The Ever Lasting Keyton

Sheilah Bright’s “The Last of Kenton” not only was well written but brought back my moments of memory about Keyton. http://thislandpress.com/09/19/2012/the-last-of-kenton/?read=complete

I visited Keyton this past summer with the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education (OKAGE) and made a stop at the community center and the museum.  The lady in the museum showered us with a lovely local treats: beef jerky from Perkins, Oklahoma and I sat on the steps by The Merc. store sign and ate a homemade sandwich prepared by Vicki and Monty Jo.  I was there before I read anything about this westernmost town in Oklahoma – consequently, did not embrace the town geographically and culturally as I could have. I remember the quietness, the bright sunlight, and the empty streets surrounded by mountains; I remember that it was a comfortable place to make my own moments of being. I also wish I had known more about the only funeral home in Cimarron County that is run by the Axtell couple and their Rockin’ A café.  I, as a person who does not have an anchor to any place, or anything in my bones (Tulsa? Oklahoma? Brooklyn? New York? Taiwanese? Chinese? American?), it is a luxury to think of having a cemetery in a place I love to bury myself with my family.  By the way, I hate to be a tourist.

Better In Than Out: Behind the doors of Kashgar Old City

The end of one Silk Road

Before the discovery of the sea route to India, the Silk Road was the most important connection between the Orient and the West. Its last great era was experience during the time of Mongols, when the entire route from China to the Mediterranean was part of one collective empire. Interestingly enough, the trade route was never known as the Silk Road historically. It was given this name by a German geographer Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen in 1877. The overland link quickly lost its importance as trade across the seas developed. Today it has been replaced in China with the railway line Lanzhou-Hami-Urumqi.  While in China, my traveling group was supposed to board an overnight train from Liuyuan, Kansu to Turpan, Xinjiang.  Ultimately, this trip never came to fruition due to a safety concern on the rails.  Just two weeks before we arrived in the city, at least 27 people died during rioting in a suburb of Turpan. The security presence was heavy everywhere in Xinjiang and no one wanted a bunch of educators to get stuck in the cross fire between Uyghur’s overwhelmingly Muslim ethnic minority and China’s Han majority.  As far as my vision of taking a train across the desert to experience the hardship of journey to the west, it disappears without a trace.

On October 2^nd, U.S. law enforcement officials shut down Silk Road, the online drug market.

(More Information available at: http://nation.time.com/2013/10/02/alleged-silk-road-proprietor-ross-william-ulbricht-arrested-3-6m-in-bitcoin-seized/#ixzz2gc0xbCgv) For whomever is interested in exploring this website, it's too late.  However, I did.  Before my trip to Xinjiang, I asked my students to pick a catchy title for my blog. I got an answer the next day.  "anything but Silk Road, it's a website you can buy drugs, heroin even firearms”, and my student was absolutely right. I clicked the website for the first time and that was also the only time I have seen this deep sea home page.

Kashgar, Aleppo, Marco, and I

This is about convergence.

In 1271, 17- year- old Marco Polo joined his father and uncle on a voyage to the east to look for broader trade markets. The Polos took a merchant ship from Venice to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and by horse, camel, and sometimes by foot, crossed Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran. They crossed the vast desert of Central Asia, traversed over Pamir Highland, and came to the oasis of Kashgar (today’s Kashi in Xinjiang). In 1275, after three and a half years they finally arrived at the Yuan capital in China. Some of the incredible stories of Marco Polo’s journey have been cited in a recent fascinating book entitled Tracing Marco Polo’s China Route (China International Press, 2009). In Marco Polo’s footsteps I endeavor to do the same: tracing my short stay in the west.

I entered Kashgar near the end of a two-week trip on China’s historic Silk Road.  By this point, I had already hurt my stomach considerably through overeating.  I was in a food coma and walked through the old part of the city like zombie. Still, I remember the sky, the sun, the bricks, the dirt, and occasionally the children who poked their heads out from the curtains that provided the only privacy from the outside world.  The time is near noon, the atmosphere is peaceful, however, our nonstop pace more reminiscent to soldiers on a battlefield than anything serene. Perhaps it was because too many tourists wanted to see the “Old” part of the city, but our tour guide had to rush us similarly to a shepherd trying to keep up with a chaotic flock. Everywhere we went we had to walk through ruins and rubble. Later on (after I had read more about the cultural and political conflict between the Han and the Ugher) I realize I had stumbled upon a very controversial city plan: bull doze the old city to rebuild a better and safer new city in Kashgar.  What I saw before me was a place in the progress of simultaneous destruction and construction.

Even with my upset stomach, I can shut my eyes to the discoveries around every corner, I love this part of town and wish I could spend more time visiting every shop and snapping more pictures of people.  Whether this beautiful, charming, and historic part of the city would survive the seemly unavoidable urban renewal, in my opinion, lies not in a completely practical, but clear artistic vision: pentimento. If you prefer clean-cut shapes, brilliant color, modern design, and straight pathways, go head, rebuild the city and mold it into a perfect model. However, if you enjoy the layers of history on the walls and hanging off the rooftops, the organic dwellings, winding streets, then you ultimately choose to repent these new changes, and instead choose to allow a place to grow in its own bio rhythm. The old city in Kashgar not only represents a way of living but also involves political power dominance. As an artist, educator, tourist and world citizen, I really hate to see the old part of the unique life style disappear in Kashgar or in the world.  Please let the old city be, and do no more harm.

My convergence to this old city of Kashgar ends with a photo essay The Veils of Aleppo by photographer Franco Pagetti. As civil war rages around them, residents of Syria’s largest city use colorful sheets to shield their homes and streets from the rifle scopes of snipers. The veils of Aleppo are the final act against human despair in war.  I hope whatever the final solution is from the Chinese housing authority that instead of choosing a path of total destruction they instead decide remember those that have come before and to preserve the integrity of the old Kashgar.

Kashgar's Old City
www.farwestchina.com

Hats on Heads

It is not strange to take pictures of yourself when you travel along. However, holding camera with a short arm, resulting in pictures with close-up heads is just another opportunity for self indulgence. During my trip to China, I had to remind myself to let someone take pictures of me in the environment so I could use the photos for publicity.  This group of head thumbnails is, in fact, thumbnails of me with famous landmarks. These heads also act as an reminder to me of  three weeks of intensely hot weather. There is one thing my son gave me before my trip to China saved my life. A pair of shoe laces. I used one for my hat and one for the belt. In Shanghai, I had to throw away a lot of my clothes to make room for books: I kept the shoelaces.

.

Taking up the Silk Road Dream

Crescent spring, Dunhuang

7/5/2013 10:15 AM I walked into the Forbidden City - three days later I left the Great Wall, retracing an ancient path and uncovering stories of trade, power, beliefs, art, love and death on the Silk Road in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous region.  My travel group was made up of 21 fellow adventurers and educators from all over the United States. At the end of two weeks of breakneck trekking to the western border of China, from Beijing to Kashgar we finally arrived in Shanghai. We were lead by Karen Kane and Roberta Martin from Columbia University, Harold Tanner from the University of North Texas, and Jeff Kyong-McClain from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. In addition, in every city we visited, five national and regional professional tour guides would join our group.

The two-week journey was a discovery of visual and intellectual enlightenment. We combined the exploration of archaeological sites with historical points of interests, ancient ruins, and museum visits. At every destination there was in depth, site-specific, topics of discussion. For instance, we explored the excavation Museum of Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, which was a stark contras to the pigs and dogs which depicted domestic life in Han Yang-ling’s tomb. I flew to Dunhuang, and saw Mogao Grottos with a pilgrimage to cave #17 – a Library Cave.  Here, I toured Bezeklik’s Thousand Buddha Cave as well.  I rode on donkey cart through the Gaochang Ruins where the monk Xuan Zhuang had lectured upon his return from India to Xi’an with the Buddhist scriptures.  I entered Kashgar and explored the great Id Kah Mosque and street markets.  My footsteps traced Heavenly Lake in Tianshan and down to the Turpan underground Karez.  I spent memorable days under the grape vines at private Uyghur houses and concluded the trip with an excursion to the fascinating Sunday Bazaar in the westernmost point of China.

At the conclusion of the course laid out by my traveling group, I continued my journey in Shanghai where I booked into a cheap hotel, my travel hut, and started a weeklong series of day trips to neighboring cities. These trips lead me to I.M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum, and a tour of West Lake and the China Academy of Art campus in Hangzhou.  I was so touched by the TV Show: “The Patriot of Fe Yue” that I sought out Yue Fe’s gravesite in record heat (42 C) on a Wednesday afternoon in Hangzhou.  I took many buses to many water towns, walked through many streets to see temples and gardens. Equipped with only a hat, an umbrella, and a towel on my neck, and several bottles of water in my backpack on these sightseeing escapade and somehow survived an unprecedented hot July in Shanghai.  Eventually, after visiting the Shanghai museum three times, I finally decided that I had seen all its collections and did my final purchases of books and souvenirs and left China to return to the USA.

Throughout the trip, I sketched on-site, and in the dark; collected tickets, maps, and booklets.  I snapped more than 4500 pictures (thank goodness for digital cameras and my Iphone).  My travel collections also include recorded videos with the Uyghur people singing and playing instruments. I purchased, in Kashgar, a Daira (a frame drum) and intend to practice it on my own.  Entering the Muslim world is an unbelievable experience, like exploring a distant continent.  I respect every aspect of the Uygur people’s life and await an opportunity to encounter China’s Central Asia.  There was so much all around me that I fear I missed many important historical sites by just an arm’s length.  Well, traveling in China, you’re bound to miss something and find something unexpected in return. 

Gaochang Ruins

Gaochang Ruins

desert ride on camel back, Dunhuang

Visiting the Great Id Kah Mosque, Kashgar

Beyond the Great Wall

It was a long time ago, while still in grade school, I learned about the Silk Road. In July, I will be on my way to China and Silk Road for the first time. I shall visit many places outside the Great Wall; those cities I have a hard time to pronounce their names; I shall let my emotion float like a small raft on the Yellow River; I shall let my eyes wonder over the mountains and across the hills; I shall let my heart pound when I step onto the old walls and roads; I shall let the sun and the sand fill me up and take me to the markets,  for the land I stand on was once an ancient kingdom . I shall sing and dance and drink lots of tea; Finally, I shall visit Dunhuang cave and pose in silence in front of their religious murals.

Without Fund For Teachers Grant, NCTA field study opportunities and Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute's organization, it  would be impossible for me to leap into a journey that I was destined to start forty years ago.  I am leaving Tulsa tomorrow to meet with the group and continue the journey  to China for three weeks.  I will bring silk and a pocket of dirt back.  Stay cool my family and friends!

I cannot  sleep

For the blaze of the full moon.

I thought I heard here and there

A voice calling.

I answer "Yes"

To the empty air.

***

Thanks to Karen Kane and Roberta Martin from the Columbia University, we have some fantastic reading materials:

http://virtuallabs.stanford.edu/silkroad/SilkRoad.html

Online Silk Road History
http://www.ess.uci.edu/~oliver/silk.html

Online Silk Road resources:
http://www.chlive.org/pbeck/eastlibrary/SILKROADRESOURCES.htm#PRIMARY%20SOURCES

The curriculum guide "From Silk to Oil"
http://www.chinainstitute.cieducationportal.org/education/for-educators/curriculum-resources/curriculum-guides-units/

The Silk Road: An Educational Resource
http://www.asian-studies.org/eaa/silkroad.htm

Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project
http://www.silkroadproject.org/

Asia for Educators program at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu

Online Museum Resources on Asian Art (OMuRAA), particularly the Featured Topics: Art and Trade of the Silk Road and Asian Religions: Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Islam, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism.

http://afemuseums.easia.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/museums/search.cgi

Three "must-see" cities on the Silk Road

http://www.farwestchina.com/2013/05/why-you-should-visit-turpan-xinjiang.html

A quick list of cities along the complete Silk Road (beyond China)

http://annmah.net/articles/secrets-of-the-silk-road/

Good resource for current news on Uyghurs in China

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur

"The Year of Dunhuang" at the China Institute in NYC and online

http://www.chinainstitute.org/gallery/dunhuang/

A great resource on Xinjianq

http://www.farwestchina.com/

Photography exhibition by Lisa Ross at the Rubin Museum

http://www.rmanyc.org/events/load/1908

Reading "Gatsby" in Beijing Evan Osnos (New Yorker, Letter from Beijing)

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/05/reading-gatsby-in-beijing.html

Xinjiang-China’s Central Asia by Jeremy Tredinnick

http://www.amazon.com/dp/9622177905

Along the Black Mesa

The young may die

The old must...

Three graces

Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast, Kenton, OK

Capulin Volcano

Sheep Pen  Sandstone, road to Folsom, NM

Black Mesa State Park

Cimarron County

No Man's Land

Santa Fe National Historic Trail

Daughters of Felt

Daughters of Revolution by Grant Wood, 1932, in the collection of Cincinnati Art Museum

Daughters of the Oklahoma Panhandle

If you head west on Hwy 412 from Tulsa, it 's three and half hour to Woodward, and  then another couple hours to reach Guymon; further west yet, Boise City, in almost a straight line fashion. 

 

The Oklahoma Panhandle region has an incredibly rich history which is shaped by farming and ranching culture and definitely by the water and wind as well. Three teachers from Felt Public School, on the edge of the OKlahoma panhandle joined the field trip. Linnett, a graduate of Felt High School and a farm gal remembers the area neighborhood; Crystal recalled the story she heard from relatives about the Black Sunday in Guymon; Janese as a tour guide pointed to the direction the dust came from  more than 70 years ago. They know people in Ken Burns's The Dust Bowl. "Remember the widow of ten kids during the Dust Bowl? She survived and managed a Cafe in  her later years," the ladies recall.

***

New Deal efforts at soil conservation brought back the land. When the rains came back in ’39, and dust storms started to settle down, farmers on the Plains turned to the Ogallala Aquifer, the 174,000-square-mile water table beneath them, to satisfy their crops’ needs. In a region with so little and such unreliable rainfall, it made sense: All the water that they could ask for was right there, under their feet. Wells started cropping up everywhere. Just how much water the aquifer holds is difficult to calculate, but its volume has been dramatically drawn down since 1950. At the present rate of depletion, the aquifer could, at some point, be pumped dry. And when that happens, the Plains, the people who live there, and their children could face the possibility of another Dust Bowl. (Children of the Dust by James Williford)

In fact, during our trip, the teachers from Guymon confirmed that the highway had to be closed due to bad visibility from dust storms.  It is very hard to visualize that I am standing in an area that has no surface water, all water supply comes from the mighty Ogallala Aquifer!

***. 

Crystal's granddaughters visited her while we stopped at Felt; Janese's parents are volunteers at Cimarron Heritage Center Museum; Linnett and husband live on leased farm land and we said hi to their cattle as we passed them. The most incredible impression I have from the people in the panhandle regions is their longevity. Their grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles all lived very long lives.  For everyone, every farm and ranch, and every cattle, please rain! 

"The guy in the picture is my grandpa"

American Gothic in grassland

Felt History

Fort Supply Cemetery

In June, I joined the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education Summer Teacher Institute to study the Oklahoma Panhandle area from Woodward to Dalhart in Taxes. I can see the cemetery from the edge of US 412 as the highway passes through Fort Supply.  We got off the bus and walked into a look- as- empty field with plain name markers dated to 1908, the year Western State Hospital was established. The Fort Supply Cemetery became the burial place for many mentally ill patients when the property was acquired by the State of Oklahoma in 1908. In 1982, Dr.William Blythe, M.D., former hospital superintendent was the last person buried in the cemetery.

***

Historic Fort Supply was established in 1868, as "Camp of Supply" for the winter campaign against the southern Plains Indians in what is now western Oklahoma. From this post Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer led the Seventh U.S. Cavalry south to the Washita River and destroyed the village of Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle. The military presence in the region was felt for the next twenty-five years as troops from the post performed peace-keeping duties monitoring the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation and the Cherokee Outlet.  When Camp Supply became Fort Supply in1878, the post had become the hub of transportation and communication in a region that included southwest Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and western Indian Territory. Troops built the roads and telegraph lines that linked the forts, reservations, and region's settlements. They protected the stage coaches, freight haulers, and travelers as they moved along the trails.

The Run of 1893 opened the lands of the Cherokee Outlet to non-Indian settlement. The troops at Fort Supply policed the operation that proved to be the last major task for the soldiers. The frontier was closing and the presence of the army was no longer required. In late 1894, the post was abandoned, and the property turned over to the Department of the Interior.

The old post became the State of Oklahoma's first state-operated mental institution with the arrival of the first patients in 1908. Northwest Center for Behavioral Health continues to serve the mental health needs of Oklahoma. Starting in 1969, the Oklahoma Historical Society assumed responsibility for the five remaining army period buildings. Since 1998, the William S. Key Correctional Center, a minimum security prison facility, has occupied most of the old post and hospital grounds. (http://www.okhistory.org/sites/fshistory)

 ***

I walk

Walking in Beauty 

A Navajo Indian prayer of the Second Day of the Night Chant

Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me

I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.

I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.

I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.

I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me

I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons, may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.

With beauty behind me may I walk.

With beauty below 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

***

I

walk

I walk
I walk

        I walk I walk I walk I walk I walk I walk          

I

 W 

  A  

  L  

   K  

A thistles field

Perryman cemetery

sketches by Yiren, 11" x 16", pen and watercolor

New York photographer Lisa Ross traveled to Xinjiang many times.  Her photographs of “The Living Shrines of Uyghur China”, showing wind-battered marks in Xinjiang, China, are astonishingly beautiful. (www.studiolisaross.com) The markmakers, using branches, flags, and pieces of cloth to make visual importance in a desert is very different than the Christian cemetery or Islamic burial site which are marked by tombstones, cubic–like structures and space alignment.  For both the East and West sacred grounds, the influence of nature and culture can be seen in the construction and age of the sites.  The spiritual ideology that lies within  a mound , a shine, or a grave becomes tangible.  Uyghur’s spiritual marks sometimes look like a bunch of scraps gathered up together to push back against the strong wind and sand of the open plains.  To put this into perspective, an ancient Native American burial ground is often surrounded  by  land developers.  Nature and cultural forces can shapes our perception of how we should die, how to be remembered, and for the most part, how to treat holiness in a very private and religious way.

I stopped by the Perryman Cemetery, a property of Tulsa Historical Society in my neighborhood, took some pictures and left there with a bit of a cultural understanding of an open land that became a town.  

Tulsa Perryman Cemetery

http://www.tulsahistory.org/visit/perryman-cemetery/

The Graveyard Hill

The Hill,  11"x 16",  oil on paper


On the Ramona Graveyard Hill
by
Virgil Van Dyck

On the Ramona Graveyard Hill
The wind blew and blew
As it did a thousand years ago.

The grass grew tall and there was not a wall
And the wind blew and blew
As it did a thousand years ago.

When I was a small boy on Ramona Graveyard Hill
I could see the longhorn cattle on the prairie
As far as the eye could see.

The buffalo and longhorn cattle are gone
And the wind blew and blew
As it did a thousand years ago

The old man died
And the little girl cried and cried
And the wind blew and blew
As it did a thousand years ago.

I was born in 1912
At the bottom of Graveyard Hill
It seemed a thousand years ago
So bury me on top.

Virgil Van Dyck
2006