After the Storm 4.0 — -Somewhere in the Eastern Sierras, New Year 2021
“Hey now, boys, have you heard the news?
That little gal of mine, she finally cut me loose
So I’m calling around and rounding up the troops
I guess this time I finally cooked my goose
I got a hankering for a drink in my hand
Jack Daniels and a Coca-Cola
Play me a shuffle or two to lighten up the mood
Bob Willis on an old Rockola
I need the neon light to shed some neon light
On why what we had went wrong
She ain’t sad and that’s two of us glad I’m gone….”
I can’t possibly be the only one who has noticed that we have become a country of dis-guarded satellite dishes. It is , of course, more obvious in our rural communities. Out here in the desert it’s even more pronounced. Whenever a dish company decides to install a new service, the old satellite scoop is abandoned. Now they grow in the front yards of Darwin like metallic toadstools. Big ones, little ones, old and heavy made of ferro cement, steel and oblong with high tech pestle-like receivers poking out to sniff for a new signal. I’ve had an idea to go around collecting them. Put them in the back of my truck and find a nice hollow bowl out on BLM land and have a satellite fest. Invite a few friends and see if we can find an alien signal.
Which is a bad writer’s way of getting around to telling a story I’ve been wanting to tell for awhile.
Sometime in the early to mid 1980’s when I lived in San Francisco, I was a part of a group with a unique holiday tradition. After New Year’s Day we would rent a big truck, (sometimes two or three trucks,) and go around the city harvesting used Christmas trees that had been set out on the sidewalk. We would do it all at night and very late we would meet up way out in the Outer Sunset, pile the bone dry trees in a huge stack on the beach and light them on fire. A dramatic bonfire would ensue. There was some satisfaction about that even though we would all have to scatter when the police finally showed up.
One of the group was a man (relatively young at that point) named Larry Harvey. And one year after a relationship had gone sour, he decided to add an effigy of his ex-girl friend to the bonfire. That started an even weirder tradition which eventually got evicted from the city beaches, emigrated to the alkaline salt flats of Nevada’s Black Rock and became an international art festival called Burning Man.
I’ve never been an enthusiastic advocate of burning effigies (or castigating former girlfriends) but I do like bon fires and art festivals. So with a pick up truck bed filled with satellite dishes I had an idea. A gathering of wantabe communicators.
It is open to anyone with a decommissioned satellite dish. Any age, any size. We take them out to the winter desert, somewhere down near Death Valley. Thousands of dishes. We line them up in a bowl and point them toward the sky. We build little fires on the rim of the bowl to keep warm and then stay up all night watching the stars wander across the sky and listening carefully for an alien message. No loud music, no lights, everyone quiet and contemplative, alone and together patiently waiting the see what the sky has to say.
We do this year after year. Whispering to each other, wondering what has become of us, until finally we get the message.
Peace on Earth. Love one another as best you can. Learn to communicate. Settle your differences. And Save the World.
