Familiar Bike, Demonic Bike by Joseph Glydon

 

Familiar Bike, Demonic Bike

by Joseph Glydon

CityBike, January 1995

Anton Szandor LaVey, in his brilliant discourse on the male psyche, tragically mistitled The Satanic Witch, has a thing or two to say about me and their cars. His perceptions can, of course, be conveniently extended to accommodate motorcycles.

Lavey’s most significant insight is that a man’s (or a woman’s) bike represents either their demonic (opposite) side, or their familiar (similar) side. The demonic motorcycle represents what is inert, suppressed or unresolved in the rider’s persona. Ye Olde Oxford Dictionary defines demon as: “Supernatural, being, inferior deity, spirit, ghost, in-dwelling or attendant spirit...” The word demon does not necessarily relate to evil. In the context of LaVey’s writing, the demonic is regarded to be the hidden self, the unexpressed self. The counterpoint personality below the surface. A familiar motorcycle, on the other hand, like the witch’s traditional familiar, the black cat, has a personality very much like its rider.

The first class or demonic relationship between rider and motorcycle is best demonstrated by the Harley-centered evangelism of otherwise highly-respectable members of the local citizenry. In this case, the motorcycle confers upon its rider the status of Mister Demon, just as twenty-year-old arm candy surrounds the aging middle manager with an aura of virility. The demonic, it seems is the seat of all that one lives irrationally. It is the latent seed of infatuation, the incubator of passion and obsession. If one chooses motorcycles, lovers, or other art forms on the basis of the relentless nudging of the demonic self, pragmatism becomes an unwanted turd in one’s existential soup.

In the clarified broth of contemporary Harley pageantry, all those intimidated little demons have had their day in the sun (Sunday?) parading in mass on runs organized by one benevolent/ corporate entity of another. The demon is leashed, tamed, and home in tame to get the barbecue (barbarian cooker) going. By the way, Anton advises that amorous women not try to compete romantically with a vehicle that answers to a man’s demonic side. It’s too much like breaking up a good marriage.

The fact that Harley riders look so unlike their motorcycles betrays the demonic nature of the attraction. While the bikes themselves are ll color, sparkle and chrome, their riders can only be properly attired in basic black with an authenticating patina of grunge. The motorcycle embodies the radiant, transcendent spirit; the rider is its dark side, its earthbound acolyte. Sacred wounds in form of tattoos, and consecrated (licensed by Willie) garments confirm the humble and enduring reverence of the Biker.

The second class of demonic influence on motorcycle choice is seen among the Ducati enthusiasts. Like Harley thugsters, the Ducati cognoscente are at the mercy of the hidden demon’s need to be heard and seen. But the twist is a little different with Ducatis and other notoriously-demanding exotics: the bike itself mirrors the hidden demon. In the Harley-based relationship, it is the rider who wields the rubber pitchfork, in the case of Ducati, the bike is the bitch.

Sportbikes are the third class of demonic reconciliation on tho wheels. In this instance, the bike and rider are inseparable; combined to synergistically produce a unique entity, fiercer than either of its components. This is a demonic manifestation that writes checks you can cash at most hospitals and police stations. Sportbikes can also function as familiar motorcycles, as in the case of those full-clip testosterone loopers to be mentioned later.

At this point I was considering exploring the demonic aspects of vintage British motorcycle ownership, but hey, Merry Christmas Norton owners.

Moving on to the realm of the familiar motorcycle, the whole scenario changes. It becomes, well, boring. According to LaVey’s thinking, a rider who chooses a motorcycle that’s as reasonable as a moderately well-adjusted human being is probably having his demonic side answered more satisfactorily by a lover, or worse, personal expression. If you think the industry is in the doldrums now, imagine a motorcycle market consisting exclusively of windbreaker-clad transportation riders. Someone so inclined could argue that if humans didn’t come equipped with a demonic side, bikes would have no place as civilian transportation. That someone, however, isn’t me.

You can usually tell a motorcycle that functions as a rider’s familiar, because it either has no image at all, or an image nobody would pay a nickel over MSRP to enjoy. Exceptions to this are the truly anti-social Harley riders, and the aforementioned sportbike youts, who are as ready to display an inappropriate response to accepted behavior as their 160-mph sportbike are to break the speed limit. In both cases, these individuals are likely to have had their riding time curtailed by the need to need to pay social debts in one sort of a correctional facility or another.

The most common species of familiar riders can usually be seen on standard and touring bikes. They don’t want to have have an emotionally-meaningful relationship with riding. The bike becomes an extension of the self. With the exception of fully-coordinated Gold Wing riders, such motorcyclists hardly think about how they look on their bikes-- and it shows.

BMW riders are the most self-conscious familiar motorcycle riders in the world. BMW owners confirm their familiar relationship by their dress. BMW owners and their bikes tend to show an unblinking fashion harmony reminiscent of those married couples who wear identical, very expensive, pastel yacht club sweatshirts or gold outfits. They also depend on their motorcycles to express how mature and well-adjusted they are. BMWs function not just as tools but as tools with a message. Like the career mechanic's monolithic, red Snap-on chest displaying an earthly fortune in premium wrenches, the BMW motorcycle conveys a sense that its owner is a serious and devoted motorcyclists. Of all the marques, the BMW is truest to the spirit of the familiar motorcycle.

Next month: Nortons in purgatory.

Learning about wine in Cucamonga

        I spotted some vineyards in the spring from the uplands of Etiwanda on a walk. The entire landscape spread out before me used to be covered in grapevines when I was a kid in the area in the 60s and 70s. Now, re-familiarizing myself with the place 50 years later, I was surprised to find a scrap left over just a bit east, on the other side of the 15 freeway in Fontana. My visits to the remnant vineyard began with the unmistakable yellow-green of spring foliage and bunches of hard green grapes. When I looked again at intervals in the summer and fall, I saw the fruit ripen, redden, and, finally, dry up to form raisins.

               Vineyards in California in the 21st century spread across the landscape from the famous Napa Valley to further south than my Cucamonga curiosity. What typifies them is an excess of care. A basic criterion is the stake-and-wire arrangement where plants are trained up trunks like bared forearms to the flexible branches and tendrils that bear or will bear the fruit. For the grape picker using a curved knife, this makes the bunches accessible from a standing or sitting position. Mechanical pickers--motorized gantlets of rubber paddles-- violently strip the grapes from the vines, along with leaves, branches, mice and snakes. For these monstrous machines, vines groomed to the wires fit between their wheels, allowing them to harvest one row at a time. Fencing outside the vineyards is either formidable, in the case of industrial operations in isolated expanses among the hills, or "twee" closer to the highway, sometimes using thickets of roses. Relating to the wine-tasting tourist, this fencing is reminiscent of the white staked fences seen on horse ranches in tonier rural areas. The vines in Fontana are not on stakes and wires. They rise perhaps as much as 2 feet above the ground, not the 5 or 6 feet of staked vineyards.  

        Each bush here in Fontana sand spreads out to about 4 feet in diameter. Bordered by highways and freeways, they grow on what was clearly desert sand before their entry on the scene. I meander in unobstructed from the shoulder of the road into the rows, just as the litter and debris of passing traffic does. No fence interferes, nor is there any sign warning the wanderer away. A powerline right of way cutting through the vineyard is equally open: cars sometimes drive under the wires, sometimes leaving trash piles, despite signs there prohibiting entry. Sight lines are long: the interloper can be spotted from as much as mile away, but I have not been questioned there. The few weeds are familiar to anyone who grew up crossing vacant lots as a child in the Southern California. The vineyard does not appear cared for, though occasional tire tracks between some rows say otherwise, and the weeds might be more numerous I suppose. 

        As an urban fruit gleaner and an amateur fermenter, I am immediately drawn the question of whether or not this fruit is utilized. Certainly, the potential harvest would be large, and while I find the idea of wasting that much fruit abhorrent, everything around me in the car-centric urban sprawl of Rancho Cucamonga tells me that waste is A-OK. 

         Well, these grapes apparently do not go to waste. Next, I will write about how I found out. I also found out significantly more than I had ever intended.

Educational Culture in Guatemala

Educational Culture in Guatemala

Piet Bess

“We educate the child [/boy] that we need not punish the man.”

-painted in large letters across the front of a school in San Andres, Petén

While in Guatemala in the Summer of 2002, I took a look at the country from the perspective of building and maintaining literacy, as well as in terms of a bilingual, social bifurcated culture. During my stay there, I visited a couple of schools, briefly assessed the literacy of the adults and children I met, talked with teachers, looked for whatever libraries I could find, and looked for books in homes. I also found a book on bilingual education, Educando en nuestros idiomas, advocating a model of bilingual education like the model we use in California. The book suggested a model in which literacy in the indigenous languages is supported, while Spanish as a second language is gradually introduced as the student progresses. The indigenous languages include those of the Maya group and other highland indigenous language groups, as well as the language of the Afro-indigenous group on the Atlantic coast.It was very interesting, but did not seem to have a lot to do with things on the ground in Antigua and in the village of San Andres, Petén where I was a Spanish student.

Antigua is a very rich place for that country. It attracts not only comparatively rich gringos like me, but also members of the Guatemalan and El Salvadorian upper classes. It can be difficult to tell the rich Central Americans and the Norteńos apart. San Andres is in the huge northern province of Petén, area of internal settlement, deforestation, and, slowly, budding ecological consciousness. A very happening, exciting locale in the global scheme of things. An utterly stultifying place in the local scheme of things.

I met a five-year old boy in the family where I stayed in Antigua who could not identify an “N”*. His family is not dysfunctional in terms of, say, alcohol or some other indicator. His family eats well and has a roof [and an internet computer]. When I brought a children’s book, a Guatemalan classic called Barbuchin, he and his sister set on it—and me to read it to them—like mosquitoes on a nice fat tourist. The book promptly disappeared. He had hidden it to keep it. [I ended up leaving it as a gift.]

*At the time I wrote this, 7 yrs. ago, I thought this was very low literacy. Now, after teaching Kindergarten for 5 years, I have re-assessed. Also, I have learned that not every country's Kinder curriculum or Kinder starting age is the same.

I found a library of sorts in Antigua. It was one of the ubiquitous recycled US schoolbuses that abound there, full of books donated from The North

[see http://www.probigua.conexion.com/jmpen.htm#Support_libraries]. San Andres boasts a children’s library partly supported by the school I attended, with decent books from Northern donations

[http://www.geocities.com/vivalaselva/]. In response, the local government, the municipio, has set up a library of sorts. It is a library in that it consists of a locale, and some bound publications are in fact located there. Otherwise, it lacks everything that makes a library a library. Needless to say there is cable TV in town.

Schools there rely on rote learning. I sat in on a class of 4^th grade girls. These may well be a year younger than 4^th graders here. I estimate on my limited sample that they were reading at what would be the 2^nd grade level here. The teacher sat behind her desk while directing the class. So that is what the teachers’ desk was originally for!!!! The students were to recite a rhyme from memory. Alone. Where we in the North talk about hopefully lowering the affective filter [making the student feel OK, so he is able to learn], they were intentionally raising it. We waited while a 4^th grader grinned and twisted her hands, wordlessly building up the nerve to recite. I suppose this took a minute or 90 seconds. Here is the rhyme:

El ronron Justino, Es el capitan, De un barco Argentino, Llamada “El Sultan.”

El ronron Justino, Es un aleman, Come tocino, Caviar y champan!*

*Justin the cockroach is the captain of an Argentian ship called The Sultan. Justin the cockroach is a German who eats bacon, caviar and champagne!

If anyone can think of a purpose to this rhyme, I would certainly like to know what it might be! After everyone had struggled through this, it was time to read the next nonsense selection aloud. They were to go to the front of the room, read it out of the book, and, this time, for practice, they were to do it in pairs. Boy-oh-boy! The idea of reciting in pairs had girls finding partners in a nonce, and the raised hands volunteering to read next showed a wildfire of enthusiasm. Apparently, doing stuff with a friend is a strongly motivating force with these girls.

I asked why the students were subjected to this difficult thing, standing alone and reciting, when it was so emotionally difficult for them. What purpose did it serve? I was told that it was because it is difficult for them. It would prepare them for public speaking, or so. My philosophy of education is at odds with this practice.

Interestingly, I saw no overt tools of classroom management, such as rules, or ways of tracking their violation, such as names written on the board. The closest I saw to this was a kid being lightly cuffed once for doing sloppy work, a practice very much out of step with current Northern methods.

The teachers in Antigua acted oddly during recess. The hung out, kicked their heels, and shot the breeze. You watch me at break, and you’ll see me goin’ nuts, just workin’ like mad. Not so there. A perhaps related phenomenon is the fact that I was there when there were about a third of the kids at school. The last week had had Monday off, Father’s Day, [always the 17^th of June]. The coming Monday there was to be no school—Army Day [not widely, uh, festive for most there!]. I was in this school on a Friday, the only day this school was in session that week. Some kids had come, seen that there were few others in attendance, and gone home. Local schools had anywhere from one to four days off that week. The occasion? Teachers’ Day! Hearsay reports from Matt, a gringo who does environmental ed. with schools in Petén [http://www.volunteerpeten.com] suggest that teachers often don’t show up, and that substitutes are not utilised. He tells of shortened schoolweeks, where teachers are supposed to, but in fact do not, attend workshops. He indicates that the work ethic is lackadaisical.

Schools in Petén are built different than the one I saw in Antigua. Petén is much hotter, and walls and windows are optional. I visited a country classroom of 20 kids from 2^nd grade to fifth, though some seemed to be young adults. The first graders were being handled by a student teacher in a different class. He was spending about 10 minutes a piece one on one with kids dictating things for them to write down. His time was largely wasted with that one, and not at all used by the other 12 kids.

Here’s an example of what was being taught to 5^th graders. Words with the accent on the last syllable [lección, población] are “aguda”. Words with the accent on the penultimate syllable [arbol, como] are “grave”. Words with the accent on the antepenultimate syllable [miércoles] are “esdrújula”. “Esdrújula” is itself an esdrújula.

One asks himself often what academic skills in our sense of the phrase the kids learn. It is easy to see, however, what they do lay a great value on. In almost every classroom I visited there, the national symbols were displayed. These include the [essentially extinct] quetzal, the national tree, the flag, national seal, etc. Sometimes a Mayan military leader [whose name escapes me] is displayed in coloring-book quality art. Sometimes there is the national instrument, the marimba, which sounds to me not that different from merry-go-round music. Odd priorities.

At the country school outside San Andres, I started talking to one 3^rd grader who was having trouble with math. She would not talk to me[incidentally, this is one way the Maya had of dealing with the conquistadors, according to a history I read], so I backed off a bit, and added encouragement where I could. At break, the teacher showed some amusement at the fact that I was talking to this kid. She hardly speaks any Spanish! Well, I felt that this would have been useful information during class. After break, I returned to working with the kid using the tools you use in this situation, supporting the words with concrete demonstration. Sitting there at break, I asked the teacher, a young, literate woman with several years experience teaching experience how she dealt with kids from Maya speaking families. She gave me a little Mona Lisa smile and shrugged.

Another teacher, who teaches in a village even more isolated and poorer than San Andres, when asked how he taught Castilian [his word] to children from families that speak indigenous languages, replied blithely, “Ya saben,” “They already know.” How horrendously callous.

Perhaps some of this could be understood by attending the Magisterio, which I was given to understand was a teachers’ college. This is high school, and high school I guess is what you have to take to be a teacher. First of all, the students have to wear catholic school-type uniforms. This looked pretty demeaning in the case of the 45 year old mother there finishing her schooling. There seems to be the idea that if it ain’t got a uniform, it can’t possibly be a school, though the one-room rural school did not have them. At Magisterio, I sat in on an ecology class, a half hour lecture. There was no reference to previous lessons. The lecture outlined the local deforestation problem, and set forth the necessity for consciousness raising. The lecturer made the point that foreign tourists do not litter as much as Guatemalan ones at Tikal, the nearby World Heritage Site. During the lecture, there was no hand raised, no question asked. At this point, it began to dawn on me what it meant that there were 15 or 20 churches in this town of maybe 4,000. They are a rather well-opiated mass.

I was expecting that there would be few physical resources. The schools in Guatemala are poor. At first, I thought what a pity it is that what is most sorely lacking is just information, mere philosophy. All we need to do is transform people’s thinking. All we need is people on two ends of a log talking to each other, communicating the ideas that are needed to teach this country’s future, its youth. But isn’t information the most expensive resource of all?

A Poem about Sand-Hill Cranes

Thanks to the teacher from Ontario CA who had his 4th graders read this at a talk on poetry for English learner schoolchildren at CATESOL in about 1998. They really put the zap on my head with this poem and others, like the Lion's speech from "The Wizard of Oz." Who _did_ put the ape in apricot?

The Sand-Hill Crane

By Mary Austin

Whenever the days are cool and clear,

The sand-hill crane goes walking,

Across the field by the flashing weir,

Slowly, solemnly stalking.

The little frogs in the tules hear,

And jump for their lives if he comes near;

The fishes scuttle away in fear

When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

The field folk know if he comes that way,

Slowly, solemnly stalking,

There is danger and death in the least delay,

When the sand-hill crane goes walking.

The chipmunks stop in the midst of play;

The gophers hide in their holes away;

And “Hush, oh, hush!”

the field-mice say,

When the sand-hill

crane goes walking.

Still Got That Look by Jim Ringer

Heard this on KPIG and laughed. Couldn't find the singalong lyrics anywhere online, so transcribed them myself. Enjoyez vous!

Still Got That Look

By Jim Ringer

From the Album “The Best of Jim Ringer: The Band of Jesse James”

Lyrics transcribed by Piet

His life was a shambles, every day was a gamble,

Orange Sunshine burned his mind up long ago.

Have a listen, he learned, and any way he turned,

He found out was the wrong way to go.

Now he wears shiny shoes, he swears he’s found truth,

And all he’s learned up to now has been lies,

He used to take acid, and now he loves god,

But he’s still got that look in his eyes.

Every day he spends hours tryin’ to pin flowers,

On folks who ain’t got time to smell.

And he tries to explain, if you miss your plane,

Well, that’s better than your burnin’ in hell.

That old preacher believes it’s the workin’s of Jesus,

That old preacher just don’t realize,

He used to take acid, and now he loves god,

But he’s still got that look in his eyes.

His mama back home kinda wishes he’d phone,

But his dad hopes he don’t call today.

The last time he called was sometime last fall,

For money and to beg them to pray,

Well the church had his money, and his clothes are still funny,

And them new shoes ain’t even his size,

He used to take acid, and now he loves god,

But he’s still got that look in his eyes.

Yeah,

He used to take acid, and now he loves god,

But he’s still got that look in his eyes.

German Radio

Making Love in a Canoe

"How is American beer like making love in a canoe?", the Australian joke of the 1980's asks. Because it's fucking close to water. It used to be that we really had something to be ashamed of over here: our beer truly sucked. Now, as long as one has the sense not to buy the swill advertised during the World Cup, we have nothing to hide. American "micro" brew ales kick the Germans' any-flavour-you-like-so-long-as-it's-Pilsener ass.

But even then, back in the bad old days, we always had an easy comeback. In many areas in the United States, there has long been quite decent radio available. NPR is available in some villes that don't even appear on a map, and any town with a college has a shot at getting avant-garde music, unless, as in San José CA, the college station decides to act as a training ground for the disingenuous pap of commercial radio. German radio on the other hand, made even US commercial stations look really good.

I just got back from Germany, and I am pleased to announce that I found a station that is not only worthwhile to listen to, but positively indicative of what Europe can become.

I stumbled across a Spanish language talk show near Bremen in 2004. I stuck with the station, though it changed languages after that one show. The station announced itself as "Radio Multi-Kulti", an interesting slang for "multicultural"[see Gerhard Seyfried comic, attached]. The daytime playlist included a lot of Latin-American stuff, stuff from all over, and Michael Franti, from Northern California, a favourite in my Berkeley household, whom I first saw at my student co-op fronting the band Beat Nigs.

2 years later on my next Germany spree I immediately got to work locating the station on the dial. I had not noted the frequencies but located them quickly enough. 96.7 in Bremen, 103.3 in Koeln; now I know. I made every effort to listen to Radio Multi-Kulti/ Funkhaus Europa in the car, at home [ to the distress of my elderly mother in law's ears] and on an Ipod sized "transistor" radio. Musical fare included, besides predictable amounts of Brazilian music, Indian pop, African styles, and, most exquisitely, male French rap interspersed with female Arabic soul-style singing. This is the style critiqued in US/monolingual form by Consolidated in "This is Fascism". There was also mind-bending music with opaque Alpine German dialect lyrics, and lots and lots of Turkish pop. Only now did I twig to the fact that there are no ads on the station!

The chrystalising moment for me was when I left the Bremen train station on a bike [multi-modal transpo!] headed for the university library. The general environment of culture shock with the heightened situation of attempting to figure out Germany's Byzantine traffic culture on a physically vulnerable bicycle is bad enough. Wearing headphones dampens the audio channel of awareness, and the eyes and neck crane to compensate. This all created a Nervenkostuem, a psychic state, which I would liken to pouring vodka on the rocks over the brainstem.

Turkish pop was the perfect accompaniment to this! It supplied just the right almost-there quality, Germany being almost-there to Turkey. The texts supplied a finger-grasping almost-there understanding to my semi-Turkish-speaking brain. I understood all the grammar of the songs, but none of the vocabulary. This was much preferable, for my craven purposes, to the Klartext, the open understandableness of German. Also, it was finger-snappin' good.

The station's format is on the German model. It is neither a news station nor a music station, but both. Perhaps the best parallel is Pacifica in the US. Mid mornings are most fruitful for music, and the evening hours are taken up with news shows in about ten different languages, starting at about 4 p.m. with news from the Beeb [BBC], cycling through French, and Italian, and ending up about 4 hours later with Russian, which, oddly comes some time after Serbo-Croatian. The daytime music shows have some information interspersed—I actually learned something about Bangladesh's war of independence after a George Harrison track. At night the station plays world beat shows from all over including our very own Afropop Worldwide from PRI, and Polish, Turkish and Francophone shows. I thought the station was Nederlands free, but it turns out that, to paraphrase the Whodini song of the early 80's*, the Dutch come out at night.

Now comes my plug for flag-wavin' Europhlia. If you, like me, have just read Jeremy Rifkin's "European Dream" or the somewhat more poppy "United States of Europe" by T.R Reid, then this station fits right into the hope of a Pan-European paradigm. Much of the informational content, the evening new shows, is tuned toward other European languages, intra-European immigrant languages. The musical content invites native and immigrant alike freely to cross borders and to enjoy what can be found there, regardless of the linguistic content of the songs. Best of all are the overnight shows, where the listener is not really expected to be able to speak the language of the DJ, but to let it just wash over him until the next song. Klartext is not a priority. Radio Multi-Kulti is pretty much Europe in a box.

After I returned from Europe I found the stations on the web. It turns out Funkhaus Europa is in the one in Koeln, and Radio Multi Kulti is in Berlin. The station[s] can be heard in those 2 cities, and in Bremen, perhaps the Berkeley of Germany. That's a simple map for you of where it might be bearable to live in Germany, if you are hip or of colour, though smaller Heidelberg is pretty OK too. Anywhere else, you can hear the stations online.

Google "Funkhaus Europa" and it comes right up at the top of the list. This one is a bit fiddly to listen to, as it plays in a browser window, and, irksomely, turns off after a while until you refresh it. "Radio Multi-Kulti" needs an additional browser term like "RBB", the parent station. Multi-Kulti only plays in Real Player, which I regard as evil, but if you quit Real Player while listening to Multi-Kulti, then it stays tuned for next time. This makes Real Player my player for listening only to this one station. [Reject all attempts by Real Player to register you, whatever that means!]

Something else about the Funkhaus Europa that ties in with the internet is that they feature particular artists pretty intensively, announcing concerts, playing their interviews in rotation, and writing up their albums. The freaky Alpine quasi-Germanophone, Hubert von Goisern [Austrian, it turns out] is featured. Balkan Beatbox was on while I was there. I would like to see who is on next.

It's not WFMU New Jersey or KFJC Los Altos Hills, but it's interesting, you can learn something, and it provides a hopeful window on all that is not German in Germany.

*"So if you wanna live a nice quiet life, do yourself a favor, don't come out at night, 'cause the freaks come out at night!" -Whodini

The McMullins

The storm and its fury rage today,
Crushing hope that we cherished so dear,
Storm and clouds will in time pass away,
The sun again will shine bright and clear.

-from "Keep on the Sunny Side" as recorded by Hank Williams.

The hopes of the McMullin family of California's northern coast in the late 1880's were indeed crushed, one by one. I have visited their graves repeatedly over the past 20 years passing through the area. The stones show how their toddlers were born and buried one after the other until, eventually, sooner rather than later, the parents go to join them leaving, apparently, no issue.
The family lies in Evergreen Cemetery [a few steps away from 38.9505N, 123.6904W on GPS or Google Earth] at the intersection of Highway One and Mountain View Road just south of Manchester, California. South lie the Garcia River and Point Arena, a larger village. Graves here appear to bear only Anglo names, many of them appearing on local landmarks, ranches, or street names. Two cemeteries close by Point Arena, one with the same name as the Catholic church in town, the other with the Odd Fellows sign above its large concrete gateway, show more diversity, including graves of the Stornettas, whose name is carried by North Coast icon Clover Stornetta Dairies. The Stornettas' land is visible from Evergreen Cemetery.
No concrete gateway or white picket fence borders Evergreen. A cedar windbreak forms the entry. The fence is split cedar stake, typical to the area. The turf is short, but not mown. The McMullins lie in the open area near the entrance where one of several shorter conifers passes its shadow over the stones as the day's sun moves by. Further back in the cemetery, the trees that grow thick over the bordering streambed encroach on neglected graves at the back. One exception is a 10' x 10' concrete area where several members of the Bishop family were interred in the century before last. The name pops up all over the cemetery and on [at least historically] the ranch just up Mountain View Road.
Under the shade of a tree blown hard by coastal winds, the parents' somewhat monumental gravestone is the final punctuation of a short sentence of much simpler gravestones. The small stones are regularly spaced and mostly straight, like a first-grader's new teeth. Here we see the fruit of Jennie McMullin's womb, beginning when she is 25 years old. Her partner, presumably husband, was 20 years her senior.
The first of the stone incisors is for Carl, "Son of S.W. & Jennie McMullin". The stone notes that he died 25 days after his 1^st birthday in 1874. In the next year, his brother, a little over a month old, dies. 2 years later they are followed into life, and then into death, by Irene, "Dau. of" the same parents, nearly a year old. This mother, who can least bear an extra burden, then conceives twins. Less than a year after the death of Irene, one, Ellie, dies on the day she is born. The other, Paullie, survives. For a week. The twins bear names befitting infants. They will not need adult names. Nearly three years elapse before the McMullins' final attempt at reproduction arrives at Evergreen Cemetery. In November 1880, their unnamed "Dau" is interred. No date of birth is listed. "Infant" reads the headstone. Jennie's reproductive potential is exhausted. She is just 31. Perhaps they have learned not to name their dying children. Perhaps this was a miscarried pre-term foetus.
The side of the adult McMullins' large, substantial gravestone lists all of these children, and no more. Jennie McMullins survived until 1893. She was 44. Her husband did not see two more summers after her death.

…Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
I t tolls for thee.

– John Donne http://www.global-language.com/devotion.html

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris

Now, this Bell tolling softly for another, saies to me, Thou must die.