Kitt Peak, Home of A Beautiful and Benign Science

March 31st, 2017 · No Comments

Kitt Peak by Jane St. Clair

A traveler went all over the world to see holy places like Bethlehem and Mecca .. And yet it was this traveler who said that Kitt Peak was the most spiritual place he’d ever visited.

The beautiful mile-high mountain has great serenity, grace and peace about it, as if it were a natural cathedral. The Tohono O’odham nation, upon whose land Kitt Peak sits, recognize it as the holy place that it is –for it is where their elder brother deity resides. Their creator deity lives on Baboquivari Peak, the sacred center of their cosmology. You can see Baboquivari from Kitt Peak’s fabulous summit.

Kitt Peak has the earth’s largest collection of telescopes so you’re seeing this strange mix of high-tech meets mountain wilderness. As you drive up the mountain, the telescopes first look like a field of little R2D2s.

But they are much bigger than Star Wars droids. The Mayall telescope has an 18-foot dome, and it’s so huge that you can see it from 50 miles away.The equipment is crisp and white against the big blue Arizona skies, and it holds all the promise of a sea voyage on a crisp blue day in a white clipper ship.

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The various telescopes have different jobs. Some are solar telescopes that make the sun look like a gigantic red fireball with fire flares darting around its edges. But oh! the pictures the night telescopes can make! Pictures of impossibly beautiful colors and amazing shapes! Pictures of billions and billions of stars in billions of galaxies, billions of light-years away!



You can go inside some of Kitt Peak’s gigantic telescopes and watch them operate in perfect mechanical symmetry.They move in a high art form, the kind Stanley Kubrick captured perfectly in his movie 2001 when he made intricate technology dance in perfect synchronization to soaring orchestral music.

Plato said, “Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” I think that is what makes it a beautiful and benign science. It reminds us that our small planet is part of something beyond ordinary comprehension. It is a science where there are no national identities, no boundaries .. just purity and universality. It is the place where science touches the spiritual.

Vincent Van Gogh understood that intersection because he said once … I have … a terrible need… shall I say the word? … of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

A Starry Night (courtesy of Vincent-Van-Gogh-Gallery.org)

To plant your visit to Kitt Peak, check out National Optical Astronomy Observatory website

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White Heat, Desert Summer

July 2nd, 2023 · No Comments

White Heat
by Jane St Clair

I don’t think there is a place as quiet as the Sonoran desert in summer noon. The temperature is an impossible 119 degree inferno in the shade but then, there is hardly any shade. I call it “white heat.”

It is the white quiet heat that rises and radiates above the quick licking tongues of fire. White heat, a white aura rising from the desert ground. White heat bleaching away the colors from the desert so everywhere you look, it is faded and brown.

Noel Coward said only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun, and he was right. It is madness to stand out here. No one and nothing is out here, which is why it is so quiet.

The silence is all encompassing – nothing stirs, not even the tips of trees. Desert colors are subtle, mostly a series of pastel greens, but the white heat and the silence fades them.

I can see for miles and miles and miles past the mountain ranges and into skies a hundred miles away, and nothing moves, not even a leaf. I can see for miles and miles, but I can’t hear anything at all.

Why listen for a leaf? — cactus don’t have leaves – their leaves have shriveled up into prickly needles eons ago, sturdy little stubby things that stand up and bloom in the noonday sun. I admire them.

Where is everyone? It is so silent here, it is so quiet. Nothing stirs, not even the tips of trees.

Everyone has gone underground where it is cool or else they are sleeping under cool rocks. They are sleeping and they will do their foraging by moonlight.

A kitfox ..

A puma …

A Mexican wolf

A bobcat …

Even a centipede…

They are sleeping, sleeping past the noonday sun. It is so silent, it is so quiet as Brother Sun casts down his white heat rays. Summer heat, white heat, so very very hot.

Finally the sun’s cruel rays slant and wane in late afternoon.

Mercifully, Brother Sun is walking to the other side of Mother Earth.

Now the creatures will come out and they will dance by the light of the moon. They will dance all night until the desert sleeps again, until she sleeps in the white heat of summer.

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May You Walk in Beauty

March 1st, 2023 · No Comments

“May you walk in beauty” means something like shalom in Hebrew or being in a state of grace in Christianity. Walking in beauty is being in harmony with everything around you – recognizing the beauty and connectedness of everything you see, even with those things that may not seem conventionally beautiful. It is a heightened state of consciousness.

May you walk in beauty all your days.


NAVAJO BLESSINGWAY POEM OF BEAUTY

Navajo Blessingway Sedona Jane St clair

In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk

Beautifully I will possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk

With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk

With beauty may I walk

With beauty before me may I walk

With beauty behind me may I walk

With beauty above me may I walk

With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk

It is finished in beauty

It is finished in beauty

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Ghostbusters of Bisbee, Arizona

October 1st, 2022 · No Comments

Bisbee, Arizona, sits on top a hill in colorful pieces like a kid’s jigsaw puzzle. It was once the biggest city between the Mississippi and the Pacific, but it shrunk and it is still shrinking even as you read this.

Bisbee is arty and has a love-and-peace 1960s vibe, but don’t you believe that one minute! Bisbee is full of ghosts and the paranormal investigators and ghostbusters who track them!

Scared yet?

Bisbee has always been and still is about copper. Today the Big Lavender Pit Mine uses bulldozers and technology ….

But back in the day, the miners rode little railroads into the cruel darkness of the underground caves blasted open by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Back in the day Bisbee was full of violent men who’d shoot each other and hang each other over women and cards or because they were too drunk to know better.

Today people come to Bisbee from all over the world with ghostbusting thermometers and proton packs. You can even take a Bisbee ghost tour while riding in a hearse. Ghostbusters look for spectres and ghosts of cheating card sharks, murdering cowboys, zombie miners, and dangerous women you don’t want to know.

Scared yet?

The Oliver House alone was the scene of 26 murders.

It’s so creepy that its neighbors put up gargoyles as a feng shui measure to keep those ghosts in their usual home.

Scared yet?

City Park at Brewery Gulch looks peaceful enough, but it’s a place with extreme readings of paranormal activity. It used to be a cemetery. The legend is that all the bodies and caskets floated down this innocent-looking hill during a flood.

Scared yet?

A miner’s ghost turns on the jukebox at St. Elmo’s Bar, another ghost climbs into bed with guests at the Bisbee Inn, a prostitute-ghost roams the streets of Bisbee looking for the cowboy who killed her accidentally while cleaning his gun, and a Madam refuses to move out of Opera Drive Brothel. The Lady in White shows up at the top of the staircases,

and once she scared three little boys so badly that they ran away — accidentally saving their lives as the ground behind them collapsed in a sudden torrential rain.

Scared yet?

Even the Bisbee prom has a zombie theme.

Every night teams of ghostbusters go looking for spooks and spectres and the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man! Aha! We have a reading here by the Copper Queen Hotel on our ghost detector that shows a non-repeating phantasm or a class-5 free roaming vapor circa 1912 ….

Scared yet?

Lions and Tigers and Bears and things that go va voom in the night.

Scared yet?

But now …Yes! Oorah!

We’ve made it to dawn —and— Bisbee’s not a bit scary in the morning.

Good job, you Ghostbuster of Bisbee. Oorah!

 

 

 
For more about ghostbusting in Bisbee, go here.

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Ted DeGrazia – His Art, His Life, His Way

August 1st, 2022 · No Comments

by Jane St. Clair

I have a snobby friend who says Ted DeGrazia was not much of an artist. It’s true that his most famous work is a UNICEF Christmas card. It sold in the millions, but it’s not like it’s the Mona Lisa or something.


To me, DeGrazia’s art is not just about his paintings. His art is about how he lived his life here in Tucson. That is why I like to go up to where Swan Road almost ends under Fingertip Rock. There I can see how an artist truly did it his way.

DeGrazia built everything himself – his little house, his chapel, his studio and his art gallery. Because everything’s hand-built adobe, the buildings are small and primitive.

There are nutsy-putsy decorations everywhere – crucifixes mixed with beer cans, candles on cactus, and old Singer sewing machines used for planters. Nothing’s wasted, like the way poor people do things. There’s art in every corner. Everything’s art.

The chapel, dedicated to Padre Kino, could hold maybe ten people on its little benches.

Drawings are all over the chapel walls, and some you wouldn’t expect – like a clown brightening up a dark corner in the back.

DeGrazia liked to go up Superstition Mountain on horseback and visit the Yaquis. Sometimes they would come to his house and hitch their horses in this handmade corral.

DeGrazia did paintings, but he also worked in metals. I picture him working on this stove outside,

fashioning the copper door to the art gallery.

or making a beautiful crown.

He put a lot of humor that shows in many of his works.

But DeGrazia believed the artist’s role was to feel deeply and express emotions for people. Here is the resurrected Christ in glowing white, yet His face says so much more about what He is feeling.

DeGrazia famously took 100 paintings up a mountain and burned them to protest unfair tax laws. That’s a Western thing — to not much like the government.

When he came toward the end of his life, DeGrazia designed his own grave. Like I said, he did things his way.

I like to go up to where Swan Road almost ends not just for his paintings, but inspiration. DeGrazia’s place is sacred because it shows you what it’s like to lead an authentic life. His house, his chapel, his studio, his grave, his way. Adios, amigo.

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Arivaca, Amazing in Its Own Way

January 1st, 2022 · No Comments

Arivaca
by Jane St. Clair

Arivaca feels authentic. It doesn’t have a touristy vibe. It’s not trying to be quaint but it is. Arivaca’s a real Western town that’s been there since the 1840s.

Native peoples have been living there for centuries.

Arivaca has a really interesting bar and café, La Gitano Cantina It’s a place where people have always a good time – even today, they have music and dancing. You’re supposed to be able to find bullet holes and bloodstains on the walls. Since the bartender not only used to serve drinks but also pull teeth with his pliers, the bloodstains may be from dental work.

Who knows.

Apparently one of the owners of La Gitano loved being at his place so much that he had his ashes put into the barroom wall.

The school house dating back to 1870 is the oldest standing one in Arizona. Then there’s the general store, Arivaca Mercantile, where ranchers still get supplies. A Catholic church, the usual post office, library, and medical clinic. A few houses.

A REALLY Wild West-looking grill just outside of town.

Believe it or not, the biggest problem that held back the development of Arivaca was mosquitos. After some residents got malaria in the 1930s, the State Department of Health investigated. By introducing Gambusia fish in various ponds and other water areas, the authorities got the mosquitos under control.

The ruins of the Ruby mine and ghost town are about six miles from Arivaca. You can visit it if the caretakers are around (they keep weird hours). However, the road to the mine is very rough and not suitable for a regular car – you’d need a truck or some such vehicle to get through patches of rocks and ravines.

What’s really interesting about this area is the scenery. It doesn’t look like your classic Arizona landscape. No castle mountains like Sedona. No jagged outlines like the Catalinas. And nothing like the forests of Flagstaff. This part of the state, very close to Mexico, has a rocky ruggedness of wilderness that’s beautiful in its own way.


If you like exploring wilderness, you can hike in the Buenos Aires Wildlife Refuge. You may be lucky enough to spot animals and birds you probably won’t see in other parts of the state.

The hiking’s great, the scenery’s wonderful, and Arivaca’s interesting.

Did I mention the La Gitano Cantina?

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Lake in Pinetop on a Lazy Afternoon

October 30th, 2021 · No Comments

Lake in Pinetop
by Jane St. Clair

I can’t think of anything as lovely as a late day afternoon by a lake. The way the long light slants and creates reflections. The way the color of shore flowers spill into the water in water colors.

And then there’s how night is looming, approaching, and leaving behind the last visages of daytime. It is that lazy time before wildlife finds shelter, a sensual and emotional part of the day.

I am remembering such a late afternoon by a lake in Pinetop.

The light was so transformative that even a lowly puddle seemed magical, just as a simple weed turned into a fairy skirt.

The sparkle of the water reflections lit up this ordinary little lake in lazy little movements that only gentle currents bring, creating gentle waves tipped by light like little fish scales.

Melville wrote about going down to the sea whenever he felt like chasing funerals or stepping into traffic. He believed that the cure for “pausing before coffin houses” was going down to the sea.

The sea reminds us, again as Melville wrote, that we have inside our souls a tiny paradise island, fully of peace and joy. Whether we stand in front of the Great Atlantic, as he did, or just a lake in Pinetop, we can travel to “that one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy …”

I think if you have no sea, you can still find your island. Even a little lake in Pinetop will do.

For more about visiting Pinetop, try here. For more posts about nice walks in Arizona, try here, or you could try here, or you could even try there.

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Hole In the Rock Mountain

September 30th, 2021 · No Comments

Hole in the Rock Mountain
by Jane St. Clair

Hole in the Rock Mountain in Phoenix is easy to miss. The reason is two bigger attractions, the Phoenix Zoo and Phoenix Botantical Gardens, are right near Hole in the Rock Mountain.


Personally I like this little roadside attraction very much because it’s unique.

Usually when you hike in Arizona mountains, you’re on some trail that goes sideways, up or down. It’s rare that you come to a big hole with a view.

It’s like your own personal window in a big red rock. How cool is that?

The climb to this window is pretty easy. Some manmade steps go up the trail, which is less than a third of a mile. Your award for climbing is a truly neat view of the city of Phoenix and its surrounding desert.

Especially at sunset.

Archelogists tell us that ancient people not only enjoyed messing around in Hole in the Rock Mountain, they made it into a science project. The Hokoham figured out that a ray of sunlight coming into the Hole from its ceiling changed position based on the sun’s movements. By marking the changing light, they’d track summer and winter soltices as well as the equinoxes. Equinox happens twice a year, when night and day is the same length of time.

This mountain is probably over two million years old.

Although people like to climb for the view, I just like looking at these strange gigantic rocks. They’re bright red because they’re made of sandstone. If you look hard enough, you can see all kinds of patterns that turn into faces and other things, sometimes spooky, sometimes playful.

Hole in the Rock Mountain is in Pagago Park, 1500 acres for hiking and biking. That’s not counting the zoo, botanical gardens, Hall of Flame Museum, a sports complex, and a golf course.

For more posts about hiking go to Sedona: Where Castles Come From, Ramsey Canyon: A Walk in the High Country or Catalina State Park: Romero Ruins.

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Felicity, California: A Journey to the Center of the World

July 31st, 2021 · No Comments

Felicity, California
by Jane St. Clair

The other day I was driving in the middle of nowhere. A very desert-y landscape near the border of Arizona, Mexico and California, unlike our beautiful and green Sonora Desert near Tucson. No sir, this was desert-y desert as in Sahara or Lawrence of Arabia.

It’s the kind of spot where you see a “Last Chance Gas Station” with a skeleton sitting outside. The skeleton is wearing a Stetson and a worn-out leather vest.

That day in beautiful downtown Felicity, California, the temperature was 115 degrees. The sun was straight up, producing very bright light and rigid shadows. The long landscape was empty and barren as far as the eye could see.

A sign read “The Center of the World.” It’s a real place, even though in this heat, you wonder if you’re imagining things.

Felicity, California has a real zip code and post office, but not very many people. It has maybe two people. The founder of the town, Andrew Istel, is mayor. In the last election, he got three votes, one from himself, one from his wife, and one from a magical dragon.

The railroad tracks go right nearby, and there’s a strange pyramid. If you stand in the middle of the pyramid, you’re standing in the Center of the World. When attendants are around (who are not around in 115 degree heat), you can get a certificate that says you stood in the Center of the World.

Besides the pyramid, Felicity, California has a church and a museum with a cafeteria. Also a “stairway to nowhere” and a bowling alley. Everything was closed on that summer day.

However, I was able to walk around a very strange exhibit called “The History of the World in Granite.”

At first I thought they meant a history of granite, but no, that’s not it. It is a history of the world in granite panels with history dates and engraved pictures engraved on them. The panels look weird and creepy in the middle of the desert. They reminded me of The Monolith-thing from the movie, “2001, Space Odyssey.

Istel, who made money making parachutes, put the pyramid in his town because he thinks pyramids go along with deserts. The “Stairway to Nowhere” has bits of the Eiffel Tower in it. The “History of the World” is an on-going project.

I don’t think you need to plan your visit to Felicity, Ca. It’s probably better to just let it pop up on you. However, should you want to plan your visit, they have a website here –at the center of the world, no less.

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Brontes. Glasstown. Haworth. Video Games.

July 1st, 2021 · No Comments

Brontes by
Jane St. Clair

Update! Charlotte Bronte’s little book went home to Haworth — the charity running the Bronte homestead paid a cool $1.25 million to bring it back. How wonderful is that? For more information, go here.

The most interesting thing in this auction is a tiny book that Charlotte Bronte wrote when she was a little girl. It’s part of the wonderful Glass Town game the Bronte children played every day. Glasstown was every bit as complex as Game of Thrones. And, like kids today, the Bronte children were gaming addicts. They LIVED to play Glasstown.

These six brilliant children were growing up in a creepy stone mansion on the moors of England. The family did not own the Haworth House (sounds like Harry Potter, doesn’t it?) but lived there rent-free — a perk of their father’s job as local minister.

As you can see from the above picture, the Brontes’ house connected to a church. A gloomy graveyard loomed in front of these buildings. Behind them was a rocky wilderness known as the moors. Horrific storms would rise up on the moors, which always iced over in winter.

Rev. Bronte, an aloof intellectual, kept the door of his study locked all day. He was always doing something important such as writing religious books or studying great theologians.

For years the Bronte children’s mother was too sick to leave her room. When she finally died, Dad tried to remarry, or as he called it, “fulfill his domestic duty.” He proposed to ex-girlfriends, but none signed up to marry him. An old maid aunt moved in with the family to help. While she did her best, she was not good with children.

The Brontes were always broke. Since Rev. Bronte knew his children would have to make their own living some day, he sent the four older girls away to a school for the daughters of poor ministers. Charlotte later wrote about how horrible this place was in “Jane Eyre.” The oldest two Bronte girls got sick there and died, but Charlotte and Anne managed to recover.

The four remaining Bronte children grew up isolated in that creepy environment. Since Papa did not want them to mix with the children of their village, they were left on their own after their morning lessons.

One day their father came back from a business trip with a set of wooden soldiers. They became the basis of Glass Town.

The children gave each soldier a name and personality, and invented a kingdom of islands where their characters lived. For years they’d spend all day making up this elaborate game of strategy. Branwell, the only boy, adored battle plans and armies. He owned the Napoleon and Lord Wellington soldiers.

Charlotte became editor-in-chief of a tiny magazine, tiny enough for a wooden soldier to hold in his hands. She wrote her stories and editorials in such tiny handwriting that you need a magnifying glass. Branwell wrote for her magazine, but after a fight with his sister, he made up his own Glass Town newspaper named The Intelligencer.

As the years went by, the game grew more and more complex. Charlotte’s soldiers ruled the Island of Agria. Anne had Gondal, but there were other kingdoms as well. The Brontes wrote elaborate stories about their solders’ adventures, and allowed them to constantly morph into different personalities. The children became the Four Genii, or immortal geniuses, with super-powers over the mortal soldiers.

I can just picture these brilliant, amazing creative children in that awful parsonage. Since Dad was afraid of fire, he never put up curtains but kept buckets of water everywhere. That just added to the gloom. Although the children could run wild on the moors, but the moors were creepy too.

As adults, the Brontes tried to work as tutors and governesses. But, as Charlotte wrote, they hated how their snobby employers treated them as inferior servants. None of the families showed interest in their “excellence inside,” as Charlotte put it.

The brilliant Branwell did not last long as a tutor. He got fired after having an affair with the wife of the house, came back to Haworth and died a drunk.

Branwell, Emily, and Anne died within eight months of each other. All were only about 30 years old. Only Charlotte survived to marry, but she died at age 38 in childbirth.

Yet the amazing Brontes became among the greats of English literature. Their horrendous childhood was only part of their legacy.They also left us “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” But to me their legacy of Glasstown is just as beautiful as their novels.

For a really cool video about Haworth, go here

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Thomas Merton on How to Have a Perfect Day

May 28th, 2021 · No Comments

Thomas Merton by
Jane St. Clair

Thomas Merton once started an entry in his diary with the wonderful statement: “Today was a perfect day.”

It turns out, however, that our monk’s idea of a perfect day was to spend it walking in the woods near his monastery in Kentucky. Nothing much happened. The most extraordinary thing that did happen was a wren hopped on his shoulder while he was writing. Then, maybe because he ignored his new little friend, the wren hopped on his writing notebook so Merton had to pay attention.

We might look back and say the perfect day is when I landed that contract, got that award, or when my sweetheart said I love you. But to Thomas Merton, perfection lay in little things that pleased him, which is why just walking in the Kentucky woods was his idea of perfection.

Merton was so spiritual that he once had a transcendental experience looking at a vase of carnations. The flowers with their colors and crinkled edges struck him right in his soul, and he went rapturous:

…..Beauty of the sunlight falling on a tall vase of red and white carnations and green leaves on the altar of the novitiate chapel. The light and dark, the darkness of the fresh crinkled flower, light, warm and red all around the darkness. The flower is the same color as blood, but it is in no sense whatever as ‘red as blood,’ not at all. It is as red as a carnation, only that. This flower, this light, this moment, this silence = Dominus est. God is eternity. He passes. He remains.”

Looking at the flowers on the altar triggers a deep mystical experience in Merton, an experience of God and eternity. He doesn’t want to compare the color of the flowers to blood or anything else.

He just experiences the flower itself.

He writes this next:

…..We pass in and out. He passes. We remain. We are nothing. We are everything. He is in us. He has gone from us. We are here in him. He is gone from us. He is gone from us. He is not here. We are here in Him. All these things can be said, but why say them? All these things can be said, but why say them?

…..The flower is itself. The light is itself. The silence is itself. I am myself. All perhaps illusion, but no matter. For illusion is the shadow of reality, and reality is the grace and gift that underlies these lights, these colors, this silence underlies: is that true? They are simply real. They themselves are his gift…

By being present to ordinary things most of us overlook, Merton was practicing what we’d call “mindfulness.” It is a shutting down of your own ego to open up to what’s around you. To experience what is.

He looked at everything with an artist’s eyes, and saw beauty and God in a vase of carnations, in a drop of water on a leaf, in the way the clouds slowly part to reveal sky, in a wren resting on a book. He experienced them as gifts from God, and his writing is his gift to us.

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