Life in Modern Day Khevsureti

A short video we made about the challenges of life in Khevsureti, taken from footage shot this past summer.

Confessions of a Climate Change Denier

A version of this article originally appeared in The Cornell Daily Sun

By Artur Gorokh & Ryan Sherman

It was in southern Utah in 2003 that Aron Ralston amputated his own arm to escape the boulder that had crushed him against the wall of a slot canyon. The only implement on hand was a small multi-tool, and in vain he poked, jabbed, and sawed at his arm, and hacked at the canyon wall and dug at the boulder. Five days later, delirious and severely dehydrated, he realized it had been his preoccupation with the useless tool all along that prevented him from seeing what had to be done.

Last week, Prof. Jon Schuldt of the Department of Communication, spoke at a Cornell Amnesty International discussion about the perception of climate change in the American population. Effective communication, he explained to us, is key in raising awareness and bridging partisanship. “Doomsday” rhetoric does not help, he said, but only serves to limit action and discourage engagement. If he is right, this column will be of no help at all.

You have no doubt been informed that the coming decades will see a world of increasing crop failure, flooding, wildfires, infrastructure failures, droughts and exacerbated inequality. This much we’ve all heard before. Much less talked of is a colossal humanitarian crisis of displaced peoples, the so-called climate refugees. Dire though all this may be, few of us have trouble falling asleep with worry for our fellow humans, or terrified of horrific calamities to come. Climate change is slow, it happens quietly in the interim and, by God, does it make for boring television. This non-urgency itself is a deathly feature. It allows us to distract ourselves with less unpleasant solutions and fall into the same mental trap into which Aron Ralston found himself.

Let me illustrate. After Prof. Jon Schuldt talk, a student stood up and to berate non-present Republicans for their sins and ignorance. The line between the right and wrong was demarcated by the aisle between them. Building solar panels, the student said, will replace coal, create jobs and stimulate the economy. Everyone wins. How incomprehensible anyone would refuse to do something so straightforwardly good!

This Teletubby worldview of win-win-win solutions was also the crux of President Obama’s environmental policy and is a denialism of its own kind. As the former administration’s website boasts, our solar output grew 30-fold and thousands of jobs were created along the way. Impressive, to be sure, but let’s fiddle with phrasing a bit put it this way: $160 billion was spent on subsidies, and as a result solar energy now makes up for a mere 0.6 percent of total supply. This infusion of cash rendered other clean sources of energy less competitive, and even forced several nuclear power plants to shut down.

The reality is that, if we are to replace coal and do it fast (say, by 2050), sunshine alone won’t do the job. It won’t even come close. An invasive energy plan, full of government overreach and deals struck with devils should be forthcoming. We might have to get over our nuclear phobia and invest into a new generation of reactors. Natural gas is not renewable nor all that clean, and fracking is controversial, but it makes for a cheap and abundant resource that could be decisive in temporarily replacing coal. Carbon tax very well may hurt the economy, but it also is a powerful incentive for corporations to reduce their emissions. (Stagnating economies also are much more environmentally friendly, by the way.) These strategies would require us to compromise our values, be they wealth, safety or even freedom, to help manage an impending crisis. But any truly effective action is likely to entail such compromise.

Distracting ourselves with impotent solutions might just prove to be more dangerous in the long run than the outright detachment from reality on the right. What these well-meaning talking points engender are a sense of fighting the good fight by creating an illusion of actionable items. This is evident in the emerging tribal culture based in sustainable garden living, anti-plastic-bag bags and targeted dietary changes. While meritorious on some level to be sure, these are activities that don’t meet climate change in reality, and the good feelings they bring are examples a temporary placebo effect.

Aron Ralston spent days in his own denial before accepting what he had to do to achieve liberation from the boulder that had crushed his arm. Even when faced with the spectre of death, perhaps the truth was just too unpleasant. But severely dehydrated and delirious, he finally abandoned the useless tool and then leveraged his own weight to snap the arm in two, freeing bone from boulder, and allowing himself to escape the canyon (almost) in one piece. But before he was able to do what had to be done, he had to recognize the situation for what it was, and take action that met the problem in reality. Climate does not care from which side of the aisle our political rhetoric derives. It isn’t interested in soothing communication strategies. It doesn't take notice of the scattering of hybrid cars or solar panels. Until our conversations describe facts, and our solutions target reality, we are all climate change deniers.

Is it Possible to Escape Cornell’s 2.5k Student Health Plan?

If you are living on loans, every time you buy a coffee, a fricassee, or tip the pizza guy, you take out a small loan to do so. That transaction leaves you a few more notches in the red. It is debt you will one day get notices about, defer to the future, and eventually pay back with significant interest.

So it is with Cornell’s student health insurance plan. Ask a car rental agency if you need that extra insurance, and you’ll find they aren't all that motivated to help you figure it out and minimize your costs. Fair enough. Yet, if they intentionally obscure relevant details to sell you something you don’t need, I would submit that is quite a different ethical category. Is that what's happening here?

The rub’s as follows: you may have already discovered you are about to be automatically signed up and charged 2.5k a semester for student health insurance. Several emails have no doubt appeared in your inbox informing you of this action and directing you to information on how this service might be waved. Following the blue bread trail takes us to the disheartening language of the Cornell Health Policy: “...requests to waive may be granted with demonstration of alternative insurance that meet [this intimidating list of complicated requirements.]”

Take that with the fact many of us have not arrived, are not yet residents, and so are not yet eligible for alternatives, are incredibly busy, are inclined to give the policies the benefit of the doubt, and you’ll end up with a group of potential customers with very predictable behaviors.

Not only that, but a sizable disincentive is also tacked right after, a $150 fee for anyone who chooses to waive their insurance after the Aug. 16 deadline. Effectively a built in sunk cost factor --- every time a student pauses, wonders, is it worth it?, there’s a $150 floating there, threatening to vanish like a Bernie Sanders afterworld.

We therefore may never discover that for many, many a Cornellian, a much more affordable option is very definitely available. For example, if you are a US citizen, paying your expenses with loans, chances are almost certain you qualify for a state-subsidized health insurance plan. A short phone call or online survey is enough to find out (nystateofhealth.ny.gov). That can turn out to be over 2k/semester that you don’t have to borrow, don’t have to be followed around by, don’t have to pay interest on long into the the unforeseeable future.

All that said, it turns out international students are not allowed the the option of seeking or securing another health insurance, even if they can demonstrate they have a health insurance that meets all of the Office of Student Health Benefits’ conditions. For the arbitrary reason of not being a US citizen, an entirely different standard is applied with large financial implications that could very well end up being prohibitive. As you may know, international scholarships often don’t cover health insurance, and 2.5k is greater than a year’s salary in more countries than it isn't (143/176!).

But this is not a J’accuse!. I’m not railing against an imaginary Big Cornell. Institutions naturally make decisions that facilitates their mandates. And don’t we all went to attend a well-run university? Cornell is itself a complicated institution made up of many entities, the student body included, each with its own raison d'être and occasionally conflicting interests.

As for me, I submit the most equitable solution would involve creating reasonable deadlines that do not preempt and disincentivize other options. Student Health Services should also be compelled to inform students that alternatives exist. What might do the trick is something like, “Students are advised to explore all their health insurance options in the state of New York at nysateofhealth.ny.gov and make the decision that is best for them.” In fact, all those waiver emails could be a good spot for the message.

Cornell Health Services are not swindling us. My graduate assistantship covers my SHP now, and it is great. At worst, Cornell Health Services are taking advantage of an unlevel playing field to charge us for something that might not be our best option. The good news is you may still be able to find a subsidized plan (nystateofhealth.ny.gov). If it all works out and you qualify, you will then waive your SHP, cough up the $150 cancellation fee, receive a bursar refund, reflect on the nature of institutions for a few moments, and then go on about your goddamn business.

Old Man Stops Riding Bicycle

He had been peddling with resigned determination when I saw him, as if he'd always peddled, and always would be peddling. I saw him out on the road several times a week, and then I didn't.

What was that sappy novella I read for a highschool class? I remember it for the beautiful image at the end, an old man dancing away his own mortality. But in that book, the author, mitch alborn?, alboom?, wastes the opportunity and misses the whole point. He turns the reader's head away from mortally and ends on transitory triumph without addressing our own human conflicts. In Tuesday's with Morrie, the character of Death stays home. We are given happy music and uplifting stories meshing into a sort of Sunday school lesson of sentimental existentialism. An old man, was it with cancer?, dancing. Dancing! And what does Mitch do? Waste it on a sentiment! He draws us from heartbreaking truth and leaves us with a silly picture of an person flailing in irrelevancy. That's not very helpful.

This old man here on the bicycle in the arctic reminded me of that book and that old man, but only for a moment as he rod toward the silly, oblivious dancer, and then peddled through dissolving apparition and on through the remote streets of an arctic town.

I found here that the arctic summer is a place of remembering. We go there, and so are taken out of lives of forgetting. We or gently set down into a mild, endless day, where it’s impossible to avoid remembering. And with the slowness of the imperceptible movement toward the end of life, the arctic's endless night slowly shrouds the endless day. Because of this, the arctic is also place of forgetting, as one has to get right down to the business of forgetting again. 

My simple forgettings are pedestrian. Alaska itself speaks to the original grand american forgetting event, the original early American pettifogging! Here the imposition of the imperial minority of whites has not become an historical abstraction, as it is for most of us Southerners. Here it is still a measurable penetration.

"Now we know in part," reads the beautiful passage before sputtering into false wishes. What does one know in the arctic? It is where the Southern world — now swarming with the work and days of hands — once formed, from where came glaciers and new animals, and it is alien and strange and but hauntingly familiar, like a womb. The arctic is where you learn that we will only ever know in part.

Obama in the Arctic: Climate Change Superstar?

*A version of this appeared here in Alaska Dispatch News (but some links and sentences didn't make the cut).

Obama in Kotzebue: Climate Change Superstar?
by Ryan Sherman

It’s no use judging a politician by what they say. That’s how they all get there after all --- they are very good at saying things. We can only judge them by what they do.

President Obama landed yesterday in the sizable native village of Kotzebue, my current place of work and residence, on the last stop on his Alaska climate change circuit. He took the stage that evening in the K-12 school’s gymnasium, and he had a lot to say.

He talked about hiking a glacier in Kenai fjords, performing a traditional Yup’ik dance at a school in Dillingham, and watching Inupiaq fisherman haul in their salmon catch. He talked of the presidents who’d visited Alaska before him. “But there’s one thing no American president has done before,” he told us with a grin, “and that’s travel above the Arctic Circle!” The gymnasium erupted in applause.

“I don’t need to tell people here in Alaska what is happening,” he said. “I met Alaskan natives whose way of life that they’ve practiced for centuries is in danger of slipping away.” He spoke to melting glaciers, native lifestyles, and coastal erosion. He laid out a powerfully compelling case for drastic action to fight climate change. “What’s happening here is America’s wake up call,” he said. “It should be the world’s wake up call.”

Stirred by his words, it was hard to believe this was the same man who only months before opened up the Arctic Chuckchi Sea to Shell drilling. This is the same Chuckchi sea drilling that the Department of Interior’s own assessment statements warned would have long lasting impacts on animals and Arctic communities. The same statement reported a 75 percent risk of at least one large oil spill when these leases are developed.

“We are the world’s number one producer of oil and gas,” the President said to us, “but we are transitioning away from energy that creates the carbon that warms the planet and is threatening our health and our environment.”  While we heard of his great administration’s steps toward clean energy, it was easy to forget that it was on his watch America became the world’s No.1 producer of oil and gas, passing Saudi Arabia two years ago.

The fight to slow down climate change will only truly begin when the huge amounts of profitable and exploitable carbon reserves are left in the ground.

Last night Obama reminded us that America’s carbon emissions had fallen by a 12 percent since he took office. “Last month I announced the first set of nationwide standards to end the limitless carbon emissions from our power plants,” he said. “And that’s the most important step we’ve ever taken on climate change!”

The emission reductions Obama takes credit for are largely attributed to our own great recession, and since 2013, emissions have risen dramatically. Coal-mining jobs are also up 15.3% since Obama took office, and between 2009 and 2012 our coal exports have more than doubled. The coal we aren’t burning, we’re simply selling to be burned elsewhere. Business is booming.  Our carbon is exported. Our footprint expands. The president grins and waves. So what's going on?

It’s hard to reconcile our president’s moving words to the Alaskan Arctic community with comments like those made back in 2012 to an oil community in Oklahoma:

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states… We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.”

Last year Putin, who commands 40 icebreakers to America’s two, also declared a renewed interest in the Arctic. Soon after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted concerns over militarization of the area. The United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland all possess territory with Arctic coastlines, and other nations, most notably China, would benefit hugely by a drastically shortened trade route.

The Bering Strait is poised to become one of the most economically strategic waterways in the world, with a projected 13 fold increase in daily traffic according to a 2009 Arctic Council report.

As if all this wasn’t ominous enough, earlier in the day, preempting the President’s speech, five Chinese warships moved into the Bering Sea after participating in a naval exercise with Russia.

At only one point last night were we given a glimpse of the development plans he has in mind. “To boost commerce in the Arctic and to maintain America’s status as an Arctic power,” the President said, slipping the info in between a salute to traditions and a nod to national parks, “We’ve called for the accelerated replacement of the Coast Guard’s heavy duty icebreaker and we are planning for construction of more icebreakers.”

Climate change is ever more a crowd-pleaser, and Arctic development cannot be achieved without enthusiastic Alaskan support. On the other hand, a querulous populace is the most serious potential obstacle to Arctic dominance. The Canadian government learned this the hard way when a small Inuit community halted a five-year license to search for oil and gas on the seafloor of Baffin Bay. 

Open trade routes. Russia. Ice breakers. Shell. Untapped energy. Development. Whatever the merits of Obama’s recent speeches, we should never be in doubt of one thing: we should not expect an Arctic savior, and he is no climate change superstar. A large-scale popular coming together, like America saw in World War II, could save us from the worst.

If it’s already too late, as some grimmer models predict, pulling together in a humanitarian spirit might be the only way to mitigate the human suffering that will occur throughout the world. Whatever else, it will require we embrace a new conception of life. What happens next is up to us.

Ryan the Rock Hound has Audience with Fortunate Eagle

A few months ago I had the wonderful experience of quitting a horrible job. Dismal pay and tedium were factors, but what made it especially horrible was a cynical alcoholic with dangerous halitosis who had, through sheer immobility and availability, waited himself into the position of director at the little nonprofit conservation organization I'd signed up for. A self-described outdoors enthusiast with a passion for the land, he diligently walked the four minutes from home to work morning, lunch, and evening. Beyond this, his interest in getting out in the wilderness was on par with that of his interest in helping clean the office. And after his repertoire of stories of party fouls and herculean feats of drinking had been exhausted, we found ourselves with little to say each other. It was just me and him there, and I was ready to go after four months of doing little more than social media posting and hearing my suggestions summarily poo-pooed. It takes a toll on a man you know.

Most of us know that if you wander west long enough and far enough and find yourself stranded in the desert, you may receive a visit or call in dream or vision from a benevolent Native American. Mine was a phone call, and the facetious old man on the other end identified himself as an old Indian, Adam Fortunate Eagle. He was calling to inquire about our organization's annual artist-in-residence program and to insist that the application requirements for digital representations of the artist's work were an unreasonable expectation for an 87-year-old fogey like himself. I agreed, but my boss, I told him, was not there, and I offered some unhelpful advice and then listened as he boasted a bit and recommended I look him up on the web and also buy his latest book, Scalping Columbus and Other Damn Indian Stories, from Amazon.

After hanging up, I went ahead and looked him right up, read his wikipage and discovered he was one of the principle organizers of a famous Native American protest back in the late 60s in which mostly college-age Native Americans from San Francisco had taken over the recently abandoned island of Alcatraz. The protest was in part a symbolic reclamation loosely grounded in an old treaty from 1868 in which the United States pledged to return all out-of-use federal lands to native peoples. The occupation lasted two years and at its height had 400 people. Difficulties amassed as momentum was lost and the movement suffered sabotage and dwindling numbers. The remaining 15 occupants were forcibly removed on June 11, 1971.

 (The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 is an interesting read btw, warming the heart right from the opening lines: "If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.")

I had visited Alcatraz the month before and had wandered through the large empty exhibit rooms about the occupation, and with this new found context was all the more eager to chat the next time Adam called.

"Is your boss there yet?" he asked.
"No, sorry, he's still out of town." I answered.
"Well whose ass I gotta kiss to talk to this guy?" He laughed and added helpfully that he one to use satire to drive home his points.

Uninterested in the purpose of his call, I eagerly mentioned I'd just visited Alchatraz myself and read about his involvement. Flattered and expansive, he went on to describe how he had then been blacklisted and watched by the government for decades after for standing up for Native American rights. He seemed to like my mention of Nelson Mandela and how for decades Mandela himself had been considered an enemy terrorist by an apartheid-friendly US Government, until politically expedite to shift alliances. I chatted with him as long as possible, and he gave me his phone number and said I should stop on by sometime.

That was fine by me. On the way back to Utah I pulled into his place and met his wife, and he showed me his numerous art pieces and workshop and a little museum on the property he had made about his life and art. He pointed out a picture of himself dressed in an elaborate Indian costume meeting the pope, assuring me he had not kissed his hand. By the entrance was a little gift shop with copies of his books and DVDs in which he had been featured. He explained the merits of each item, and I asked him what he thought I should purchase. "How much money ya got?" he asked, as if at 20 bucks each every item was a bargain. I mumbled something about not having much and settled for his most recent book, which he signed To Ryan, The rock Hound, Fortunate Eagle. (I have no idea at what point I gave him the impression I was a rock hound.) He showed me around his wonderful house as well, which was full of paintings and gifts from fellow artists and books as well as pictures of his children and grandchildren. I resisted asking him what he thought about Sherman Alexi.


One of my favorite anecdotes of his, told several times, was a publicity stunt for Columbus Day that had received national attention. He had flown over to Italy and conducted a ceremony there to claim Italy for the Native American First Nation.

Back inside at his table he began to talk about the artist-in-residence program again, and I felt a little bad I'd not gotten around to saying I no longer worked there. Still, I'd put in a good word for him with my indifferent former boss, and I'd brought Mr. Eagle a pricey bag of pistachios and some coffee. He is, in my judgement, a wonderful artist and would make a superb artist-in-resident, if the dainty little program can handle him. I was also pleased when he perked up at the the sight of the pistachios.

Adam Fortunate Eagle was a wonderful collection of sound bytes and benevolent admonitions and also always quick to mention any facts related the systematic extermination and expulsion of the Native American population. Everything he said sounded as if he'd said it a thousand times before, and I was a bit disappointed with his answers when I filmed him for a few minutes to ask, after a life of dissent, what he would say in way of advice to young similarly-minded individuals. (Read history, was his reply.) I prodded him a bit more, until I suddenly saw myself as another white tourist badgering an old Native American for my own pithy, inspirational soundbite. I left with a smile and wave. All said, it was an interesting afternoon spent with a charming and somewhat ostentatious elderly Indian living on a reservation in the shadow of his former larger-than-life self.

a voice from the desert

early november morning

Three months after returning to Utah, the predawn morning saw me pushing the last of my cardboard boxes into the backseat of a recently purchased 98 Corolla. I pulled out of the side canyon, and headed west on the main canyon road. 10 days later, most of the boxes were be in the back seat of the car.

By that afternoon, I was in the sizable town of Winnemucca, Nevada, talking with my service coordinator and raising my right hand to recite the platitudinous pledge of service that had been tacked to the wall.

I bought food and started the drive down toward Reno. By the time I had to turn northward off the highway it had started to get dark, and I pulled off the road, checking my maps and printouts in the dirt pullout in front of the small offroad townish furnishings. I'd been right the first time. It was that smallish dark road with no cars or lights, leading north under an overpass.

A dark clench of queasiness at the base of my ribcage had been spinning there all day, and had warmed as I headed farther into the unfamiliar. I am not alone my attempt to ignore the great darkness behind us, catching up, alien, indifferent, and inevitable. It's always there. And at dusk in the desert, with the opening up of depths of dark blue universe, and the outline of distant chains of mountains, and the deep flatness that falls away from a two-lane road, sometimes it reaches right down into you.

I arrived in this small town late, and met my new director, and currently only employee of the non-profit at which I'd be working. He showed me around our office briefly, and we went to the bar nearby, the bartender of which doubled as the motel check in desk. I'd be staying in a weekly. We had a beer on him, and went round to see the motel. The smell was the first thing I noticed, and I glanced at his face. "Oh yeah, it's about as big as my place," he said. We parted, saying we'd see each other in the morning, I got my sleeping bag and toothbrush and wine out of my car and was soon asleep.

The next day I showered and showed up. After a tour of the office and all our stuff, we took our truck out onto the playa, the massive flat dry bed of ancient sediments. The clayish grey-white silt is impervious to seepage, and it's saltiness allows nothing to grow. The area's also lively with geothermal activity as well, and an archipelago of hotsprings scatters across the desert, several of the hottest ones have a history of fatalities.

Every morning, I awoke with an awful smell in my nostrils. I slept with all the windows open. I tried not to touch anything in the living room. It was becoming difficult to transcend the filthy carpet. On the third morning, nauseated before my eyes were open, I swore I'd sleep in my car before staying there another night. That evening I didn't go back. I pulled my sleeping bag out of my car again, and set it up on our office couch. I had found a few folk on the Internet to email about a place, but that didn't come to fruition. Our director was vague and unhelpful. "I mean, there should be some places around here... ."