have achieved approximate parity with men in general, with exceptions in specific fields which are changing as we speaking- yet in nearly every television sitcom I have seen recently (more than I care to admit- see below) I have noticed that the female leads are more likely to be stay-at-home moms with working husbands, usually in couples who don't appear to actually share any hobbies or common interests outside of the children (in whom the husband is usually mostly disinterested). In fact, in most of these fictional families, the man is the only one who has apparent outside interests or is able to pursue them.

Women are generally stereotyped as being uninterested in sports, video games, comics, cars, etc.- essentially, in anything not about hair, makeup, housework, babies, or feelings. In my own life, I am frequently met with surprise when a new acquaintance learns that I am a female gamer / sci-fi fan / comic reader / firearms enthusiast (although several recent studies indicate that I am not that unusual in regard to gaming, and Felicia Day is giving us all a kickass example). It still seems that the societal expectation, perpetuated by our toys, is that while both boys and girls can work, in our off time, the boys get to have hobbies and the girls are supposed to be interested only in looking pretty and being nurturing. That's a terrifying thought, as it seems to encourage girls to be less than full-developed, well-rounded people. One of the comments on Smith's article says, "Adventure and imaginative play are where it’s at. I think that’s really what any child wants, regardless of gender." Amen.

All in all, I think the general message here is that society may be pushing gender roles, especially in terms of interests and likes or dislikes, on children much too early. We tend to leave the TV in the funeral home office on during the day for background noise. As a result, I've seen full runs of three or four TV sitcoms in the last year which I otherwise would have ignored totally if left to my own devices (see above). Thus, I have twice viewed an episode of Yes, Dear in which the main character's mother upbraids her daughter-in-law because the main character's infant daughter is dressed "like a boy." She insists on taking the child out to buy some girlier clothes so that total strangers can look at her and tell that she is female. Although the mother-in-law character is meant to be obnoxious and overbearing, like her stereotypical counterparts, I still find the episode to be the philosophical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

For one thing, the kid is still in a stroller. I realize that gender identification is a big part of how we humans navigate social interaction, but when dealing with a child who is still stumbling across the threshold from infant to toddler, is it really that important to know if the child is a boy or a girl? Will it really affect how an adult interacts with the child? More importantly, should it? I find the idea either absurd or troubling, depending on the answers to those questions.

Besides, I personally viewed the child's clothing as gender-neutral, which perhaps raises a whole other set of issues. I can walk around town in most of my husband's clothes, and though I might look a little frumpy since they're mostly all a little baggy on me, I'm not going to look exceptionally odd, and probably no one is going to declare me a cross-dresser; if he were to walk around in a random selection of my clothes, though, he's got about a fifty percent chance of standing out in most people's perception as crossing a clear gender boundary, regardless of whether those people approve or disapprove of that action. "Masculine" styles are more frequently seen as potentially unisex or neutral, but overtly "feminine" styles are more clearly gender-polarized.

It was after viewing that episode of Yes, Dear that I heard about the Stocker-Witterick household in Canada who recently made the apparently controversial decision to keep their newborn child's sex a secret from everyone outside its immediate family, to shield the kid from the sorts of pressures and biases I have just been going on about. Dr. Killgrove's blog post includes a link to a statement on the matter by Mrs. Witterick herself; interestingly, her five-year-old son raised the initial question that led to the family's decision. I'm not sure I would do it myself, but I honestly think it's a pretty cool idea and I'm curious to see where it leads.

Musings on Myth

Reposted from my personal blog,One Day at a Time.

So, it's a slow day at the funeral home, and I'm settled in here at my desk with Joseph Campbells's Transformations of Myth Through Time which is actually much less dry than the title makes it sound.

Campbell is an anthropolgist focused on myth and comparative religion, brilliant and insightful and engagingly articulate. The book itself is a collection of fairly informal lectures, so the writing style is a little more casual than I was expecting, as you'll see in the bits I quote below, but it's every bit as fascinating and challenging as I had come to expect from Joseph Campbell.

As I read Chapter 2, certain pieces really got me thinking, and I decided to share some commentary. A lot of it is likely to stir up some controversy and get me called some unpleasant names, and I apologize in advance to whoever I might offend. /disclaimer

[. . .] "And when it came to this problem of explaining what this Buddha-consciousness or Christ-consciousness was, I looked up at the ceiling for an inspiration and I found one. I said, 'Look up, boys, at the ceiling and you will see that the lights(plural) are on, or you might also say the light (singular) is on, and this is two ways of saying the same thing.' In one case, you are placing emphasis on the individual bulb, in the other you are placing emphasis on the light.

[. . .] Now when one of those light bulbs breaks, the superintendent doesn't come in and say, 'Well, that was my particularly favorite bulb.' He takes it out, throws it away, and puts another one in. What is important is not the vehicle, but the light.

Now, looking down at all your heads, I ask myself, of what are these the vehicles? They are the vehicles of consciousness. How much consciousness are they radiating, and which are you? Are you the vehicle, or are you the consciousness?" -p. 29

The underlying assumption here is that each lightbulb emits a light quantitatively- and more important, qualitatively- equal to the bulb it replaced and the bulb which will replace it, not to mention the bulbs surrounding it in the meantime. The individual bulbs are identical and interchangeable, and so is the light they emit; so is its effect on the total Light in the room. An individual bulb's light contributes nothing to the Light but quantity; it has no special characteristics that make an impact on the whole shared Light.

By extension, the analogy asserts that human beings are vessels and vehicles for consciousness in the same way that light bulbs are vessels and vehicles for light; it also asserts that the consciousness contained in and expressed by each individual human (components of a univeral Consciousness which our myths strive to make us aware of and in connect us to) is not only quantitatively equal to that of every other individual, but quantitatively equal and interchangable as well. There is nothing unique about any one individual, no special contribution or effect on the Consciousness or the Universe which can be made by that individual and that individual alone. The next bulb in the row produces an identical light.

A certain interpretation of the Buddhist philosophy expressed in the analogy could assert that the personality and uniqueness that define each of our worldly selves as individuals are actually part of the earthly vessel rather than part of the transcendent consciousness to which Campbell refers. My Western individualism rebels against this notion.

White light, from a physics standpoint, is made up of all the colors in the light spectrum; to produce white, these colors must be mixed in equal amounts- an imbalance produces a bluish or reddish or greenish light. Suppose for a moment that, if we continue Campbell's analogy and represent human consciousness as light, each individual's unique qualities- the things that make my soul a similar thing to your soul, but definitely not the same soul- are represented as variations in the color of that individual's light, and the combination of various-hued lights from the bank of bulbs merges eventually into a white spotlight.

Just a thought.

"Now I want to go back to the main myth of the Navajo. [. . .] It is of the first people having come up from the womb of the earth through a series of four stages, and they go from one stage to another. Some accident happens in the lower stages; a flood comes as a punishment for impropriety of some sort, the breaking of a taboo or something of the sort, and they come on up. And finally they come to the top level, the earth on which we are now." - p. 32

This account could be viewed as approximately parallel to the Biblical account of Man's "fall" and subsequent divine punishments. Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden could, in the Navajo context, represent a forced climb up from one stage to the next. The aftermath of the flood in Noah's day could represent another (Campbell doesn't mention whether the Navajo account includes an attrition rate).

Does anyone with more Biblical knowledge than I possess want to see if we can figure out which events there might parallel the Navajo's four stages? It could be an interesting project.

"Furthermore, the land is the holy land. And the land where you are, not the land someplace else. Not only the body, but the specific landscape in which the people are dwelling is sanctified in these old mythologies. You don't have to go someplace else to find the holy land." -p. 29

"But there is a difference between the science of 2000 B.C. and the science of A.D. 2000. And we're in trouble on it because we have a sacred text that was composed somewhere else by another people a long time ago and has nothing to do with the experience of our lives. And so there's a fundamental disengagement.

[. . .]An article from Foreign Affairs called the "Care and Repair of Public Myths" says that a society that does not have a myth to support and give it coherence goes into dissolution. That's what's happening to us." -p.46-47

While I personally do not subscribe to the claim that the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation, any halfway astute observer has to admit that our social structure and the public concerns which become political issues have been influenced heavily by Judeo-Christian philosophy, beliefs, and writings, and that our public is predominantly at least nominally Christian.

That means that a significant portion of America's culture and public life are based heavily on writings and thoughts and laws written thousands of years ago in another place and another culture. We have no native, American myth tied to this place and this culture and this societal reality- all the belief systems tied to American soil and American settings were systematically wiped out with only a few scattered, aging, and mostly disregarded survivals. We are, as a culture and as a nation and as a people, mythically and philosophically displaced. We have no roots of myth or belief to call our own- we're still clinging to someone else's and trying to make them fit.

Campbell's commentary about the land flows from a discussion of how most Native American belief systems, and others around the world, both drew their myth from the landscape around them and, if they relocated, resituated their myth onto the new landscape. They made their home itself the Holy Land. Most modern Americans (and many modern Europeans) don't consider their home the Holy Land. Their myth- our myth, is not tied to our home. It's tied to another place and another culture thousands of miles away on another continent. This has produced not only a sense of cultural displacement, but some very expensive political entanglements out of the resulting sense of obligation to some foreign place most of us will never see, let alone live in and truly identify with.

It occurs to me that this "disconnect" Campbell mentions between our culture and that from which we try to draw guidance may be the source of so much of the cultural polarization and strife today. We have no roots, we have no direction, and of course we're at each other's throats, because trying to hash out a common identity and a common philosophy without that is a nasty process.

The solution? I don't honestly know. I'm not foolish enough or arrogant enough to declare anyone's religion outdated or wrong, and that's not at all what I'm trying to say here. Certainly we can't do a quick edit of the Bible and change some place names and update some cultural references. One, it's terribly disrespectful at the least, and two, someone's going to notice, you know? So what do we do?