It was the best of times ...

Rehearsing in a garage, a high school student’s fingers run raw as she retries chord after chord, desperately trying to match music to her emotion.
Every failed strum brings her closer to that perfect song and every callus measures her journey.
Across town, a 28-year-old abstract painter adds another splash of color to a piece he’s already spent hours working to complete to his satisfaction.
Despite the difference in art form, personal background, experience, education and socio-economic class, Sedona’s underground artists seek the same vexing goal: expression.
Kindred spirits, the artists of Sedona reach out and support each other in ways that major city art scenes envy: poets attend friends’ art openings for inspiration, painters dance to their favorite bands and musicians cheer the loudest at poetry slams.
Understanding this city’s rare peculiarity – that artist friendships transcend genre – is what makes living, working and creating art here worth enduring endless road construction, noise ordinances and the high cost of living.
Desert sunsets every night, hiking trails minutes away, recently-immigrated artists adding new ideas and stories to our municipal tapestry infuse inspiration to short-timers and longtime artists alike.
Our residents may complain about the city’s small-town atmosphere bleeding away into memory, but for Sedona’s art community, it’s alive and well.
Sedona’s underground art scene has grown by leaps and bounds in my last three years, eight months and 23 days working as copy editor, columnist and arts reporter for Larson Newspapers.
From a loose collection of cliques and tribes, the art scene now boasts a cohesiveness that promulgates into the city’s core.
More festivals, arts events, concerts and small gigs – and greater diversity among them – have found the gumption to exhibit their creations. Their news continues to fill our pages.
At an event on Friday, April 25, a local artist told me that my work “has changed this town.” However, I am just a storyteller reporting on the changing city around us.
Artists and the community at large have grown to realize that art is not a luxury, it is as necessary as food, shelter health, education, decent working conditions, to paraphrase poet Adrienne Rich.
The city has always been a mecca for artists, ever since the Sinagua carved petroglyphs into the rock faces at Palatki Heritage Site centuries ago.
Many artists claim, while other loudly champion, that the strength of Sedona’s current underground art incarnation has its roots in a small coffeehouse located beneath a liquor store in West Sedona.
It was a venue that welcomed all artists to perform, exhibit and produce, served as a gathering place for local, temporary and traveling artists.
While the venue closed in July 2005, the close-knit community spirit has lived on, even among those who never drank a coffee within its walls.
The “Sedona Underground” column certainly had its roots there.
My first column on May 27, 2005, appeared with this editor’s note: “This is the first installment of a column that will appear weekly in The Scene. It will explore the underground artists and musicians of Sedona.”
Colleagues and friends alike wondered if there would be enough artists to maintain such an endeavor.
In the more than 100 columns published in The Scene, the well has yet to run dry.
Artists continue to appear from the woodwork, drawn not by “vortex” or “red rock fever,” but an unspoken conviction that Sedona returns to you what you bring to it – artists either flee within months or flourish for years.
Those who endure the trials of living here pass on their experience and artistic talents to those who move here for the art scene and those young artists who rise up and take their rightful place in the community.
What has made these artists so remarkable and worth the ink of newsprint are not simply their skills, but their proximity. These artists live and work among us – next door, down the street, or in a room upstairs.
It has been my privilege to bring you, our readers, the personal profiles of the scene’s most talented, influential, inspiring and promising members.
However, all good things must come to an end.
I am leaving the Sedona Red Rock News to pursue other artistic endeavors in the Verde Valley.
While this column comes to an end with my departure, the obligation to support, promote and celebrate the city’s art and artists falls on the community that they entertain and honor with their work.
Sedona’s destiny is to become an artistic hub of the Southwest, but we must all have to gumption to play our part.
Follow your bliss and build the city you want to see.
Contact Christopher Fox Graham at foxthepoet@yahoo.com.


Now take the first nine paragraphs and read the first letter:
Rehearsing in a garage, a high school student’s fingers run raw as she retries chord after chord, desperately trying to match music to her emotion.
Every failed strum brings her closer to that perfect song and every callus measures her journey.
Across town, a 28-year-old abstract painter adds another splash of color to a piece he’s already spent hours working to complete to his satisfaction.
Despite the difference in art form, personal background, experience, education and socio-economic class, Sedona’s underground artists seek the same vexing goal: expression.
Kindred spirits, the artists of Sedona reach out and support each other in ways that major city art scenes envy: poets attend friends’ art openings for inspiration, painters dance to their favorite bands and musicians cheer the loudest at poetry slams.
Understanding this city’s rare peculiarity – that artist friendships transcend genre – is what makes living, working and creating art here worth enduring endless road construction, noise ordinances and the high cost of living.
Desert sunsets every night, hiking trails minutes away, recently-immigrated artists adding new ideas and stories to our municipal tapestry infuse inspiration to short-timers and longtime artists alike.
Our residents may complain about the city’s small-town atmosphere bleeding away into memory, but for Sedona’s art community, it’s alive and well.
Sedona’s underground art scene has grown by leaps and bounds in my last three years, eight months and 23 days working as copy editor, columnist and arts reporter for Larson Newspapers.
That's right, "Read Kudos" the secret message hinting at reading the competition arts publication I'm taking over on May 1.

How would Jack Bauer free Tibet?

Why is the world picking on the People’s Republic of China leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing?

For a country with 1.3 billion people to protect, feed and force into sweatshops to manufacture Western goods — such as your shoes, watchband or every plastic thing in your kitchen — you have to admire the PRC’s efficiency.

Production quotas and six-day, 12-hour work days get things done for those proud Americans with five-day, eight-hour workdays and addictions to “24.”

If Jack Bauer knows the world is harsh, shouldn’t we?

From the state of China’s perspective, what’s the harm in oppressing a nonviolent ethnic minority here or there, crushing unarmed student protestors or blocking Google searches about “Sedona vortices” to keep the peace?

Independent thought and differing ideas cause problems, plain and simple.

Political dissent and free speech must be restrained and controlled for the state to flourish. Hence the reason Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, whose theft of American liberties is only topped by the sheer, kneejerk brilliance of turning it into an acronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

Seriously, that’s what it stands for.

Imagine being in the room with the guys during the six hours it took to come up with that title not realizing the Bush Administration official who said, “Hey, now, make it an acronym,” was just kidding.

In 2005, Reporters Without Borders’ Annual Worldwide Freedom Press Index ranked the PRC 159th out of 167 countries.

The Chinese Communist Party restricts most access to news deemed a threat to national security.

Few Chinese have met Westerners.

Right now, the average Chinese have access to state-run news which tells them Tibet was never independent, asked for PRC support to resist Western imperialism in the 1950s and wants to break away, due to a secretly militant and nationalist Dalai Lama.

History gets fuzzy when it keeps changing, much like recollections of past ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends change when your current partner asks for details.

The state of China and the Chinese people need to be treated as two separate parties as we approach the games.

Most Americans these days don’t want foreigners to confuse their ideologies with those of President George W. Bush, thus the reason some Americans wear red maple leaf patches when they tour Europe.

Hate the war, love the soldier.

The Chinese see images of foreigners the world over trying to douse the Olympic flame or statements like, “Our government should boycott the Beijing games …,” however, the state of China carefully neglects the context of “… because the Chinese government has oppressed, silenced and killed Tibetans for 50 years.”

Protesters would do better to silently protest the passing Olympic torch with signs reading “Question Your Government” and “Dissent is Necessary,” “Demand Free Speech” — of course written in Mandarin — and hope to get caught on camera.

“Free Tibet” bumper stickers help pay manufacturers to make more “Free Tibet” bumper stickers but do little to actually free Tibet.

One-sixth of the world’s population wakes up with a photo of Chairman Mao on the mantle. They support their government because there is little or no access to the outside world.

Bitter street protests in San Francisco or Paris make rabble-rousers feel self-satisfied, but to the average potential Chinese dissident watching on television, the Western countries seem like tribes of self-righteous jerks, which helps neither Tibet nor the average Chinese.

Rather than boycott the games, more Westerners should go. For many Chinese, the 2008 Olympics may be the first face-to-face contact with Westerners.

An old friend of mine returned to Sedona after a few months in the Far East. In China, he was asked bluntly and naively, “Tiananmen, did that happen?”

For Westerners, the oppression in Tibet, the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square and Beijing’s efforts to limit free speech and dissent are old news. To the Chinese, they are rumors desperately seeking confirmation.

The right words at the right time could do more than a full day of tear-gas-filled fun on the Champs-Élysées.

Communist China is a doomed creature, whether it happens in the slow progression toward capitalism or with a violent overthrow by the people.

Either way, this summer’s celebration of the best achievements the human body can perform could be a tool to show the Chinese what’s possible from free minds.

Ask yourself, “How would Jack Bauer free Tibet?”

Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Free Northern Arizona with a plebiscite

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

The idea has been thrown around of a Verde Valley independent of both Yavapai and Coconino counties.
We should go further. Let’s declare Northern Arizona independent of Southern Arizona.
The word “succession” has earned a foul reputation ever since Fort Sumter and “partition” implies a hope for an evitable reunion. An “irreconcilable statehood” might be more appropriate.
Phoenix can claim up to New River while the state of Northern Arizona gets everything north of Black Canyon City.
For too long the counties of Northern Arizona have been beholden to Phoenix’s values. We have the water, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelley National Monument, Hoover Dam and the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City.
Southern Arizona can keep the Gadsden Purchase, whose northern frontier is proudly celebrated at a rest stop somewhere between Phoenix and Casa Grande.
Northern Arizona may lose the rights to the Old West battleground of Tombstone and Bisbee, but Western movie heroes always rode off in the sunset in Sedona or Monument Valley.
The division has historical precedent: while the Union split Arizona and New Mexico at the 32nd meridian west of Washington, D.C. — the present boundary, the Confederate States of America split the states at the 34th parallel — placing Sante Fe and Prescott in New Mexico and Phoenix and Roswell in Arizona.
An obvious provincialism already exists in Northern Arizona, clearly illustrated in Sedona’s citizen-local and alien-visitor dynamic.
Those visitors from Flagstaff — “You live in Flagstaff, my kids go to college there” — and Anthem — “You’re from Anthem, that blight of urban sprawl choking the water and life from our state?” — are treated different in Northern Arizona already.
There’s a rash of new states springing up around the globe, from East Timor and Kosovo to peoples demanding autonomy from Basques, Chechens, Kurds, Tamils and Tibetans.
A new state of Northern Arizona could slip in without much of a fuss.
The biggest and most obvious gain for partition from the south is tourism, which we can use to fund roads, schools, emergency services and local government projects.
Ever heard anyone travel from Michigan or Sweden to visit the wonder that is … Yuma?
However, Kingman draws gamblers too broke to stay in Laughlin, Nev., and Route 66 is still a part of the national consciousness although the Mother Road is a worn out, potholed strip of pavement that only photography students from Yavapai College or Northern Arizona University dare travel anymore.
Payson can hold a referendum to see which side of the line it wants to beholden to, but my money is on the northern half. We’re just cooler.
Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1898 and since 1952 Puerto Ricans have shot down the idea of becoming the 51st state. Maybe they really want to be the 52nd state and are just waiting for a filler in the 51st slot.
Perhaps that’s our destiny.
Besides, having 52 states would be great for playing a deck of cards — Northern Arizona could be on the seven of clubs.
But the primary motivation for statehood would be better planning for water as Salt River Project owns surface water rights throughout the state to keep Phoenix moist. The Verde River risks disappearing so Tempe resident can have a pool and Scottsdale can advertise golf courses in the middle of the Sonoran Desert.
Northern Arizona would also control it’s own transportation projects, namely the brilliant decision to implement road construction on Sedona’s busiest intersection, the ‘Y,’ between Spring Break and Memorial Day.
It takes someone from the Phoenix-based Arizona Department of Transportation to assume that the best time to rip up our most important and heavily traveled thoroughfare is during the height of tourist season.
Combine that with the heavy roadwork along Hwy. 179 at the same time and you can see why locals debate succession.
Even cable guys know better than to work on the line in the middle of the Super Bowl or the season finale of “American Idol” as they’re liable to face the wrath that is a football fan, or worse yet, a 14-year-old girl with a crush on Jason Castro.
Maybe blocking highways in Phoenix makes sense in the spring, but with the lack of an alternate route between West Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek, all the road work does is make locals wonder, “If it’s called ‘tourist season,’ why can’t you shoot the tourists?”
Now we just need a flag.
Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Dodging bullets like Keanu Reeves

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

As the recent Sedona city election headed toward the finish line, some of our readers wondered if the Sedona Red Rock News would endorse any candidates.
Other editorial boards in other major newspapers have endorsed presidential candidates, but more often than not, these endorsements have little effect on readers and only serve to reveal a potential bias in following new stories, whether they exist or not.
In our Internet culture, people are reading more, but are less likely to read the opposition. People want “news” about their candidate or issue, but they don’t want “news by journalists” to present an honest picture, flush with the acne, scars and high-class call girls with MySpace pages that may taint a public figure.
Liberals tend to skew toward left-leaning publications like Mother Jones or TomPaine.com whose writers inch more toward punditry that journalism.
Conservatives have “fair and balanced” Fox News, which is neither fair, nor balanced, nor really news. Discuss.
Punditry is not a bad thing in itself, but it should not masquerade itself as journalism.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post are cited by the right and left as too liberal or too conservative, respectively.
At the other end of the spectrum, journalism must be free of any bias whatsoever, otherwise, it’s just opinion printed on broadsheet.
It’s that specter of bias lurking beneath the bed that defines a reporter from a writer.
When we begin in this career, cub reporters are terrified that readers may see a hint of their opinion on a issue, so they learn to pick words and phrases that avoid that bias but still tell an engaging story.
They call representatives on both sides, in part so they don’t get angry phone calls after the story goes to press, and get quotes so that readers have both sides.
The reporters also learn the hard way that even if the story is fair, they’ll still get angry phone calls from both sides.
Nobody likes the truth unless it’s their truth.
As cubs grow up into … lion reporters — I’m stretching for the metaphor here — they carry themselves with a certain proud nobility of being fair and unbiased. At this point they’re not much fun at parties, but certain costs must be paid for ethics.
While the Sedona municipal election was the impetus for this column, we dodge these bias bullets in Keanu Reeves-like fashion in all of our news coverage.
In the same issue, we run letters to the editor calling President George W. Bush a warmongering pinhead destined for a war crimes trial at the Hague to letters calling the sweet, mentally handicapped man a hero for doing his best to protect Americans from the dangers of militant Islamic fundamentalism.
This gut-twistingly fun sense of ethics is also what defines a newspaper from a tabloid or a newsletter, like many of those that have appeared in Sedona.
The journalists’ Constitution is the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.
Some of my favorite parts, which mark the distinct difference between the Sedona Red Rock News and other publications, include section three, “Act independently:”
 Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
 Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
 Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
 Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
 Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
 Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am the volunteer chairman of the Sedona Youth Commission. As such, I will never write a story on the commission’s activities, I will not edit a story on the commission, nor will I read it until it comes off the press.
This is not a rule of the city government, nor has it been handed down from our publisher. It doesn’t need to be. It’s simply the ethical thing for a reporter to do.
Other publications, in stark contrast to the Sedona Red Rock News, publish bylined news stories by individuals quoted as sources in the story and — miraculously or with the help of a tripod and timer — appear in the story’s photographs, too. Will technological wonders never cease. Toss in a letter to the editor by the same person and you have a tabloid or a newsletter, not a newspaper.
The only thing that gives journalism its health and strength is ethics — without ethics, newspapers are merely pretty fishwrap. The Sedona Red Rock News’ readers have a healthy newspaper.
Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

CFG to Rick Renzi: resign now

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

To the honorable Richard Renzi, United States House of Representatives,
Resign.
Now.
You’re facing 35 counts of criminal activity, your fellow representatives dodge you in the halls of Congress and since you’ve left all your committees, you aren’t really helping your constituents in Arizona.
Sincerely,
Christopher Fox Graham.

On Feb. 21, a federal district court in Tucson filed a 35-count, 26-page indictment against Renzi — who technically represents Arizona’s First Congressional District.
While Renzi is innocent until proven guilty, in politics, guilt isn’t the issue — effectiveness is.
As glimmers of impropriety grew into friendly visits from FBI agents to a novella by a grand jury, Renzi left the House Intelligence Committee, the House Financial Services Committee and House Natural Resources Committee — he has been effectively ostracized from decision-making on Capitol Hill.
Laws aren’t decided on the House floor, they’re decided in committee. Voting on bills is something any appointee can do. Right now, Renzi’s collecting a big paycheck for only a few hours of work a month.
In fact, forward Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano my phone number; my weekends are free.
Miraculously, Renzi topped both the charges and page count filed in 2005 against Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham [R-Calif.], considered by many as the most corrupt member of Congress in recent memory.
Duke, step aside and clear the pedestal for Rick.
While the nation stood aghast at the corruption charges filed against a sitting three-term member of Congress, national news agencies turned to Arizona for a response and found that most voters in Northern Arizona sighed and asked, “Oh really? We knew that.”
A congressman who could be Joey Buttafuoco’s twin brother was indicted? You don’t say.
It’s no secret that Renzi hasn’t represented Northern Arizona well. He’s rarely in Arizona, if at all, except for brief tours during election season and fair-weather visits.
Think of the grandkids who only visit grandparents long enough to remind them that they need a paragraph in the will – that’s our congressman.
His staffers show up to events and apologize for his absence, much the same way our parents continue to tell us there’s a Santa Claus.
We believe some fictions because they’re pretty.
Chances are, it’s because he can’t find the Verde Valley on the map — if his staffers want to tell him, we’re south of Flagstaff and north of Phoenix … just find us on GoogleEarth.
I remember getting a call from his office to request a copy of a newspaper after a former editor wrote a particularly scathing editorial.
Granted, we’re not a huge newspaper, but you’d figure a congressman with a net worth of $5 million could afford the out-of-state subscription of $65 per year from a newspaper serving 10,000 of his constituents – we’re cheaper than a set of American flag cufflinks.
According to an Associated Press news story in 2002, Renzi has lived in Arizona only seven of the past 20 years. Imagine electing a Sedona City Council member who lived here only four-and-a-half months a year. Renzi is essentially a Virginia resident with a vacation home in Flagstaff — and all 12 of his kids went to school in Virginia.
In 2001, Renzi started his first run for Congress, using what federal investigators are now claiming were illegal funds.
He also boldly claimed that he had authored key legislation for Sen. Jon Kyl [R-Ariz.] and former Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe, then of Arizona’s District 5.
In an Associated Press article by Scott Thomsen in August 2002, both Kyl and Kolbe denied that Renzi was anything more than an unpaid intern, making his closest interaction with pending legislation the act of pressing the “copy” button on the Xerox machine.
Renzi won that first election by vastly outspending his opponent, George Cordova, and paying for attack ads that Cordova simply didn’t have the funds to fight.
All of his campaigns have been equally brutal to his pocketbook and yet he has stayed in office.
Since moving to Washington, D.C., — or going back home — Renzi has been implicated in the firing of U.S. attorneys, an action, which, added to perjury, brought down U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in September.
The FBI come knocking on the door of his family’s business in April 2007 and the indictment was handed down last month.
“Let the chips fall where they may if I’m a carpetbagger,” Renzi was quoted saying in the 2002 Associated Press article.
The chips have finally fallen, congressman. Go home.
Deciphering Sedona is published every other Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Campaign trails: Not for stars or VIPs

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

Scarlett Johansson has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama [D-Ill.] for president.
That endorsement may be key to winning the Democratic nomination before the national convention in August and may entice swing voters away from the presumptive Republican contender, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and could push Obama into the White House.
Those who stood in long lines at Sedona City Hall only wish they had heard her endorsement before Super Tuesday, otherwise they would have given the state’s delgates to Obama instead of Sen. Hillary Clinton [D-N.Y.] and McCain.
Even though Johansson has never been elected to office, she holds the crux of the pop culture swing vote.
Scarlett Johansson … yes, the actress. From “Lost in Translation” and “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” She was in “A Love Song for Bobby Long,” too, I think.
Johansson recently appeared in a music video alongside footage of Obama’s concession speech after the New Hampshire primary in January.
Even though he lost the state, the speech is an example of Obama’s linguistic prowess and inspires in a way only the man who dared to author a book called “The Audacity of Hope” could.
Johansson is accompanied by almost 40 other actors and musicians, including that guy from that thing, I think, and that girl I saw on a magazine, I think, or maybe her bandmate … maybe.
Quite honestly, aside from Johansson, I couldn’t name anyone in the video with certainty, hence the reason she’s receiving the brunt of my angst.
Anyone who can name more than 10 of the artists in the video probably spends more time watching music videos than deciding who to vote for anyway.
The video is an example of viral marketing — a sinister tactic that uses word of mouth and existing social networks to promote a concept or product.
The video snaked its way on to YouTube and Think MTV — make your own joke about that one — and into the collective consciousness pitting the “have you seen it yet?” faction against the “I’ve got to find it because I’m not cool” faction.
Thus, if you have seen it, you’re cool for being in the know. If you haven’t, you’re not. Sneaky marketers evolve just as fast as consumers.
The song was “written” by Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, who can call stolen lyrics a “song” the same way he can call his pretentious spelling of “William” a “name.”
Will.you.are, in music, it’s called sampling. In journalism and everywhere else, it’s called plagiarism.
Don’t get me wrong, Obama’s speeches are moving.
While my daily Bruce Wayne facade is a newspaper copy editor and columnist, my Batman is a slam poet, so I can say with some authority that Obama is a poet running for president.
He commands the English language like President Abraham Lincoln, imparting hope and patriotism without sounding cliché, and does so with enough humility that makes us believe we are merely angels trapped in skin suits.
I sometimes get chills from his cadence and inflection, which seems to blend the the inspirational concepts of President John F. Kennedy, the conviction of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the lyrical rhythm and simplicity of poet Maya Angelou.
However, watching a group of self-righteous celebrities ride on the coattails to promote a political candidate smacks of an impeding American Idol coup d’état, which threatens our fragile democracy.
It’s nice that celebrities have gotten out of rehab long enough to tell us that Obama’s words are moving, but, honestly, we don’t care.
We know the words are moving already.
What’s worse is that Obama’s campaign neither commissioned nor endorsed the video.
Actors should stay in movies, musicians should stay on CDs and only occasionally make the foray into other mediums to sell cologne or laundry detergent.
Leave the speeches to politicians and the poetry to the poets. If they happen to be same person, let the Obama be.
Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Underdogs get Sedona's sympathy

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

In restaurants and bars across the city on Sunday, Feb. 3, Sedona residents joined the more than 97.5 million Americans to watch Super Bowl XLII.
While both teams garnered local support, in many Sedona venues, the crowds leaned toward supporting the New York Giants in its inevitable defeat at the hands of the as-yet undefeated New England Patriots.
Why?
Perhaps our support is a translation of the American way blended with Southwestern flavor.
We are a nation, after all, that earned independence by defeating the largest empire the world had ever seen with a army of Kentucky farmboys and Boston tea-tossers — then defied the greatest navy on Earth for good measure 30 years later.
There is a strong tradition of supporting people who have little chance of victory, yet we still secretly root for Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, the Washington Generals and the Rebel Alliance to overcome overwhelming odds.
Perhaps there’s some vicarious joy in watching Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, the provebial flawless homecoming king replete with cleft chin and five o’clock shadow, get showed up by Eli Manning, a Louisiana hick who often has the stunned expression like he’s just been hit in the face with a shovel.
Even in Hollywood, the doofus gets the girl.
However, Sedona’s support of the underdog was not unexpected, but an incarnation of our city’s character.
Sedona is a city of small-business owners and working artists who often defied convention to eke out a living and inevitable success among like-minded people struggling against larger forces, be it big box stores, economic instability, environmental doom or the vices of selling out to capitalist corporate music.
For Sedona residents, the Giants was our team.
Granted, New York was also destined to lose brutally.
The Patriots were 13.5-point favorites with an unblemished 18-0 record.
The team planned to walk home with the Lombardi Trophy and a perfect 19-0 record after a short Sunday afternoon of playing a quaint little scrimmage against a wildcard team with a 10-6 record.
Sports commentators nationwide debated whether the Patriots would abuse the Giants like Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas” with the largest blowout in history or merely rough up the team by a mere two touchdowns.
Yet, the unthinkable happened. The Giants not only put up a fight, they won.
Casino owners in Las Vegas made money like mad.
The “greatest team in football history” was run out of Phoenix by a scrappy team whose quarterback often throws footballs wildly, often into the arms of the opposition, and can be counted on to blow any advantage his defense can earn.
Manning looks like someone who fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down, then climbed back up because he thought he missed one.
Before Sunday, Manning was not anyone’s pick for most valuable player, certainly not by fans in New York [actually New Jersey, to be geographically accurate], who booed him during games earlier this year.
Yet, Manning led his team over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers with plays that caused diehard fans to go white-knuckled at the sheer inane recklessness of his behavior on the field.
But perhaps we cheered for the New York Giants because the New Agey metaphysical gooeyness that is Sedona has rubbed off onto even football fans and we saw the future before it happened — and the cause of the Patriots inescapable fall from glory.
“Spygate” — the illegal videotaping of opposing teams’ sidelines during games by Patriots head coach Bill Belichick — was conspicuously absent from any reference during the telecast. Many felt the NFL’s punishment for the sin was far too light.
However, the universe smacked revenge by pressing the “smite” key giving the Giants a 17-14 upset of the Patriots
Sedona residents have a word for cosmic justice: Karma.
Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Governor's doublespeak leaves Sedona wondering

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano visited Cottonwood on Jan. 15 to tell local leaders her plans for 2008.
She also came to say that the impending recession was not her call and that whether we’re in one or not is up to academics to determine.
Apparently, a recession is much like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal — if you can’t see it, then it can’t see you.
No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but the governor’s obvious omission does hold some weight, especially in financial markets where moods of investors can change the future, best illustrated by Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley in “Sneakers:”
Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.
Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.
Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.
Conclusion: You can make banks fail.
Of course, if the banks are already shaky, then the rationale for denial goes away. The governor, rather than looking like an alarmist, begins to look oblivious.
On Monday, Jan. 14, stock markets around the world crashed in their biggest drops since the economic fallout following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Markets from Mumbai and Hong Kong to London and Paris saw huge drops, some of which froze trading for hours to induce calm.
Imagine 10,000 high-stress, over-caffeinated stockbrokers trying to find something to do before the markets reopen while at the same time trying to find reasons not to kill themselves.
In the bars around the world’s stock markets, I bet pinball games recorded their highest usages ever.
In Japan, the Nikkei Index hasn’t fallen this fast since Ghidorah faced off with Godzilla.
Why did the world go nuts? With the U.S. economy roiling from the subprime housing fiasco, the Bush Administration announced details of a stimulus package Friday, Jan. 11.
Of course, economics looked at the package, then asked if the real package was hiding behind that one.
Call me shocked and awed.
The Bush Administration has been able to hold off widespread criticism of its domestic policies for the last six years due to a mediocre wartime economy, but as the housing crisis and credit crunch strikes hardest at the middle class, expect even die-hard right to turn on President George W. Bush.
Bush lasted longer in office than his father, but will be remembered the same way — as a bad economist.
Oddly enough, if the Bush Administration had stayed out of Iraq and restrained itself to snipe hunting Osama bin Laden in Waziristan, it would likely have enough of a surplus to afford a buyout of the worst mortgages and stave off the fall.
Hindsight is 20/20. That’s what the History Channel is for.
In the meantime, though, Arizona’s governor needs to face the state’s economic situation and offer us more than blase shrug of the shoulders.
If we wanted to ask an academic about the state’s economy, we would have elected one as governor. But we elected Napolitano and she needs to say it like it is.
Once people know they’re in a recession, spending habits change and the economy slowly begins to recover.
If they still think the economy is shiny, however, they buy Hummers and oceanfront property in southern Arizona figuring good times will refill their pocketbooks.
Locally, Sedona businesses are buckling down, while others are changing hands or closing up shop.
Houses that have been vacant and up for sale will likely stay that way a little while longer.
As a city, Sedona’s renewable resource is its landscape, so even in a recession, people will still come, artists will still create and the city’s finances won’t collapse.
So even if the governor won’t say it, pretend like we’re in a recession. Plan for worst, hope for the best.
In the end, what makes governor’s doublespeak ironic is that her ambiguous answer intended to keep us out of recession creates enough confusion and false security to push Arizona into one even faster.
Deciphering Sedona is published Wednesdays in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

A game of Red Rover decides next president

Christopher Fox Graham
Deciphering Sedona

Unless you’ve been behind closed doors this week or catching up on all the New Year’s Day bowl games via TiVo, the biggest news this week was the Iowa caucuses.
Every four years, the corn capital of America takes its focus off its native sons Tom Arnold and Ashton Kutcher and turns toward selecting our next president.
Unlike typical blind ballot primaries, the Iowa caucuses are an odd throwback to our agrarian heritage.
The premise is simple: neighbors gather in a town hall, church or farmer Jim’s big red barn and debate which person they like best, like a bad high school prom.
One of the major parties – figure out which one — uses a straw poll, but admission to the caucus costs $35, so candidates often purchase tickets and give them out to supporters.
This is different from buying votes, because, well, they say it is.
The other major party has voters stand in designated areas for each candidate. For 30 minutes, they shout each candidate’s pros and cons trying to coax other voters to leave their group.
Nothing says we have a modern 21st century government like choosing our leaders in a game of Red Rover.
As some candidates’ support drops below 15 percent, they are no longer viable and the former supporters have to choose a new candidate to support and 30 more minutes of “will my candidate make it.”
Kind of like musical chairs.
In the end, the results are supposed to prognosticate the future election season.
The turnout is historically miniscule. This year, 225,000 Democrats and 120,000 Republicans participated, slightly more than 0.15 percent of the country’s registered voters.
In layman’s terms, it’s like determining the end of an hour-long football game in the first 3.8 seconds.
In our microwave society, that brevity makes sense.
Thankfully, Arizona has the foresight to hold its primary on what was once called Super Tuesday, but now Super Duper Tuesday, perhaps the lamest name for a calendar date since Weasel Stomping Day.
The date places Arizona on the “forgettable states” list, when faced with the powerhouse delegate states of California, Illinois and New York.
However, it also means that as candidates skip Arizona in favor of California, we’ll also dodge their negative ads, the slight swelling of anger when they mispronounce “Prescott” in speeches and a deluge of campaign promises that they’ll forget if and when they reach the White House.
“Did I promise Arizona I’d protect its water, or was it Tennessee? It was all such a blur.”
The results of Super Duper Tuesday on Feb. 5 will essentially leave voters with the two major candidates for the long, bitter run to November.
While the particular process of primaries is almost silly, the matter behind it is not.
This presidential election offers female, black, Hispanic, Italian, Mormon, senior citizen and second-generation immigrant candidates — not as fringe choices but as major front-runners for both parties.
But what makes the 2008 election a milestone is not that candidates come from these groups, but that their minority statuses seem to matter so little.
While in past years, a person’s gender or ethnicity was seen as a benefit or bane, in 2008, it seems to be more of a footnote.
While voters and the media note the specific differences, the actual influence seemed to be negligible at best.
Voters at the Iowa caucuses were gleefully choosing from a slate of candidates far different from their state’s demographic, with little concern about that difference.
Whether Iowa voters predicted the future president during their popularity games, they chose candidates based on the content of their character.
The prediction that race, gender and family heritage will cease to divide us less and less after 2008 is one any election-watcher can see coming.
Deciphering Sedona is published every Wednesday in the Sedona Red Rock News. To comment, e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

"Sedona Underground" in newsstands Friday.

My first column in Sedona Red Rock News comes out Friday. It's called Sedona Underground and focuses on our local underground art scene. In Sedona, everyone is an artist of some kind, and if they're not, they're probably a tourist.

For Sedona locals who read my LiveJournal, pick up Friday's issue and tell me what you think. It's on Page 2 of The Scene.