Readers interested in the two strains of conservatism Landon Meyer finds competing within him, and the issues involved in reconciling them, might want to look at the work of the great British conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott, collected in Rationalism in Politics (available in various editions). It contains the famous and beautifully written essay “On Being Conservative,” which is also available online.
The Yoeme (Yaqui) language quotes from the traditional Yaqui Deer Songs that begin and end the book are drawn and modified from “Maiso Yoleme/Deer Person,” Felipe Molina, Yoem Pueblo, August 21, 1984, in Yaqui Deer Songs, Maso Bwikam: A Native American Poetry, Larry Evers and Felipe S. Molina (University of Arizona Press, 1987, pp. 71 and 106). The phrase “the weeping earth” is from “The Elders Truth,” a sermon by Miki Maaso at Yoem Pueblo on December 22, 1987 (transcribed by Felipe S. Molina and Larry Evers, Journal of the Southwest, volume 35, number 3, Autumn 1993). I put together my own version of the song that ends the book.
The lines said by Alex Z beginning: “All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about it” are paraphrased from Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa, quoted in Hannah Arendt’s “Truth and Politics” in Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics, 1993). The concluding part of the line is: “At the end we’ll be privileged to view and review it-that’s what’s called judgment day.” A different version appears in Dinesen’s Last Tales.
I hope I didn’t offend any readers with Tansy’s comments about Carlos Castaneda and his fictional Yaqui shaman, but like her, while growing up along South Sixth Avenue in Tucson, Arizona, I never saw an Indian fly-even as we raced with dimes in our hands from the sandlot next to my house past Vic’s Trading Post to the legendary Le Caves Bakery on the corner.