A Confrontation with Racism

In my writing I shy away from controversy, and lean towards the warm fuzzies. I enjoy writing things that make people feel good about what they are reading, regardless if we share the same viewpoints on environmental, social, spiritual or political issues.  

Recently something happened that I simply have to write about: a racist comment. It was late night, two in the morning, and I was at the home of some close friends. There were some people I didn’t know as well, but as it goes it Durango, new faces often become new friends. Then the comment happened. It was about black people. I looked across the room to see if anyone was as offended as I was, and sure enough my buddy spoke up and said, “I have black people in my family.”

The guy followed that up with another racist comment. My buzz was instantly killed, and my blood boiled. I was absolutely shocked to think that a person within my circle of friends could be so blatantly racist. I mean after all it is 2013, and we’ve had a black president for over four years.  

Later I talked about the event with my friend who spoke up. He offered, “Man I’m from the south and used to racism, but to say something like that here in Durango, that surprised me.”

Thinking about the event more, I suspect the guy was just trying to act tough to impress his friends. I guarantee the guy would have not made the comment if there were black people hanging out with us. And why did the comment upset me so much?

Comedian Dave Chappelle is one of the most hilarious and genius minds of my generation. Before disappearing out of the spotlight he made two and a half seasons of the “Chappelle Show,” where he often made skits that covered racism in a comedic and unique way.

The most brilliant skit was, “The Black White Supremacist,” about a blind black man who was a leader in the white supremacist movement, able to hide his skin color under the guise of a KKK outfit. Blind and surrounded by racist white people, no one ever told him he was black. This skit was so genius because it nailed the absurdity of racism. Why does the color of one’s skin matter? We may be of different hues, but we are all human.

Reflecting on the situation some more I wondered why I was so upset about the racist remarks by a stranger, even if we did share some of the same friends. I started thinking back to my childhood, and ever since then there has always been a black person I’ve looked up to as a hero. As a child it was Michael Jordan. When I grew up into a man, it was Martin Luther King Jr. Learning about Dr. King and the civil rights era made me realize the importance of non-violence and love. I felt connected to that struggle even though I wasn’t even born yet during King’s time. Today I feel many of our country’s most brilliant minds are from hip-hop, an art born in the black community. Hip-hop represents my generation, and is the daily soundtrack to my existence. Black culture has always been part of my life, and will continue to be. I’m actually looking forward to being an old man, rolling up to some youngsters at a stoplight and bumping some 2Pac. God knows what the kids will be listening to then.

Last month, while working on the alumni magazine for my alma mater, Western State Colorado University, I interviewed a gentleman named Melvin Foote, who is the president of the Constituency for Africa, based in Washington D.C. Coincidentally Foote, who is black, is from Rockford, Illinois, the same town where most of my family lives. Before moving to Colorado he grew up poor and didn’t even know a single college graduate prior to attending Western. After college he joined the Peace Corps, went to Ethiopia, and has spent the rest of his life dedicated to helping the people of Africa. He’s rubbed shoulders with many influential leaders, including Nelson Mandela and Colin Powell. I reached out to Melvin earlier this week while working on this piece to discuss racism.

Nelson Mandela and Melvin Foote

Most of what we discussed I expected. Of course we talked about slavery, and how everything is tied back to that. Foote shared with me that racism is less direct now than it was in the 60s when he was in college, and more institutional.

Then he talked about those younger than me. He spoke of his daughter, who is 17 years old, and her group of friends, who are both white and black. “They don’t judge each other by their skin color, but rather the content of one’s character,” he said, quoting Dr. King. “They treat each other like sisters.”

Then he talked about children, even younger than her. “In a few years there are going to be kids that are 7-8 years old that have never known anything other than a black president.”

When he said that it made me think of my own life, and what I’ve known and seen in my very short 34 years. I wasn’t brought up in a racist environment, and that is probably why I am not racist. I was raised in a time where black people were not inferior, but where they were my peers, and even my heroes. I didn’t live through the civil rights movement of the 60s, but rather the aftermath, the path towards equality of all human beings, and that is something to be proud of.

So, I think that’s what pissed me off and shocked me the most, that someone could blatantly make racist comments in front of several people he did not know. In retrospect though, forty or fifty years ago it may have been commonplace for a white man to make such comments about black people. Today it is not. That alone is a small victory.

In closing, I wish I had a few thousand more words to reflect on this issue. There is a very similar struggle for equal rights going on for those who love the same sex. I can only hope my children grow up in time where everyone who loves each other can get married and share their love openly, regardless if they are homosexual or heterosexual. After all, God is love.

And wishing I had more time, more words, I’ll just leave you with a few that I first heard from a rapper, Andre 3000 of Outkast, “No one is free when others are oppressed.” 

This piece appears in this week's Durango Telegraph. 

Eyes on the Prize, Trying to keep the focus into spring

The Highway is for gamblers

Better use your sense

Take what you have gathered from coincidence

-Dylan

I am a man of seasons, my behavior is defined by the outside conditions, and I can smell, feel and taste spring in the air. Clothes come off, and an awakening stirs within.

This winter I felt incredibly focused. I went into my own form of hibernation, writing thousands and thousands of words, starting a new book, writing articles, essays, blogs, working on The Climbing Zine, and also working a lot at the restaurant where I am employed. Delightfully I climbed almost all winter, and except for two cold and stormy weeks I got adequate doses of Vitamin D, climbing in the Southwestern Colorado sunshine that I worship. Some pray to the son of God, some pray to the sun.

Though I am seen as an oddball in a region where many people are obsessed with skiing (I haven’t been on a pair of skis in three years) in many ways winter is a treasured time of year. The older I get, the more focused I become, and I’ve realized writing is my life’s work. I am no longer trying to become a writer, I am a writer, I just need to channel my gift and be patient with it.

Now that spring is here I get a little more antsy. The mind drifts towards simple sinning a little quicker. My routine of early to bed, early to rise will be interrupted more and more. When I was a child I was full of angst, and something about warm weather, more sunshine, women wearing less clothes; well, a storm brews up when all these appear.

Last summer I embraced the angst, the openness, every woman that came my way, but this season I hope to be more disciplined. Routine can be boring, dreadful, but routines can create health, which is wealth. Health is the altar I will pray to this spring and summer while embracing the ecstasy of the warmth.

Life is about to be action packed. I’m about to print my first book, Climbing Out of Bed, and go on a couple book tours this spring and fall. I have four weddings to attend in the next five months. The next Climbing Zine is coming out in April. When there are new things to do it sparks my cells and I feel alive. A writer must live an interesting life or else there is nothing to write about.

On that note, I’ll leave you with some words from a draft of a piece I working on for the next Climbing Zine. It’s called Hip-Hop and Climbing, and it covers the terrain where the two intersect. I hope the spring is awakening something beautiful within you.

(an excerpt from Hip-Hop and Climbing)

The fringe is where the magic happens.

Four climbers pack into The Freedom Mobile, a graffiti-ed vehicle, spray painted red, white and blue. The sun is shining so brilliantly, its impossible not to be intoxicated by the Vitamin D it provides, even before climbing.

The commute to the crag is filled with excitement, and hip-hop, the music of our generation. We are in Indian Creek, Utah, the red rock desert, our home away from home, or home to those that choose to not call civilization home. Red rock walls all around are where we spend our days. The energy of hip-hop is where its at. The lyrics are secondary, sometimes, it all depends on the mood, sometimes the lyrics are the most important thing. When we’re driving to the crag its all about the mood, the energy, hip-hop awakes us from the slumber, pumps us up, till people are so damn amped it must be time to climb.

This scenario unfolded for years, over and over again before I thought of the connection. Hip-hop has been a part of nearly climbing experience I’ve ever had. We listen to it on the drive to climbing, the words get stuck in our head, and nowadays with iPhones and iPods, music anywhere, anytime that fits in our pockets, we even listen to the music while climbing. I’ve been driving around a graffiti-ed car to climbing areas for years, and graffiti is the art that was born with hip-hop in New York City in the 1970s. And, the best of the big climbing parties in our crew of friends always end up in dance offs. Hip-hop is the soundtrack for my climbing experience, but does the connection just end there? Do hip-hop and climbing have a deeper connection that what is at the surface? Of course they do, but you’ll have to go to the fringe of your mind to believe...

My homey, Cheo, doing his thing!

Read the full article when The Climbing Zine Volume 5, The Dirtbag Issue drops as an e-zine on April 20th. A print version will follow the electronic version in June. 

A Crack at the New Indian Creek Season

Some thoughts on my first day out climbing in Indian Creek this season:

http://www.climbingzine.com/portfolios/a-crack-at-the-new-creek-season/

The Bridger Jacks, Indian Creek, Utah. Photo by Braden Gunem

Poker Night

Written for this week's "La Vida Local" column of the Durango Telegraph: 

“You don’t have TV, how do you live without TV?” my uncle asked in disbelief. I was back in the Midwest, and as usual, something about my Colorado lifestyle, was surprising my relatives. Typically the topic of conversation is about me sleeping on a rock face, or how if its hard to meet women when I’m living out of a vehicle, but this time it was my lack of access to cable.

Yes, I have all but abandoned the recreational pastimes I grew up with, with one notable exception: poker. I learned to play poker with my uncles in Illinois, and over the holidays every year we’d sneak off into a basement filled with antique beer cans, a pool table and a card table. I almost always lost my five-dollar buy in, but liked the excitement of playing, and when I was old enough, I enjoyed the beer my uncles provided.

Sometime after I moved west in the late 1990s, poker blew up in popularity. In particular, Texas Hold Em, a seven-card variation of poker, took the nation by storm, and suddenly it was the way to play the game. Even in the small corner of the world that I was living in at the time, Gunnison, everyone playing poker had adopted Texas Hold Em, and there was no turning back.

Somewhere in the middle of this I had a friend who had a grand idea, we could fund our climbing trips by gambling. He had a system for several ways of winning money with roulette, blackjack and poker. For a brief minute I believed in his system when I won seventy dollars in thirty minutes playing blackjack in New Mexico, after returning from a climbing trip to Mexico. “See, seventy bucks can last a week in Mexico,” he said.

I shared his passion for this idea briefly, until I lost two hundred dollars at a roulette table using his system. “Just keeping betting on black,” he said. “Eventually you’ll win your money back.”

Well, I did keep betting on black, and the little silver ball kept landing on red until I was out of money. I still never lost faith in his idea until he left me hanging in Las Vegas one time. He was planning on meeting me there to test his systems in Sin City, but couldn’t make it; something about a tooth falling out because of his frequent tobacco chewing habit.

What we didn’t know at the time was there actually was a man who funded his climbing trips by gambling. For over twenty years, John “The Gambler” Rosholt was a climber by day and professional poker player by night. He funded a dirtbag climbing lifestyle from playing poker, and was known for his methodical, scientific approach to both poker and climbing. Rosholt considered poker a science, and a job rather than a game. Not only was he successful with poker, but he was also one of the top climbers of his time.

Sadly in 2005 Rosholt went missing in Las Vegas. The media covered his disappearance, and his sister Jane, tirelessly searched for him. Many theories existed about his whereabouts until 2010 when a climbing party found some human remains on a wall in Red Rocks, a climbing area near Las Vegas. The remains were tested and found to be Rosholt’s. Apparently he was scoping out a new route on the wall, and slipped, falling to his death. There are many interesting stories about him online, and hopefully someday, someone will write a book about the man they called The Gambler.

In Durango, I’ve found a great group of guys to play poker with. Like me, most of them don’t want to lose more than five to ten bucks a night, and laughter is of equal importance to winning hands. My buddy Travis, a smooth southern gentleman, is the ringleader, and last winter somehow convinced six to eight people down in his frigid basement once a week for a friendly game of cards. Good beer was always on hand, and it had a similar vibe to playing with my uncles, but instead of the antique beer can collection on the wall, there was a Wu Tang Clan poster.

I can’t overstate how cold it was in that basement, one night my friend Tim, who doesn’t have an ounce of fat on his body, and suffered frostbite as a teenager, showed up in a puffy coat and pants that one might see in a picture of someone climbing Mt. Everest. Though we made fun of him, he insisted it was the only time he was warm enough down in that dungeon.

This winter Travis is off to exotic travels with his lady, but we’ve still kept a decent crew together. We play every couple of weeks, and have found a warmer location than a seedy, dark basement. We miss Travis and his wit, “I don’t want nobody to get shot or stabbed down here, it’s only poker,” he would often say, but don’t miss the fact that he usually took all of our money.

           

Through poker night I’ve met some climbing partners, new friends, and grown closer with others. It’s a good time even when I lose my money, which is most nights, but I’ll admit it is much more fun when I’m winning. I don’t have the keen sense that John “The Gambler” Rosholt must have had, although his lifestyle was envious, and I’m glad there was someone out there living that dream.

I don’t have any regret about leaving behind a more sedentary lifestyle back in the Midwest for a more active one out here. After all if I stayed in the Midwest I’d never have any of these stories. But, I’m glad I’ve hung onto at least one pastime, poker night. 

Eat, Sleep, Paint. Alexis McLean trusts the artistic process

Local artist Alexis McLean knows that the grass is green here in Durango, she just has to doubt it sometimes.

 “Whenever I think that I need to move somewhere else with a bigger counterculture art scene, I’ll meet several artists right here in Durango,” McLean says. “It’s really a great scene here, one that I’m proud to be a part of.”

Being inspired by other local artists is just one element of McLean’s work, which is now on display at Eno, located at 723 E. Second Ave. An opening will be held today, Thursday, February 7th from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Her show features twenty-eight original pieces, a mix of watercolor and oil paintings, as well as a few prints. About half of the pieces were made just for this show; incredibly productive considering she also has a day job at Z Chiropractic and works as a kids ski coach on the weekends at Durango Mountain Resort.

 “I really had to dig deep for this show,” McLean, 30, shares. “Typically I can get into a creative space very easily. This time it was more challenging. I wanted to do a lot of new stuff. At first I was thinking about everything too much. The key ended up being just showing up to my studio, day after day.”

Over the process of paining and writing (she uses words and poems in several of the pieces), she became so inspired she didn’t want to stop. “I ended up pulling an all-nighter, the first time I’ve done something like that since college.”

While she doesn’t have a specific name for the show, one central theme emerged during the process: trust. “Trust is the web that connects everything,” McLean says. “Trust is a part of what we go through as humans. As an artist I needed to trust the paint and to trust my intuition as an artist.”

When asked to describe her style as a painter she first says “subconscious frontiers” and then also adds that others might call it “representative abstract”, but not solely abstract. She constantly uses birds, bees and hearts in her work. “There’s just something deep about a bird flying, that freedom and mystery. I especially like using ravens in my work. They are wise and crafty.”

Faded Wisdom by Alexis McLean

 “I have a visceral connection to birds, hearts and bees,” she feels. “I can’t paint them and not feel anything.”

McLean notes that the emotions she feels pour directly into her work, even if she does not realize it until years later. She enjoys the reactions from others with their interpretations often being completely different than what she was feeling when she painted it.

“One of my favorite parts of creating these paintings is to see what they evoke in people,” McLean says. “I create from my own space, my own self indulgent emotional darkness, my own light and beauty, my own heart wrenching memories, my own nothingness. All of that disappears in a show. They are not mine anymore.”

McLean has been creating art as long as she can remember, and always had the necessary tools available while she was growing up. “Both of my parents are creative people, my Mom is a jeweler and a writer, and my Dad is a builder, an abstract thinker who is always doing something creative. There’s a picture of me at an easel when I was five years old.”

Listen by Alexis McLean

At Fort Lewis College she got a degree in Humanities and took courses in painting, ceramics and art history. After college she didn’t paint much, and then one day it hit her, and she just had to paint. “It became a need for me, like drinking water and sleeping. Sometimes more important than sleeping,” she jokes.

In addition to the act of creating art, the need to be surrounded by other artists is of equal importance. “It’s nice to be a part of the growing art scene in Durango. I love watching my friends evolve, and it’s refreshing to see more contemporary work, not just the typical Southwest themes.”

She thinks that the Durango Arts Center has done a great job promoting local artists and is active in the Studio & community. (She is participating in an art show at Studio & on February 22nd.) McLean has a studio on 9th and Main, one where other artists also have spaces nearby, and she enjoys having them close. “I enjoy seeing other artists’ spaces, where they create,” she adds.

McLean is constantly trying to experiment with new art forms, and wishes that there were more places in Durango where graffiti art could be featured. “The cities where it (graffiti) is allowed have an amazing artistic expression.”

She has a project to paint a friends art car in the works, and has been dabbling in writing poetry. Last summer she had a show at the Diane West gallery that featured hand written letters from various friends and family. She appreciates poets and hopes to help organize future spoken word poetry events in Durango. In addition to all this she is a fit athlete, an active skier and climber.

McLean’s future goals involve finding a gallery to represent her and seeking a residency, where she can dedicate more time to her art, in a community with like-minded people doing the same. She also enjoys teaching art, and would like to share what she’s learned with others. More and more she is being commissioned to create pieces for people who like her style and want to give her the freedom to paint something specifically for their homes.

As for this current show, McLean is very proud of her work, and enjoyed the process as much as the paintings she created. She loves being an artist, if only for the sake of it.

 “When we approach our desks, stages, easels, journals, we need to talk to our brains into the fact that the end result does not matter. When we think of how something will look or sound, the moment of creation becomes limited. We need to distract the brain so the heart will be free to express the truth.”

Alexis McLean’s studio is located at 101 W. 9th St. More information about her art can be found at www.alexis-mclean.com and www.facebook.com/alexismcleanpaintings. 

This article was originally published in the Durango Telegraph, Feb. 7, 2013. 

Another Freedom Photo

Another photo of The Freedom Mobile, taken by my friend Ashley King, at Hartman Rocks, Gunnison, Colorado, summer 2011. This was what The Freedom Mobile was all about, getting to the rocks, to climb. It was a thousand dollar car that lasted seven years, went to Potrero Chico, J-Tree, Yosemite, Red Rocks, Indian Creek, Castle Valley, and the Black Canyon. It was part of my American Dream, to live cheaply, simply, and full of free time, freedom, free climbing. Let freedom ring!