The Picture At the Top

1.Feb.24 - I changed the picture (banner) in July of 2023. This story below is about the previous one.

In the 1930s my Dad immigrated from Germany and joined the American Army. During the second world-war he served as a double agent. He was proud of helping many people escape the Nazis and a cherished memento is a picture of him in a bunker with about 20 other men; in the foreground stands Der Fuhrer. It was obviously taken in collaboration with the photographer; Dad is in the middle (at the back) clearly visible, with the other men equally divided on either side.

Known as a fan of the composer Richard Wagner, he did such a good job during the war they, the U.S. military, gave him the Wagner home in Bayreuth to live in...along with a chauffeured car, a cook and gardener.

A pianist, we have pictures of his grand piano in its own room and 8mm movies of he and my mom, with friends, skiing the Alps; the sunshine so warm the women are in their bras. (Knowing my parents, I like to think she and her friends just put them on for the movie.)

Years ago I had an office in a division of the University of New Mexico's College of Education formally known as Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS). It was an agglomeration of 22 professors who taught teachers, primarily graduate students, to teach cultural diversity. There was a Buddhist, a Jew, a Fascist, quite a few from Native American communities including the pueblos of Zuni and Cochiti. Many were/are famous authors.

There was a Chinese woman who came from somewhere in the western part of the country who when I asked if she spoke Mandarin, huffily informed me there were over 27 languages in China of which she spoke six, including Mandarin. There were also several lesbians: a militant, a moderate, and a sensualist, each, of course, with a unique view of patriarchy.  The rest were mostly Spaniards, descendants of the Conquistadors.

I, a mere administrator, designated myself The German-American and taped a brown paper sack with the German eagle on it to my door.

After my four-hour stint, I would cross the street to run my art gallery (NW corner of Central & Pine). My boss, the department secretary, came from an entrepreneurial family of Italians who'd immigrated to Gallup to be miners. Over the years she allowed me to run several businesses...as long as the faculty were kept happy.

When we first returned from Germany in '62, we went to Nashville, Tennessee. I was not quite ten and had never encountered racial prejudice. Living through the Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King riots I saw first-hand the hatred and violence of Whites toward Blacks. Today, in an era of nationalism that reminds me of Germany in the 1930s, I occasionally fly the German flag as a show of pride in my heritage. Of course, it's nothing like being Black, or any of the flavors of sexual orientation, or -- there but for the grace of god go I -- FEMALE, but I like to think when folks see it, it'll give pause for thought. Maybe they'll wonder what those Germans are doing over there! (They presumably know what everyone else is doing.)

Once, when I was flying it, the flag that is, on a bluff above the Takhini River in the Yukon, my girlfriend, said, "There's no place for politics in the wilderness." I agreed and attempted mollification (she's Dutch) by saying it was a joke. She didn't think it was funny. And frankly, neither did I. But it's the best I can do in the face of the lines being drawn. (Born in Nϋrnberg, I fly its flag along with Germany's.)

I don't know who took the photograph I'm holding, but women have played pivotal (ovarial...as compared to seminal) roles throughout my life -- I'm a polyamorist -- and the image is an expression of their (ongoing) significance.

Finally, Wahnfried was the name of Richard Wagner's (the composer) home in Bayreuth. It means madness-free. Nomadicism has done the trick for me.