Articles from the Archives — Barbara Clayton RSS

From the Undivided Spiritual Realm to the Physical Symbol: Recognizing Depth and Resonance Through Robert S. McPherson's Dinéjí Na `Nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History   For the Navajo, the world and all being are first conceived and created in the spiritual realm. According to author Robert S. McPherson who has studied the Diné for over thirty years, listening to their lives and stories, the gods first “formed the earth spiritually . . . before it was made physically” (4). The physical realm conceived by these “holy people” is then an expression of that original, constant and real metaphysical expanse that continually operates as the universe. To them, these holy people are present with only a slight separation. What is known physically is a literal...

Completing the Story of Richard V. Francaviglia’s Go East, Young Man:  Imagining the American West as the Orient “The lives we live depend upon the stories we tell.”  Lee R. Edwards (paraphrasing Joan Didion) “The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake . . . but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.  It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”  Joan Didion “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become...

A Consideration of Philip and Alex Fradkin’s The Left Coast:  California on the Edge   Originally published 1 June 2014 “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”  Saint Augustine “Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll.  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.  Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.”  Lord Byron Philip L. Fradkin’s The Left Coast:  California on the Edge, (2011, University of California Press, 126 pages, index, color photographs, paperback, $36.95) with photography...