Editor’s Thoughts – Bad Ju Ju
Posted by: anitaburns on: January 15, 2012
Before Biker Babe there was Hippie Dippie Hope
Posted by: anitaburns on: November 23, 2011
Peace and Love
Never Trust the Man
Power to the People
Make Love, Not War
Give Peace a Chance
Drop Acid, Not Bombs
P E A C E
Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.
Those are just a few of the “banners” we lived by in the late 60′s and 70′s. As many of you who follow my blogs know, I have had a varied life experience. I guess choosing not to be a mother and not being tied down to much in the way of conventional thinking allowed me to gladly move from one life venue to another.
Yes. I was a hippie for a while. I mean, how could I not be? After my rather sketchy high school education, I got married, just one month after graduating. I was 18. It was 1966. I had lived through racial riots in Watts, just twenty or so miles from our house. Ashes from the burning buildings fell on our front lawn in Pacoima, CA, in the then, not so bad San Fernando Valley. It was an exciting time of change, demanded by the people. Racial issues were being forced into the open. The Vietnam War was being protested. People were demanding change in corporate American and in the Government. Kennedy had been shot. We were just about to put a man on the moon.
So in the midst of all that excitement and change, Rick and I tied the knot and moved to Vallejo to live with his parents, brother, and sister for a while. Vallejo (pronounced Va-lay-ho) is near San Francisco. I was not prepared for the conventionality of that life. I felt stifled and bored. My inlaws were blue collar, salt-of-the-earth Republicans. Nice, honest, hard working, narrow-minded, simple folk. Definitely not what I was used to, although my dad was the poster child of bigots. If you read my “Peeling Potatoes for Jesus” blog post, you’ll get a better idea, and maybe a chuckle or two.
Anyway, getting back to hippie dippie. We finally moved into our own little rented house in Napa on a couple of acres of fruit trees. I had a ringer-washer, no dishwasher, a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. It was probably about 600 square feet, but it was MINE! All MINE! (evil laugh).
The novelty of being “Sadie, Married Lady” wore off quickly and I realized what a mistake I had made. OMG!!!! I was trapped in normalville! Everything that was important was happening in San Francisco! What was I doing there cleaning, cooking, and putting up with my mother-in-law’s constant demand for grandchildren. No way. I wanted more from life. I didn’t drive. Rick wouldn’t let me. I felt trapped. I couldn’t work. Rick didn’t want his wife working. Even though he worked for Kaiser Steel as a machinist, and was on strike more often than working it seemed.
One day, I just decided enough was enough. The world was passing me by. Shortly after watching the first moon landing on Rick’s aunt’s flickery black and white TV, I made a vow to myself. “I gotta get outta here and into the action.” It was a time of war protests, riots in Berkeley, the People demanding to be Heard!
I bought a bus ticket to Frisco, and was on my way. To where? I didn’t know or care. Something would turn up. It did. When I got off of the bus station, a sylph-like young woman with frizzy blond hair and gauzy, gypsy-esque clothing, handed me a flower and said, “Peace and Love.” I was supposed to then give her money, but instead, I said, “Want to join the cause. Who can I talk to about that?” She looked surprised, then grinned with perfectly straight white teeth that set off her natural, no make up beauty. I was entranced. I wanted to be her. Yeah, right. Like I could EVER be like that.
Thinking about that scenario now, I am reminded of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. She always wanted to be soft, kind, generous, and loving like her mother instead of the fiery, ambitious, manipulative vixen she was. No use. Scarlett would forever be Scarlett. But what did I know then? Nadda.
Any-hoo, she said, come with me. She took me to a tall bearded young man who put his hands together and bowed, “Namaste.” After a little explaining, he handed me some flowers and a pouch to greet the incoming busses. I flung my satchel over my shoulder. It held my few belongings, money, etc. and proceeded to spread peace and love for a small donation.
George Harrison 1967 at Haight Ashbury
After the “shift,” I asked where we lived. “We don’t live anywhere, but home is Golden Gate Park,” was the answer. Huh? Where? Usually we “crashed” in “pads” of other hippies, or some liked to sleep outside in the vast Park. We ate whatever we could in the way of pre-made food, deli sandwiches, candy bars, chips, etc. Everything was shared, clothing, toiletries, money, and weed. Lots of weed. Not much acid or other stuff. Weed was their drug of choice. I did a little, but I’ve never really been interested in getting high too often. Or maybe I’m just not remembering.
One guy in the group had a small apartment in town that his parents left empty most of the time because they lived in the wine country. We stayed there sometimes and used the shower when we could. Of course, we had the iconic VW van with psychedelic paintings all over it, including a large peace sign.
Not Us, but much like our group of flower children
We traveled to places where we could get donations, spread hippie sayings, and talk about hope for the future of a better world. Sometimes I passed out underground newspapers on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. I vaguely remember that the Grateful Dead lived together in an old Victorian Painted Lady house near there.
I also vaguely remember a bash out free festival in Golden Gate Park, the Human Be In Festival with Jimmi Hendrix, Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Santana, and probably more. It’s all a bit blurry.
After a couple of weeks I realized that this was not the lifestyle I wanted either. I was cold, hungry, and tired of the endless sameness of drugs, sex, and rock and roll (plus a sea of folk music). I was also tired of the lack of common sense, and pseudo-intellectualism that passed for being truly wise.
BE IN FESTIVA
So, I went back to hubby, he forgave me, and I plotted my escape, which came in 1969. I told Rick that I was going to visit my mother in So Cal. I packed as much as I could in suitcases, boarded a plane and never looked back. As I write this, the song “I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane,” by Peter, Paul, and Mary is running through my head. I enrolled in college, got a job, and began a new life. Well, maybe it was much the same, but with different slogans.
The whole experience was freeing and transformative. However, in hindsight, there was no way it was going to make the huge difference in society that we had hoped. Many of those idealistic, starry-eyed youth grew up to become bankers, brokers, and politicians. Many died of drug abuse, untreated disease, suicide, and other things that came along with the rampant pie-in-the-sky attitudes accompanied by emotional dysfunction. Others grew up to work for the betterment of us humans, women’s rights, civil liberties, and more. So, I guess it was the beginning of many good things, but we were so naive, thinking that we could create a Utopian society of fairness, peace, and where common sense would rule over greed an corruption.
Does all that sound familiar? In today’s world of 2011/12, the world is again in a attempt for the “people” to change things, for the people’s voices to be heard and heeded about corruption, greed, and cruelty. Thousands upon thousands are taking to the streets worldwide, demanding change. Those who want status quo are fighting back with violence and force. Ah, it brings me back. Being the eternal hippie that I’ve been told I am, even through my attempts to leave that behind, I am hoping that this time, there will be a difference. Maybe this time, real laws will be passed to keep greed and corruption in check and that the tide of the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer” will be stemmed.
Don’t misunderstand my meaning though, I am all for people working toward abundance, being successful, and having as much money as they earn. I am, however, dead against corrupted, greedy practices in order to achieve that success. I am against the flat out deception, and manipulation that attempts to keep the common folk from rising to success without resorting to the same degraded practices. This new uprising isn’t about poor people wanting to grab a piece of the pie, many wealthy people are in the streets protesting, or broadcasting their support. Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, Natalie Portman, David Crosby and Graham Nash to name a few. So, even though the tie-die, faded jeans, headbands, beads, and flower power are different, maybe this time there will be a difference for the future.
Well, just listen to me. I guess the hippie is still there.
Peace and Love,
Anita
Biker Babe
Posted by: anitaburns on: November 13, 2011
Hell's Angels by Irving Penn
When I was a young girl of 13, the most fearsome creatures on the planet were the members of the Hell’s Angel’s motorcycle gang. They would roar through town with their tough looking leather jackets, long hair, tatoos, beards, chains, the darkest glasses, leather mechanic’s boots, and bandanas around their brows. They were sooo cool and sooo scary. I wondered what it would be like to have that much macho, that much raw power. All my giggly teen girlfriends thought the bad boys were unbelievably sexy. I guess it’s always been that way. In the Wild West, gunslingers were the Hell’s Angels of their day and I’m sure they had a lot of young women swooning over them.
I didn’t have the courage to actually meet one of them. But, a few years later when I was a bit wilder and nearly 17, I did meet some Hell’s Angels. My friend Sandy had her own apartment and knew one—a man-child named Hog Bob. One would think it was because he rode a Harley (Hog); I think it was because of his lack of personal hygiene. We didn’t like to get too close, and he often got tossed into swimming pools at parties.
Bob was NOT the sharpest knife in the drawer when it came to brain power, but he gave great parties. He once drove his Harley off of his second floor balcony into the pool. This ended up costing him a bundle in repairs to his bike and the property. He didn’t seem to mind.
I never told my parents that I was going to “Biker” parties. I guess they trusted me. They shouldn’t have, but they did. Oh, it wasn’t as bad as you might think. Yes, the drugs and alcohol flowed like Niagra Falls, but for some uncanny reason, I was cautious. I didn’t do the drugs. I did, however indulge in alcohol. To this day I can’t drink a Screwdriver or Harvey Wallbanger—too much puke involved in my memories of those things. I smoked cigarettes and a little pot, but nothing excessive. There was a lot of sex, but I wasn’t interested. I had a boyfriend. That was enough. Plus, my young age put me in the “to be protected” category. They had their code of honor.
So, I was living the “bad” life without really living the “bad” life. Later, I married (at 18) and moved to the San Francisco area where after leaving my husband, I led a brief, but intense lifestyle as a hippie/flower child. Interesting, but not the life I wanted. So, I returned to my husband and plotted my escape. At 21, I escaped and moved back to L.A. to live with my recently divorced mother, work, go to school, and party, party, party.
I worked as a waitress (a really bad one) at Dino’s, an Italian restaurant on Victory Blvd in Van Nuys, CA. My bosses’ son lived downstairs. Of course I was sleeping with him. What did you think? I was a slut. It was my job. My mother once told me that nice girls never had any fun. I guess I took her at her word. While living together, we often dated the same men. She was a beauty.
When my mother married and moved out, I had no one to keep me in line at all. More partying, more men, more rock and roll. I had a string of interesting men in my life, from a classical organist to an exiled New Zealand wrestler, to a Gandolf wannabe. The wrestler couldn’t go back to his country for an unknown reason. Perhaps because he was in the African animal skin smuggling business—zebras, lions, and such.
It was during this wild-woman time in my life that I finally got to be a biker babe. I met a mechanic through work who was in a biker club. Chopped hogs, ape hangers, loud, flashy, and dangerous looking. We would put on our scariest leather and chains, adopt a swagger, and an I’m-too-cool-for-my-skin attitude, then the pack would mount their bikes and we would roar through the freeways and streets of Southern California.
It was amazing how many people got out of our way—fast, or wouldn’t look at us. We were loud, wild, and tough looking. I wore short shorts called “hotpants,” thigh high boots and a leather vest. Yeah, I had the body for it in those days, sigh!
I don’t remember much about that time. Don’t ask why. But one thing stands out in my mind clear and sure. Our trip from San Fernando Valley to Big Bear Mountain. I was on the back of a chopped Harley. This was before helmet laws. and the long ride was hard, jolting and loud. My hair flew free and wild. It was wonderful! Well, except for the bugs in my teeth and my aching ass. Plus I have tinnitus now, that probably contributed.
Alas, as with most of my men, I grew tired of Richard (my biker boy) because he didn’t have much to offer in the brains department. I’ve always been more attracted to brains than braun or beauty. The novelty had worn off and I was looking for something different. After a few months, I checked that experience off my list and moved on. I had done it. I had been a biker babe. Whatta ride. Next up was a psychopath who nearly shot me. But that is another story.
Live, Love, Laugh,
Anita
Halloween – Bah Humbug and Hah! Bumhug!
Posted by: anitaburns on: October 30, 2011
This is a short blog note just to get something of of my chest.
Am I the only one in the country who thinks that Halloween is a useless holiday? Think about it. Other holidays serve a purpose of sorts. Granted many of these purposes are somewhat skewed and vague, but they have a recognizable reason to be that is sill valid to some degree. Halloween’s original meaning is long gone and now it is a holiday where people dress up in costumes, then consume massive amounts of sugar and artificial color. It is often dangerous for children because of lunatics giving poison candy, or drunk drivers not seeing the kiddies crossing the street.
As for adults, Halloween is often an excuse to drink and party in costumes. Often the excessive drinking proves to be dangerous or even fatal. I just don’t get it.
For children, what’s the deal? Many parents limit there kids’ sugar intake the rest of the year, but at Halloween they are allowed to eat themselves sick. Or, I knew a kid who’s mother would let him trick or treat but dole out the candy so he only got one a day for however many months it took for it to be gone or too stale to eat.
Trick or Treat?
When I was a child, I loved Halloween. I bagged loads of candy and got to dress up and go out with my friends to wreak havoc on our neighborhood. We didn’t have parents go along with us, just a pack of children having fun and being silly. Now, I’m not even sure it’s legal to let kids roam the neighborhood without parents staring them down, holding their hands, and driving them from block to block. That would have been my worst nightmare.
Many Christians look upon Halloween as a “Devil’s holiday” and refuse to have anything to do with it. Of course, in my thinking, this is just as mindless. It is just a day, where someone, sometime in the ancient past decided that it had special meaning for communicating with the dead. Even astrologers can’t support that theory.
Still, I am faced with the fact that most people I have met or communicate with on Facebook, LinkedIn, and such love Halloween. It brings them much happy face. So I guess in the end, what I think in my grumbly suit doesn’t really matter. So if it is important to you, enjoy. I’ll sit in the dark pretending not to be home.
Blessings, and thanks for listening.
Anita
The Big Fat Orange Van
Posted by: anitaburns on: October 3, 2011
Dear fellow travelers through the insanity we call life. Before I start this story, I want to preface it with one of my unusual quirks. I love cars and hate shopping. Very ungirl-like I know, but there it is.
My Big Fat Orange Van
I looked at my blog yesterday and realized it has been For-Ever since my last entry. Not because I don’t have inspiration. Ideas come up every day. After all, I have had a most unusual life. When a story comes into my head, I say, “I’ll have to blog about that.” Of course I forget about it a few minutes later. Ah, the ravages of “maturing.” Well, this time I jotted down a note in my I-Pad to “remember the Giant Orange VAN.”
My friend and lunacy crony, David and I were having Mexican food the other day when, for some reason, I remembered the orange van. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before in my blogs. If I did, it is worth repeating.
Throughout much of my life I have had car karma. I didn’t have a new car of my own, bought with my own money until I was in my 40′s. Before that, it was a string of cars with, well, character.The first car I had of my own was in the early 1970′s, a used Ford Fairlane of the early 1960′s ilk. It was white, had tires of different sizes and treads, made funny noises and sported Florida plates. I bought it from a newspaper classified ad for $100. I never registered it because . . . Yes, I will get to the orange van in a minute . . . I worked for General Telephone in Santa Monica and employees of the lower ranks, i.e. galley slaves, didn’t get parking spots. I sometimes had to park several blocks away from work. Okay New Yorkers, laugh at that.
Well, no self-respecting Southern California girl in those days walked more than a block. I started parking in places the law said I shouldn’t. Naturally, the parking tickets started coming. I never paid them. I was young and had no conscience. I’m sure whoever was still on the registration was inundated with parking tickets. But, I had, as I said, no conscience.
After that, I went through a circus of odd cars here and there, including a 1964 Dodge something or other that my brother customized. Every time I turned left, the horn honked. Then there was the 1956 Cadillac that had personality. The Windshield wipers only worked when I was accelerating. In order to see int he rain, I had to drive fast.
One of my favorites was the 1973 Mercury Marquis Brougham. A huge boat of a car that was built for luxury. If I ever have to live in a car, that’s the one I would choose. What spoiled my love of the beautiful beast was when I spilled a gallon of raw milk onto the carpet one day returning from my trip to the dairy farm (again, another story). No matter what I did, it always smelled like sour milk after that. I understand that those are classic collector’s cars now. Oh bother.
I did have a couple of really “cool” cars. I still think of my 1966 Mustang and sigh. I loved her. She had pony interior, a floor shift, and air conditioning–very rare in those days. It belonged to my dearest friend. When it died, I bought it and my then husband, John restored her to pristine beauty. That car had sentimental value. When Kathe and I were single, we would cruise Santa Monica in this sexy little thing and flirt with the guys who would honk and yell, “Welcome to California, Y’all.” It had Alabama plates. Before Kathe and I both married and became respectable, that little car got me safely home after many a drunken all night party.
The other car I loved to pieces was a 1971 Datsun 240Z. I fell in lust with the 240Z when I was dating a barber who had one. This was 1972 and the Z car was the hottest thing around. Richard, the barber and I saw each other only on the weekends and one day, he said, “Why don’t you take the car for the week?” I almost had an orgasm right there. Then, he asked, “Do you know how to drive a stick shift?” I didn’t but wasn’t about to let that get in my way. “Sure,” I said, “I learned on a stick.”
It wasn’t a total lie, when I was 17, my boyfriend, future hubby #1, Rick, tried to teach me how to drive his 1956 turquoise and white Pontiac. This was his baby–floor shift, Tijuana tuck and roll, diamond upholstery to match the car paint, special tires, and of course, loud radio speakers in the front grill. His claim to fame in our peer group was that he could out run cop cars. Mostly, we would cruise the local Van Nuys, CA burger drive in, Oscars. All the teens would cruise around and around, trying to look oh so James Dean cool, before parking and ordering a Burger, Coke, and Fries. Anything else tagged you as an outsider and very uncool. I remember the car hops on roller skates always flirting with Rick’s car. Come to think of it they flirted with Rick too. He looked like Patrick Swayze., only not as smart.
Rick tried to teach his patient and best to teach me how to drive a stick shift. I didn’t know it then, but I had a bad case of spacial dyslexia. I ran into more chain link fences and trash cans than I can remember. I knocked over a stop sign once. That’s when he decided that I was a lost cause. Probably a good thing.
So, back to the Z car. Here was the barber, Richard, offering me the Academy Award of cars. How could I say “no?” A measly gear shift wasn’t going to keep me from the Z car! He drove up to his house, handed me the keys and said, “See you on Friday night.”
“You bet,” I said back, kissed him and climbed into the driver’s seat. Suhweet! He waved and went into the house. I wasn’t a dummy, I had watched him drive it and I was remembering my “lessons” in the Pontiac. Slowly, I depressed the clutch, put the car in 1st gear, then gently accelerated while letting off the clutch. Yes! It worked! Second gear was a little trickier, but I caught on really fast. I wanted that car!
When we broke up, I missed the Z car. When I married John, he bought me one. It was school bus orange so I had it painted chocolate brown with a gold undercoat. It was gorgeous.
Those where the only really great cars I owned until many, many years later when I bought my brand new Chevy S-10 truck. Alas, long gone now but it was a prize.
So back to the Orange Van. Before the Chevy S-10 bought with my newly divorced independence, I lived in Houston, Texas with my dearly dysfunctional husband, Lee. My little red something or other had died a horrible, coughing, hacking death. So, Lee said I should drive the orange van until we could get another car. Not my first choice, but I needed transportation. The trouble was that the van was also our gardening, duck feed, and lumber transportation vehicle. He drove a Corvette but I was not allowed to touch it. Hint at why I finally left him.
The van was old, rusty, huge, noisy, and bright orange. The air conditioning only worked while accelerating, so I would put it in neutral whenever I could and rev the engine to get a blast of cool air. Speaking of starters, this ugly duckling was also magic. When a problem developed with the starter, we took it to a mechanic. He told us that there was no way this van should be running at all. The starter was never wired to the thingy-ma-bob that allowed it to start. (thingy-ma-bob is my technical term for whatever the Hell he said).
I would park the beast as far away from where I was going as possible so no one would see me driving it. I hated that van. I hated it so much that one day I drove up to the underground parking at the Houston Library (this was before the Internet), I totally scoffed at the sign that said what the height clearance was. I had spacial dyslexia. I couldn’t tell 4 feet from 7 feet. So I drove on and soon discovered by the horrific grinding noise on my roof, what 7 feet was. It was lower than my van. Actually the ceiling was tall enough, the pipes hanging down from the ceiling? That was another story.
Still, I kept going, I figured the pipes were smashing in the roof of the van enough so that I could get out, and as long as I was still moving, life was good. I parked, went into the library, returned, and drove out, scraping and crunching all along the way. I wonder if anyone ever looked up at the pipes and was puzzled by the swaths of orange paint covering them.
The van was tall so I could only assess the damage by walking to the top of my sloped driveway and jumping up to see the roof. It was crinkled, rippled, and without paint in many places, but it seemed to be intact. Well, as I found out a few months later, that was not true.
It rains a lot in Houston, Texas. It is a subtropical climate, so rain is as common as sunshine in Southern California. One of the things we used this van for was to transport feed for our many Mallard ducks. I love ducks, but that’s another story. One day, I opened the back of the van and discovered corn plants two feet high growing in the carpet! That was the last straw. I demanded a new car or else.
Now every time I see an orange Chevy van, I am transported back to the rippled roof and the corn field in the back. Funny now, not so much then.
I still drive an old car, but it is one I love. I bought it because I loved it at first sight. It is a 1996 baby blue Toyota 4-Runner. She is my soul mate.
I’d love to hear your car stories. Comment below.
Live, Love, Laugh
Anita Burns
www.themessenger.info
Of Art and Dunderhead
Posted by: anitaburns on: July 8, 2011
Gary Watching TV. Ink. Drawn from life, 1964
When I was a child and as a teenager, I was lauded by one and all as having amazing artistic talent. Unfortunately, that talent’s development got stuck somewhere in my teen years. It just never really deepened into something adult. Why that is can be left for now as too cerebral for this discussion. Let’s just chalk it up to everyone’s favorite excuse—bad childhood.
As a creative artist with paints and brush or pen and ink,I have always struggled to express in a meaningful way. Yeah, I hear you thinking, “meaningful is subjective.” I know; you’re right. I mean that my art doesn’t express what I, and probably every other art critic in the world, think of as meaningul. Have you ever thought about what make really great art as opposed to, say Motel Wall art or what I call “shopping mall art?”
With music and dance, there are definite rules. “Your arabesque extension was beyond perfection.” “Your timing and color with that song were amazing.” But media art such as oil, ink, and watercolor have looser definitions. Perspective, balance, color harmony, depth? Yes. Those can be important, but look at Picasso, look a any number of “great” art pieces and you will see those rules broken. It’s not that. It’s something subtle and undefinable. Great music and great dance have that subjective something too. So does acting and film making, but, as I learned when studying classical ballet, the rules are more important. If your timing, pitch, or harmony is off; if your body doesn’t do what you tell it to, all is lost. As anyone watching “America’s Got Talent,” or “American Idol,” can attest, enthusiasm and confidence that “God wants you to be a star” is not enough.
Art, in today’s world includes all sorts of undefinable goodness and badness. Now, anything can be called “art.” I recently read a comment that a pile of bricks might be placed in a museum and called art, but it’s still just a pile of bricks. I felt the same way when touring a museum of modern art and encountering a fish tank with three basketballs floating in it. Art? Not in my book, but there are a lot of books in the world. Even if I were to think that mine is the only one that counts, it isn’t. At one time, Norman Rockwell wasn’t considered to be a real artist. Hah! My book has a whole chapter.
So, what I want to talk about now is not that kind of, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, pseudo-art that piles a bunch of diapers on a hot pink toilet seat and calls it art. I want to talk about my first love and my greatest frustration–painting. It’s the great mystery.
For me, words come easy. I have an ongoing voice in my head saying all sorts of weird and wonderful things. I used to voice them but learned that irony and absurdity are lost on many people. Just like the actor who wants to direct and the director who wants to act, until recently I had always wanted to be an artist, up to my eyeballs in canvas, oil paints, and brushes.
Mom and Dad 1947
And, my chances were good, genetically speaking. My mother was an artist, once upon a time, and good too. My father studied art in the short time he was in college. I only saw one of his paintings. He showed it to me when I was a child. It was of wild horses. Now HE was an artist. It had life, movement, energy. It drew me into the painting as if I was there. I could hear the pounding of the hooves on the hard-packed earth, smell the dust, and feel the hot wind stick to my sweating body. Looking at those magnificent animals, manes and tails flying as they ran, the ground shook under my feet. Tears came to my eyes. He was truly an artist, that is until alcohol took him away from it.
However, to be fair, it wasn’t just the alcohol. After all, there have been countless great artists who pickled their brains with alcohol or drugs, or both. No, my dad was a decent, hard working man from depression era Oklahoma. He had been in the Navy in world war II, and held on to the standards he grew up with. Marriage and family meant putting yourself aside, working at a steady job and bringing home the bacon.
I wasted a lot of years hating my father and wallowing in self pity because he wasn’t Mr. Cleaver or Ozzie Nelson. When I finally let go of that, it was as if I was reborn. Now, I can look back and appreciate much about him, including the artistic genes that I inherited .
Abandoned Farmhouse in Texas
Still, I believe that I have never been really good at fine art. I am great on the computer. I can manipulate pixels and create, as the discoverer of Tut’s Tomb expressed, wondrous things. It’s sort of like some people taking tests. I know the material, I know how to use the tools, but when brush hits hand, mind goes blank. I can copy really well. Maybe I should have become an art forgerer. Or is it forger? Who knows, who cares.
Anyway, I have one shining example in my life of a time when I did create something amazing, something others said was worthy of hanging in a gallery. Now I know the trick, but as I grow older I prefer pixels to paint fumes in my nose, dribbles smears, and swashes in the floor walls, in my hair, permanently on my fingers, up my nose, and well, everywhere. That’s how I cook, sew, and garden; that’s how I painted. I’ve always been in awe of people who can simultaneously be creative AND neat. That’s just wrong in my book. It’s, well, against nature. I manage to make a mess just writing an article. Maybe I’m way off about this, but in my mind, the best creativity requires wild abandon and to Hell with the mess.
So, once upon a time, I was married to a wonderfully traditional man named John. He was my second husband. When I met him, I was dating his best friend who asked me to join him at the beach while he took his Scuba something or other to get his certification. I was, I think, 23 years old and a hotty, or so I was told. My “date” brought along a friend, John, to keep me company on the beach. “Okay,” I thought without much caring. I was wearing a yellow, crochet bikini. That’s all it took. Soon after that, we were married.
John’s parents were well off with a golf-course home in 29 Palms, a cabin in Big Bear Mountain, and other fun stuff. One scorchingly hot summer, John and I spent a weekend at the 29 Palms house. I hated the heat. We went to some of the art galleries in Palm Springs. I looked at the abstract art in awe. There were wild splashes of color, lines that boldly cut through the canvas, symmetry, asymmetry, and aliveness. These paintings had messages from the heart exploding from the canvas. I was in love.
“I could do that,” I naively said to myself. Oh how blind are the emotionally repressed. When we returned to the house, I eagerly set up my canvas and paints on the patio. I stared at the whiteness of the rectangle in front of me. It stared back. I applied paint. Ugh. Scraped and started again. EEEEUUWWW! Fortunately, I was using oil paints and could just scrape the canvas clean and start over. I struggled and struggled but it only looked like a 5-year old’s scribble, well maybe not even that good.
The sun was setting and I was in a mood so dark I could have started a thunderstorm single-handedly. Finally, I was tired and angry. I took paint directly from the tube squirted it all over the canvas, shouting at it with my best French obscenities. But, Merde, the French really know how to curse. I then attacked it with a putty knife, stabbed at it with brushes, scratched at it with my fingernails. I was angry, frustrated, crying, and screaming. Fortunately, I was alone. John was elsewhere, I don’t remember where.
When I finally exhausted myself and calmed down, I looked at the painting. It was marvelous. It was angry, full of life, energy, and amazement. Red, black, blue, yellow, gold, orange, and dark green jumped off the canvas. I wish I had kept it or at least photographed it, but I didn’t’. Years later, I sold it for a pretty penny. The only painting I ever sold.
You’d think that after that I would have had a light bulb go on in my head, “Hey, dunderhead, you’re emotionally repressed that’s why you can’t paint! This one is raw, real, and YOU! That’s why it’s good.” No, I didn’t get it. I never repeated the success of that painting, no matter how hard I tried. I guess we just can’t fake raw emotion. Now, in my old age, I could easily do this. Raw emotion is at my fingertips, just ask my husband. But that’s not where my life is now. I prefer words. Words are my expression of self. Maybe someday, I’ll wake up and smell the turpentine and linseed oil, but for now, it’s words. For my visual art fix, its photography or pixels.
Leave a comment. I love to hear about your experiences, opinions, and thoughts.
If you’d like to see more of my work, I have some posted on Imagekind also on my Facebook http://www.facebook.com/anita.burns1
Things About Believing in God That Don’t Make Sense
Posted by: anitaburns on: June 24, 2011
I live in an in-between world, religion-wise that is. Although I have long renounced any religion as having anything to offer me but a nice little mythology and an excuse to get and give presents on December 25, I have not given up spirituality. There is something out there, I just don’t know what.
When most people I know about speak of God, they are thinking of a being resembling some sort of super human—all seeing, all hearing, all knowing, and with a nasty temper. That’s religion. To paraphrase George Carlin, if God is so all powerful, why does he always need money? Okay, enough of the jokes.
People just can’t seem to let go of the Big Daddy in the sky concept, even though to do so means twisting logic and common sense into loops and knots that a Celtic metal-worker would be proud of.
For example. One of my FaceBook friends posted something that went sort of like this:
God speaking to, someone, or maybe everyone. “If I didn’t give you sickness, how would you know I am a healer? If I didn’t give you pain, how would you know that I am a comforter? If I didn’t give you . . . . .” etc.
This was supposed to be some kind of inspirational something or other. To me it said that for that to be true, God would have to have such low self esteem that he makes us suffer so that we turn to him for comfort, healing, etc. and know how great he is. It’s like making your child cry just so that he will come to you for comfort and see how good you are. There’s a name for that in psychology, it’s called psychotic.
The other thing that bugs me is how people don’t think this God thing through. When the Chilean miners were stuck underground for so long after a cave-in, they came out and thanked God. Sorry, it was the ingenuity and hard work of caring, thinking people who got them out, not God. They should have asked why God put them down there in the first place. Oh, yeah, see the “If I didn’t give you pain” paragraph above.
The fact that everyone believes that their ideology has the TRUTH and the fact that ideologies are vastly different, enough to cause wars, torture, and mayhem, means that SOMEONE IS WRONG! In my opinion, everyone is wrong in the greater sense and right in the personal sense. Religion, like bad poetry, should be personal, not inflicted on others.
I am going to guess that the vast majority of Christians have not read the Bible thoroughly. If they had, they could not, unless they were completely insane, believe that it was divinely inspired, or that it is literally true. That book is the most unbelievably crazy conglomerate of contradictions and nonsense. It condones slavery, incest, infanticide, patricide, violent subjugation of women, and so much more. But hey, as long as it condemns homosexuality and prostitution, what they Hell. Sorry, I said no more jokes.
Granted, the Catholics say that they don’t take the Bible literally. That’s fine, they have other problems to deal with. Subjugating the strongest drive in the human, sexuality has produced centuries of priests who, shall we say, find sexual outlet in less than socially acceptable ways. Now, I’m not condemning all priests. I’m sure many have dealt with their sexuality the way most other men without a human partner do. Let’s leave it at that.
If God is everything, then God is also evil. If God is not everything, then he/she/it is not omniscient and therefore does not fit the popular idea of God.
There is ample evidence showing how the Christian beliefs, and in fact, most of the major religions of the world, evolved. They had very little to do with a divine, omnipresent being. There is mounting evidence the Jesus’ life story was fabricated for political reasons. If anyone named “Jesus” (not his real name) existed, he was certainly not anything like the contradictory stories about him in the Bible. Hell, the Bible even gets his inception mixed up. Even though Joseph was not supposed to have been the sperm donor, the Bible counts his genealogy through Joseph’s lineage. Most of Jesus’ life was lifted from earlier myths and stories and jammed together to get fearful, superstitious folk to follow along.
It’s quite a racket to get so many people to believe that if they give you money now, you will take care of them in the afterlife. It’s kind of like the company started in the 2011 End of the World scheme. This company promised that for a fee of no small amount, they would take care of your pets when the rapture happened. I understand they got quite a few takers. I guess the consensus was that the people at that company were sinners and would be raptured. Hmmmm.
One of the reasons people take religion at face value is because they are used to it. Other people’s beliefs are wild and crazy only because they are unfamiliar. But come-on talking snakes, instant Adam and Eve, a God impregnating a young woman, walking on water, etc. etc.
Another reason people cling to religion is out of fear. Fear of Hell, and fear that if they give it up they will have to deal with how duped they’ve been, then tell mum and dad that they are no longer in the fold.
It’s all so mindless. But then, I think of how easily things become sacred to humans. Take the Hollywood Sign for example. Some years ago, there was talk of tearing it down. People were outraged. You’d think the world was coming to an end. They forgot that originally the Hollywood sign read, “Hollywoodland.” It was an advertisement for real estate.
Even people in so-called Metaphysics, who talk about being one with God and that God is everything and in everyone, and spout that we are all one. Contradict themselves in their constant thanking God for this and that, and being ever so grateful to God for blessings and gifts. God is either us or not. It can’t be both ways.
I recently pulled back from a spiritual center that I really liked because it has increasingly, to my mind, become so much like a regular religion. No, they don’t have a lot of nonsense rules, and sin, Hell, and stuff like that are thankfully still not a part of it. It just seemed to me to be increasingly religious in that the concept of the Big Daddy in the Sky is hard to let go of.
Now, as I said in the beginning, I have not let go of spirituality. I am a strong believer in
science and I think science will one day discover some kind of glue-force that holds us all together. I think this glue-force includes positive and negative poles. It is these poles that combine in ways that create consciousness.
I believe in life after death, only because I have seen and talked to so many spirits in my life, and had so many out of body experiences, it would be hard to deny that we continue on in some form. Right now, I still believe in reincarnation, ESP, energy healing, and astrology, plus other things like that. I believe these things because they give evidence to the incredible and scientifically unexplained personal experiences of my life. There may come a time when someone will have another explanation that makes sense to me. Then, I will happily move on from there. I have no stake in holding on to my beliefs for the sake of them. If my psychic ability is explained any other way, it will still be there.
In the meantime, I like the words of Steven Hawking, that belief in god is for children who are afraid of the dark. The only difference to me is that the God he is speaking of is the, Biblical God. I guess, I’m more of a Taoist than anything. God is a force of light and dark, positive and negative. All things come from that polarity.”
Thanks for reading. Leave a comment, good bad, or lovely and Remember to Live, Love, and Laugh
Anita
A Tale of Tail O’ the Pup and The Outback
Posted by: anitaburns on: March 17, 2011
MMMartini
I have to begin this entry late at night with the confession that I am drunk. Three sheets to the wind, down under, tippled, sloshed, and inebriated. This is not something I indulged in often, although my youth is rife with imbibery.
My ex-husband and now best friend took me out for a belated birthday dinner tonight. We went to the Outback where I started with one of my favorite things, a vodka martini, straight up with two olives. This was my first martini in over a year and I enjoyed it more than I can say. It was superb. I was feeling giggly and relaxed after drinking it to the last drop. In my youth, I always opted for drinks that included food, and I was never one for sugary, sweet drinks, so there was the Martini.
I must interject here and say that David and I were also playing a scrabble game on my I-Pod during the appetizer. I soon discovered that alcohol interferes with my usual excellent, nay, superior skills with that game. OMG, after a Martini and half a glass of wine, I sound like a character from the Renaissance Faire. WTF?
Oh, yes. I also looked on the Internet for whatever happened to Paul Hogan. Not a pretty sight. Why Paul Hogan? The Outback gives you huge knives to play with your food. I was buttering a dainty bit of bread with a knife that looked like it belonged on a Rhino ranch and it reminded me of Crocodile Dundee, who was played by Paul Hogan. How could I resist. As I said, not a pretty sight. Probably better off not knowing.
Anyway, since I am sharing this with my food blog, I will describe the rest of the meal. We started with coconut shrimp appetizer. Excellent. Plump shrimp encrusted with coconut. Fresh flavor and not at all greasy. The dipping sauce was a sort of marmilade. Good, but Red Lobster still holds the prize for best coconut shrimp on the planet because of its Pina Colada sauce.
I ordered the 10 oz ribeye with mushrooms and blue cheese sprinkles on top. Thanking the powers that I came to my senses and stopped being a vegetarian, I blessed the beast who gave his life so that I could enjoy this meal. I went traditional and had baked potato with the works (on the side) and mixed vegetables.
A word about vegetarianism. I still have a pang of old guilt hanging on about eating part of a creature that probably lived and died in the most horrific of ways. So, blessing the food is a way of easing my conscience. When I was a vegetarian, an activist vegetarian, I noticed that none of the causes I was ranting about were affected in the least. Plus, well, never mind. I’ll blog about vegetarianism later. Suffice it to say that I am mostly at peace with my eating habits now.
David ordered the 14 oz ribeye with horseradish sauce, broccoli, and a Caesar salad. BTW. Did you know that the Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, California? No anchovies in the original. But, I digress.
Food was incredible! Except for the vegetables that were cooked within an inch of disintegration, and unnaturally green for that state of doneness. It’s possible they add baking soda to the water they cook the veggies in. It softens them too much and keeps them bright and green.
Steak was cooked just right, potato likewise, although notably ordinary. They didn’t put the stuff on the side like I asked, but at that point, I didn’t give a flying fig. Mushrooms were perfect, although not as perfect as what I make at home. I slice them, brown them in butter, and add red wine and garlic to the sauce. I had a glass of red Zinfandel that was drinkable, if not exceptional. I am a raging wine snob after all and have wine delivered to me from Reustle Prayer Rock in Oregon. This was inoffensive but I wouldn’t buy it.
I won the Scrabble game in spite of my head spinning. Then, after sounding decidedly tippled to the waitress, in a happy way, I ordered desert—the three sampler plate of cheesecake, something chocolate with ice cream, and a carrot cake. I have to say that all three were excellent. Often deserts in restaurants are awful, mostly sweet with no depth of flavor. These were all very good.
Tail O' the Pup for breakfast
So what’s with the title that includes Tail O’ the Pup? On the way to the Outback, we passed a hot dog stand and briefly discussed doing a series on our Fractured Foodies Having Fun Blog about hot dogs. It was then that I remembered all the great hot dogs I’ve had—Pinks, topping the list, then a little stand on Santa Monica Beach, and of course, Tail O’ the Pup in L.A. “I’m going to blog about the pup,” I slurred to David half way through dinner. And so it is.
Once upon a tim, in my wicked youth of twenty something, I partied hardy in Santa Monica and Los Angeles. I would often attend after hours, all night parties with musicians, actors, mystics, and various oddballs. It was usually formal attire, long dresses, feathers, jewelry, lots of make-up, heavy false eyelashes, and poofy hair held together like cement with gallons of hair spray.
Sometimes, on my way home in the wee hours of the morning (read afternoon), I would stop at the Tail O’ the Pup, in my finery and very dark sunglasses, and have a hot dog and Coke for breakfast. What a sight I must have been. If I were a great artist, I would paint my memory of sitting on the counter stool, long shimmery dress dragging onto the ground and my feet securely painful in too high heels.
My hair was probably popping out of it’s piled high prison, and I’m sure I had a false eyelash or two hanging on by sheer willpower. And there I was, munching on a super chili dog with extra onions and a tall Coca Cola only a few hours before I had either class at the local college or a job to go to. 
Tail o’ the Pup is only one of my most fond memories of life in an era of freedom that is unlikely to be seen again to the “civilized” world. I wouldn’t trade my wicked past for anything. I had more fun than anyone. Aids wasn’t a concern, morality was a personal matter, and drugs flowed freely. By freely, I mean that no one cared whether you imbibed or didn’t. I mostly didn’t, except for a little pot now and then to be sociable. I was a free spirit but not stupid. I liked to dance, laugh, and generally have a good time.
The really interesting thing too, is that I wasn’t really promiscuous, by today’s standards anyway. I knew how to say “no,” and often did. I never thought I wasn’t complete without a man and knew my power. If I wanted a partner, there were plenty of takers. When I was in a relationship, I was generally faithful. I knew when to move on, and did so, often.
As I may have said before, men, in my life have been like New York Taxi Cabs. If I missed one, another came along in just a little while. Since, I’m no beauty, I’ve never really figured that out, except that I was never afraid of men, nor did I idolize them. I think men are just like everyone else. If you treat them with respect, they respond in a positive way. But then, maybe I’m just full of s!@#. I don’t really know. I like men and, until I “grew up,” I didn’t know what it was to be committed to one individual for long.
The Tail ‘O the Pup is one of my favorite iconic memories of an era of emotional and sexual freedom that will probably never come again. Thank the powers that I’m old enough to have experienced it—Groovy.
Thanks for listening. I’d love to hear from you and your life. I’m off to bed now with three aspirins and a glass of water (the best hangover preventative ever!)
For an interesting look at Tail o’ the Pup, go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_o%27_the_Pup
Maybe If I Had Been a Mother, This Would Be Easier?
Posted by: anitaburns on: March 12, 2011
I woke up this morning with the fervent hope that my dementia-riddled mother had kept her Depends on all night and that the Immodium I gave her before bed worked.
When I crept out into the hallway and peered into her room she was still asleep after being up for two and a half hours later than her usual sleep time last night. Great! I have a couple of minutes to snuggle with hubby, check my email and YouTube subscriptions, maybe get a little Facebook time in on my beloved IPad. Aaaaah.
Half an hour later, I see her,on the surveillance monitor, standing in the doorway of her bedroom, looking lost. I hauled myself out of bed, donned sweats and slippers and came out into the hallway. She said that she had been calling me but I didn’t answer. Cue dramatic music—GUILT! I had shut my bedroom door and was listening to Chad Vader’s latest video when she needed help. Aaaargh!
Skip forward a few minutes. She didn’t remember that she has trouble walking and was wondering what was going on. Alas, she did NOT, after all sleep in her Depends. There were great pools of pee all over the sheets and the plastic covered carpet. Groan.
My blessings this day boil down to: at least it’s only pee and not piles of steaming sh%# and, thank the powers that be, it didn’t get onto the carpet! Whew!!!
I help her turn around, grabbed her cane and took it to her. I turned her around again to remind her where the bathroom is so she could shower. I then hunted down a roll of paper towels to sop up the ocean on the floor, found the cleaning supplies, rubber gloves, and such. Pointed her again to the bathroom, ran into the bathroom for her walker, took it to her and showed her again how to use it. Ran back into the bathroom, turned on the shower, found a clean wash cloth and placed the soap within her reach. Pant, pant, pant.
I went back into the bedroom She was almost to the bathroom, apologizing. I reassured her that it’s okay, she couldn’t help it. Helped her out of her wet nightgown and slippers and into the shower. Handed her the soap and a cloth and reminded her to use the soap.
I shut the shower door after seeing that she was safely seated on her shower chair, then back into the bedroom to continue “clean-up on aisle 1.” Shower done, I saw that she did not use the soap. Too tired already to fight about it. F#@& it, I handed her a towel after she struggled to stand up.
I went into her closet to get her some clothes and clean slippers. Then, into the bedroom for socks and clean Depends. Helped her get started dressing. Picked up the dirty clothes from her floor. Back into the bedroom to strip her sheets. Took the whole bundle downstairs to the laundry. Ran back upstairs to continue helping her get dressed. Ran to my office down the hall to get her morning medication.
Then I came back, got her cane, reminded her to leave the walker behind, hold on to both railings and be careful coming down stairs. I walked halfway down to see that she was doing it right, then moved into the living room to clear her spot on the couch of the piles of books, and stuff she stacks up every night. I went back to the stairs to remind her to turn right and use her cane. She hobbled across the family room floor to her spot on the couch. Once she was seated (grass grows faster), I went into the kitchen and saw that no one cleaned up last night. Ugh! I cleaned some dishes, pots, the stove, the counters, and rinsed and stacked some other dishes because the dishwasher was full of clean dishes and I was simply NOT going to empty it.
I went back into the family room to give mother her morning meds. Then fed the cat that was threatening to eat my ankles if I didn’t give him a can of his morning sniff and reject treat.
I made tea, an egg with butter and marjoram, and warmed a leftover homemade cranberry/walnut muffin from yesterday. Put it all on a tray with vitamins, and such, gave her a small glass of juice and took it into her on the couch.
In the meantime, I looked at the small sofa in the living room. OMG! Full of cat puke and a wrinkled Piddle pad that I put down on the seat because one of the cats has declared it hers to pee on. Must shampoo sofa today and do something to deter kitty. What? I don’t know.
Hubby is on his way downstairs. LIghtbulb above my head! Aha! Maybe he will clean the sofa. I ask him to do it. He just nods. This means he might, if he remembers. Don’t get me wrong, Allen is an angel. He supportive, caring, and hard-working, but he too is busy and that might slip his attention unless I “remind” him.
I think, okay, now I can go upstairs and get dressed. “NOT SO FAST!” screamed a shrill voice in my head, “There’s still the LAUNDRY.” Right. I went into the laundry room and stuffed everything into the washer. I don’t even bother to separate anymore. If it gets ruined, so be it. Everything gets a scoop of detergent and a little Oxyclean. It’s washed on cold. So there. I used to care. Now, with having to do mountains of laundry almost everyday, I don’t give a flying fig.
In the meantime, during the day, I have to produce product to make a living, take care of mother when she needs a new Depends, or when the guys can’t or they need a break, go shopping, clean house, and talk to clients. I have to work on the big projects I’m trying to finish (and may never at this rate), talk to pharmacists, doctors, help in the garden, cook, and such.
Maybe if I had been a mother, this would be easier. It would have prepared me for the monumental task of caretaking. On the other hand, I only have to go through this once in my life instead of multiple times (if had children). But all is not gloom and doom, I have a royal title now—Queen of Poop, Pee, and Vomit. Wow, could life be any better?
Thanks for reading. I feel better now. I am going to Paneras for breakfast then run errands at Target, Trader Joes, The Vitamin Shoppe, and Home Depot.
Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down To Me
Posted by: anitaburns on: March 9, 2011
I can’t tell you how much being able to blog about my crazy life has meant to me. Oddly, it keeps me sane. I have so much more to spill out onto the page. I just need the days to be 36 hours instead of 24. Alas, my story will be told eventually.
Michael
However, this entry was not written by me. It was written by one of my most favorite people in the world. My friend Michael is one-of-a-kind. We met many moons ago in a yoga class. He could hardly bend or move at all and I wondered at his attempts to stretch and twist his very tall, handsome body only to give up half-way through, find a corner and take a nap. There was a story there, no doubt. After class one night, his bright, twinkly eyes connected with mine and within a few minutes, we were friends.
I was coming to yoga class with my friend Joann at the time and she was initially attracted to Michael, only to change her mind later. Just not her type, she figured. I ended up dating an artist friend of Michael’s for a while. Well, we are all best of friends now. Michael is the type of person who really likes people, and they like him. He can get to know you in an instant and be genuinely interested in your life and your story. Michael is a talented artist, photographer, writer, builder, wood carver, and a beautiful spirit.
For years, I knew that his slight limp and physical problems were the result of, as he said, “Smashing my head against a mountain.” He was a hang glider in the early days of hang gliding. Very dangerous then. Probably still is. Don’t know. Don’t want to find out. He never really told me the story of how this happened though, until now. A few weeks ago, I received an article in my email with the story of how his head was introduced to a mountain and how he was indirectly responsible for the invention of safer hang gliders.
When I read this story, I cried. It touched me so deeply that I wanted to share it with everyone. So, here it is.
Be like a bird.
Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me.
Be like a bird.
Michael McLane
Well, here I am, many moons later, thinking about that day when I almost met my maker. What led up to my decision to jump off the mountain that day when the wind was not quite right has kept my mind busy wondering for 36 years. Finally, at the ripe age of 71, I have enough understanding to write about it.
Two days before that final flight, I had a great ride. December 28 1975 was a good day. My friend John and I hiked down the south slope of Mt. Lukins to the sweet spot for wind All I wanted to do was soar forever. After evaluating the air currents, I elected to be the “wind dummy” and took off first. John followed. We were lifted up like angel’s with wings. A few bumps at first, then a silky glide in smooth circles and a perfect landing.
I couldn’t wait to go out again, so a couple of days later, John and I were on Mt. Wilson. This was not as sure a wind as on Lukins. The strong north side wind moved up the south side in gentle puffs. Hmmm, we considered. Was this the dreaded “rotor” wind? Pilots call this a “wind shear” and it can rip a plane to pieces or cause it to plummet to the earth like a rocket gone bad.
We talked about it for a while. The circular flow of air in a rotor spins like a Ferris wheel out of control. It lifts you up on one side and slams you down the other. We checked all sides from our starting point for signs of “good wind” or “rotor.” In hindsight, we probably ignored the warnings, but as enthusiasts, we were also confident that we knew our stuff.
Wind is a fickle creature and a hang glider is dependent on wind alone to keep it’s rider alive. Even experienced riders can make a mistake and take off in a gentle onflowing wind only to find a rude, or even fatal surprise as they fly headlong into the downside of a rotor. Or, they might be unaware of a wind approaching from the back, or even a thousand feet over their head. Hang gliding is not for the faint of heart. To those who love it, it is worth every risk to soar the heavens and fly free with the birds. There is no feeling like it in the world.
So there we were, hooked into our gliders, looking, feeling, examining, silently praying to the wind gods. Waiting for the right moment to push off, we looked down the mountain for signs that the brush was showing a nice breeze coming up the slope. We were expert riders and knew enough to remember that no matter what our precautions, surprises can kill us anyway.
I guess, thinking back, that my desire to fly overrode my good sense that day and I miscalculated the wind as thoroughly as a beginner would have. But, that was then. Looking back always brings more clarity.
Mt. Wilson is a large canyon flight with an altitude of about 5,000 feet at take off. While we were considering and waiting, John took out his field glasses and looked at the brush and tree movement on the canyon ridges to our right and left. No wind indications there, but the landing site in Eaton’s Canyon showed flags blowing straight up the canyon toward us. This was a good sign, the sign we had been waiting for. So, even though there was a little voice in the back of my mind screaming DANGER! I pushed it out of the way and remembered that Mt. Lukins turned out okay, so, “What the Hell, I’m going.” I pushed off.
It was a good take-off and all went well for about a mile. After a few hard bumps, all was calm. Ahhhh. That wasn’t so bad, I said to myself as I sank into the bliss of gliding. My peace was short-lived though. Without warning, my glider yawed left until I was flying backwards, away from the mountain. Uh oh! I broke out in a sweat as I saw that I was still level from my take-off point. I managed to turn the glider around and started a bank to the right to get the hell out of whatever turned me around.
I relaxed for a second as the glider levelled out. Then it shot up for about 1,000 feet in six seconds! I was screwed. In those days we flew in a swing seat sitting upright. In my attempt to dive to a lower altitude I pushed the control bar against my navel. I didn’t work.
The glider flipped upside down over the nose. I was on top of the winds now. “Oh no,” I muttered as I heard the distinct sound of aluminum crinkling, like wind chimes. How ironic that such a beautiful sound could be so deadly. The glider flipped and I was under it again, or what was left of it. One wing gone and the rest a total mess. I thought that this would be a good time to wake up and realize that this was just a nightmare. It didn’t happen. I knew I was dead.
I was spinning so fast details of the ground below were a blur of motion. Oddly, my mind went to, You shouldn’t have taken off. Why don’t you have a parachute? and useless thoughts along those lines.
Down below, greenery was spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane, but I could make out, in the middle of that whirl, a large tan rock that I was bound to hit flat on. No hope. All I could think was, Ok, if this is what you’e gotten yourself into, it’s alright. I was resigned to the fact that if one transgresses the rules of the elements, a payment has to be made.
“It’s alright,” I said aloud three times, trying to fortify myself. In a way I became detached. I grew bored with being so helpless. I thought of disengaging myself from the glider so I had a chance of being flung out into the trees or bushes instead of that swiftly approaching rock. I couldn’t tell how high I was so I didn’t let go.
Next, the sound of the wind and flapping sail grew louder and I was crashing through trees and brush, feet first, pulling off branches, then whole bushes out of loose, granular ground. Suddenly, I stopped sliding, the last bush held. Old movie serials came to mind as the hero is saved by the last branch he grabbed on his way to a sure death at the bottom of the gulch. Even in crisis, our sense of humor and irony never leaves us.
There I was, laying on my back, just above the sheer drop off. I was grasping that bush, grinning, with tears in my eyes. Was I really alive? What’s next? At first, I couldn’t tell how badly I was injured. Then I saw that my left foot was pointing off at a weird angle. I knew my leg was probably broken. I eased my grip on the bush and didn’t slide down the mountain any further. I felt my thigh. It was tight and numb so it knew it was the femur that broke. I felt around the leg to see if anything was sticking out. I found a lump, but my pant leg wasn’t damp, so I was bleeding externally. I wasn’t numb anywhere else and I could move my head with no strange feelings or any pain. That was good news at least, probably no serious back injury.
After a few minutes, the shock was wearing off and pain was invading my body. I decided that I’d better secure myself to the bush in case I passed out. I pulled myself straight up for about twelve inches so I could get my arm around the bush, then wrapped my hand through the cord that held the front of my field jacket closed.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the heavy jacket, gloves, and helmet that kept my skin intact. Later, when my heavy hiking boots were removed, my toes were completely black.
After I felt confident that I was secured to the bush, I looked up the hillside and saw my glider. It was a mangled mess. It had struck the cliff cliff nose first. I was about 120 feet down the slope from the glider.
I’m still not sure how I missed that rock I was sure would be my final resting place. Nor can I figure out how I came undone from my swing seat. Perhaps when I was contemplating disengaging from the glider, I actually started to undo the belt. All I can put together is that the glider must have slammed into the cliff, somehow unlocking the belt. The centrifugal force then could have flung me down the cliff at an angle. Going through the trees slowed me down a lot. But, this is conjecture. I will never know what really happened because I don’t remember hitting the ground.
So, there I was in the middle of nowhere. Was someone looking for me? I waited for rescue or death from exposure or wound infection. About fifteen minutes later a helicopter showed up and hovered above the glider, blowing it away like an autumn leaf in the breeze. It was then that I realized another mistake in judgment. My field jacket was green; so were my pants. I looked like any other bush. Only my blue helmet could have stood out against the landscape.
The helicopter moved off a bit to my left, hovered for about 30 seconds, then flew off. My heart sank. I mentally kicked myself for being clever enough to camouflage so well by wearing green. Just when I was about to give in emotionally to the inevitable, I heard someone climbing around in the brush above me. I tried to call out, but couldn’t because my ribs were injured to the point that I couldn’t take a deep enough breath to yell. I tried whistling. That worked. It caught the rescuer’s attention and he called out for me to continue whistling.
I guess we looked pretty good to each other; he as my rescuer and me no looking like hamburger. He opened his emergency kit and tried to hydrate me with an IV, but couldn’t find a vein that hadn’t yet collapsed from shock and contacted someone at a hospital who gave suggestions for getting the IV going. I was growing impatient to be OFF OF THIS DAMNED MOUNTAIN! I told him that I would take care of the shock so that he could concentrate on getting me out of there. The hospital agreed. The rest of the rescue team arrived and told me they had to get me to an open area so that the helicopter could pick me up. I felt both dread and relief. Visions of being dropped and rolling off the cliff like a downhill snowball ran through my head.
My fears were unfounded. These guys knew their stuff. They put me into a basket with ropes and tackle attached and worked me up to a place that was away from the cliff. The helicopter positioned itself over me and lowered a cable so it could be attached to the basket. It was a surreal view as I was being drawn towards the bottom of the only hope I had of living. I could feel helicopter fighting the same wind that collapsed my glider and mild worry grew into near panic. Oh my God! I said to myself, I’m getting into another aircraft.
Finally, I was level with the open door and a man pulled me inside and slammed the door. He told me to keep my hands inside the basket and the helicopter pulled away from the mountain. The air got rougher. There we were, only three of us, me, the pilot and the crewman who pulled me in. He was hanging onto the superstructure and I was being tossed all over the inside. By the time we got away from the mountain, I was mostly on the floor and feeling extremely grateful.
Inside an hour of the crash I was safely in a hospital. I had a broken left femur and shoulder. My left arm was paralyzed. Almost immediately the doctor drilled a bolt into my shin so my leg could be put into traction. I was moved to a room with scaffolding for the leg and sandbags were attached. I could feel the pull. Not fun. But, there were drugs and then I was blissfully unconscious.
When I was able to function again, I looked at pictures that were taken of the site. One picture amazes me still. It was my glove, still hanging onto a piece of the control bar. There are a lot of unanswered questions about that crash and I can live with that. My brother told me they could see a tunnel carved through the branches and the ground littered with broken parts of brush, trees, and glider. During my slide, my doctor thought that a branch caught me at just the right angle to break my femur instead of shatter it. From the nerve damage to the shoulder, he concluded that the same branch that broke the leg, broke the shoulder and pulled my arm to about the level of my ear. My arm should have been ripped off, but it wasn’t.
My recovery was slow. At first, I could feel everything, but had no motor control It took years to get the use of my arm back. I still have back and leg pain. For the two months I lay in the hospital, there was guilt that came and went, guilt that I was probably a contributor to having hang gliding sites shut down. This would mean that others would not be able to have what I considered to be one of the most beautiful experiences possible, flying free.
Later I discovered that I was probably climbing at about 60 mph with the wind going in the opposite direction at the same speed when I hit the dreaded rotor. Basically, the wind changed direction at about 120 mph—OUCH!
When I was on my own again, I visited all the flying sights that I knew and cautioned fliers not to take the risks I did. In other words, I cautioned them to never fly with their egos. Shortly after that, my friend Chris Price came to visit. He showed me his latest achievement, a brand new flying harness that included a parachute. I finally realized that my survival and my proactive demands for hang gliding safety reform brought about parachutes becoming a common part of a flying harness. It also brought about industry testing for the strength, dive recovery, and stability of hang gliders.
Recollecting that fall brings many thoughts to me that I am sure are shared by others who have suffered a crisis. There is the theme about how precious time is. I have spent only a little time beating myself up for the mistakes I made that day. The rest of the time, what I thought was the rest of my life, brought up what was most precious to me. I was grateful that the lady I loved was not there to see what had happened to me. Another thought was the gratitude that I felt for having had the chance to experience the true freedom of flying in a hang glider.
In most movies and TV shows I’ve seen of people falling to their death, they scream all the way down. It wasn’t like that at all. I was laughing from the joy I had had in my life. Looking back, I am sure I understood that there was no time to waste in fear or sadness.
So, it comes to this wisdom, dying in a hang glider should be left as a vicarious experience. Giving up living is easy when you have exhausted all means of surviving. If time permits, the terror of being so helpless is beyond my comprehension, even though I went through it. It is a frightening door that I do not even want to remember opening. I hope that no one reading this has to experience what I went through. You might survive and relate your story to others, but probably not.
I owe the Montrose Search and Rescue for my survival. My brother John, Glen Brown, and Chris Price for retrieving my glider and taking pictures of the site, and so many others who dedicated their time to helping me recover. Thank you.
I no longer fly hang gliders and lead a much more sedate life, at least physically, but I still have fantasies about flying. To be sure there is still a smile on my face.
Love to hear your comments and stories.
Thanks,
Anita
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- J.P. Lane: Anita, as I read this post these words kept humming in my mind - Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end (: Great post. Glad I fou
- anitaburns: Thanks Mike. Maybe I will put this all together in a book.
- Michael McLane: Right on Anita!!!! Unh, well there are some new tie dye T shits showing up in San Pedro. Really Anita, when are you going to put this all togeth
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