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Not much to report, but I feel like that rabbit. So many things are in the air. Major changes are coming, but what will they be?

My personal astrology is pretty wild right now. Why should that matter to you? Hah! It probably doesn’t! Meanwhile in the “Finish the Fucking Book” Dept., I have a deadline of June 25th. Amazingly, there are no other must-do, must-happen things on the immediate horizon, which must mean I’m ready to be surprised. Pleasantly, I hope. What else? Oh, yes.

Regarding said book, besides the editing I’m also working on a new chapter to fill in some important details I realized were missing because I couldn’t blog about them at the time (2011). It’s called “Timeline Interrupted: The Untold Story of Helen’s Capture,” and it’s kind of fun to write.

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“Let’s move!” she said, upon hearing yesterday that the newly elected three member majority of the Taos town council had voted to rename Kit Carson Park something else to “right past wrongs.” My sentiments exactly. It was the sudden almost vengeful nature of the thing. It also made no sense, especially without public discussion and some kind of vote. She’s calmed down since then, but I’m still mad and trying to understand why.

“He was atrocious, an Indian killer,” said a member of the council. I realize many people feel that way, but this summary judgment is unfair or worse. It attacks the truth of who we are. As former Horse Fly publisher and Taos observer Bill Whaley put it in this response (my emphasis):

Apparently, the town council has just discovered that Kit Carson is considered a “notorious Indian killer,” and justly so by the Navajos or Dine. Carson conducted, under the orders of the federal government’s military governor, General Carleton, a scorched earth policy against the Southwest’s most notorious raiders in the Dine Homeland. During Carson’s scourge of Dine country, he was accompanied not only by the military, and, according to the history books, by his own trusty Ute allies but also by outriders from Taos Pueblo. Eh?

Indeed, the Dine were unpopular. They frequently raided the Spanish farms and Pueblo tribes up and down the Rio Grande. People theft, especially of children, i.e. slavery, was common among the tribes, the Spanish and Los Americanos. But the times changed and the historic forces, Indian Tribes, Spanish and American soldiers, who hadn’t been able to defeat the Dine in hundreds of years, finally found a vicious general in Carleton, New Mexico’s military governor, who persuaded the wily tracker, Kit Carson, to go out into the wilderness. Call it blowback. Carelton wanted to become as famous as John C. Fremont, the pathfinder, who benefitted from the famous tracker’s uncanny ability to find his way through the untracked Western America.

Carson himself defended the Indians as a whole during the times, attributing their plight to the “aggressiveness of the whites.” He was highly critical of Colonel John Chivington’s horrid Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. He fought for the Utes in order to preserve their reservation homeland. In a Homeric sense, the American Indians and Kit Carson recognized each other as worthy opponents, as members of the warrior culture. Carson’s first two wives were Arapaho and Cheyenne, his daughter by Singing Grass (Arapaho), who died, was raised by his sisters in Missouri. He [later] married a local Taos girl, Josefa Jaramillo.

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“You need to shake things up,” she said. (What, does she know about the Uranus transit?) Hell, yes. Still, it’s nice to be told. The shackles are off, but I’ve not strayed far from the gate. I wonder what I’ll do? Spend the house money on a truck? Oh, no!

But it’s beautiful at our old rented adobe now. The house next door is vacant so it’s nice and peaceful here, kind of like it’s ours. We have lots of bunny rabbits and pretty birds and fine tall trees and water running in the acequia. That could blow up any minute, but what the hey. I also have a perfect place to work, if that is what we call it. The Mountain™ is right outside my window. Disengaged from my ambitions, this is awfully nice. Have you ever heard of surrendering to your own life? That seems to be a thing I ought to try, especially if I get my Fender Reverb fixed.

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It’s a jungle in the tall green. With the neighbors and their two cats moved away, the native grasses left to grow make food and shelter for all kinds of living things. I’ve left the grass alone at our house, too, with tactful trimming and some helpful paths. I’m astonished at the variety and beauty of the seed heads. When the wind blows, it’s like waving fields of grain. I don’t know why anybody cuts the grass around here. The tall stuff is staying green so far! Where I trimmed or cut a path, whatever’s left is turning brown.

The quiet and the grasses bring more animals around. We hardly ever have to feed the cat. I told my wife, for her it’s like a giant cafeteria except the menu is alive.

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