Animal (Willful Ignorance)

more and more there is this animal
looking out through my eyes
at all the traffic on the road to nowhere
at all the shiny stuff around to buy
at all the wires in the air
at all the people shopping
for the same blank stare
at america the drastic
that isolated geographic
that's become infested with millionaires
when you grow up surrounded
by willful ignorance
you have to believe
mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you have to grow wings
and rise above it all
like there
where that hawk is circling
above that strip mall

more and more there is this animal
looking out through my eyes
seeing that animals only take from this world
what they need to survive
but she is prowling through all the religions of men
seeing that time and time and time again
their gods have made them
special and above
nature's law
and the respect thereof
and i think when you grow up surrounded
by willful ignorance
you have to believe that mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you just grow wings
and rise above it all
like there where that hawk is circling
above that strip mall

ask any eco-system
harm here is harm there
and there and there
and aggression begets aggression
it's a very simple lesson
that long preceded any king of heaven
and there's this brutal imperial power
that my passport says i represent
but it will never represent where my heart lives
only vaguely where it went
cuz i know when you grow up surrounded
by willful ignorance
you learn that mercy has its own country
and that it's round and borderless
and then you just grow wings
and rise above it all
like there
where that hawk is circling
above that strip mall

words and music by ani difranco © 2004 righteous babe music / BMI

Maybe a Turtle Foot

February 2005 Photos:

Just yesterday photos of one particular testudinate stone.

tes·tu·di·nate (těs-tōōd'n-ĭt, -āt', -tyōōd'-) adj. Of, relating to, or resembling a turtle or tortoise. n. A turtle or tortoise. [From New Latin Testūdināta, order name, from Testūdō, type genus, from Latin testūdō, testūdin-, tortoise; see testudo.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth EditionCopyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Brushing aside the duff reveals a stone inches away that resembles a turtle's foot, claws and all.

How many times has this been my experience before?

Many times.

There were no other obvious "parts" just laying around. Perhaps they are just below the surface of the ground, along with other artifacts that will never see the light of day, or add to our picture of the Sacred Landscape.

Trying a couple positions for a recreation of it's original position.

Monday Morning Thoughts

On the opposite side of the road is another row, much like but not identical to the rows that will be dismantled, buried and otherwise compromised, on my property.

They can, and will be studied, and that's my promise on this Monday Morning...

Linear row views

The old school house and the linear row
and then some more views of this "Wall of no great importance - if you forget that it's an irreplaceable object of great antiquity and beauty, whether colonial or Native American in origin, that is part of the cultural landscape of a town that is proud of it's rural nature...

A letter from the CT State Historic Preservation Office was read that stated that the wall is considered to be of no great importance...

The end of the row connects to possibly a buried row along an ancient glacial lakeshore, I believe. Just as far away as the known "Contact Time" village, in the opposite direction is a rock shelter site.

This place was known and visited by Native People for probably 20,000 years.

Any guesses at the staggering number of artifacts that may be sleeping in the ground here? Any guesses at how much Knowledge and Wisdom and Beauty will be lost about a Sacred Cultural Landscape?

Wishing and Wondering

As time goes by I'll know I will wish I had better photos of the row that somehow remained pretty much intact since 1659. I could be totally wrong, but I think it was a row that was (at the least) a fire break for the western bank near the fish weir that is the origin of the word Nonnewaug, and the original path to my house, on the row's uphill side. I think my house originally belonged to John Minor who was the Indian Interpreter for the Pomeraug Plantation. I think it was built slowly, it's eastern front facing the Indian Fields, dating back perhaps to the time of the Nonnewaug Purchase. I think it was a strategy designed to have a house already built on those most desirable lands already cleared by the Native Americans for who really knows how long, so that when the Indians did move, it could readily be acquired.

Remnants of the zigzag rows remain in the area, but since 1991 when I first began to think that they might be pre-colonial constructions, many have dissappeared due to building and road widening as well as other human activities, while natural forces have destroyed others.

There's some consolation in knowing alot of this will be buried...



The old school house and the zigzag row...

I keep trying to guess what will stay and what will disappear...

This end of the linear row will probably remain intact and visible...

the road plan

Linear row meets zigzag row. In the background, where Nonnewaug Road meets CT Route 61...

The plan...

Well, last night I just saw Al Dayton, a guy from my old neighborhood. His construction company got the contract to realign my road. He explained the markers to me. It turns out that they are going to build the west side of the road right up to my property line before zooming out to the east into the water company property - where the fog always forms over the wetlands- obliterating some ancient stone walls that are part of the cultural landscapes that occurred here, going back to prehistoric times.

My barn will be 39 inches from the edge of the road at one point, measuring off the stake they put in today.

Make that 39 and a quarter inches. I want to be honest - someone has to.

If I’m looking at it right, the southeast corner will be even closer.

They originally told me there would be this green space that moved the road away from my barn that their road sends water towards!!

No wonder the Town Planners didn’t notify me of the meetings by mail as they promised to in July 2005.

The whole idea was to ensure people’s safety while driving on my road.
Actually, it was to cut down on accidents on the state highway where it meets my road around which all these accidents occurred in the recent past, except for one – which happened at a spot that will remain exactly the same.

Is there really nothing I can do about it?
Am I going to have to watch it take place, lose that extra tiny little bit of property that separates me from the road, and see the ancient Indian stone rows disappear forever?

July 2005

A Wall of No Great Importance

I attended a town meeting on July 7, 2005 regarding the realignment of Nonnewaug Road in Woodbury CT. Part of the proposed work involves the removal of a portion of a “stone wall.” A letter from the CT State Historic Preservation Office was read that stated that the wall is considered to be of no great importance, but I strongly disagree with that. The possibility exists that this row of stones may not be of Colonial or Historic origin but could rather be prehistoric in origin, built by Native Americans as part of a land management scheme that depicts a higher degree of civilization than is accepted by most archaeologists and anthropologists.

There are actually two adjoining stone rows in question. One is a linear row that joins a zigzag stone row, a row atypical of the incidental construction of zigzag row that results from stones being thrown up against a wooden “snake fence” that has long since deteriorated, as in described in books about stone walls by Eric Sloane and others. If this were all the fence was, it is still Historically a Wall of Great Importance.

Another straight-line row connects to this zigzag row along the road, the first terrace above the floodplain, the shores of a glacial lake…

Zigzag Lines

If I told you I know how old Womoqui felt,
You probably wouldn’t understand
Not many people remember the man
The Elder Sachem,
The Old Bear
Who leapt from the Falls
Rather than leave his lands
So the story goes
In that old history,
The Ancient History
Of Woodbury.

It’s cut and fill
On the old Indian Trail
That led to this old house;
They’ll be cutting on my side
And filling over the old Indian firebreak,
That Zigzag row, the sacred row –
This morning I just happened to look
At a book of pictographs
Where it says those zigzag lines
Over Crazy Horse’s head mean that
He was a man of Great Mystery
Touched by the Great Spirit
A man of Great Medicine…