Sample columns created with the Great Falls Tribune audience in mind: Editorial guidance needed&desired!
Active links, if someone bothers to get this far, are to other works of mine.
Writer shooting arrows, blindly, yet trusting to providence ...
[Elder Wisdom, if you're up for it]
a column by Joel A. Wendt, born in GF on December 23rd 1940.
Left at 18, and mostly never came back.
Ran north and south alongside the rocky mountains, and then bounced east and west - coast to coast,
but not too much the middle - just the four directions mostly.
~!~
#1
Remembering Wally.
My dad, who died in 1968 in the company of MLK, RFK, and the Democrat Party, ... if he lived today might well have admired Trump - or not - but all the same would have found himself siding with the folks referred to in much Media by the somewhat ignorant/arrogant expression: “trump voters”.
Hmm? Let me see? Did those who voted for him, cause his election?
I’d guess the profit-driven Media gave about 10 Billion in free advertising to a very gifted con artist, who had the basic virtue of not being a politician; and somethings just need someone who is willing to kick-start stuff. Ever kick a machine or a dog, and get something going? Everyone is pretty much angry about something these days.
It is known to happen, that someone inadvertantly wins an election because the other folks ran such a poor/lame/irrelevant campaign. Trump&company had no real plans for a election night celebration, not nearly on the same level as did Hillary Clinton and the Goldman Sachs crowd.
History will find them so-called: “trump voters”, to be heroes, patriots, and seriously&justifiably angry. The underlying principle here, though, is that giving a name to folks, such as conservative, liberal, trump voters, whatever ... giving labels doesn’t touch Who they really are, and Wally would have understood them completely.
The heartland of America >(not the homeland, what an abuse of language that cheat is)> is people who lived a certain kind of life. Mostly they were churched folks, every Sunday. Here, in Great Falls, Wally and Dorothy - mom&dad, went to college at the start of the depression, lived through that and the Big War, and the cold war, ... a lot of folks lived through that and they held this country together.
Dorothy grew up in Eastern Montana, her mom a teacher in a one room school house whose husband died of the flu in 1921. Having a big house, her own car, a country club membership - amazing time of life (just, you know, ... paid for by cleaning a house of four men, seeing to their clothes, and speech - lets not kid ourselves Mothers are not getting enough credit.), until Wally died, and Dorothy rode the train of modern medicine into a long life of the body living, but the spirit gone walk about far too soon.
Shut ins vote. Lots of ways a capitalistic society leaves a trail of injured and dead. The older - the Elders, the less real care and the more promises broken over the years of modern political farce.
These kinds of folks, all over America, gave everything there was to give, and as Societies change, traditions weaken and children leave home for city lights. The 60‘s and 70‘s culture wars were won by the music. I listened to mom and dads music (Frank&Bing&Nat, with regular square dancing on the side), and then when I was a teenager (‘55), Elvis, Hugh Hefner, and Martin Luther King started saying enough is enough, seeds of something new, only possible because of the sacrifices of the heartlanders.
Dancing changed in the 50‘s, the music changed, and movements quickly got too sassy for some, too blatantly sexual - in public no less - becoming over a time just another new fad.
What is celebrated at the half-time of a Super Bowl Game? The dreams, the extraordinary ordinary people follow, are found in the music and other mass-art forms, like films and TV.
Now, Today ... when a kid is born, we are handing them smart phone magic lanterns, Aladdin’s genie, useful in world of at least 40 Thieves. These djinn-run creations have many bugs/glitches/flaws/security faults, by the way, ... hacking has its roots of/in something seeming Fey, as in dark arts Fairies, although being spied upon by the lying CIA and NSA, and all the rest - is getting very tiresome.
Listen in the right places, and there are messages everywhere. Crop Circles, Medicine Wheels, Labyrinthine games being played, and too many jerks still getting away with stuff. Washington D.C. often called: Byzantine.
Hurricanes move through social and political life, if we track the psychic weather rightly. Latest too big for his britches psychic-storm front, named Trump. Still, at the gas pump, and the store, and the place I need to work to have money to buy what I need to live ... everyone who can afford two floors of lawyers on K. Street in D.C., knows how to get free passes, while the rest of us barely get left overs.
Do not worry folks, big-sky-flying-hard-living-pain-facing - you should try living our way of life ... or not. Everyone, even the rich and famous, carry rocks in their packs. GF Montana culture was ... / 7 decades ago: work hard, play by the rules, mind your own business, and respect and care for your neighbors ... today, some folks mad at God as well. Public payback to public figure male-pigs: a good sign or a bad sign? Mobs generally dangerous, public shaming not known for its truth sense, although confessions finally help ... when will we shame the bankers, that’s my question?
The Politicians (never trust a thing they say was common wisdom when I was 11) needed votes and started promising their victims the stars and the moon. Never delivered did the politicians - both Dems and Reps: the farms still got sold off to bankers’ games, the city-cesspools were filled with ever more lawlessness, a values war erupts and some folks are pretty much justly-right not liking the breaking of promises.
I was there when Wally was wined and dined by the Strategic Air Command, while the military-industrial complex painted a big X on our town, perfect for the Ruskies to not miss.
Trump and Putin? - talk about strange bedfellows.
I hear rumors that big sky folk still be neighborly, mostly, except for meth, gambling, and the usual excesses. I suspect I like the Montana of my dreams, more than I will like it if I go home, considering Fate has given me a good nest in New England, among forests, with visits of bears, squirrels, hares, birds - even a vulture, silver and red foxes, with a wildcat snow strolling on the side. I’m hiding out in as much Montana as is available elsewhere, including good neighbors. The curse of the white-privilege I suppose. Yes, and black lives do matter, but everyone pays their dues, people, ... everyone.
All the same, Montana raised me well, and for that I am ever so grateful. Its the future that worries me, given how badly government seems to be taking care of our business, We the People being the Sovereign ‘n all, and the rest - in politics - having to swear oaths to public service. Personally, leave the oath there - but its all just so many words now, OR for/as a new-now: dear politicians, please share your blood for us to test, & secrets to know. No one who seeks and obtains public office gets passes to misbehave. If any work place needs to drug test its employes, it is the Houses of Senate, Congress, the White one and the Supreme Court as well.
Given all the stupid coming out of D.C., we need to set some higher standards. Or maybe, just give everyone in D.C. a hidden carry permit, and when the time comes, we can watch CNN as the Senate starts to act like a bad Western.
Maybe We should rewrite the Constitution. Social equality would mean that the lives lived, should receive equal treatment, and that Corporations are Ruled by the quantum entanglements living in the cold black holes of bankers hearts. Congress gets only the healthcare and other benefits the lowest of the low of all citizens gets. And regular drug tests, and public revelations of taxes. They got to better than us, more open, not more secretive.
In the Old West, if you are keeping up with our cultural memories - I just love Westerns - one on Neflix just stared a lady from Downton Abby, name of show: Godless. Bankers, owners of lots of property (the banks loan the money to themselves basically), restless post civil war blood thirsty, religion/wisdom quoting murdering madman, ... visual joy, well acted, reminds us that the basic arrangement of our lives has not changed its fundamental social order, on that level.
Godless. Bankers, owners of lots of property (the banks loan the money to themselves basically), restless post civil war blood thirsty, religion/wisdom quoting murdering madman selling meth/myth dreams, to children well acclimated to needles as sources of change, fragile souls in a world gone mad itself.
The name of the 20th Century?
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
But this is the 21st Century -
... warrior women admired, athletes, as well as drug dealers celebrated with prime time TV soap operas characterizations. I would label/libel/the 21st, considering the present situation ... the Will You Look at that Shit, age, although the Hopi have a wonderful way with words: The Day of Purification. A Christian might say, after John the Baptist, the we are being -today - baptized by fire and holy breath.
~!~
#2
more comments from retirement, by a son of Montana
Queens for Daze:
Dreams trouble most of us. Some folks’ nightmares bad, but Houston was not a dream, nor is Washington D.C. =+=Wall Street.
When I grew up, in the ‘50‘s, we had serious courses in Civics in what today is called Middle School, ... we called it: Junior High. Social Studies later ate Civics, and most people you meet now don’t know much Civics, except in heart-places, but there is, in the Law, a Spirit much abused these days. Lincoln was a lawyer, and being one is not always bad, just ... law is so polluted these daze with thoughtless overcooked legislation.
What if there is nothing wrong with America?
Everyone’s got complaints, and there are various expressions of which person’s worries are more important. But what if what was set on course, as the 1700‘s was becoming the 1800‘s, was something deeper, perhaps even worthy of this not much used anymore word: Mystery, in the archaic sense. Truth to tell G. Washington left behind evidence he was a ganja-tea user, helped from alchemist practices lingering in the Free-Masons lore.
The Founders were as one, whatever intoxicant they used, in that Law belonged to the Citizens to create. Citizens were to be individually Sovereign, no more kings and queens. As was said in “V for Vendetta”: “people should not be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of their people”. Read the Preamble, and the 10th Amendment. We the people ... do ordain and establish ...The powers not delegated to ... nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, as in We the People ... what was given, can be taken back, and a ballot box is not always necessary. Although talk is cheap, and too much is owned by someone not the speaker.
What if the major religion of Western Civilization - Natural Science - is wrong on some very crucial points? I’m picking just one, namely that just as we ordinary folk have an interior of depths of feeling, struggle and pain, so does the Whole-Universe throb with invisible Life, to the thought-rhythms analogous to our blood and nerves. There are no things, only Beings, many well noticed by old words. I’ve heard a rumor, that: “In It was Life, and the Life is the Light of the World” is scientifically rigorous religious poetry.
Back in the Day when there were Goddesses as well as Gods. Or, Mother Earth and Father Sky.
Western Civilization is dying of the disease of the patriarchs, which is that women - well-hymm - need to be corralled, otherwise they’d have us putting away our toys, and no longer getting to leave our messes for them to clean up.
Trump, ... he is clearly flying too high, and destined for a fall, .... the only scary question is just how bad will the politicians let it get, before they show an ounce of spine. Words don’t count, nor do guns. Mom always said if you want a job done well, do it yourself.
Still an old mystery of why so much pain and suffering - used to be the old gods (not the new) explained themselves better thousands of years ago, when it was all different, simpler times, but still boys with toys and girls with causes makes for a more lively world. God-science-&-technology seems hell bent on dangerous territories. Atom bombs, becoming changing the DNA, and do human beings really believe they are ever going to be as obviously and rambunctiously genius as/is the world of our experience. I can raise a middle finger, but I sure as f’n hell can’t make one. Don’t get me started on oil, fracking, or money, please and thank you.
Existence an Accident? Geez, talk about stupid.
~!~
#3
What Happens to a Society Where Bullies, at middle and high school, are not adequately made aware,
or punished, for Behavior Uncivilized?
To know the answer to this, all you have to do is read the New York Times, digital edition, delivered daily to my paying them $15 every four weeks.
Some arrive in the ‘public’ eye, while appearing to be all squeaky clean because they make money for themselves and other people. A public image is created, while the private behavior generally remains uncivilized, until ... well, right now some of them become lobbyists working from rich law firms on K Street in D.C. I’ve seen lawyers at work, and when there is not a judge watching them closely, intimidation is an art practiced and revered, for it does often get results.
Roy Cohen, who mentored Trump, was well practiced in that art, having been on the McCarthy commie-hunting hunger-games, along with tricky-dick Nixon. A Slick Willie former president Bill Clinton, is now being reviewed for his more stylish form of domination, charming persuasions followed by working mostly for his own benefit. Went to the Banker’s training school in England, as a Rhodes Scholar. His main gift is to be naturally believable when he lies. Lucifer is always charming.
Let us not pretend that women cannot be dominating bullies as well. Its a human trait, although women are often subtler, unless they are movie or TV stars&starlettes, where their ability to fake emotions is natural, and often includes better training.
The need for dominance is often rooted in fear, a kind of minor-note PTS, from childhood. Shamans have a better name: we call them “wounds”, for that does mean - hopefully - capable of being healed. Except, like/as with any addiction, the wounded individual has to seek out the healing. Basic AA stuff. Can’t force domineering folks to recant something that has so many satisfactions. especially if the basic practice is one of surrender and truth-speaking before others.
In a good AA meeting, bullshitters see other bullshitters a mile away. Then there is the News readers, who can’t see a thing, like the famous three monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil, & speak no evil.
If the wound has a scab to protect it, it will be a behavior very self-centered, too often in the extreme. The secret self is sacred, often to ourselves in modern civilization with its very sick scientific seeming memes that we are accidental brains, having no will and/or meaning of/in the greater scheme of Events. Any behavior can be justified, for thinking is that pliable.
Drunks and meth-heads and junkies are obvious. A joke bumper sticker from the ‘60‘s: “My Karma just ran over your Dogma” had some truths to it. Where does the attraction between victim and victimizer gain its opportunities? Is it all coincidences, random chance and/or unexplainable happenstance?
If the idea of Karma is about payoffs for prior bad deeds, ... not likely to really come from something divine, unless all gods&goddesses are serious perverts (maybe that’s were we get such ‘undesirable’ habits, even heaven&hell has undesireables, or Not), ... The world cannot always be our fault, sez Robin Williams over again over again to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. That was wise words, from some worthy artists. Keep in mind that self awareness on this level not possible for a silicon artifact, however much dreamers wish it. Think someone is going to figure out how to give a machine a conscience, or make it capable of experiencing shame?
All the same, the public shaming of public figures seems delightfully bright with ‘what goes around comes around’. The German language has an awful word for this: Taking pleasure in another’s misfortune, which is all the more juicy when it is the mighty that are falling. Your sister/brother ... that’s nasty hard, and often impossible. Lots of folks falling these days. Is there anyone out there catching them?
Hard, very hard, for a wounded person to surrender to being healed. Not sure public shamming is more than just a sport of current media flavor, ... piling on we used to say in football, ... Although when Media piles on it needs to be more thoughtful, because it all just washes off the master of ice skating on lies. Why? Because Media is built out of lies, taking for granted certain social qualities and characteristics as - tolerable, because sensationalizing them makes for a profit.
News is not knowledgeable or wise, only clever and manipulative. Mostly what leaks through is that ghoulish trash which used to be called: yellow journalism, as in yellow for cowards throwing speculative lies, but when caught-out bury the retraction on page 11, next to an ad for tampons.
Eros&Mothers-may-i battle inside ... inside everyone. Journalists advertise themselves as saints, but still the most prominent are just normal damaged people, carrying a multitude of sins - just in the limelight - more risk of being exposed.
Trump gets off on that - applause and adulation ... self convinced he’s up to anything. The ancient Greeks, and most aboriginal peoples, can see this guy running for a fall, ... leading or following? Following is obvious, because the man is as shallow as a puddle of piss just about to evaporate.
Media gets paid to lie, and makes its money from the greatest professional artists of the lie ever, ADVERTISING. Infotainment will not give watching folks any wisdom. Maybe watching Spielberg on HBO Documentaries, or KenBurns&Company(not a household name yet - female person, named: Lynn Novick): Vietnam ... subtle and beautiful television, leaving the deeper questions to the watching hearts and minds at home.
My favorite lately tho’ ... the Big Bang Theory ... well paid, highly skilled, dedicated humorists, take the first half hour of the new season to undress physics, publicly. It was beautiful and confessional to have our favorite odd-people-nerds notice that in the last few decades since quantum theories coughed the building (and immortalizing in film) - of the infamous Cern super-colider - for billions obviously - none of the big/serious/final answer experiments are working out. It made the main boys (Sheldon&Company) sad, with a wondering hint of: What are we doing, nothing is coming from it, ... which gave an intelligent and poignant layer for the usual rapid play of repartee, and one liners.
Physics standing still in its own self created wound-based glue - seeking connection via numbers with that which they find so amazing, not imagining that it might really be true: We are not only Creator/createes/creating, but our interior/exterior is exactly in the image&nature of the divine mystery. Could not be more obvious, but folks had to spend some time in their own, and mixed up in all their dramas/concerns/wants/needs ... without the Sky People as close as the Ancestors, but still believing there is no there there to the legends of invisible stranger things.
Want help with Storms and Stupid Presidents? Hmmm? Who you gonna call?
~!~
#4
retirement, playing with toys, reverently ...
Wrote a check or so this a.m. /stoned/ age 77, chronic knee pain, Insurance-folks don’t cover ganja-goddess ... yet ... had to pay cash, lucky to have it around..
Money.?.
My older brother, a rather deliberate wandering hermit, tossed about these days on the system of living only on the promises made: Social Security; Medicare, ... He will be 82 in a couple of days. I’m not sure I have his present phone number, but last bit of gossip was that he’d found a place near one of his three daughters. That’s 82 years surviving ... Depression/WWII/ColdWar/falling in love and having babies. Totally entitled to have acquired a few bad habits, weaknesses, a vital question or two: To what degree do you succeed at some level of self medicating?; Is the plumbing working well ... simple worries, tho’ out of the cold is always good.
Shoved away? Maybe. Certainly Christian/Political Capitalism is fairly lame at a lot of stuff, including taking care of America’s Elders. No surprise then, that current voting patterns reveal advanced letters of warning, from folks rather tired of the same old same old promises, as against what is/has actually been delivered so far.
Trickle-down horse shit be far more descriptive, if we was sitting against a wooden fence, having a smoke, before going back in the house, to get out of the winds riding the plains in winter.
The Dude, as in the one hanging from the Crosses everywhere, warned us: “Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Mathew, somewhere near, 10:24. Fair warning is, after all, fair warning.
The Dude Abides, ????? doing what? Well, He did say He was going to be with us forever basically. Kind of eerie if that be true ‘n all. Ghosts, big foots, ancient legends&prophecies, angels&demons even. Scary that. General agreement upon reviewing my glens in the forest of facebrook: A general consensus being voted upon: What you put out comes back to you, and/or/then sometimes/something called bad-luck happens. Apparently there is no connection.
If we adopt the recent in-visioning that we all might be living in a computer game in which alien intelligences play games - game reality/virtual reality, it is suggested, is not much different from how life is organized. Okay, but you know don’t you, that if you don’t eat&stuff you will die.
Try imagining being the cave man in all the cartoons. What if it was a garden, which lasted a long long time, until the hour-class ran out of that sand of wisdom, and it was time for the Lady to reach down, and gently turn it back over, so we can continue the plays we live/endure/survive ... music and quiet helps, but modern tastes - among the Civilized first world - excess is always basically ugly. Yet, for there to be beauty, there will be ugly. Sure you can, with knives, dissect a human body, but you won’t find the person in that dead thing. They got away, and the only people that don’t want to know it are ... well ...
There’s actually only three kinds of people in the world. It all comes down to psychic itches in our experiences. ONE: Hates everything, .... born a grouch, can’t find a good word in a library. Gnome infested works (long story). TWO: Determined to see the bright side of life. Believes, acted upon and goes there: perfectly captured as the character Joy, in InsideOut. Joy’s pants are on fire, and she/he cannot sit still, even in mood.
THREE: then there are the calm folks, deliberate. Slow down, take the right amount of time. Watch their breath. Grouch is always sitting, mouth running, ... Joy’s feet hardly touches the ground, and Deliberate tries to stay calm in the middle of all the fires ~!~!~!~!~!~ dancing.
What’s your music?
Two millenia after a miracle made us spiritually rich, but at the same time everyone into being a bully, or dominating, is out there running games, while advertising every possible which/where/ever. A sword makes a lot of sense, ... just saying.
Money ~$~
Various headaches the less you have, unless you are Joy. Need it to get food in Cities. In countryside/farms&villages, life is different, but the money-changers are in every temple now, whatever our religion.
Does the world have too many Gods, or are too many people thinking their God Knows Better? Occam’s Razor suggests there is one god with as many names as there are individual human beings.
I’ll be 77 soon. Out lived every male blood relative, of a certain generation. The women live longer, and that’s because .... that they do seems true, not sure that also doesn’t mean they have a spirit of a kind that endures the storms a bit better. Softer and quieter often not so dangerous as pushy and obstreperous.
Here’s the last 2+ minutes of the black and white movie, John Steinbeck’s: “The Grapes of Wrath”, released March 15, 1940, ... the ides of March just before the Depression morphed into the start of WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTW3ABcSZ88 Hollywood gave it an upbeat ending, which Steinbeck had not. Fair warning.
~!~!~!~!~!~
Letter Sent to the Great Falls Tribune
another, ... I shot an arrow into the air
Dear folk of the Great Falls Tribune:
I would like to write an occasional column for the Tribune, on those more comic&cosmic questions, in a Way that entertains, and informs, while at the same time being very relevant to everything going on in the world of today.
I will not work for nothing. That said, I shamelessly want to be published in cyberspace, so - as they say - who do I kill?
Some sample questions, maybe ...
What If Science is Wrong, and a human being is both spirit&matter?
What if a more mature science will eventually prove that the traditions of aboriginal peoples - including our Native population in Montana - that Mother Earth and Father Sky are real perceptions - traditions that reveal that we live, on the Earth, in a divinely created world. Nature is conscious, paying attention, and there are no hurricanes&earthquakes without the Mother being involved.
That would be a pretty serious bit of science getting it wrong, don’t ya think? It also only really works if the human being is immortal, and goes from life to life - many incarnations, trying to figure out how to be a human being.
Lots of heresy there.
What if a traveling son of Montana - who (me) graduated from GF high school in 1959, president of my senior class, and going off on an adventure to the USAF Academy - found while traveling and juggling life&spirit, that science cheats, a bit, becoming over time more like a religion that is believed, than a repository of eternal verities/truths, and even some facts don’t actually measure up.
That’s a lot of what ifs, isn’t it.
I do understand that, in your business, editorial review of one’s works is the norm. I’d like to become an even better writer, and maybe this is just the right school for me to enter in order to learn. In my social research, Media (in general) is the living heart of the living heart of the living social organism. Civilization’s parts all being living human beings, how can its synthesis&totality not be living as well?
A complicated, and very responsible situation, in which I’d like to participate. Being age 77, and seen a bit of life along the way.
You will notice, if you read my sample-offerings ... published to my Facebook feed the day you receive this, ... but these were written with a GF Tribune “audience” in mind.
... I have explored some edges, deliberately, & would rather get “corrected”, than walk in the door with a cane and a wimp/limp. I do believe the News’ business model is that we want readers to read what is offered. Infotainment is - an opinion piece as it were, can be: Good writing, provocative and memorable.
I lived in the SF Bay Area, when most everyone read the daily Herb Caen column, having its own locus on the second fold, along side a big ad for major local store. Caen got talked about. Mostly a lot of clever gossip for a town in love with its own Self.
SF is not, however, at all like GF Montana, not at all. In spite of all the troubles, there is something here, in Big Sky Land, that is not like a lot of other places.
My card: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/wendtagency.html
My CV: http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
Here’s some of my writings on Science:
“I am not my brain - the map is not the territory” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/brain.html
“Electricity and the Spirit in Nature” http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/electricityandthespiritinnature.html
“The Misconception of Cosmic Space As Appears In the Ideas of Modern Astronomy” - and as contained in the understandably limited thinking embodied in the conceptions of the nature of parallax and redshift. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/space.html
“THERE IS NO “FREE” ENERGY: Space and “field” phenomena; Nature and sub-nature”
https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/46/n05/Goethe_Space_Field_Phenomena.html