SALISH WOOL DOG (extinct)

GONE BABY GONE

    I’m riding back to the mountain from the doctor’s office in Goshen and my girlfriend Samm (who’s driving) tells me that she’s tried to read the new blog but as usual was stymied because of my use (and misuse) of punctuation. It (like my shoulder from which the doctor dug out a carcinoma) is a sore spot between us. I’ve written columns, songs, unpublished books, essays, lectures and blogs for forty years and I admit that I still have no idea where to put commas and semicolons. I sprinkle them liberally, hoping a few will land in the right spot. Most people don’t care, choosing instead to concentrate on taking issue with what I’m saying. One can agree or disagree without bashing my “flow” and sentence structure—like Samm does. She can’t help herself. For my love it’s a tick, a roadblock she can’t seem to maneuver around to get at the meat of the narrative. I’m sure I’ve screwed up repeatedly in this first paragraph. It drives me (and her) fucking crazy!

   Nonetheless, she perused down the page enough to disagree with my overall premise of the impending “pastoralism” of the Amazon, as well as my use of finite declaratives like “forever” or “for all time.” “After all,” she points out, "hasn’t the Catskills reverted to a wild state plenty of times over the centuries?” She’s correct. The re-greening of the Catskills and eastern seaboard in the second half of the twentieth century has welcomed back multiple flora and fauna into its chaotic bosom. Pockets of neglect and depression have become the friend of antipastoralism and multiple almost extinct species. The failure of subsistence family farming throughout the Catskills and Orange County, the adoption of coal, gas and oil as primary heat sources instead of wood, has led to the return of the eagle, wild turkey, black bear and whitetail deer, as well as the re-introduction of the eastern coyote or coy-wolf. Sadly, this phenomenon of regeneration is limited. We only have so many second chances. Once the herdsman burns the Amazon and massive warehouses scar the Montgomery hayfields “forever” may be a very short amount of time. Those apple trees in White Sulphur Springs will never return. I say again—NEVER!

    Try as I might to argue this, I get her point. Shit can turn around in spite of ourselves. I don’t want anybody to get the impression that I know how this will turn out—except on a case by case basis. For example: I’d prefer Butch Resnick, John Letourneau and Brett Budde tear down all their fences and let the deer herd return to their ancient travel patterns. Of course, as a deer hunter, this is a little selfish on my part. The Buddes' apples would be eaten and Butch’s ostriches and camels would get hit by egg trucks. It’s not a sustainable solution. As for John and Asher Rothman’s failed attempt at farming, that resulted in an enclosed five acres of beautiful bottom land now populated with golden rod, the fence serves no purpose whatsoever. Like Samm, John and Asher will have to slash and burn their way through all my misplaced commas to read this, and be sufficiently pissed off at my intrusive opinions to care. I’m not too worried.

    One of the difficulties pastoral scholars faced in studying American human chronology was the omission of the shepherd in the four stage development theory of Indigenous peoples. Dogs were domesticated but served only as guards, companions and food. Until recently it was assumed there was no home grown tradition of native domestic herd animals or animal husbandry in North America. Whatever tribal shepherds existed, their flocks were european (horses, sheep, pigs, goats and cows) in origin. Only South America’s llama could be pointed to as a native source animal for transport and wool—the exception to the rule. This omitted the now extinct Salish wool dogs of the Pacific Northwest tribe. Thankfully, scholarship is being revisited and revised constantly. Just so happens Samm’s collie dog Lassie blows out its “wool” yearly and Samm makes it into yarn. She wears a “dog hat” she knitted. Sorry Samm. You can stop googling. Right now there are no more Salish wool dogs in existence. That doesn’t mean one won’t pop up someday.      

    I don’t profess to have the answers to the larger issue of false pastoralism that’s been with us for so long. I’m not naive enough to think we can ever return to a hunter/gatherer system or that burning wood is sustainable or farming and livestock don’t play an integral role in society. All I know is that it’s very much on my mind these days and this is what I want to write about…… until something else catches my fancy. I don’t want to lecture. I want to discuss. But that takes more than one voice. I know from experience it is difficult to get people to engage. Few want to stick their necks out for fear of ridicule. But what the hell, it’s the internet. Nobody really cares what you think or say. I encourage readers to leave comments, point out hotspots of concern or needed activism and hopefully a conversation will ensue—a commonality of purpose. I’ll try my damnedest to clean up the commas and will NEVER ever use FOREVER again!

CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE by Jasper Francis Cropsey 1855

THE NEW PROPAGANDIST

    The Catskill Mountain House, perched on a cliff above the town of Catskill, New York opened in 1824. A year later Dewitt Clinton’s Erie Canal commenced operations. New York State (like the Mountain House) was at the precipice of its global reach and by the late century would approach the apex of The Hudson River School pastoral pastiche. Marquee names like James Fenimore Cooper, Thomas Cole, George Innes and Washington Irving joined lesser knowns like Jasper Francis Cropsey and Rev. Charles Rockwell at the Mountain House to take in the views, hobnob with the ladies and soak up the local lore. Rockwell’s The Catskills and the Region Around 1867 is a collection of mythic tidbits garnered from the guests and staff at the Mountain House in its heyday. Chapter Seven- The Osterhout Narrative is predictably my favorite. But these canvases, stories and lies came later. 1824 was the formal beginning of Catskill tourism and men from Cole to Cooper to Cropsey were the propagandists of the day. It was privileged, upscale, nativist and decidedly white and Christian.1824 was three years before slavery was abolished in New York State and the Jewish diaspora was yet to come. Welcome to the Catskills.

     By the 1840’s, around the time Thomas Cole was dying, his young, very talented acolyte Jasper Francis Cropsey’s career was taking off. Cropsey had a palatial studio, christened Aladdin, built in Warwick, NY. Between trips to Europe the artist painted the Hudson Valley and Catskills with a syrupy, romantic’s eye. The light is almost art-nouveau. He has two paintings to his credit that interpret ancestral homeland— Autumn Landscape-Sugar Loaf Mountain 1867- 1875 (Jennings) and Catskill Mountain House 1855 (Osterhout). Both interpret family stomping ground in the nineteenth century. There’s no question as to his point of view. Neither place looks realistic. Cropsey was an unabashed pastoralist.

    

   Although I’ve lived in cities (Baltimore, San Francisco and New York) I am a country boy at my core and my favorite haunts are the flatlands of Orange County’s Wallkill River valley, where I grew up, and the rugged ridges and feeder lakes of eastern Sullivan County, where I spent my summers. This was, and is again, my Home. I’ll only leave feet first.

      I didn’t come here to be ignored. It is now a matter of policy for the New York Times’ art critics, like Roberta Smith and Holland Cotter (who both used to attend my gallery shows) to only concentrate their coverage on New York City proper “art.” If we country artists get any stray press at all it’s in the “style” or “real estate” sections of the paper. We hillbilly “eccentrics” make good copy for tourism. Already a bastion of urban elitism, the art press is now officially off the hook in covering the hinterlands. Except for the the odd self-generated PR puff piece, we are on our own. 

    So when I do projects in public locally I know that word does not spread far. I accept this, realizing the urban center has become more and more unwelcoming to the rural, car driving, upstate resident in general. Fuck me? Fuck You! This mutual marginalization in attitude and practice is again what feeds my antipastoralism. This is not the case with my neighbors. They can’t help but reach out to the urbanite. Being capitalists, they need the citiot; so put a bird on it. They romanticize for the buck. In contrast, my work reflects the sad realism of blow-up lawn ornaments and junk cars with trees growing from the back seat—the rot of the the everyday—nothing pastoral about it. But, for the boutique farmer, air B&Ber, shopkeeper, and poor rural kid who just wants to survive in the sticks, it’s a different story. I feel their pain of forced hospitality. “Pick our apples, buy our chainsaw sculptures…..maybe spend the night. Take in the view. Here, let me refill your drink. Come back soon….”  Christ, I’m exhausted just thinking about it.                

     But I also didn’t come here to quietly tend my garden and fade into comfortable straw hat obscurity. No! I came here to work, have fun, provoke, piss off, promote, form a community and ultimately die in peace. And goddamned if it isn’t working. We’re not a school like the Hudson River School. Not an art colony like Cragsmoor or Woodstock, or a high end marketplace like Hudson. We are a congregation of farmers, innkeepers, artists and misfits; revolving around the concept that a church can exist outside of religion and community can form without commodity or monetization. I am the new propagandist for the antipastoral here in the Catskills. Tear down your fence lines. Let the manque go feral. Forage. Hunt. Pray. Step it up. Burn your dollar bill right HERE!

COMING SOON- White Sulphur Springs, NY

PASTORAL BLIGHT

  In his essay The Oxymoron of American Pastoralism, academic Gordon M. Sayre refers to the widely accepted “Four Stage Theory” of human development. This linear chronology of 1) Hunter 2) Shepherd 3) Farmer 4) Consumer brings us to today’s Catskills. These mountains have experienced and had a hand in how all these tropes developed. I mentioned how Henry Hudson and his crew on the Half Moon were the first tourists to the area. This is actually incorrect. They were the first “white” tourists. The first humans to reside in the Catskills were the mastodon hunters of the Munsee speaking Leni-Lenape tribe. Archeological evidence in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania puts the Lenape in the area as early as 8000 BC. These were the first outsider hunters of the Catskills and as they were strangers who had traveled west to east—pastoral interlopers— they moved into a land heretofore unspoiled by human habitation. There goes the neighborhood.

     Theories as to what happened to the mastodon vary but many blame the Lenape for over-hunting the great wooly beasts into extinction. It makes sense. An animal that large needs a lot of room and food to survive. A peaceful, lumbering vegetarian, the mastodon was easy prey to well organized, hungry humans, with brains way too big to be justified by their circumstances. By the time their bellies were full the meat was already beginning to rot. The Lenape never thought too far ahead of the dinner table. Guess we’ll have to kill another one. And so it went.

   Back in the nineties, when my father was still alive, I would bend his ear complaining of too many fence lines, loss of hunting property, too much traffic, ornery neighbors and clueless “citiots” invading my corner of the Catskills. Ever the wise pragmatist, he would remind me that there were plenty of inhabitants of Sullivan County before I decided to plop my ass down here and I was being myopic and “mean-spirited” not to realize that I had no claim to any more than my 3/4 acre. “That sunset over the Parker farm is everyone’s.” he would gently lecture. “You have to find a way to share.”  

   Of course the old man was right. This is our dilemma as the great Hasidim diaspora flows north looking for greener pastures to park their minivans and more subdivisions to house exploding families. Dollar General stores and AirB&Bs are spreading at a frenetic pace; while a print industry is developing around second home sales and tourism, geared towards snaring the hipster with glowing (albeit cherry-picked) pastoral narratives. Magazines like Upstate Diary and DVEight, run by enterprising female friends, are filled with well-heeled, good looking people, thrilled to be escaping the city for the “simple life.” Naive as they sound, I can’t deny or dismiss their heartfelt declarations of unfulfilled “satisfaction” as they till garden plots, patch sheds or raise chickens…..looking sexy in the process. I want to share the landscape. But, how can we maintain a lifestyle that welcomes these newcomers without losing forever what is disappearing at an accelerated rate? Take a good look at those ancient apple trees in that White Sulphur Springs lot across from the fire house. Soon they will be bulldozed over and the view will be of another Dollar General. You plein air artists better paint fast. “Save time. Save money. Everyday.” The age of consumerism has been upon us white people here in the Catskills for over four hundred years. The age of desolation approaches.

RIVER IN THE CATSKILLS by Thomas Cole 1843

UNSPOILED=WELCOME

    Cole's River in the Catskills is considered the first "major" painting to include a steam locomotive within the "natural" composition. The addition of this fly in the ointment of the pastoral landscape was seen by many (until recently) as Cole's acceptance of the unavoidable industrial future cutting across his idyllic horizon.  Only in more contemporary scholarship have art historians questioned this premise and put forth the proposition that Cole was actually an "antipastoralist," hoping his tiny brush stokes that conjured the diminutive Canajoharie-Catskill rail line would be a passing fancy and his beloved views of the Catskills would return to their unspoiled splendor....in time. The line did fail, but the railroad was just the beginning of the spoilage. I can relate.
     My earliest memories of the Catskills are of my grandfather and I standing on a rocking, half submerged dock at Wolf Lake, as hurricane winds pushed the white caps over our feet, playing tag with the waves. The pines on Blackbird Island danced and bent to kiss the blueberry bushes as we giggled in the face of approaching storm. The old feeder pond for the D&H Canal was then littered with driftwood, swampy islands, frogs, snakes and sharp toothed pickerel as big as your arm.  Lakes like Wannasink, Yankee, Lake Louise Marie, Masten and Wolf were all manmade basins, dammed up and designed to control the flow of the Delaware Hudson Canal that cut through the Bashakill Valley, just down the mountain. It was a massive project that became obsolete before an aqueduct system could be implemented. The railroad saw to that.
    When the canal reverted to swamp, these feeder lakes of the eastern Catskills also returned to a more natural state. It wouldn't be until a few savvy Orange County businessmen/developers, among them Hank Bull, Judge Wilmont Decker and my grandfather Wray Osterhout, spied the property before WWII, that Wolf Lake would be yanked into the Twentieth Century.
   Sixty years after I popped and jiggled in the face of that hurricane, Wolf Lake is no longer a wild place. Upscale year round homes ring the placid waters. Blackbird Island is gone; as are the snakes, frogs, tangle of driftwood and chaos of nature. It's still beautiful....but tamed forever. Thomas Cole was an early environmentalist, warning through his brush strokes, poetry and commentary of what was to come. The grove of trees around the old Van Vetchen stone house, those shading the ancient Indian burial ground, once axed for the railroad line were lost for all time.
    I moved back to Sullivan County in 1995. In the twenty five years since, I've witnessed a similar degradation of my view and cherished surroundings, as the pastoral moves in, trims and encloses. Large property owners, hobby farmers, orchardists and weekend dilettantes are moving into paradise at an ever increasing rate. There's no stemming the flow. So how can we preserve what we have and at the same time welcome these strangers? This is what I want to discuss.           
       

ECONOMIC ELITISM AND THE MYTH OF THE PASTORAL

"Pastoralism" can be found in literature, music, art and economics, going back to the earliest scratchings and squawks of man. Simply put it is the interrelationship between animals, the land and humans. The central character of the pastoral is the nomadic shepherd; a romanticized figure, sleepily populating painting, story and song, watching over the idyllic herd as they move in lazy unison across the landscape. In America the best known 19th century pastoral painters were of the Hudson River School, men like George Innes and Thomas Cole. They gave us our idealized view of the Catskills; of light streaked storm clouds, engorged waterfalls, fantastical crumbling parthenons of antiquity....and of course the tiny, gentle herdsman. Industry is a distant locomotive's smoke stack, cutting a straight line across the canvas. The "peaceable kingdom" is a lie.
   Tourism in the Catskills  started well before Cole picked up his first crayon. You could say the first tourist was Henry Hudson who landed in what is today New York Harbor on September 11, 1609,  proceeding up the North River to Albany. The Dutch, the English, the Germans, Irish, Italians, Eastern Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Jews from everywhere and finally.....the hipsters followed. This brings us to today.
     The Amazon is burning. It's not the first time, but it is one of the most blatant attempts by the herdsman to impose his vision of what the world should look like- flat vistas of grassland populated by livestock. The dark, beautifully obscene chaos of nature can easily be eradicated by fire. The aboreal residents of these ancient rainforests- mini as well as mega-fauna are barbequed as the trees are reduced to ash. All is lost forever.
   How does this effect us in the Catskills? It doesn't....yet. But it will. Capitalism and right wing politics, which is its greatest enabler, can wreak havoc from the poles to the equator in a very short time span. What took centuries to accomplish in the Catskills can now be "tamed" in a matter of a few short years. The pastoral is accelerating at an exponential rate. The straight line and domesticated meat, wool or hide animal unleashed by humans are the enemies of nature. But wait......wasn't it all put on earth for us (humans) to enjoy and exploit? And don't the Brazilians and Bolivians have just as much right to paint their delusional picture as we had? I smell smoke.                

INTRODUCTION

     Starting a new blog is a breeze....even in the countryside. Most people have cell phones. The internet is always in their pocket. They can text one up in minutes, sitting in the trailer. But, even those of us who have somehow avoided that appendage (I'm still cell-less) any laptop or library basement computer will allow you to start a blog FREE! any time you want. Then you are in business- a transmitter- a hillbilly gadfly. Having something to say is a much more complicated issue. But, that's never held me back.
    Although I've written many blogs over the years, I'm proudest of www.huntingwithsupermodels.blogspot.com and www.fancestor.blogspot.com. HWS was open ended and and filled with beautiful women in various states of undress- of its time- but possibly already dated in this post-Me-Too era. Trigger warning: not for the faint of heart.  (F)ancestor is a "generational memoir" centered in antebellum New York involving race, murder and family. Although (F)ancestor was edited and published in real time, I'm hoping to get an agent and see it in print. I'm not trying very hard. That's the beautiful thing about a blog. I've done my job by hitting "post." It's on you to read it. I say this both as invite to new readers and a way out to old faithfuls. I don't want to be a bore.

   wwww.theantipastoralist.blogspot.com I hope will be a realtime window into my life here in New York's Catskill mountains, as a conceptual artist with a cat named Cheeky, who runs a crackpot, country church. Thanks for coming.