Badlands

I had coffee with mom this morning. It’s a trip. She can’t hear worth a damn and rarely wears her hearing aids. The TV was on, of course, because dad watches TV 16 hours a day. The phone rings about every 5 minutes — mostly solicitors because they have one of the last land lines left in the country and because they always answer their phone so are on every call list in the world. Mom would rather cut one of her own fingers off than not answer the phone when it rings. It’s so deeply engrained in her to always answer the phone that she simply cannot fathom just letting it go to voicemail and returning the call later.

So a 10-minute conversation with mom takes about 35 minutes when you factor in phone calls, repeating what I say multiple times, and generally going down rabbit holes as she remembers something she needs to tell me (again).

But it is still enormously gratifying sitting there sharing time with her. I lived all over the planet for 35 years so it’s a blessing to be able to see her routinely. Oh, and dad.

It’s international rugby season so I’ve been able to catch a few of the matches. Makes me want to be in a pub somewhere in Europe watching but alas, I am at my kitchen, or if I am lucky, a local pub.

Earlier this week I went down to the lobby at the hotel early to have a coffee and do the crossword before our 6:30 meeting. There is a high top table where I like to sit. But this morning the TV was on very loud and it was playing country music videos, which on my best day I have no tolerance for and today was shaping up to be a shitty day. It’s no coincidence that the CIA uses modern country music songs played at high volumes to torture terrorists at Guantanamo. I’d rat out my grandma after an hour of that shit.

I could not find the remote so I went looking for the night clerk. Nowhere to be found. Until, that is, I stepped inside the ‘Market’ and snagged a bottle of water and I turned around and there he was. Ready to ring up my water. I had been planning to take that bottle as a complimentary token for my having to deal with the loud music videos. But he wasn’t having it.

In reference to my theft attempt, I am supposed to get a free water since I am a gold-star platinum diamond presidents circle-jerk level loyalty status with Marriott. But they were out of water when I checked in so I rationalized my theft. And I got caught. So I paid. Them’s the rules.

We never found the remote. If I was a refugee from Somalia, as this guy was, and I came to this country and had to watch those country music videos I would reflect about just how bad it really was back home. Combine systemic exposure to loud modern country music with Donald Trump and he’s probably better off in the old country.

Two days on site at the work gig this week. People are angry and vicious right now. Raw from the new management structure that is creating conflict and confusion and the air is filled with tension. People do not like this new reality. I do not like this new reality and pine for the days when we had clarity and thoughtful leadership and people knew what was expected of them and felt valued and respected. No more. It’s a new world order. And then when we leave work we have the harsh outside world where crazy Trumpers are emboldened and sharpening their knives so they can stab lib-tards and stand over us with their demonic eyes and stupid expressions.

Is libards meant to be hyphenated? Better see what Merriam-Webster says on that.

It’s easy at times like these to get mean and spiteful. We are all fighting it. I am still figuring out how I am going to react, but for now mostly anger, massive disappointment, confusion, angst, bitterness.

Trump and Co. are continuing their gloat tour. Trump is naming cabinet picks like a drunken sailor throwing darts on a ship tossing and turning in high seas. The child-like Matt Gaetz for AG. Kristie Noem the dog killer for Homeland Security. Tulsi Gabbard, a women curiously short on intelligence as head of, you guessed it, National Intelligence. RFJ Jr. will bring his particular brand of worm brain crazy to Health and Human Services.

It’s gonna be a wild ride man. The evil greed-heads are taking over. Richard Nixon might just dig himself out of the grave to come walk the halls of the White House and mumble to Kissinger like the good old days.

For those who did not vote for Harris because of Biden’s handling of the situation in Israel and Palestine, you can now get to know Mike Huckabee, the new ambassador to Israel and who is extremely prejudiced against Palestinians. So yea. That worked. That’ll help. I’m surprised Jared didn’t get the call since he did such an amazing job bringing peace to the middle east last time.

Poor Jimmy Carter now needs to live another 4 years to get a 2nd chance to vote for a woman for president. Or maybe 8. Who knows.

I read a good article in The Times about horses. Specifically about a horse whisperer whose secret sauce is patience and patience and patience. He lets the horse eventually tell him what’s wrong and then they work it out together. They are far more fascinating creatures than I gave them credit for in my youth. But over time, and as I’ve read more, I am intrigued by these beasts. Still a little scared of the really big ones.

One excerpt from the article is below.

In the wild, they spend the entirety of their lives within the eyesight of another horse. Even domestic horses who don’t venture beyond their pasture will take turns staying awake while others sleep.

So how about that? They are highly social. They can be reclusive in a way, but never solitary.

I always loved the final scene in The Electric Horseman. Robert Redford is about to release a $10M racehorse into the wild. As they stand there and look at a herd of wild horses in a field, Redford whispers to the horse ‘Now remember, these horses ain’t never been broke. But they ain’t won no championships either‘. It’s a brilliant scene.

I’m reading Bad Land now by Jonathan Raban — an author I return to occasionally. Sometimes compelling, sometimes a little boring but always informative. He is speaking about the period of time when 1/2 sections of land were given away like candy to anyone willing to go live and homestead in the Great Plains. Much of the book takes place in eastern Montana.

The US government and private sector businesses (mostly railroad companies) conspired to formulate a program designed to drive out Native Americans and usher in homesteaders to solidify US control over these lands that had been contested for some time. But just telling people to go live somewhere isn’t really practical, even when giving them free land. They had to survive and that meant providing tools and resources and creating an illusion of providence.

A guy named Hardy W. Campbell, working closely with the railroads who aimed to get rich by selling goods to the settlers, produced a pamphlet called ‘Campbell’s Soil Culture Catalog’. This apparently was an inspirational book filled with all sorts of advice and guidance for the aspiring farmer and homesteader. This booklet detailed soil properties and chemistry and directly addressed the fact that the Great Plains are arid or semi-arid. So how to farm in what was often referred to as a desert.

Combined with this practical advice (mostly unsuccessful from the farming standpoint) was the government’s elevation of the simple farmer to a far more prestigious place in society. Noting this letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison in 1785.

‘We now have lands enough to employ an infinite number of people in their cultivation. Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the lasting bonds.’

The pamphlets were printed and distributed all over the eastern US and Europe and even into Russia and the wanna be farmers came to claim their land and take their place in history as the most virtuous citizens.

This bit of history is interesting to me because I was raised in an environment where farmers were elevated to near saintly status. They were implied to be better than non-farmers. People who were not farmers themselves, but lived in small farming communities, also seemed to enjoy some level of greatness by virtue of proximity. When growing up, there was never any shortage of judging and commenting on the moral and ethical deficiencies and generally lower standard of people who lived in cities.

It was not directly stated, but as kids we were meant to understand that farming was a level of importance above selling insurance or working in a factory or being a newspaper reporter. This mentality remains today. Farming is put forth as sort of a calling, and that farmers sacrifice much more than the rest of us for their vocation — and all for benevolence by the way. Also left out of the conversation is that the majority of small farmers inherit their land which is often a multi-million dollar affair.

Of course food production is important. But having a lot of firsthand observation of farming, I can tell you there is a not insignificant amount of time spent standing around drinking beer involved in the modern small farmer. And not always quite as vigorous or virtuous as one might imagine from Jefferson’s letter. Turns out they are human and mostly just humping out a living like everyone else. They also get every conceivable tax break and many get direct subsidies from the government for not planting any crops at all.

I don’t dislike farmers. Many live around me and are nice people although they tend to be politically conservative and criticize government support for anyone except themselves (because they are special). But I found the book interesting as it seems this building up of farmer’s self-image goes back a ways. Salt of the earth and all that.

I survived the week on site. Two more weeks up there in December. Things are getting busier. And we are not helping ourselves with this new org. structure that has us all wondering who is really at the helm. But the work will get done. My team is rock solid and knows what to do so in the absence of direction we will just rock on.

Tonight I will make dinner for E-n-R and hang at home. Tomorrow off to C’Bus to spend time with Brittany and then dinner with Mike and Craig tomorrow night. Sunday Marti and I will drive back to Black Dog Ridge for the night.

I was deficient with capturing some decent photos of life this week so will offer instead some random timely images from the world outside my bubble.

No other news of note.

Humbly Submitted.
Robert Myres – Flanker, Portneuf Valley Rugby Football Club (ret.)

Lights out tonight, trouble in the heartland
Got a head-on collision smashin’ in my guts, man
I’m caught in a crossfire that I don’t understand

But there’s one thing I know for sure, girl
I don’t give a damn for the same old played-out scenes
Baby, I don’t give a damn for just the in-betweens
Honey, I want the heart, I want the soul, I want control right now

You better listen to me, baby
Talk about a dream, try to make it real
You wake up in the night with a fear so real
You spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come

Well, don’t waste your time waiting
Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay
Keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good

Working in the fields ’til you get your back burned
Working ‘neath the wheels ’til you get your facts learned
Baby, I got my facts learned real good right now

You better get it straight, darling
Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything
I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got

Well, I believe in the love that you gave me
I believe in the faith that could save me
I believe in the hope and I pray that some day
It may raise me above these

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay
Keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good

For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive
I wanna find one face that ain’t looking through me
I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you’ve gotta pay
Keep movin’ ’til it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good