Earthships

We drove out one day across the mesa at Taos, crossing the high bridge over the Rio Grande gorge to arrive at the Earthships visitor center. Here we were given a tour of an earthship demonstration home, watched some instructional videos and took a few photos of some houses under construction.

Detail of wall construction.

Earthships are made (actually sculpted) from recycled materials, notably soda cans and used rubber tires mixed in with adobe (mud and straw) for stability and insulation. Through an ingenious system of solar panels, water recycling methods and heat-regulating thermal columns bored into the ground, earthships are practically self-sustaining and self-insulating in all climates.

The Earthships website provides relevant details and much technical information.

Taos Pueblo

I spent most of last month visiting friends in Albuquerque and Taos. The most memorable event was a visit to the Taos Pueblo, which has been in existence for about a thousand years, making it perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States.

Taos Pueblo with Red Willow Creek in foreground.

Most New Mexico Indians are Catholics since the Spanish occupation.

Doors and windows were introduced after the Spanish intervention. Originally the rooms were entered via a system of ladders on the rooftops dropping into holes in the ceiling. The entire complex thus functioned as a fortress against raids from other tribes. Today the pueblo is, as we were told, inhabited mainly by young men who must spend a year of residence there in the interest of tribal solidarity.

Taos Pueblo lies at the base of a holy mountain entered by the cleft in the center of this picture. Red Willow Creek flows through it down to the Pueblo.


+

On the ineffability of the obscene

It is possible to live long enough to see the meaning of words change. A generation older than mine would not have associated the word "gay" with a sexual minority. The word "obscene" formerly referred to sexual misbehaviors: the charges of obscenity to which James Joyce or Allen Ginsberg or Lenny Bruce were subjected and which were dismissed in subsequent court trials now seem completely outdated. "Perversion" also seems to have lost its conceptual applicability, perhaps because child abuse is the only sexual misbehavior left that remains universally demonized by society.

Instead, "obscene" has become a kind of Schimpfwort, a term that denigrates a wide variety of unacceptable behaviors that aren't sexual. One speaks of obscene profits made by Wall Street firms, or of obscene lies made by politicians in the tradition of Watergate. You don't see child abusers accused of obscenity: the term is reserved for liars and thieves.

Either way, there is still a mysterious aura of odium attached to "obscene" which persists through its semantic transformations. I suggest it has something to do with the sensation that the word represents something offensively twisted and grotesque, something in other words outside the natural order. Take for example this well-known Fifties magazine advertisement:

There's hardly any reason to rail against sex in advertising, which no doubt will endure as long as capitalism. But the only thing that's really being projected in this ad are some dumb male adolescent phantasies about women with oversized breasts, and one recalls also all those 8mm beaver movies projected on the Bell & Howell machine when the women weren't around, a convenient subtext no doubt well-understood by the ad men.

Sabrina herself, whose principal claim to popular attention was an hourglass figure consisting of huge breasts that wobbled like traffic cones precipitously balanced on a tiny waist, was a physiological exception, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his youth, whose physical economy was famously described once by Clive James as a "brown condom filled with walnuts."

Isn't it this combination of sexual phantasy and anatomical disfigurement that makes Sabrina's Bell & Howell ad truly obscene?

Cuteness run amok. Photo: North Coast Curmedgeon

The Doggie Diner figure on the other hand is a masterpiece of what I would like to call ineffable obscenity. Try to define why it is so repulsive, and you simply can't, and yet "obscene" sounds exactly right.

It reminds you of the marginalia in medieval manuscripts that depict grotesquely misshapen animals and fantasy creatures. A supreme example of monstrosity in advertising, the Doggie figure was a gargantuan coppery red cartoon filled with menace that lurked behind a leering grin, towering ubiquitously over the distinctly un-medieval margins of Bay Area roadways. Perhaps its inherent obscenity rested in its intention to frighten the customer into buying an equally distasteful Doggie Diner hotdog.

+

Where are the little old ladies?

Photo: Phil Maxwell

I wonder often what ever became of the little old ladies. As a social category they seem to have vanished from public view many years ago. I remember them well from my youth: walking around Boston in the afternoon hours one might encounter them shuffling down Tremont or Washington streets. They seemed to gravitate naturally to Boston Common, where they assumed ownership of every second park bench, claiming the shade under the bureaucratically-designated elm trees (Ulmus americana) as their naturally assigned habitat.

Little old ladies were recognized by their loose-fitting, full-length coats, the scarves or handkerchiefs covering their hair, and their oversized shopping bags and occasionally rolled-down stockings. Their shoes deviated far from the norm conventionally assigned to elderly women at the time, which involved black orthopedic-looking leather shoes and dark stockings. In flagrant disregard of geriatric fashion, little old ladies simply wore on their feet whatever was comfortable, anything from house-slippers to sneakers.

Photo: Phil Maxwell

I don't know if these women were really as impoverished or as socially victimized as they appeared. Certainly there does come a time in old age when you decide to chuck appearances altogether and concentrate on comfort as a survival strategy. But in my mind they seemed to me the original beatniks, "beat" in the primal sense of the word, not so much "beatified" as Kerouac conceived it, but rather as a sub-set of feminists resolved to ignore any conventionality and carve for themselves a chunk of private space in a dismissive world. In my imagination I thought they might be disguised bodhisattvas, like the ancient zen masters who lived defiantly under bridges among beggars.

Of course there is no longer a place for little old ladies in our suburban mall-culture, where if you want to desist from shopping and sit down somewhere, it's going to cost you. They do seem to enjoy a digital resonance however, as seen from a wonderful selection of photographs taken by Phil Maxwell, presently available at Spitalsfield Life.

+

The Zugspitze

The Zugspitze is Germany's highest mountain and provides some spectacular Alpine views. There are three different aerial lifts that bring visitors to the summit, and you can easily make it a day trip out of Munich.

The summit at 9,718 ft.

Telecom, weather and research facilities look like an art installation.

Tram station and restaurant.

The Austrian border runs exactly across the top of the mountain.

So in pre-EU days you had to show your passport to enter Austria.

+

Lübeck — Part Three

Lübeck Cathedral (Lübecker Dom) was the first of the red-brick churches built in North Germany in the cities bordering the Baltic Sea. It was dedicated in 1247 and constructed without buttresses, so that the side aisles are much narrower than inside the larger Marienkirche, and they shoot upward at steep angles.

The Cathedral was badly damaged in World War II, and the Arp Schniter organ of 1699 was replaced with a modern Wacker organ.

The "Triumph-Kreuz" and clock date from 1477.

 

+