This past week marked a watershed moment for civil rights, in which the Supreme Court determined that the 14th Amendment protected same-sex marriage.  This is wonderful news for all Americans, as any extension of civil rights helps to protect everyone’s civil rights.

This got me to thinking, as it often does, of westerns.  Westerns are considered by many, including myself, as something like “America’s Genre.”  The western is the quintessential American story, and it really represents to me an embodiment of all the best that our country has to offer.

But wait, many will say, isn’t the western simply a genre rife with the romanticization of White oppression and the colonization of native peoples, essentially a genre of white hegemony? Well, yes, and also no.

The Western, firstly, is many things.  As Richard Slotkin has argued in his trilogy of the genre, the western has changed and morphed to suit and reflect the times in which it was made.  The westerns of the 1950s were very clear-cut, and reflected the certainty of their age, while the westerns of the late 1960s and 1970s demonstrated a much more nuanced treatment of the western hero, and indeed offered a new protagonist, the “anti-hero,” most notably of the spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood. Richard Etulain calls these “gray westerns” because the boundary between good guy and bad guy is much more difficult to ascertain.  It was in the ‘70s that we got such notables as “Little Big Man” and later, in the 80s, “Dances With Wolves.”

But back to same sex marriage and gender roles in the western.  The Western has long been a bastion of conservative values in some respects, but if we look to the literature and the history of the late 19th century, a couple of things stand out.  First and foremost, the West of real life was a good bit more diverse than the Hollywood West that emulated it.  Some figures put white cowboys in the minority, especially in the desert Southwest, where much of the cowboy terminology owes a great debt to the Spanish and Mexican vaqueros.  Secondly, the western, as a genre, is capable of housing a multiplicity of viewpoints while still remaining a clearly identifiable western (staying true to popular genre markers), and so the tales that the western tells are not only chronicles of conquest and power, but of understanding and coexistence, and sometimes even forgiveness.

Bret Harte was an early “local color” writer whose work preceded (and some may say enabled) the success of Mark Twain.  One of his notable short stories is “Tennessee’s Partner,” which is based on a real-life pair of men in California.  In the short story, Tennesee runs off with his partner’s wife, only to return without her.  In an unexpected twist, the partner forgives and accepts him back.  In real life, the same thing happened, but the two men, Chaffee and Chamberlain, continue to live together for 54 years.  While they were not exactly “out” by modern standards, the local community seems to have considered them a couple, and accepted them as such.  People who had no particular acceptance for homosexuality accepted these two men.

Which brings me to my point.  The frontier west was a vast space with relatively small population densities, and although it was rough and tumble, people also had to work together, and the openness of the frontier created social spaces for coexistence that did not exist elsewhere.  Women, for instance, had voting rights in Wyoming from 1869, and most of the states west of the Mississippi granted women the right to vote prior to the 19th Amendment in 1920.  People might not like a certain ethnicity, or gender or religion, but in the old west they couldn’t remain ensconced in insular Facebook chat rooms of like-mindedness; they had to exercise tolerance and a certain amount of acceptance, even among people with whom they disagreed.  Some western stories, like “Tennessee’s Partner,” demonstrate this point.  You can see this story, and others, in the collection below.

I do not for a moment suggest that the west of history or literature is really a misunderstood land of progressive thinkers masquerading as rough and ready gunfighters, but do think that it’s a good example of how people can live and even thrive together in spite of their differences, and how a good western can often show us how to do it.

So I’ve named my little blog “Writin’ the River,” which may seem a bit . . . counterintuitive to those who know me and know where I live.   As my wife said upon seeing the name of my blog, “what river?”

It’s true, Arizona is not really known for its rivers, especially here in the south.  We have the mighty Colorado, which still qualifies as mighty in certain seasons, up in the Grand Canyon and cutting along our western border.  That is certainly our biggest claim to fame, and our tourism export. There is also the Salt River, which winds its way out of the White Mountains and provides Phoenicians with some hot-weather relief as they tube down its length.  But by the time it reaches Phoenix proper, it’s pretty slim pickins.  As a general rule, rivers and creeks in AZ are more riverbed than river.

I was thinking about none of this when I chose the name.

I was thinking of a metaphoric river, and of the idea of “riding the river,” (see what I did there?).  The river represents boundaries, movement and journeys, but also the quality of people one wants to accompany them on such journeys.  There is an old saying that someone “will do to ride the river with.” This phrase is used to compliment someone by saying they were of good stock, reliable and dependable.  I believe this phrase began with the Texas Border Patrol, who quite literally rides along the Rio Grande as it marks the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico, and the phrase was popularized by the famous Border Patrolman Bill Jordan in his book, No Second Place Winner (see below) .  For men like Jordan, men whose livelihoods depended upon being able to trust one’s partner quite literally with their lives, it was no small thing to be considered good enough to ride the river with.

So this blog is named as it is in honor of my own humble aspirations.  In my professional life as a teacher, writer, and artist, I hope that my colleagues and students, and all my readers will find that I “will do to write the river with.”

One of my little secrets is my love for reality television shows (I guess it’s not so secret anymore).  Lately, I’ve been watching the cooking show Chopped quite a bit, and I think I’ve learned some interesting things about the foodservice industry that I did not know before.  One of the most telling differences between the different competitors is their level of education; many chefs who are relatively successful in their profession come onto Chopped and admit that they have never been to culinary school, that they received their education through hard-won experience.

What it means to be Chopped

Contestants routinely cite their competing on Chopped as an appeal for validation that they are truly good enough, that they made the right choice in their profession, that they (excuse the pun) “make the cut.”  As one contestant said, a win “would be a complete affirmation that I’m going in the right direction.”

This obsession with being “good enough” seems to me to correlate quite closely with the academic graduate student’s obsession with being “smart enough,” or “published enough,” or whatever benchmark they believe they might have some measure of control over as they enter what they know will be a brutal job search.  Ultimately, many candidates who are plenty skilled will not make the cut, just as many talented chefs don’t pass muster on Chopped. 

Training or Education?

I’m not sure what the ratio is of professional chefs (and I’m not sure if that term has a standardized definition) who are “trained” on the job versus those who are “educated” at culinary institutions, but there does appear to be a clear distinction on the show, an unspoken tension among the different classes.  Those who have attended a famous culinary school make a point of naming their institution in much the same way as those who have degrees from highly sought-after academic programs, and anyone who has training in the French style makes a studious point of letting viewers (and judges, and anyone else in the vicinity) aware of their awesomeness.

The self-taught chefs, however, present the most interesting perspective on their education.  They almost always note that they didn’t go to culinary school, which they follow with either an expression of doubt or hope that they will be able to perform or a self-conscious assertion that they are just as good as those who attended a culinary school.  Sometimes the competitor appears to really believe themselves, and other times they are transparently justifying their position.

All this makes me think about the difference between training and education, and the purposes behind each.  When I think of “Training,” I think of something, generally of short duration, that is designed to impart specific skills to do a given task.  I get training in Canvas, our college’s learning management system (think Blackboard), I get training in how to navigate Word or build a web page.  In foodservice, one might be trained in some certain aspect of the business, say dishwashing or prep work.  Later, one is promoted to the grill or line cook, and learns this job.  After several years, the employee has held many of the cooking jobs, and knows how to do almost everything, so they feel confident and apply for Chopped.  They are well-trained, but are they educated?

To be educated implies more than simply having amassed a certain number of skill sets, although the connotation is not widely agreed upon.  An “education,” particularly in the humanistic tradition, implies taking a longer view than simply learning discrete skills that someone might pay for; this is historically the difference between getting a degree (Associate’s, Bachelor’s or higher) or getting a certificate, the difference between a certificate from a mechanic’s institute and the mechanics program at a community college.

What’s the Takeaway?

What’s my point here?  At regular intervals on Chopped, the contestants must deal with exotic, often truly odd ingredients, the sort of thing that no one, I mean no one, ever really cooks with.  Someone who has a fuller education, generally, finds themselves in a better position to address these odd ingredients.  They may never have actually used (or even seen!) a hundred-year egg, but they’ve heard of it.  Sometimes they’ve never encountered an ingredient, like goat brains, before, or fenugreek (is it a grain? Is it a spice?), but they can more easily assess its qualities and make a better (wait for it) educated guess about how to address it.  Ultimately, it comes down to a difference of knowing how to do something, versus knowing how to think through a unique problem.  The solution of education is the ability to think through unforeseen situations more so than the ability to perform a predetermined set of specific tasks.

For contestants on Chopped, as it is for our students, pursuing an education is an act of faith that the things learned are intrinsically valuable; even though they may take their culinary degree and work in a rib joint, knowing how to julienne an exotic vegetable just might come in handy someday.  Our students often bemoan the pointlessness of required courses like English and Math, but I submit that, like their culinary brethren, having an education pays dividends far beyond the concrete skill set required for a particular job title.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several western states had Ranger companies, mostly formulated on the model of the Texas Rangers, which were perhaps the first and are almost certainly the most famous.   Colorado, New Mexico, California, and Arizona all had Ranger organizations.  Virtually all of them are now defunct.

The Arizona Rangers were founded in 1901 to combat rustling and lawlessness that was giving the territory a bad reputation and stood in the way of the territory’s bid for statehood.  The rangers, 26 men in all, were tasked with law enforcement over the entire territory.  They mostly worked alone, often undercover, and had to provide all their own equipment. It was a tough way to make a living.

The Arizona Rangers don't get nearly the publicity of their Texas brethren, probably due to their short tenure, although Bill O’Neil did write a fine history of the Rangers; see the link below. 

They were disbanded in ’09, having either arrested or chased off most of the real rowdies, and Arizona came to statehood in 1912.  The territorial rangers moved on to other work, but in 1957 several of them decided they saw a need for a community service organization, and they reformed the Arizona Rangers as an all-volunteer law enforcement auxiliary.  The new Arizona Rangers have been serving their respective communities and raising and donating money to children's charities ever since.

Today they are a recognized 501(c) (3) non-profit organization with four goals:

1.  Render aid and assistance to law enforcement when called upon

2. Provide support for youth organizations

3.  Support community activities that  benefit all involved

4.   Keep alive the traditions of the old west

I am proud to be associated with the Arizona Rangers, serving my local community and raising money for our children.  

I have long wanted to be a writer, specifically a novelist, and for a number of years have actually worked toward that goal.  Sometimes feverishly, sometimes sporadically, but with my pen always pointed in a literary direction.  I enjoyed the work, and enjoyed some successes. However, like many other reasonable people, I recognized that being “a writer” in the way I mean it (as opposed to being a journalist, for instance) is an unstable profession ill-suited to raising a family or enjoying the sort of lifestyle that most of us Americans have come to enjoy and expect.  So I put it on the back burner, and instead have worked at a career in academia with the implicit goal of securing the “day job” and then being free to work on my novels, secure in the knowledge that I would not be, well, that I would not be risking too much.

It worked out okay.  Not great, not bad, but okay.

But today I am tired of being reasonable.

Today, I am A Writer, and there is nothing much reasonable about that.   Today, “I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.”

This web page is my yawp, my authorial manifesto.  It’s my little place to share with the world what I’ve written and what I’m currently writing.  This blog is something like my writing journal, in which I ponder and postulate about whatever has caught my attention. Sometimes it may be insightful, other times it may be silly.  Some ideas will go nowhere, and some will hit pay dirt.  Writing is sort of like cooking spaghetti; you’ve just got to keep throwing noodles at the wall until something sticks.

This site is where I get my Joseph Campbell on and “follow my bliss.”  If your bliss is a little like my bliss, come join me on this rollicking journey, and we’ll see what we find.

Now then, everyone into the pool!