~ This is another “double post”; posted here so the bots can find it back in time and so that you can find it now.

This post is entitled “On the Border” because there are now so many border issues that we’re all on.  The document presented (in this post via a link) is historical, but could not be more relevant then than it is today.  Click on “exact copy” now, or read the post here first and then click on “the President” at the end.

This is an exact copy of the original UPI Teletype text of President Kennedy’s Speech of October 22, 1962 to the world and the nation.  It is presented here in “16 takes” which represent the 16 pages of the scan of the original teletype roll that is one continuous sheet more than fourteen (14) feet long.

The date on this teletype is October 23 (1962) because about 1:00 A.M. in the morning of Tuesday the 23rd of October it was the 23rd in Korea and still only just after 12:00 noon in Washington D.C. where it was still the 22nd (of October).

Kennedy had not given his “speech to the nation” yet, but it had been written and starting about 12 noon on October 22nd (Washington time) the news started going out across the world about what he was to say.  The world was on the precipice of war, probably nuclear, possibly breaking out on a hundred fronts.

I was in Korea at the time; in Seoul - living on an army base.  I was fourteen (14) at the time.  I had a few good friends who worked for AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network) in the news; television and radio and things like that.  They worked high upon a hill near where the broadcast towers were and where the teletype machines were housed.  That’s how news came in in those days; the bulletins, the “breaking news”, the news that was known before it was ever broadcasted, disseminated, spread around.  First it came in on the teletypes, later it went on the air.

Everyone “knew” the President’s Speech was coming.  They knew there was a crisis, a crisis in or over Cuba; what they did not know was how big, how bad, and “when”.  Finally word got out that the President would address the nation at seven (on Monday); but the military command in Korea and elsewhere had to know beforehand what the President would say; so they could call up the troops and tell them in case the war started before the President had a chance to speak.

I had been going up to the AFKN studios nightly (before curfew) to keep on top of the situation.  On the night of the 22nd (still morning in Washington) things were different.  No one cared about the curfew assuming that maybe one was soon to die; “we’ll be in Pyongyang by Wednesday” was what everyone said - that, “or we’ll be dead”.

The American Colonels, Majors, Generals had their own teletypes at SAC Command (Seoul Area Command).  They knew about the same moment that I knew what the President was to say.  I read each word with bated breath as it came in over the wires; peace or war, like Roosevelt and Truman a democratic president in the White House giving national addresses almost always was a call to war.  That’s how people thought then, it was seldom “give peace a chance“.  “Tanks roll in an hour.”  “We’ll launch our nukes (in Korea) and then we’ll take the ground.”  All the soldiers on the ground knew it; it looked clearly like a time to live or die, confined to barracks - waiting for the order to “move out” and take the ground with a radioactive cloud overhead - our nukes not theirs making up the cloud.

I took home this piece of history, “let the kid have it” - “fourteen is too young to die”.  “See ya tomorrow Don”, is what they really said, still hoping - hoping that tomorrow and the next day (in peace) might come.  There are no patriots when confronting a nuclear war, the uniforms make no difference, it’s just, “where have all the flowers gone” and Gypsy Rover and a few other familiar tunes.  America the Beautiful was not the song that night as I walked home after curfew, in the dark, knowing what the President would say on the morrow; not knowing what the response might be.

You know my feelings about war; now you’ve walked another twenty feet in my shoes.  I’ve saved this tightly wound roll of paper so that I would never forget; never forget that evening, that night, never forget the way I and others were made to feel in a world with the bomb; in a middle east with at least 500 nuclear bombs armed and ready and ready to go.

Read these words and remember.  Remember the way that it was.  Remember Dorothy and Oz and the emerald slippers and Kansas (or Nevada) and a place one might call “home”.  Then contemplate the winter, October late, a nuclear winter maybe coming and all that could be lost.  Is it worth it over a few houses; built or empty does it really matter; the eastern world (even the western) does not have to explode.

I give you the President:

[First posted  2010.05.13 / Thursday  On the Border]

~ The Lake Tahoe Limbo Rock.

How low can you go?  Do the limbo rock.

The limbo is really a rather easy two step.  It’s not really so much a dance, as well, a dance, as well in a dance about leaning over backward until you drop, until you flop, until you are flat out on the ground with your back to the ground, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” type thing.  I mix my metaphors like a bartender might mix her whiskey and rye.

The limbo is easy to try.  One needs no experience, no training, just a butt to fall on and a back to lie on once you know that ones butt is not the bottom in the limbo rock.  I can see that you can see where this post is going.  It’s about the market and your money and the simple fact that in a market everyone else is after your money.  They want it.  They want to take it away from you.  They don’t ever want you to end up with your money, you are not a victim, you brought the money to the market.  Geesh, you do know something about what ‘market’ means don’t you?

I learned to bargain, to barter in the bazaars of Afghanistan, in Kabul mostly.  Bartering for goods was mostly new to me.  I had grown up in a world where most things were ‘price fixed’, had a fixed price, a market price marked on the item with an actual price tag, not just a bar code.  This was in the days before prices were posted on the edges of shelves to catch your eye or maybe to mislead you.  Shopping was easy, buying things that is.  Just find something that one might want, lift it up, feel the weight, inspect the quality and look for the price tag.  Too much and you put it back.  Just right and you took it to the cashier at the cash register and bought it, with cash.  That’s why the machine was actually called a cash register, it had drawers for coins and cash and even a place for checks if a merchant was willing to honor such things - if they really knew the maker and knew the funds were good, no questions asked, no ID.

That was the way of stores.  Some stores called themselves markets, some were shops, others (and most) were just stores, referring to the stores of merchandize that they had on hand, stored until a buyer might come along, often stored for a long time before a buyer came along.  Everything else was more like horse trading.  If someone owned something and was not a store the price was negotiable if it were for sale.  The assumption was never that a persons possessions were for sale, asking to buy things that did not clearly display a for sale sign or a price tag was considered rude, pushy, something that one heard of in the east, or about the east - meaning the east coast of the USA, not Asia.

Horse trading was a bit different.  It usually involved an exchange of things, maybe including a bit of money, but more like a dowry type bargain based on taking things one had and offering them for things that one might want.  Two horses, one a little lame, for a good deer rifle - you get the drift.  A box of cartridges and you’ve got yourself a deal, “but just how bad is this horse?”

Horse trading was like a potlatch ritual, it kept things moving, kept things old or unused from gathering too much dust, from taking up too much space, from taking too much time to repair when one wasn’t really too good at repairing things, but knew that others were.  Things were still mended then; but that’s a different story.

The limbo involves a stick, two men (or now two women) hold the stick, hold it even and parallel to the ground, they’re fair about it, hold it steady and exact as in holding an exact distance as one can see eye to eye.  The dancer goes under, leans back not ever forward, the eye must always see the stick or it’s not the limbo rock.  The stick starts high and then moves ever lower with each passing person, each person testing the ever lower stick to see how low they can go, without dropping on their butt or to the ground, flat on their back perhaps, totally down, defeated.

Like most affairs of the heart the limbo was originally a market game.  Performed for money in the market, make a wager, watch the stick get lower, wait for the drop, how long before it’s over.  The market of course made the money, each gambler always lost, such is the manner of the markets, these are the manners of the market.

High above Reno and Carson City is a lake, Lake Tahoe.  It is or was one of the most beautiful lakes in all the world, originally named Bigler, Mark Twain probably described it best, if not first in the English tongue.  His description is still worth reading, but that’s for a different day.

Lake Tahoe was long thought not to have a bottom.  Some thought that at the bottom there were rivers and that the rivers outlet was the sea.  There were tales of men drowning in the lake, falling off of boats or piers, off of log rafts floating southward whose bodies would go down and down to seek the bottom and they would never be found except at the sea.  Which in this case were along the beaches of northern California, Ukiah maybe, or somewhere where the Redwoods grew along the ocean.

Six thousand some odd feet is a bit of a drop in a pool without a bottom, too far down to think about, too cold, a body would certainly freeze at such icy depths, certainly too cold for comfort.  What does this have to do with the market?  A body so big and deep and ‘all wet’ that it has no bottom, or at least no bottom that many can ever find, lower than limbo, lower than just ending, “flat upon your back”.

I have friends who still are in the market.  In Wall Street, as measured by NASDAQ or the DOW.  They wince at their recent losses, look for bottoms, refuse to sell.  Maybe they still see the peaks of Tahoe, look up and never down, though at best they’re floating, and though they know that they are down.  The market is like a story, it starts one place and makes a point.  Most likely there is no finish to the story, no happy ending, no long lines, no tied up ends.  Just images of highs and lows and something for awhile in-between.  And then too suddenly there’s just a sinking feeling….

That’s the point.

[2008.11.12 / Wednesday - Market May Ham]

~ Saving the economy now.

What must always be remembered is the 850 billion dollar bailout that was passed by Congress, signed into law by a Republican president, and proposed by and supported by Wall Street.  It was and is a bailout of the rich, free money, government welfare for the few, for the greedy not the needy.  It made no sense.  It was a daring and reckless act designed to transfer the wealth of the many to the hands of the few by the vehicle of a great inflation, sure to come in time.

Social Security needs to be over-hauled, modified, made to work, to do what it was always meant to do and that is to be a retirement fund, to replace the need for the other failed funds like those offered by the railroads in the 1930’s, or the steel mills, or the Wall Street bankers now.  Money put in stocks is money lost, that is so evident.  Money left in stocks will be money gone, thrown away, how else will America learn to turn its back on a failed capitalism, an economy based on greed, not work, not productivity, not even real trade or trades as opposed to stock trading which is no trade at all.

I like good round figures, guesstimates, numbers that resonate and might be memorable.  The government agrees, so does Congress (as if they were the government), 700 billion, 850 billion, a trillion here or there, let’s not sweat the small stuff.  Fact check the trust fund (government site) and one will find an even trillion dollars in each year for the social security fund, only 2/3 out (a bit less, 640 billion).
They will not say, but about an even 50 million get the checks, not even 20%, and that includes all those not so old, those that never worked and too young to work and many still in school, not old, not retired.

The average recipient receives $1,066 per month to live on, to have a life on, to get by on.  An amount no greater than minimum wage, below the poverty line, what America’s businesses will pay for a high school dropout that knows no intelligible English, and whose appearance probably looks like hell - that’s what minimum wage is all about, a minimum wage for working, the bottom of it all.   If an employer gets better they are lucky, they never paid the taxes for getting better, only for war, only for the betterment of banks and Bernanke and Paulsen, please.  Are there a lot of houses for sale for $260 per month, principal interest taxes and insurance?  At 5%, $56,000.  That’s the amount Wall Street buys a house for now, under the bailout, but not middle America, not the working poor, not those over 62 and retired.

The media is so warped, so stupid, so uninterested in what’s going on.  They know only those that may get checks (Social Security) of $2,000 or more a month, not realizing that that means someone else getting only $500, or $360 on which to live.  60 million souls would be 20% of America, might cover the 10 million with no coverage, not rich, just no coverage, nothing, nothing at all to live upon except the charity of others, no welfare, just charity pure and simple, maybe dividing the $1,066 by two or three (retired people).

When your 401 K goes so far south that it leaves through the hole in the ozone, when your GM pension fund is flat-out dead and gone like the poorly built cars that created it, when your long term investment broker is totally broke (and admitting she was wrong) - then you will wonder, will wish for, will believe in Social Security and be oh so glad that it is a government program and not one from Wall Street, that Bush and Friedman lost, that there is some reason to America.

I propose that everyone aged 60 to a hundred receive 2,000 dollars per month (Social Security), provided that they retire, not work, leave their jobs to others who need the work, the jobs, the often better pay.  It’s not a lot to live on, not by American standards, but it is a lot to spend, in the economy, on the economy - about 1.44 trillion dollars, right here, right at home.  The difference, the difference is that famous $800 billion.  But these billions would be spent, not hoarded away, not sent overseas to other banks and bigger banks and put into the hands of the idle rich hoarding idle money.  Is anyone even thinking?  It’s the economy stupid, not the banks.  Can the retired save the nation, save the economy?  Yes we can.  Just give them the tools to do it, the money, it’s all about the money when it only matters what you spend, not where you live or how you live.

The caveat is that the old must spend and must spend wisely.  They must not save, must not invest, must not hoard their wealth for later, that’s the point of ageing, moving on, no worries except about the moving on and all its associated little aches and pains.  The old would travel, ride buses, ride trains, walk a little, visit far and wide.  The old would buy books and read, support new authors, those with new ideas, and better.  The old might grow gardens, might blaze trails, might lend an ear or two or bend an ear or two.  Sixty years is long enough for anyone to play the game, compete, fight unfair or be unfair or fight being unfair.  Yes we can.

When I was twelve I lived in the middle of Korea, a peninsula, a nation very old.  In Korea there is a tradition.  It involves the wearing of a hat.  It is a very old tradition and a very special hat.  The hat is made of horsehair, it’s always black, round and tall and flat on top.  It’s stiff, as horsehair often is when dried and shaped and colored, bent just so, woven to let the air through.  The hat is worn by those over 60, the elderly - black hat, white robes - men and women both the same.  They (these people) are revered, they are retired, they work little or no more, just do the things they like, play with the children, smile mostly.  It is the Papasan tradition, the hat they wear is called Papasan too, even though the same hat is worn by women.

I forget the village, the small city, the name from where it came.  There was a river there, a park, a playground and all the world was spring, and all the world lay ahead, for me, an American in Korea, young and free.  But it was the dignity of the old that beckoned, their straight resolve, their freedom from want or care and care about the material things that no longer mattered, the learning’s of a culture at least 5,000 years of age.  I bought a hat that day, horsehair, not for the future but for then.  I put it on.  I put it on my head and wore it down the street, around the park, along the river with blossoms blooming.  For a moment I was both old and young, experiencing what was and what was to come - stopped in time, or maybe just getting started.

It’s later now.  The age it has arrived, but I have no hat to wear, no village pink and green to honor me, to give me peace, to pass on to me a thousand year tradition.  In Korea every one is born on the first of a given year, a common birthday, you and all your friends.  The individual date never matters, it’s you, not me that matters, and we are all together.  But it’s not too late America, we can come together.  There are other lands, other lessons, other ways of doing things.  We are not alone, not always right.  We haven’t lasted long.  It takes just one day to change, and then another and another.  It may be alright, alright still, in America.  There may be hope and promise, things different than before.  I’m not so sure, but somewhere a hat is waiting, somewhere - for you, for me.

[2008.11.06 / Thursday - Yes We Can, part 2]

~ “The End” somehow doesn’t seem so final.

We’ve been invited to a party, a political party - not to join, but to drink.  We were invited once before, four years ago.  The party is at the club, the local Country Club, whatever one that might be, it’s always there, some newer, some older, some with more disreputable reputations, like not ever allowing blacks in, or to enter, not even the President I guess.

We are not members needless to say, we don’t do those things, don’t really drink, don’t need the high society, the exclusive pander, can eat meals elsewhere on Sunday night, like at home, a good rich soup.  But we know someone who knows others that are members of the club, that like that stuff, or carry on because it is tradition, memberships inherited through the eons or what might seem like eons to most of those in America who might belong to such clubs, not really in the Country anymore, unless the word has changed from meaning wilds and rural to the nation as a whole - The COUNTRY Club, a natural place to get political.

Four women all contribute equally to this thing, this party, this friendly get-together.  They rent the room at the club, make arrangements for the bar (cocktail, not legal), make lists for those they will invite.  Most of the comers are Republicans naturally, but the idea is that it doesn’t matter, that anyone might come, even those that might have the (good) sense to stay away (like Democrats, like Independents certainly, like the Infidels of voting - a must no show).  Our name is on the list, we were not invited though, our sponsor paid her share (for us) but we have  not received our written invitation, stamped and mailed, dropped in the mail, it still is nice to receive things in the mail, invitations, not just bills and mailers.

The problems with clubs of course is they all become so clubish, everyone learns each others names, say Hi, small-chat at the tables, or on the links, or at the bar, the bar, the endless bar - scotch not salads.  Whoever got the lists to send the mail must certainly have missed our name, “Who’s that?”, doesn’t sound familiar, what does he do, what do they own?  Well, we’ll just pass them, bye, and keep our tables safe, the spirit right, no rubbing in the gloom.

I would expect no less from politics, I know the game, I’ve been there enough to know, have walked the party line straight and narrow, though I was drunk (with avarice perhaps), among the drunks, no DWI checkpoint in sight, no blue-blood tests for the rich or powerful drinking down good whiskey at the club, they know their country, they own it, stolen fair and square, as the Reagans say or said, and now he’s dead.

I like my TV live, watching Republicans watching TV, watching them turn south in their sorrow as their fortunes fall, as they contemplate lost contracts (government welfare), a loss of capital gains, a loss of power and prestige, no special invites to the White House or the Cosmos Club just up the block or two.  I like eve’s-dropping on their banter, bemoaning race and immigrants and renters and abortionists and gays and all those things that everyone knows every Republican represents, but doesn’t really, but it’s only politics really, red or blue, no mix, just blood.

I could stay home, listen to the returns on the radio tomorrow afternoon, evening, night.  We don’t watch TV, have no cable, not even a rabbit ear antenna.  At the club they will have rented extra sets, big screens, monitors to the world, with the reds really red and the blues really blue, communists and jazz, politics like its meant to be - visible and visceral with the veneer shorn away with drink and alcohol, a toast to the Grand Old Party, the party’s dead, long live the GOP.

I knew a girl when I was twenty something, maybe just twenty at the time, too young to drink beer or wine or anything sold with a per cent sign on the bottle.  She denied the truth of the popular wisdom that everyone seemed to spout about alcohol stripping away ones inhibitions, letting them be free, be their natural selves like some noble savage.  She said “au contraire”, what alcohol really does is bring out ones socialization, it makes one act as they are taught to act and expected to act by society and perhaps by television (which now is society).  The noble savage lives (she said) in the sober life, in sober conduct, more removed from the lure of depravation, from the corruption of the social order and social charms and socialality.  That’s why, she said, they call it “social drinking”, the redundancy makes the point.

It is Bush that makes me want to drink and Bush that makes me want to stop.  The social contract seems to say that it is Bush Forever, that this scourge against all that is human, sane, fair and just, loyal and Constitutional, forgiving and peace-loving, God-faring or good will live on forever, like some Catholic hell, evil set in stone, enthroned endlessly, so that America the damned will be eternal so long as it may live.  Eight years can seem forever, too long a time to waste, living in fear as the nation dies, airports close and borders, living under constant surveillance not vigilance, the black hole of Calcutta come home to roost, the evil one occupying the White House, a pentagram of doom, eight endless years seeming an infinity.

The damage is perhaps too great to have hope in hope.  It was Hope, Arkansas that brought us Bush - a convenient set-up, a one-two punch, a smiling devil opening the door for another devil, worse that time, worse than anything that could be imagined just eight years ago.

They will be there tomorrow night, those that made it happen, brought Bush to power, put him in, wrote checks at the Country Club, gave toasts and money, said Hurrah.  That is why I shall go, will go, must go.  I must go to see them, to watch those with power as they slip away, see Obama win, see the end of Bush 1 and 2 and 3 no more, an end to Cain, God bless Able, amen.  But my heart will not believe it, that Bush will ever go away, like at Wounded Knee somethings must stop, hearts must stop, America has died, killed by Bush and tomorrow night won’t bring it back, won’t change a thing, won’t end the drinking and the toasts and one more last Hurrah.  It will be more a wake than a party, not for Bush, but for America.

It seems Bush is already dead, died years ago, what it is we see I can’t really say, I don’t really know.  Some say he’ll live in Paraguay, new act, no secret service protection for too many years anymore.  Needless to say there are those that might be out to get him, or get the shell, bring it down as an up on a slow newsday, he might not even be an American by then, maybe he never really was.  Politics is divisive, a waste of time, a waste of intelligence.  It upswells passions, divides neighbors and the nation.  It is an ugly thing causing ugly words and ugly feelings.  Look at this last campaign, look at all the accusations, all the claims.  Politics is what makes America America, and now politics will undo America, it has long not served her well.

People will vote for McCain because they hate.  People will vote for Obama for revenge, to avenge the wrongs of Bush, to roll back time and the Republicans and to try to restore an America that never was.  Either way it will not be pretty, not be nice - politics is never nice, nor never is the outcome.  The election will be over by this time tomorrow.  But Bush will not be over, he’ll still have more time, weeks and months to do his worst, to flood the subways, destroy even those that supported him and gave him power, he’s a dead man walking, a zombie, the most dangerous kind there is.

This year October is continued.

[2008.11.03 / Monday - Bush Forever]

~ The most foreign place in America.

I first visited Chimayo in the year 1974, it was in the spring, blossoms were in the air, the scent of log fires drifted where even no smoke could be seen.  Chimayo is north of Santa Fe, in New Mexico, where the USA really began if one counts areas that began before the USA began, but are now in the USA as they are considered a part of the USA by the USA, whatever that means.  Chimayo is such a place, old, very old by US standards, which is not very old by Afghan standards, but I’ve made that point before.

Chimayo is a small place, and a strange place.  How small?  I could look it up on the web, give the government figures, quote the returns from state tax returns and head-counts perhaps.  But that would tell you nothing about Chimayo where many do not return the returns, do not speak the language of the head-counters, do not worry much about facts or figures or the written word much less written numbers, never have, and probably never will.  But lets just say 500 folks for sake of argument, and there will always be argument about Chimayo.

New Mexico is where people (in the USA) go to leave America, to find a strange and foreign land, to become lost or to maybe find themselves in “The City Different”, or in “The Land of Enchantment”.  It is so foreign and remote that New Mexico is where the USA went to build the bomb, the atom bomb, in secret, finding a place so secret that the Germans would never know, even if the Russians did.  New Mexico is so lost that even space travelers get lost there, and the records of them being lost get lost.  It is a quiet place, quiet valleys, quiet mountaintops, quiet labs quietly creating or recreating things that might make a lot of noise, a big bang, nuclear detonations never heard in Roswell, nor Socorro, nor even places nearby, at least according to the press, a free press, no story.

There of course has been only one nuclear explosion in New Mexico (to date), the first one, the one that has divided the world between the past and now, between before the bomb, and after the bomb, on the day when the entire atmosphere would ignite and burn away all the sins of the world in one gigantic flash of light and burning holocaust, world-wide and instant.

It did not happen that way (yet), the scientists were wrong, the ones that quoted Tesla, or the ones that quoted Chimayo perhaps.  Chimayo is a bit west of Los Alamos, lower hills, higher valley - depending on what one thinks of high.  It was an easy place to visit, even then, by car or motorcar, a good long walk if one must.  Which is what they do, in the spring, each spring in Chimayo, people walk, up a sacred hill, carrying sacred relics, crosses sometimes, big ones while blood gushes from the head or hands or other places on the body, not nuclear sores but older, the sins of sacrifice or penance or the efforts to escape the fires of hell, a burning atmosphere, consuming the whole world.

Chimayo goes back forever, in the minds of New Mexicans, it was always there, the “Sanctorio”, the sand, the sacred earth that heals all, puts things back to their proper place, brings wealth, heals ills, straightens legs, restores the vision of the blind.  The chapel is a small place, old, hand-carved and painted beams atop adobe walls where pigeons live and roost and coo and coo - no pictures please, it is a sanctuary, holy ground, no pictures to steal the souls of the living or the dead.

Chimayo is a spooky place, a very scary place with no McDonald’s, no Burger King, no Holiday Inn Express, no TV’s blaring, no internet cafe’s that I ever saw, not now even, not even cell towers atop the sandy hills.  There are crosses there, on each and every hill, some visible, some only in the mind, sometimes they stretch for miles, beacons to Chimayo, silent testimonials to a primitive faith in God, an ancient Catholic faith long abandoned and neglected in the parishes of New York and Massachusetts and places like where the Kennedy’s might go, or McCain if he were Catholic, and old, and lived in the Southwest part of the USA or Northwest Mexico or a land somewhere in-between.

There is a Statute of Liberty in Chimayo, draped with Christmas lights, white lights of welcome, artificial candles down the metal gown, wrapped around the torch before moving on to plastic saints and Santas and Virgin Marys (not the drink) and plastic garlands of plastic flowers and devotional glass jars with even more candles burning, this time real.  Add stone grottos, pictures of the Gods and Goddesses and all the pantheon of Roman religions renamed each day, each saint, one at a time until one has one church, universal, the only real one, now forgotten in an orthodoxy now so unorthodox.

There should be chickens on the street in Chimayo, one for eggs, one more for sacrifice not unlike in Haiti or New Orleans, lost in time before the Hurricanes hit, washing all sins away, leaving shacks of people with little faith left, if at all.  Chimayo is isolated, very far away from far away, from far away Mexico City in the days when it was founded, established, discovered to be so holy, a religious shrine, the healing dirt or dust just blowing in the wind, not yet sanctified, not yet blessed, not yet carried in bags to the far cities of America to bring one hope, when hope was not just a sign, a yard sign, and a word on a teleprompter on some TV.

New Mexico is a complicated place, the old and new, science and superstition, faith and belief and a science to deny it all.  There are 600 nukes (or more, or not more) stored on the outskirts of Albuquerque, rotting, waiting, some with new triggers, some with old, some tested, some not so much.  The nukes are sitting silently, waiting, as America is waiting in secret places and not so secret places.  Some have faith, some do not - sometimes faith is a complicated thing, misunderstood, and sometimes best not understood, not like in Chimayo, or in Los Alamos, or in Roswell as we await the golden dawn, an Obama sign, or just something one might Goggle.  I might be wrong.

If one is wishing to explore New Mexico, northern New Mexico or the south even, the place to stay is the La Fonda, in Santa Fe, the word means “inn”, there are other fonda’s, there is only one La Fonda, a Harvey House operation once, on the Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, but not on the route (per se) of the Santa Fe.  The hotel is old, quite old, though not as old as Chimayo, updated from time to time (the hotel), not Chimayo.  There are ghosts within the walls and halls of the La Fonda, secret stories and stories of secrets and the vibrations and energies of those who have stayed there (within), as they sought refuge from the world without, outside Santa Fe and outside New Mexico.  The walls are thick, adobe and steel and plaster and cement, poured concrete even, terracotta tiles upon the floors glistening with age or Ajax or some compound made to quench the dust, which it does.

A meal at the La Fonda will never leave you, the food one digests, the atmosphere is more electric, changes the orbits of electrons, makes an impression that stays there (atomically speaking) or maybe just seems to, as in an urban myth or in faith, or it is just in my belief.  For breakfast I had Eggs Benedict, a traitorous concoction if one is a vegetarian or if one thinks of “Arnold”, but I was thinking more of “Benedictine”, more of monks, more of Chimayo and how grateful I was for the distance and the walls, the sanctuary that the La Fonda is, a safe-ground distance from Los Alamos and Chimayo and Albuquerque even.

If America were to end, the whole world with it, skies afire, politicians falling, failing - the world come undone - I can think of few places I would rather be to watch it all, to savor every last remaining minute, to appreciate the past and the future still in store.  It did not happen this night, nor last night, nor yesterday a week before - but it may happen, may happen still, the nukes in old Albuquerque are waiting, in Chimayo they’re still watching, at the labs they’re still building for tomorrow as they’ve always done before, day for night, not a movie now.

It is not the bad times that should scare you, it’s the good times, the party, the wiz-bang when money rolls and champagne is free and everything seems so possible, life is not about that, it is more real.  For most people in America real life is real foreign, a place far away, a place like Chimayo or Roswell or some other place that no one knew, but is there, waiting…. waiting.  May all the Saints be with you.

[2008.10.31 / Friday - Eggs Chimayo]

~ Westfield is Number 1.

A new mall opened today in Europe, the biggest urban shopping center there it’s said, in the hype and there’s always hype when it comes to shopping centers.  I can’t wait to go, to buy something, to see it - isn’t that what every mall is all about, bigger, better, more stuff.  And of course that is what every western oriented person needs is more stuff, to stuff in more houses and bigger ones and now you know why the market is soaring across the pond, a scant five hours away from shopping mania in Britain, I guess they’ll even bring the Concorde back so Wall Streeters can get there faster.

Each shop cost a scant $10,000,000, on average, to build.  The whole thing, built with economy in mind, involves less than $3.5 billion, for the economy, lots of jobs to build it, lots of jobs to keep it open, good jobs as a shop girl or shop boy making 3 pounds an hour, six or seven bucks even in dollars, the press release wasn’t that specific, not too informative.  The mall has 700 surveillance cameras, about 1 for every 30 customers that showed up on opening day, in the morning maybe.  Shoppers like to be watched, conspicuous consumption is cool, DVD’s of ones single parent shopping, a cool Christmas gift for anyone courtesy of the mall, check it out.

I guess people are a bit richer in jolly old England, each new customer at the mall spending $100 on each purchase, no slackers, every person buying something, spending their 50 pounds or so to float the $100,000 per month in sales (per shop) that it will take to keep the whole place open.  They built a new transit tube to serve the place, to bring in the required customers, the equivalent of one full busload every minute, coming and going, 24/7 or at least for a good ten hours every day 8 - 6, 7 days a week.  Exact calculations are difficult, each economist has her own perspective, ask Greenspan, and then there’s then and now to muck things up.

I have a few concerns though.  With 20,000 shoppers it would leave only 2 minutes per shop, not enough time to ring up the required quid, so one needs more than 20,000 (for the mall to work).  Twenty minutes per shop is always nice, time to see everything, get around, bring in 200,000 folks each day that way.  But then it would be 10 buses every minute, a whole transit train, moving along the tracks, 600 trains a day, pretty impressive for one mall, 6 million folks a month, everybody always coming back for more, each person spending a little less I guess, $5, but time to see each shop, to shop, which is why they call it shopping I guess.

There are evidently two larger malls just in Britain, seems they are suburban, not just urban.  Maybe a few inner-city shops as well, like downtown London, think the London Mall, a bit old in spots, but far more shops.  How many super-malls in all of the Isles?  Probably a hundred or more I would guess, then a lot of smaller shops and the web and the Chunnel to France when one gets bored, bored shopping on the west side of the big bore.

I wish Westfield my best, I know they thought it through, figured out the incomes, the finances, had better figures than mine about costs and projections.  Calpers, the California retirement fund for state employees has lost $67 billion in the past twelve months, enough money to build 23 Westfield Malls, what have been called Poncy Shops, the word is not in my dictionary.  Make a list of 23 California cities, give each one a new 3 billion dollar mall, assume that there are 120 million new customers to buy things there, folks new to California so that those already there keep buying in the existing shops and malls, so business doesn’t get worse in those old ones.

On NPR the other day I heard an announcer say that a billion might as well be a zillion, nobody knows what such numbers mean.  I am not alone.  A billion here, a billion there, a billion or three for Pakistan, several more for Hungary, AGI is larger than half of Europe I suppose, at least in its needs.  The Feds will bailout Calpers of course and Westfield too is too big to fail, it’s all too big to fail because it’s all too big, too oversized, too over the top to comprehend, to be meaningful, to be sensical.

The market is of course going crazy, up and down maybe 20 per cent in a day or three, so much for patient industry, for investing, for doing any real work when all real money is made by gamboling.  It was when the shoeshine boy told Rockefeller he was soon to be rich by buying stocks that Rockefeller sold all his.  It’s just an urban myth probably, but it gets the point across.

I don’t know who is full of more gibberish these days, the MSM MainStream Media or the Conspiranuts or just the ordinary bloggers sixteen to sixty.  Chatter is at a crescendo, screaming heads, fright night every night and not just on Halloween.  All of America now celebrates the day of the dead, like Mexico, or has signed onto skull and bones, the Yale club with Bushies, the signs may say Obama, but the bones say Bush, not like the Halloweens of old, a diversity of costumes, a bit of color, not just red for blood, black for darkness, white for bare bones and empty skulls, not thinking.

It was once a part of the Century now past to ask will the world end with a bang or a whimper.  I think it will end with neither, though end it seems it must.  No, the world will end in screaming, not from the pain, not from the horror of it all, not from the horrors of hell - but from just the madness, the madness of it all, and the madness that it takes to keep up and maintain the madness.  The solution?  Just step away, step back, take your hands off the card.  Also, don’t vote, eschew stocks and bonds, turn off the media and check out Wikipedia for the real meaning of “poncy” because I don’t know.

Post Script:  What I do know is that there’s great new stuff going on in the 1930 Sidebar, to the left of your screen.  It’s just one click away, no shopping, just browsing, a way away from the madness, including the election and Halloween and market and mall madness.

[2008.10.30 / Wednesday - Poncy Shops]

~ 1 per cent loans, but the workers loan for free.

My wife suggested that I try a new non-quote style - I guess she means writing style.  I’m not so sure.  I feel that writing should reflect life.  My experience in life is that words often have many meanings, phrases are often just clichés, often not respected, held in good contempt - which is the opposite of high regard.  A few days back I would of put high regard in quotes, but not today.

I learned to read about the time that I was also learning about money, first and second grade, Dick and Jane, Spot and Sally, the “one-way” road to learning circa 1954 in the USA.  Fluff was the cat, Spot never knew what a leash was in his life, no leash laws then for dogs, at least dogs owned by white people and the Dick and Jane family was very white, with white neighbors, parents married, Mom at home, I don’t think anybody ever knew what Dick’s father did, he was mystery meat but America hadn’t coined that term yet, more like “shit on a shingle” which was a term that all the GI Dad’s taught their sons (their own versions of Dick) to get a rise, and to introduce them to swearing, meaning cussing and vulgarity and not court oaths.  Now you understand my point about quotes, maybe.

Chipped beef was the shit, the shingle was a piece of toast, and this attitude about a fairly palatable food came from the poor starving survivors of the Great Depression.  Today the beef would be considered a topping, I really want to use quotes on that one, but I will resist.  It was banks that used words so differently than what was taught in my Dick and Janes, I think Dick had an interest in Spot and Sally an interest in Fluff.  The local bank had an interest in my money, in making me into a saver, think quotes, and therefore offered to pay me interest, think more quotes.  Quotes in writing reflect words that send off alarm bells in the mind when one hears them, words that one knows have different meanings that if one gets it wrong one will have hell to pay, which should be in quotes, because I’m not talking about punishment after death here.

I guess you have probably figured out my point by now.  The word interest is really lame as a money word, there is nothing interesting about money, really.  Capital might be interesting, one might have an interest in capital, meaning money type capital and not government type capital unless the government and money are both the same and then why not just call them Washingtons and not Dollars and one can say, I have an interest in Washington and everything will be perfectly clear, Washington the currency, Washington the capital, Washington the other capital, all roads lead to Washington and politics and those that are interested in going to Washington for politics.  I digress.

Since money is capital where does money come from?  Nobody seems to think about this anymore, since it all comes from Washington now, big bills, which doesn’t mean the size of the national notes, but does mean the size of the national debt, the borrowing, the borrowed money, the borrowed Washingtons that Washington prints up as giant T-bills, giant only in zeros, not big in size at all.  But there was a question on the table, one about money, the value of labor, the want of work in a capitalist system where people work for money and not for joy, not to make anything except to make money.

So people start working, work for free mostly in America, get a job, start working away at something they probably don’t believe in, don’t like, don’t really want to do, is not their heart’s desire, at least not deep down.  One leaves their family, their friends, Spot and Fluff and Puff and whatever they call their horse, their hamster, their rabbit maybe and go off to work, to make new friends, maybe, to make up with the boss, maybe and to make capitalism work.  Each worker must begin each job by making an investment in their job, they must work for free for about two weeks and then work for free for maybe another week or two before getting paid.  Each worker in America has invested about a months free labor, free work in each job, no interest paid, no dividends, no interest due - just free money for the company, for the capitalist, for the would be capitalist.

If a company like GM has say 50,000 workers, paying about $4,000 each per month, then the workers have given GM over $200,000,000 in interest free money, not even earning the 1 per cent that Washington wants, I guess it’s hard to make a buck in banking when it’s so easy to get free money from the workers, from everyone who has a job, from you and from me.  The me should be in quotes, written because the word has poetry, not written because I have a job and would be contributing to all this free money if I did.

The bad thing, really bad thing, about laying off workers is that that is the only time that a company ever really has to pay back the worker for the interest free loan, the free month of unpaid labor, and this assumes that there is no severance pay, which there usually is no severance pay - let’s be real about what capitalism is all about, no golden parachutes for the workers of America, no parachutes at all, just jump, out you go, say goodbye, jump.

I believe that my bank, my bank in Carson City circa 1954 called their plan the Junior Savers Club, maybe it was the Dick & Jane Cooperative, maybe it was Save Spot and Fluff, the name does not matter, did not matter, words have so many meanings.  What did matter was the idea that great things grew out of savings, not borrowings.  The idea was that investment came from work, not interest.  No profitable enterprise or even company, well run, ever needs a loan, or ever needs to borrow money from their workers for that matter, they can pay daily, pay hourly if they need to, and each worker paid fairly at a job they like will stay each hour, each day and probably work a lifetime if needs be.

Every loan in America is designed to destroy this system, the work-place reality outlined just above.  Loans are designed to destroy well run businesses in favor of mismanaged ones, destroy prudent decisions in favor of reckless growth, destroy temperance in favor of greed.  Insurance is designed to cover emergencies, unexpected perils, unforeseen economic downturns, a good business is always self-insured, reserves built up in good years to cover bad ones - only the unwise ever need a loan, or those bought in to an unwise system.

Russia was first into space, Sputnik blinking, ping - ping around the world overhead, small orb of silver, earth’s second moon as it was called at the time.  It was a Russian craft, not US, not American, Russia was first into space.  Now Russia is first out of space, out of cyber-space, away from cyber-space banking, first to say no to the bit-stream currency, to the swipe of the magnetic strips called credit cards, no to ATM machines, no to the culture of something for nothing.   How many moons ago was Sputnik?  How many moons will pass before this simple new idea gains momentum, spreads around the world, can be seen where you live overhead or underground?  We followed Russia into space, we will follow her out again.  Will the change be hard?  Chipped beef anyone?  Maybe the cat was called “Puff”.

[2008.10.29 / Wednesday - Wholesale Banking]

~ Fiat politics.

A lot has been written lately about “fiat” currency.  The word in Latin literally means let there be, as an order usually, as in fiat lux, let there be light, the motto that hangs above the Sather Gate as one enters the original campus of the University of California in Berkeley, being the original University of California.

But things have changed, now there are UCs almost everywhere, like Wal-Mart’s, superstores of learning, a ready place to buy a degree, to get into debt, to mortgage your future time in exchange for the lure of fiat money, money based on law not metals.

The old UC was a different place, South Hall, North Hall, a simple quad, the Hearst Mining Building, built to teach the trade of mining to those that might value metals, Hearst was not a coal miner.  my grandmother Hemme went to school there for awhile, summer school, she took astronomy and other courses, the class always took a field trip to Mount Hamilton, world famous telescopes, the eye of science to the universe, looking for canals on Mars perhaps, real science for real scientists in the making.  Her class was the first not to ride in horse-drawn buggies to the top of Hamilton to see the Lick Observatory.

They took cars her year, that first year, for the first time - open roadsters, touring cars to be precise, all convertibles with great cloth tops rolled back to let in the California sun and the California dust of the dusty road up Mt. Hamilton, no gold below inside the mountain but light above, from the heavens, stars at night, let there be light.

The trip began and ended badly, it was a scandal, made all the papers - tickets, accidents, breakdowns, a rollover even, banging cars to see the big bang or something, the latest in scientific machines gone wrong in an effort only to reach the mountaintop.

By the 1930’s, we’ve been writing about the depression lately, good old Berkeley had changed a bit.  The school had gotten new angles on admissions, required photographs to be taken, full frontal nudes of all incoming students, cameras clicking to see what they could see and record it all, it was the law, an order - fiat.  My father went to UC then, and later my mother too, one in Science, the other in History, neither in law unless there are really laws of science, laws of history even.

There are eight days before America votes, on “election day” which is no longer what it once was with all the early voting now Vote - early and often, always the mantra of machine politics, the big boys and girls smoking long cigars, puffing in the backrooms, making deals, things all decided long before the ballots went in the ballot boxes, who would win and who would lose and who would make the laws.  I guess nothing has changed much, don’t be fooled again, lyrics from a 60’s song.

I gave politics a good run once, then gave it up, don’t vote now, not a comment, more the suggestion.  I am freer when I just watch, politics are for the amateurs, Tuesday will be amateur night, like New Years night for drinkers, it’s not a night for real power, just for politics, the pageantry on parade, a fiat politics like fiat money, an operation of law, not science, nothing more, nothing really behind it except whoever is really behind the curtain.  We are not in Kansas anymore, no, definitely not Kansas.

What are the odds in the real world that both national party candidates may not be by law qualified to be President?  So many choices, so few qualified.  The Constitution of the USA, for those that care, supposedly the law of laws of the land, I don‘t think so anymore, supposedly determines who is qualified to be President, not the electorate, not the party, not the great machines on the way to the mountaintop.  The way it is supposed to work is that from those qualified according to the Constitution the voters select, choose, make a choice, decide who they might prefer.  It’s a simple system, or was, once.

The Constitution really does not expect a lot from the President, mostly just loyalty to the law, to the Constitution, an oath is required to that effect.  The law requires that the President be of a certain age, about 35 as I remember, a male, that part was changed, a land-owner, that part was also changed, and oh yes, a natural born citizen of the USA, meaning born in the USA and not in some spot of land owned by some foreign dirt-devil of a nation-state type thing.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Kenya, I like Panama too - good countries, nice places to visit, interesting places to live in even, ask McCain, ask Obama - they know, they’ve been there, done that.

Back in 1964, when another gentleman from Arizona was running against a personage from the great state of Texas I was still in High School and there were so many things going on about the Constitution like Vietnam and Congress “declaring war”, like “gun control”, like “states rights” - and a few other fairly important things - that people started to talk about the need for a new Constitutional Convention as the old Constitution was pretty much in tatters and wasn’t really written too good to last this long.  We, maybe, needed a new Constitution, a new law, a new founding document fit for a new land, changed and larger than the old land cramped up against the Atlantic shore in the age of pedestrians, sailboats, white wigs, and weird black hats.

It didn’t happen.  The Constitutional Convention, the new one, did not happen.  Congress kept on passing laws though, and the president kept on signing laws, and the courts kept on interpreting laws, and the number of self-canceling, contradictory, ever-opposite laws and legislation kept mounding up into the greatest pile of laws and legal rubbish the world has ever seen; lawyers became liars in everybody’s mind and most elected to office just about everywhere were the educated of this ilk, law school graduates who thought of the law as ever malleable, ever changing, having no real meaning, just whatever you might get somebody to believe for a day or two until you used it to make a buck or two in salary, contingency, or commission.

Friday, or some such time, Obama flew to the newest state, Hawaii to visit the last person on earth who could be brought to testify about where Barack was born, his grandmother is said to be near death’s bed.  On that same day it seems the Republican woman who is the Governor of Hawaii sealed the Obama birth registration certificate from public view, the certificate that confirms a birth from any land, but “registers” the birth as an Hawaii legal document, probably used by the military to document the foreign born in 1942, both Japanese and Filipino mostly I imagine, useful law perhaps or I imagine some thought so at the time.  But who really needs historians to set the facts straight, write articles, appear on talk shows, interrupt the evening news now 24/7?

On this same fateful day, 79 years after the market crash of ‘29, the Federal Court threw out the Berg lawsuit asking for one small favor, for a public review of the original Obama birth documents, like with the name of a hospital, the doctor, an address or two - easy stuff, like the law and Constitution do demand.  The court said no, Berg, a democrat, had no right to know, no right to say he might be harmed by Obama being President, there is no injury, there is nothing wrong or done wrong.  He cited the case against McCain, the court said the same thing, the Constitution does not matter to the common man, common person, common child in America, a violation is not a hurt, not an injury, not yet.

Obama does deny he was born in Kenya, how would he remember, how would he even know?  McCain knows he was born in Panama, admits it, can prove it, does not worry about things like leases, occupied, flagships, territories or US property.  A good case can now be made for a million Germans in the US Zone to be OK to run for US President, Green Zone births in Iraq, births at bases all over the world and in APC’s, in Embassies, in aircraft, life begins at conception, as you know and who knows where conception occurred, except like what the mother says.  Maybe McCain wasn’t born in Panama at all, maybe Obama was born-conceived in Kansas, maybe it’s all a lie, maybe nobody really knows anything anymore?

So all the world is now born in the USA as the majority seems to say, it is, or was, all occupied territory or was at war or in a state where law can be spun, twisted, changed, concealed to create a birth or no birth or seal a record soon enough to open possibilities or to close them.  Homeland Security wants to seal, control, the borders, but I think we are all Americans now, so vote early, vote often, vote wherever you are or be ready to complain that you weren’t allowed to vote in Georgia, in Paraguay, in Moscow maybe, or Tokyo even.  But rest assured, no Federal Court will be there to sort it all out, Case Dismissed, no standing, no power, no need for an election anyway, what eight days, what law?

One final thought though.  If fiat money is based only upon law, and nobody believes in law anymore, then where’s the money?

Note:  If all this 21st Century madness is getting to you too, take a trip back, to 1929, located through our  Qala Bist sidebar and follow along with Hemme on her journey of how we got here, if you‘ve been reading carefully you will know that she’s about to ride into the Great Depression in a Hupmobile, which as a car company will not make it through.  But then again, what car are you driving?  Are you listening?

[2008.10.27 / Monday - Eight Days]

Tsar nuclear test video, October 30, 1961.

100 Megaton bomb scaled down - Tsar test video.

Maude Jeffers
————————————————————–
September 23, 1953

Thomas Jefferson 3 cent stamp.

62 South 13th (Street)
KCK (Kansa City, Kansas)
Sept 23 ‘53

Dear Hemmie:-

I know I have been slow about writing - but there was not much to write.  I was called to Iowa in April by the illness of my younger sister Reta.  She was desperately ill, and we expected to lose her any time.  I did not intend to stay more than a week, but she remained so ill the Dr. asked me to stay.  We had planned to be married Mother’s Day - but when I could not get away, Joe came up there and we were married at Eldora, Iowa May 5th, came home a week later, then there were changes to make in the home arrangement, and we were quite some time getting settled - by that time we had to make garden if we were to have any.

Then the hot dry weather set in.  I never felt the heat so badly, and I don’t know why.  My sister continued seriously ill and is still no better.

Then that tradgie July 16 - since that I have not been much good.  It was all so sudden and so near.  I just can’t seem to get over it.  We did not know where you were or how to contact you as we understood you would be traveling around.

After things were quieted down and they got Loyalls car out of the police control, they found a late address of yours in the glove compartment - where he had put it as he left the farm the last time.  I later wrote Mr. Beale and he answered he did not know how to contact you.

There was nothing any one could do, he had lived a clean upright life and left a good example to his children and others.  Of course I have Joe and he is a consolation, But God only knows how I miss Loyall - he was my all in all.  I am thankful he was not bruised or mangled, and that he did not have to lay sick a long time.

Dorothy is managing nicely and she really has two darling children

This letter is pretty scribbly but maybe I can do better next time.

Lovingly
Maude Jeffers
62 South 13 K.C.K.5

Next HNB Letter - March 14, 1931.

[Note:  Maude L. Cline was the wife of Alfin Backlund.  Alfin was a brother of Hemme N. Backlund (Hemme Martin).  Maude was born circa 1884 (probably) in Metz, Missouri.  Alfin and Maude had two sons, Forrest and Loyall Backlund.  Alfin died in 1918 (at age 40) of the influenza and Maude later married a Mr. Stone, they divorced.  This letter reports the marriage of Maude Cline to Joe Jeffers.  The “tradgie” (tragedy) of July 16, 1953 was the death of her son Loyall Backlund, age 40.  He was driving, apparently had a heart attack and blacked out.  His car hit a utility (light pole or telephone pole or combination light and telephone pole), he died on the way to “the hospital” the same day.  While no mention of her son Forrest Backlund is made in this letter the obituary for Loyall Backlund states that Forrest is living in Winfield, Kansas.   Dorothy (Dot) is Loyall’s widow, the two children are the children of Loyall and Dot.  Information regarding Maude Cline‘s birth year is courtesy of ClineFamilyTree.com which has additional information about Maude‘s parents and her birth family.]

[1953.09.23 - MLC to Mrs. Hemme Martin - RR Green, Kansas.]