Another Transcript Just Posted: Marfa Mondays Podcast #15, an Interview with Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

Marfa Mondays Podcast #15 Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands [MUSIC] C.M. Mayo: Welcome to Marfa Mondays Podcast number 15 of a projected 24 podcasts exploring Marfa, Texas and the greater Big Bend region of Far West Texas, apropos of my book-in-progress. I'm your host, C.M. Mayo, and on my webpage, cmmayo.com, you can listen in to all the podcasts anytime for free, and also there you can find out about my several other books. The most recent book is the reason these podcasts have been coming along a little more slowly this year. That book, which is done and now available in paperback and e-book formats, is Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. For those rusty on their Mexican history, Francisco Maderowas the leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution and he was president of Mexico from 1911 to 1913, so his so-called secret book, which I translated into English, is in many ways quite illuminating. This podcast is of my interview with Greg Williams, executive director of the Rock Art Foundation. It was recorded on August 30, 2014 at Meyers Spring Ranch on the conclusion of a four hour tour of the rock art there and of the restored house of the military commander at Camp Meyers. Meyers Spring is one of a multitude of rock art sites in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, a region around the confluence of the Pecos River and the Rio Grande and extending south into Mexican state of Coahuila— by the way, the native state of none other than Francisco Madero. In this region, to quote Harry J. Shafer in the introduction to his anthology, Painters in Prehistory: Archaeology and Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, "Magnificent polychrome, pictographic images, panels, and murals exist that rival any in the world." Meyers Spring, which I toured with the Rock Art Foundation, is on private property a few miles drive from the tiny border town of Dryden, Texas. To quote from the Rock Art Foundation's website, rockart.org, "Meyers Spring is an isolated water hole in the arid lands west of the Pecos. Brilliant red paintings overlook a permanent pool of water sheltered only by a shallow overhang. Although faded remnants of much older pictographs can still be detected, the majority are attributable to Plains Indians who were latecomers to the region." You can view pictures of Meyer Spring and other rock art sites on the website rockart.org, and for more about the rock art I can also recommend the books Painters in Prehistory, edited by Harry J. Shafer, and Rock Art of the Lower Pecosby Carolyn E. Boyd. Before we go to the interview with Greg Williams, executive director of the Rock Art Foundation, an apology for the sound. There's a bit of a roar which would be the very necessary air conditioner. This was recorded in the kitchen of the ranch house so people were coming in and out and there was some target shooting going on from the porch. I managed to edit out most of the shooting, but you'll still hear a few pops. I would like to dedicate this podcast to my friend and neighbor in Tepoztlán, Mexico, Patty Hogan, because Patty, I am so grateful to you for putting me in touch with the Rock Art Foundation. [MUSIC] C.M. Mayo: Most people that I've talked to have never heard of rock art in this area, and yet there's a lot of it, and it's really important. Why is that? Greg Williams: Probably the best way I could explain it is explain to you what happened to me. In 1991 in my business I was trying to have some photography done, and so I looked in the phonebook and I saw a man named Jim Zintgraff who is a well-known San Antonio photographer. I hired Jim, and we went out to a photo shoot, and the conversation kind of waned, and my son and I had been camping in West Texas for years, and so the only thing I really knew about that I thought Jim might be interested in is I brought up West Texas, and it went from there. Jim was the director of the Rock Art Foundation then. Jim passed away eight years ago and I became director following him. But what happened is this gentleman brought me and my wife to West Texas to see things that I had never even known about, and they were the remnants of a past culture, a culture that had existed in the Lower Pecos region of West Texas, which is the confluence of the Pecos and the Rio Grande, for twelve thousand years. I had no idea that people lived out here for that long, And so we wandered around and we looked at the remnants of that culture. We looked at their lifeways, through the floors of these dry rock shelters, and we looked at their language, the stories that they wrote for us on the walls of these shelters, and we didn't know what they meant. You'd have to be in the mind of the artist to find that out, but you could sit and wonder about these folks who lived so long ago here and how hard the life must have been for them, in our context. For them it probably was not quite so difficult at all. They had plenty of food, plenty of water. But what they left behind was remarkable and it's called rock art. It's a book, it's a story. Some of the images out here in West Texas, you can call them the oldest known books in North America. They are thousands of years old and as we look at cultures of people that exist today, the Huichol in northern central Mexico, the Native American populations around the country, and we look at their art, and we look at this four thousand-year-old ancient art that we have here, we begin to see similarities. We see Lower Pecos images in Mayan art, we see it in Aztec art, and by making all those comparisons you can kind of start to believe that you understand what these people have written, and what's in their book that they've left us. That's the mystery. Will we ever know? Probably not. You'd have to be in the mind of the artists, I think, to understand that, but to look at an ancient culture, to look at what they've left behind, to wonder about what you're leaving behind in our modern culture, it seems to me that the things that were left for us so long ago seem to be so much more important than what we're leaving behind today. So that's the mystery that keeps, I think, all [of us] coming out here. We've got 35 people in the Meyer Springs Ranch today and that, what I just verbalized, was the entire reason they came here. They may not realize that, they may not verbalize it in that way, but to come and see a culture that passed so long ago, and to stand in the footsteps that they left, and to look at the book they wrote, and the messages that they left for us... pretty remarkable! And after years you feel that you begin to understand who they are. All of a sudden one day they become alive. You can see them. We just came back from Camp Meyers and that was a much later culture, but you could hear them talking, you can smell them, you know they're there, and you feel that you're one of the very, very lucky few people that realize they're still here, and they're still here in what they left behind and the messages on the rocks, and I feel blessed to be one of the people that can stand there, and stare at that, and wonder, and have some kind of knowledge to what it might mean. That's what it does for me. I hope that makes sense to you. C.M. Mayo: It makes beautiful sense. Kind of two separate things here, one is the rock art that we saw today which had images on top of images- we saw some that were very faint and possibly thousands of years old, and then more recent ones that look like they were painted shortly after the Conquest showing priests, showing a cross, handprints, birds, really a wide variety of images. But then we also saw Camp Meyers, and that was something from the late 19th century, which you restored. Greg Williams: This is 25 years for me out here doing this. And I marvel at what's out here, but the military history, probably because it's not that far behind us, that intrigues me the most, and the life that these people lived here, and how harsh it was, and how gentle our lives are in comparison. I look back and I have great respect for those that came before us, and I look at where we're heading as a culture, and I'm not pleased. And I wish that some of the life values that these people behind us had, that we could adopt those today. Our children aren't, our adults aren't. It's very saddening to me, but to come out here and be a part of a group of people that I admire so much is important. And I learn a lot from that in how I handle my life. And when we bring tours of people out here—and we've done it for over 15,000 people— when we bring people out here that's the message that I try to tell them without using words. If I can show them something that's totally astounding, and show them a better way, things that people did long ago that were much better than what we're doing now, and if you can learn from that, and you can make an impression, I think that's really very important. But I try to do it without words. C.M. Mayo: What specifically do you think was done better in the past that's not being done now? ... CONTINUE READING

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Transcript Now Available for Marfa Mondays Podcast #16: "Tremendous Forms: Paul Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape"

Marfa Mondays 16: "Tremendous Forms: Paul V. Chaplo on Findng Composition in the Landscape"  was posted as podcast (listen in anytime on podomatic or iTunes) back in January, but the transcript has just been posted here.

I'm aiming to post transcripts of all my podcast interviews, both the Marfa Mondays and Conversations with Other Writers (for the latter, so far, transcripts are available for Rose Mary Salum and Sergio Troncoso). Stay tuned for Marfa Mondays 17, an interview recorded in Fort Davis with Texas historian Lonn Taylor.

>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America by Richard Parker (Book Review by C.M. Mayo)

Texas Exceptionalism (TE): I would give it the knee-jerk reject but for the fact that after more than 25 years of living in another country (Mexico), if I've learned anything, it's that empathy for others' notions of themselves, off-kilter as they may seem, is not only the more politic but oftentimes the wisest stance (because the other thing I've learned is that there's always more to learn). Plus, as my birth certificate says, I'm a Daughter of the Lone Star State, so nudge its elbow and my ego is happy to hop along, at least a little ways, with that rootin'- tootin' idea. But I was not raised in Texas and, to put it politely, I've yet to grok TE. The way I see it at present, yes, Texas is a special place full of proud and wonderful people, with a unique history and an awesome landscape, and once we look with open eyes, ears, intellect, and heart, so is just about every other place, from Baja California to Burma.

That said, though in Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America, Richard Parker serves up a heaping helping of gnaw-worthy TE, it is an elegantly-written and important book examining trends and challenges for Texas — Texas first, Parker argues— and the nation. 

Migration is changing Texas at warp-speed, and here, with an overview of the history of migration into the area, Parker makes the most vital contribution. 

It was the Fifth Migration, from the Rust Belt of the 1970s and 1980s, that brought northerners with their Republican-leaning politics; the Fourth, Southerners, many of them Yellow Dog Democrats, coming in to work in the oil and related industries in the early 20th century; and the Third, Southerners arriving in the 19th century to farm and ranch in what was originally Mexican territory, then an independent Republic, then a slave state, then a member of the Confederacy, then, vanquished, reabsorbed into the Union. (The Second and First Migrations telescope thousands of years of immigrations from elsewhere in indigenous North America and, originally, from Asia.) 

The current wave of migration, the Sixth, is bringing some 1,000 immigrants into the state each day, from Mexico, points further south, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and all across the United States itself. And because of this, the over a century-long "Anglo" dominance is about to crumble.  Soon the idea of Texas itself may morph into something denizens of the 20th century might no longer recognize. 

J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964) was considered 

the first recognized and professional literary 

writer in the state. From the Wittliff 

Collections biography: "Many Texas writers 

openly credit Dobie with giving them the 

inspiration not only to be a writer but also 

to feel comfortable using their home state 

as a subject."

Yet where did that idea of Texas— this great state for big men in cowboy boots—  and the related TE— come from? How did it become an image fixed in not only the Texan imagination, but the national and international? I would have ascribed it merely to a mash-up of anti-Mexican Texan and US-Mexican War propaganda, the tales of literary legend and folklorist J. Frank Dobie, Southern wounded pride, and splashy bucketfuls of Hollywood fantasy, until I came to Parker's riveting detour into the history of the marketing of the World's Fair of 1936. That fair, held the same year as Texas' centennial, was celebrated with all get-out in Dallas. For its leading citizens, this was, Parker writes, 

"the opportunity to recast Texas:  No longer a broken-down Southern state of impoverished dirt farmers, but one with oil and industry— an inspiration if not a beacon to hungry Americans looking for opportunity in the midst of the Great Depression.... Copywriters, journalists, and artists were hired to tell tales of cowboys, oil, and industry in the years leading up to the World's Fair." 

But alas, this came with the racial nonsense of the time. Parker: 

"Gone was the Mexican vaquero, the African American, and the Native American, or at least they were relegated to the role of antagonist.... A centennial exposition [Theodore H. Price, a New York PR man] argued, would teach attendees that the cowboy story was really a story of racial triumph..." 

Giant, the 1956 movie based on Edna Ferber's 
novel, starred Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor

and James Dean.

Some of Texas history is painful to read, painful as those punches Rock Hudson's character, Bick Benedict, took at the end of Giant, in defending his Mexican-American daughter-in-law (from being refused service in a café because of the color of her skin). Parker doesn't shy away from discussing some ugly and enduring racial problems in Texas, including in Austin, its capital and haven of liberalism, music, and righteously organic breakfast tacos.

At the time Lone Star Nation went to press in 2014, according to Parker, "nearly one in three people who call Texas home have arrived from elsewhere in the United States in the last year." The gas and oil boom have since collapsed along with the price of oil, so I would expect those numbers to have dropped; nonetheless, as Parker stresses, the overwhelming majority of immigrants end up not in the oil fields, but the "triangle," the area in and around Dallas, Austin-San Antonio, and Houston. The draw? "Better-paying jobs and bigger homes for less money."

Parker argues that better jobs are a function of education, and that therefore one of the challenges Texas faces is adequately funding its schools and universities while keeping tuition at affordable levels, especially for the working class and recent immigrants. But the political will may not be there; neither has it been adequate to cope with water shortages, both current and looming. 

Parker's political analysis is seasoned but unabashedly biased. My dad, a California Republican, would have called it "Beltway Liberalism," and indeed, until returning to Texas, Parker, a journalist, was based in the Washington DC metropolitan area. I happen to agree with much of what Parker argues, but as someone trying to get my mind around Texas, I would have appreciated his making more of an effort to explore, if not with sympathy then at least empathy, the various strains of conservatism. 

To illustrate the trends and challenges for Texas, Parker offers two scenarios for 2050: one in which Texas has not invested in education, nor maintained a representative democracy, nor addressed environmental issues, and so degenerated into a nearly abandoned ruin (think: Detroit meets Caracas meets the Gobi Desert); in the other, challenges addressed, Texas is a super-charging China-crushin' hipster Juggernaut. My own guess is that the Texas of our very old age will fall somewhere in between, vary wildly from one region to another, and be more dependent on developments south of the border than the author or, for that matter, most futurists, consider. 

On this last point, in discussing the tidal wave of migration from Mexico, Parker mentions the Woodlands, a once upscale Anglo suburb outside of Houston, still upscale, but now predominantly Mexican. I would have liked to have learned more about this slice of the sociological pie, for in my recent travels in Texas, and from what I hear in Mexico, I've also noticed that a large number of well-off Mexicans have been moving to Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. I'm talking about Mexicans who speak fluent English, play tennis and golf, and have studied and traveled abroad in, say, New York, Vancouver, Paris. There's a bigger story there, for many of them are the wives and children, but not so many husbands, who spend weekdays at their offices in Monterrey, Guadalajara, or, say, Mexico City. These families have not come to Texas for the jobs, nor the wonders of that great state (whose loss still makes many Mexicans bristle), but primarily for their safety—  and, in many cases, for business opportunities. Should security improve in Mexico, I would expect many of these families to return and quickly. Whether that is likely or not is another question.

In sum, Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America is a rich, vivacious read that provides a sturdy framework to think about the past, present, and prospects of a state that is as much a place as it is, in the words of John Steinbeck, "a mystique approximating a religion." And if the author is a true blue believer in TE, well hell, bless him. Highly recommended.

>> Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

>> Follow me on Twitter @marfamondays

A Batch of US-Mexico Border Mini Travel Clips

Just posted a batch of what I call "mini travel clips," that is, super brief videos, nothing fancy (taken with my iPhone), but edited and with audio—clips by that jaw-droppingly prolific clangy-bangy soundmaestro of Bridport, U.K., Ergo Phizmiz.


FAR WEST TEXAS MINI CLIPS

Casa Piedra Road, Far West Texas 
(with a view of a fire in Mexico)
(1:06)




> Listen in anytime to my podcast. "A Visit to Swan House." Swan House, a unique adobe teaching house inspired by the legacy of Egypt's greatest architect, Hassan Fathy, is on Casa Piedra Road.

> Read my article in Cenizo Journal, "A Visit to Swan House."


Over Burro Mesa and Into Apache Canyon 
(Big Bend National Park)
(1:06)

 

> Listen in anytime to my "Marfa Mondays" podcast, "Over Burro Mesa / The Kickapoo Ambassadors"

> Read the essay, "Over Burro Mesa."


Pecos River Crossing (Highway 90, near the US-Mexico border)
(:41)
West of the Pecos is Far West Texas. The end of the video is a gaze south into Mexico.

And I did some slight edits on a video I had posted a few weeks ago, Descent into Eagle Canyon (:53), near Langrty, Texas— Eagle Canyon flows into the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border.




> Listen in anytime to "Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands."


AND AWAYS YONDER WEST

Finally, almost the border (well, a two hour drive) is Joshua Tree National Park in California (2:24). Herewith my mini travel clip of that:




> More mini travel clips here and
> Mini clips of Far West Texas (apropos of my book-in-progress) here.

> Watch Ergo Phizmiz starring in "I Am the Music Man," a video by Martha Moopette.




>Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Descent into Eagle Nest Canyon

Back in December I went with the Rock Art Foundation down into Eagle Nest Canyon, which drains into the Rio Grande just past the Pecos near Langtry. There was rock art to see, of course, and the second largest buffalo jump in North America. This mini-travel clip, an edited 50 seconds, shows only the descent into that spectacular canyon. 

>>WATCH HERE<<

> More mini-travel clips 

> Visit the Rock Art Foundation at www.rockart.org

> The music is by Ergo Phizmiz under a creative commons license. P.S. Ya'll check out Ergo From the Factory.

> Listen in to my podcast interview with Greg Williams, director of the Rock Art Foundation: Gifts of the Ancient Ones: The Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

> Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Marfa Mondays Podcast #16: Tremendous Forms: Paul V. Chaplo on Finding Composition in the Landscape

Happy 2015! Just posted, Marfa Mondays podcast #16 (of a projected 24), an interview with photographer Paul V. Chaplo, author of Marfa Flights: Aerial Views of Big Bend Country (Texas A & M University Press). Recorded at the Texas Book Festival in October, 2014. 

Marfa Flights was published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition of Chaplo's large format color photographs in the Museum of the Big Bend, in Alpine Texas. That show is open through January 18, 2015. Don't miss it!

Listen in anytime here.

Listen in to the other Marfa Mondays Podcasts here.

Find out more about Chaplo's magnificent Marfa Flights here.

***UPDATE*** The transcript of this podcast is now available here.

Marfa Mondays Podcast #15: Gifts of the Ancient Ones: Greg Williams on the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands

Marfa Mondays Podcast #15 is now live. Listen in anytime to my interview with Greg Williams, Executive Director of the Rock Art Foundation. Though the Rock Art Foundation's tours and website have been spreading the word, it still seems a well-kept secret that some of the most spectacular rock art in the world is tucked into the nooks and crannies of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Far West Texas (and into Coahuila, Mexico). I had the great privilege of being able to view some it, specifically, the rock art at Meyers Springs, through the tour offered by the Rock Art Foundation. My interview was recorded in the Meyers Springs Ranch house kitchen, just after the four hour tour (and target shooting had commenced).

Recommended reading:


Painters in Prehistory: Archaeology and Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, edited by Harry J. Shafer

Rock Art of the Lower Pecos, by Carolyn E. Boyd



Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Harry Crosby and Baja California's Magnificent Cave Paintings

12 Tips for Summer Day Hiking in the Desert or, 

How to Stay Cool and Avoid Actinic Keratosis, Blood, and Killer Bees

Marfa Mondays #14

Over Burro Mesa / The Kickapoo Ambassadors

Marfa Mondays #13

John Tutino: Looking at Mexico in New Ways

Marfa Mondays # 12

"This Precious Place" An Interview with Dallas Baxter

&gt; Listen in anytime to all the Marfa Mondays podcasts here. 

Lifting the (Very Heavy) Curtain

on the Leader of Mexico's 1910 Revolution

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico's Secret Book