COMPENDIUM 2022
So I am going to assemble this book in real time. The whole idea of trying to sell the book to a publisher and then market it, just didn't feel right. All that effort for a result I didn't desire. I even stopped playing the Lottery because I don't want my life to be influenced by money anymore.
So this is just some summer reading to maybe a catalyst to do some real thinking to find a way get to a new normal. The old one wasn't working as the memes state and we know why. I'm going to throw my stories into the Creative Commons at the end of the year, and some of it was copyrighted in 2008 as History Of THE Pagans.
I'd like to see if I can gather any interest to self-publish an e-book, sure, but it kind of doesn't matter. I'd rather spend the $2000- on preparations for Armageddon.I think the connections we are making now are more important than any vain inglorious pursuit. We are already in the process of creating small markets and that is what Market Socialism is about (1-2).
Also, this late in life, its readily apparent I could go the way of the birds at any time. I also realized the previous blogspot entry for "Compendium" sounded a bit dated and long in the tooth.
We really are at a brand new time in history. Except instead of getting more modern, we are going to retrieve some old concepts. A precedent setting era and I like to think the sociological changes that are going to occur is how we are going to proceed into the future..
Warning
I am responsible for what I have written, not for what you think I wrote, or meant. Simply stated, the opinions expressed herein, may at times resemble facts, therefore… always double and triple check before you let any incorrect facts loose on the internet with millions of undisciplined minds on the loose.
I believe it is a consensus that we seek, not confrontation, and I look for reforms that all sides can agree with. We all have to compromise. Except for when it comes to the earth and the ancient forests that remain. People beginning to realize there are too many people.
The ultimate sad reality on earth is that there are billions of people living in misery on what was once a bountiful, clean planet. It’s as simple as that. We've failed to manage it up to this point, and we'll see how this first brush with extinction will end.
Once it was ours and it will be ours forevermore if the working people wake up. Capitalism And Communism are two Euro-centric economic systems that have failed the world.
Let me guide you around some of the seemingly intractable dilemmas of our modern era and offer solutions, and please be willing to contemplate new perspectives, because the
voter/citizen/worker needs to lead now,
and follow no longer.
COMPENDIUM
1-1 THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
1-2 MARKET SOCIALISM
2-1 ANCIENT GARDEN GATHERING
2-2 DO AS YE WILL
2-3 THE MEEK
2-4 SOUL VIEW SECRET RITE
2-5 ANGELS AT THE INTERSECTION
2-6 PEOPLE OF THE SHORT CORN
2-7 PAGAN MILLENIUM
2-8 THE STONE PEOPLE
3-1 iNDEX bIBLIOGRAPHY aNCIENT cURSES ...... aND DRUDOCCITAN
4-1 TRIP TO OREGON
1/1 THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 1
" Not only are you creating recreation for today when land is purchased and preserved, but wild space for ever and ever."
Americans demand recreation areas, protected forests, with preserved estuaries and parks nationally, and walking trails locally. They appreciate being supplied with good facilities during their travelling adventures in this wonderfully expansive system of national and state parks in the United States. This notion seems logical for a country that includes "the pursuit of happiness" in its mission statement, the preamble to its Constitution. Then why does 800 billion dollars go to The Pentagon every year, and only three billion goes to the National Park Service?
Apparently, making a fleet of eighty MILLION dollar fighter jets was much more important than anything nature has to offer. This is what the government is telling us with this lopsided budget. Why should taxes go to a park ranger explaining the difference between red squirrels and brown squirrels during a guided tour? How is THAT a priority they ask?
What about the supply and demand in our economy that the Republicans are always whining and braying about? Our National Parks have a dearth of facilities and maintenance is spotty, but crowds continue to grow. There is a big demand from the people of America, --- the supply part of supply and demand, you know. Park expansion, safety and the preservation of ecological diversity has been subverted by corporations that profit from war, and by the army of corporate lobbyists in Washington.
THE PEOPLE WANT PARKS NOT WAR.
The American people and visitors from around the world, are out there trying to have a grand vacation visiting the great places of America, only to find stinky bathrooms, traffic jams, and tour guides swamped with crowds. Pondering all this, how does upgrading to 150 million dollar fighter jets ever make sense?
It makes sense because everyone has gotten fat off the government the last sixty years, and now they slap "my guns my god and my money…you keep the change", bumper stickers on their cars, not realizing the markets that big government encouraged created their prosperity from markets as diverse as Dairy and Nuclear Energy.
The capitalists slipped America a roofie, 60 years ago, and have not stopped ravaging her. They can't believe that no one has stopped them, so they keep taking from her, rapidly poisoning our earth with their newest degradation called Fracking.
Making weapons and selling weapons is profitable. Creating wars to destroy them, so they can make more, made these phony wars enormously profitable. Making weapons is a dirty income and many of todays tea baggers profited, and perhaps you are profiting also with your investments or as scions of the investments that allowed large corporations to destroy small business America. Small business America where you lived near where you worked 
. Now that they’ve got their pensions and social security, the senior Teahadists are quickly closing the barn door so no one else can share this wealth, which they stole directly from our natural resources. One entire generation destroyed more forests than any other previous generation and profited wonderfully from this drastic reduction of resources. The cost of paper products was artificially cheap enabling an illusion of prosperity in the 50's and 60's.
Dear reader, if you invest, then divest of your poison stocks. It is time to think about all the life on this earth that will be here the next million years. Invest Green best you can. Invest clean. The Market Socialism of the Green Movement needs to be regulated as little as possible. We agree with Conservatives on this one. Raw milk producers want regulations eased but Big Dairy is firmly in the driver's seat preventing a resurgence of small farms. The sterile poison seed of corporate farmers get subsidies, yet small organic farmers have many regulatory hurdles to leap; and certifications to achieve.
War is good for the economy, it creates JOBS we were told our entire childhood. "World War 2 lifted us out of the depression", is another myth that has become reality. The truth was that the explosion of innovations after WW2 was actually possible because of all the scientific improvements that had been made in the 1930's. In radio, refrigeration, electricity, and many other areas of research.
Invention and innovation and knowledge rapidly expanded in the Thirties and a real prosperity was emerging and lively cultures were booming again in many cities, then WW2 disrupted all that was right at that time in the world. Good times with positive momentum were on the way, as the world retooled itself after the Great Depression.
Instead, we are told the Big War created prosperity, when all it really did was create devastation and misery. Brainwashing of the highest order, World War 2 being good for the economy is a complete lie, but 80% of Americans believe it. Reducing our 800 billion dollar a year Pentagon budget would "make us weak" and "could wreck the economy" we are told in 2021, yet America spends as much as the next ten countries combined on the military, how stupid do they think we are? The fearsome empire of Russia spends 50 Billion.
Do you truly believe we were preserving American freedom by the wars in Korea, Vietnam and proxy wars in Central America, and 2 wars with Iraq and the furthest away of all, and the longest war, Afghanistan? War may help the Gross National Product and is lucrative for people with stocks in weapon manufacturing and oil companies, and a pension from your Weapon Maker job. If your conscience doesn't propel you to divest and boycott companies that pollute our planet or degrade any part of humanity, then the falling stock prices of companies that come under fire as regulators investigate fraud, surely will make you sell those stocks. Falling stock prices of companies that are effectively boycotted will be another incentive to not invest in the ruination of the planet.
Try as they might to make mass murder acceptable
and patriotic, deep in our collective American hearts
we know it’s wrong.
The Greatest Generations antiquated notions of how everyone has their place was put to the test and failed in the 60's. The boomers saw this world filled with racism and sexism with our young hopeful eyes, and collectively our disgust level was so high, that things have truly changed in the last 50 years. Thank you to all who have stood up for equality, you are the actual patriots.
Why couldn’t a black dude or a woman be hired for any job? Why not pay the woman the same as a man? Whazzup with that? We didn’t get it.
Will there ever be a disgust level with war, however, which will help us change? Not until societies embrace the feminine, it seems. Women are always trying to fit in, but most cultures do not mix the masculine and feminine very well. How can a smooth polarity of the masculine and feminine be achieved, as cultures constantly chafe as an exuberant maleness continues to slow us down.
Incivility and brutality is the result of the warrior elites dominance of most societies the last 2500 years. The incivility and wildness of our culture is not the primitive paleo wildness we have forgotten, but the fealty to authoritarian despotism of manipulative men, and the obedience of the sycophant chumps that ring their bell. This has led to a false patriotism, the War without end. Always enemies to kill, God bless you.
America is here as a place for you to breathe free,
to be anything but ordinary if you choose, and to help hold the light of liberty for all who strive for freedom. I encourage all countries to create new covenants with their people to create equality and freedom. For people that want to escape repression, we need to create safe havens. Not a global order, but decentralized spheres of influence with minimum standards for all to follow voluntarily.
We must upgrade our earth manners and safety nets for all people. Your good efforts will be returned threefold as the momentum of all of us working toward a humane humanity, is finally with us. It is the darkest before dawn.
The theme to most American movies, the good guy wins in the end, is all fine and dandy, but they have all been pyrrhic victories. Life has to be more than vanquishing enemies and they won’t be real victories till we can
encode liberty, embed equality, ostracize criminality , humble the mighty, invalidate injustice and vanquish cruelty
in all the countries in the world. Let’s give ourselves the chance for a new start, with the rejection of violence, and we will usher in, at long last, The Dawn of Civilization. All of us together in every country: Out of many, one; Unity without hierarchy. We are ready.
THIS is my suggestion for a 28th amendment
Henry David Thoreau, "A free and enlightened State recognizes the individual as a higher and independent power, from which, all its own power and authority are derived."
1-2
MARKET SOCIALISM
“ ....anarchy is the absence of coercion ....”
The road to anarchy will not be a chaotic anarchy as you have been led to believe, but anarchy as self-rule in our various communities and keeping common local market spaces free and open for small business and household industry. Now that the rich have saved up trillions of dollars in hidden off shore accounts, we can use this stolen labor (profit) to create the Infrastructure Initiative (II)
Envision something great for every one of us to use in the next 50 years in an expanded and expansive health and transportation infrastructure. A beautiful and enduring hardscape, and finally, wildlife corridors for migrating wildlife and MORE LAND PRESERVED FOR THE THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS TO COME. You’ve seen the trail cams and how often these under and over passes facilitate wildlife migration.
We can create abundance with a new economic system that isn’t dependent on excessive resource extraction or tanks in Afghanistan that get three gallons to the mile. It costs $400 dollars to supply one gallon of gas for every piece of equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan at an average of 500,000 gallons a day.
This wasn’t about terrorism more than it was about selling gasoline.
We also need to knock aside the languid and miasmic political will of the Democrats for the last 25 years, and let’s have a go at a New America. The Republicans want to eliminate things we all own in common such as the National Parks so their rich overlords will prosper and eventually own everything. As I like to say, don’t confuse Socialism with common sense and there is no war but class war.
It’s time to roll ‘em up and get down to work to preserve our wild lands forever, and this is the last chance for you Democrats because we'll have a third party otherwise.
As of this writing in March 2021, the President is appointing corporate parasites and neo-lib war hawks. Consequently, spurned Progressives hunger for battle. The neo-libs have no idea what’s coming for them and when they see that the Progressives have the general public behind them on most issues, it will be a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the death of the GOP when poor white people realize they've been had the last 40 years.
The Infrastructure Initiative II, is the construction of a tremendous hardscape infrastructure with immense areas set aside for barter and small business. Areas that will be run by the federal government for ten years and the state government the next ten years and to the best representative of the general population from then on. We use government to create a structure for people to eventually run themselves.
Down here in the underpaid working world, we have adjusted in many ways to the vagaries and vicissitudes of the market. Capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich is the system we have and people begrudgingly accept that fact. The corrosive coercion of capitalism has dissolved many of the social bonds we once had.
Bankruptcy and foreclosure? Aw, too bad said the bankers who have been gouging the American worker with interest. Should be a crime, it used to be. Google 'penalties for usury'. Tens of trillions of dollars charged in interest by bankers to the detriment of American workers.
For instance, in a world awash in excessive clothing manufactured by 25 cent an hour workers, we go to thrift stores now to buy much of our clothing in 2022. I buy three dollars shirts and pants on the regular and they are normally only nominally worn. We go to Dollar Stores and church rummage sales and reliable second-hand exchanges for many of our purchases now.
We love bargains, but, let the buyer beware with the guy that has the frozen shrimp in his trunk though … we all have our particular discernments.
The whole scene is changing from below. If you can turn over a ton of food with volunteer labor you have accomplished something real without government bureaucracy. There are more distribution sites than ever before from groups that are taking in food and more people are getting fed but many more are experiencing food insecurity.
Not everyone wants to scrounge for a living in the city, there are many thousands of RV parks and many more people and their pets will be living in their vehicles in 2022. There can be a tight network of community exchanges. Free spaces and rural hubs the general public can utilize. Year One of II22 will have many more rest areas built. I almost drove off the road looking for a rest area one scary night on I 40 in New Mexico.
The problem with the bush and t***p tax cuts for billionaires, was that the wealthy were theoretically supposed to step up with more charitable donations, and of course a handful have, but the dark heart of capitalism always says, “no thanks, not today, the guest house needs new furniture.”
We are buying hand-made quilts for xmas presents and reconditioned bicycles for birthdays. We are already building Market Socialism but the corrosive corruption of capitalism has to be dealt with in a big way by a lot of people. Jenga Capitalism. Sooner or later it will collapse.
The over credentialed, over certified white-collar world isn’t going to rule us with their stuffed and mounted academic validations forever. We can and are creating a Market Socialism structure that won’t require stockholders and white-collar parasites.
Where are the jobs now? There is a severe shortage of carpenters electricians and plumbers. With an authentic infrastructure program, people from every educational background will be needed along with all the useful trades.. For every tank in Afghanistan we can have ten jobs here in our own country.
The Flat Tax Initiative of 2022.
I would have each person exempt from taxation for the first 10,000 dollars of income, and $25,000 for small business. Period. End of story. Then a ten percent flat tax for yearly income below $100,000. A 10% flat tax for business income up to $250,000. That means no deductions of any kind except the initial ones that theoretically covers business expenses.
The next level would have a 20% flat tax for all individual income above $100,000 and business income over a million per year. 30% flat tax (no expenses or deductions) for billion dollar companies and individuals that earn over a million dolllars a year.
In addition, we would lift the cap on social security from $106,000 to a $ gazillion. I find the EITC as a haphazard way to over tweak a haphazard way of giving the poor a break. Just trash that whole program and let people earn up to $10,000 without having to have to report it. With this initiative, everyone will have skin in the game. Then you have the entire following year to pay the tax.
Let everybody make a little money … for crying out loud ... and give them food stamps if they need them and every person who has no permanent address, but a social security number, a basic income of $300/month as a start of a UBI program and a free PO BOX for communication. Make the Republicans refill the social security fund back up. Let the billionaires give back what they stole from the languid, complacent, servile, no longer unionized American. See how that works? You will.
Socialist Eugene Debs actually went shoulder to shoulder with the workers and spent nights in jail as needed. Progressive, ‘fightin’ Bob LaFollette, in his role as elected governor of Wisconsin in 1900, actually implemented Progressive Pro Worker ideals into action and reform. Progressives are neither conservative or liberal. Not necessarily capitalist and decidedly not communist.
Which leads me to the question ... Are there are no other theorists for the workers revolution? Someone who goes outside once in a while and recognizes an impending environmental disaster when they see it. People simply don’t talk about marx down here in the working world and I’ve worked in three corners of this country and have talked to thousands of people from all demographics and every occupation.
Plumbers and gardeners and property managers and security guards and janitors. Administrators and store managers and even homeless people I find sleeping in the bushes. Not a one of them talked about Marx. Nobody. The working people don’t talk about Marxism, they talk about what is going on in their life. They talk about making the job better.
The maids, the sandwich makers, the floor polishers, the CNA’s, your finishers your starters, the kitchen crew and clerical staff. Gardeners get around and we are usually the last to go onto a project and people still working the site unload their problems on us while the incoming professionals bemoan their woes.
There’s the ferry captains, the car washers turned computer techs, the vegetable growers and organic chicken egg producers. I can’t ever remember anyone talking about marx, but we did talk a lot about unions. I saw a union go in, in 1975 and I watched the dudes that knew what they were doing advocate for wages and benefits that were equal to surrounding towns and they got it. Then I moved to aaright to work state.
America IS different but no longer exceptional with the right-wing coup eating us alive like a tapeworm and we are going to need more than marx to stem the tide. Small business has been destroyed and the same $15 minimum wage for all will be the final nail in the coffin for small business.
Progressives, Greens and Independents, PGI, are poised to lead the world out of its miasma but the conservative?liberal tennis match (back and forth back and forth and nothing gets done). Marx or Mussolini? The billionaires have shown their hand, and they don’t care if we all die and everyone knows it now. They are stripping the earth without regard to the economies of the future. The biggest problem is that people don't think things will ever change.
Marx or Mussolini? What will it be? The Left has to abandon Marx to gain any credibility with the American worker, that’s all I’m saying. On the right, the GOP is exactly what Mussolini had in mind. Braying sycophants for corrupt authoritarianism.
The billionaires have shown their hand and they’ve chosen Benito’s corporate-run government and they don’t care if we all die and everyone knows it now. The corporations are stripping the earth without any regard to the 100 billion people that will be born on this planet during the next 5000 years.
The workers revolution will be inevitable once the Steam Age academics of Marxism have been replaced and the Republicans are deloused and deprogrammed from the brainwashing of Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes’ Fox News.
How do you like that? We need unionism, not Marxism. Marx is insightful, but not useful. Does he really have to be the face of socialism? A man who didn't work or bathe? People are not inclined to malign Marx online and I don’t know why not, I know I will get heat for my stance. Nearly every commie has unfriended me on FB. The city slicker Liberals are not crazy about what I post either. Independents tend to stir the ire of both sides.
I do know an American will never call themselves a communist. Sorry Tom and others who have unfriended me, I’ve worked with a lot of people in three corners of this country and Americans will never call themselves communists. Never.
Down here in the underpaid working world we have adjusted in many ways to the vagaries of the market. Capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich is the system we seem to have.
Then again, why can't I sell produce from my house? Land of the Free? It doesn't sound like it. Where are the common spaces, Capitalisms notions that somebody must own everything. Make a showcase for ending government intrusion of the marketplace with market based community centers. We are strangling from an over-tweaked, law debilitated paralysis that destroys too many small businesses and keeps communities separated socially. Make a showcase for ending government intrusion of the marketplace with market based community centers.
We are strangling from an over-tweaked, law debilitated paralysis that destroys too many small businesses and keeps communities separated socially. We are dependent on 8 companies to feed us, fuel us, fleece us and forget US. The four F’s. That is going to end and we are in the process. Small markets without the investor class parasites.
1-3
LIBERTARIANS
“trust is the essence of anarchy and freedom”
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a marvel of engineering, construction, recreation and conservation. There is scant signage, such as “overlook ahead” or "Pine knob 3728 ft.", and no stop lights for 469 miles, best I could tell.
I left Pilot Mountain. Finally working on my bucket list ... I was headed to the Blue Ridge Mountains. After I realized the GPS voice was bringing me to Dalton Campground in Virginia, and not Doughton Campground near Sparta North Carolina, I re-directed and got on the Parkway finally way up into Virginia, and began to search for a place to camp out. When I got to Doughton Campground in North Carolina, I fell in love with site #77 and stayed for 6 days of a 16-day vacation.
When I first got there, three choppers roared by at eye level after they were leaving the disaster area that was the North Carolina coast after Hurricane Florence. Even Interstate 95 got washed out. I was ready to expect the unexpected. The Blue Ridge Parkway had only opened two days previous in North Carolina after trees were cleared from the road. Sawdust everywhere and trunks in piles by the side of the road. There’d been a bear in the park recently too, so I decided to sleep in my rented Jeep.
I was able to set up and get a fire going. This was a chance to truly relax and the last mountain I had seen was Stone Mountain in Georgia ten years previous, so I was way overdue and enjoyed the views. I enjoy Floridas great weather but it is as flat and green as people say it is.
I had a nice moment of Zen listening to the many bird calls and crickets as nightfall approached and I sat with my eyes closed at the picnic table. Releasing my troubles to the breeze, I closed my eyes.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
It’s the Balrog! Beezledoom!
Out of my comfort zone, I sat up startled ,,,,,, till I realized was just a drum circle over in area B, and it was a welcome addition to the night noise of birds or crickets.
There was also a squeaky thumping noise that I heard off in the distance and disregarded at first. By nightfall no one else had parked in Area C and I had a nice chunk of the Appalachians to myself. I had that whole further section of the campground to myself since people weren’t traveling the Parkway.
Later on, I went to the bathroom to check out everything they had and didn't have and then as I was going back to my site and there it was again, gears gnashing…a loud mechanical noise... Invasion from Mars? Were Robots clambering up the side of the knob I was camping at? Later after walking to the bathroom to rinse off the days dirt and grime, I realized it was a water pump.
It was an excellent bathroom with sinks of course and a water spigot about a foot above the floor, for taking a French shower or whatever cleanup you had to do. No lights in the building but a solar powered light outside so you could see the place on a foggy night.
Then I got to wonderin' how would a Libertarian get hundreds of gallons of water a day to this remote bathroom? The bathroom is a sacred place when you're camping for a couple of days or more. The answer is, they wouldn’t.
They wouldn’t build a campground that every day working class people could afford. These are the kind of people who objected to a Postal Service that would deliver to every single house in this country, so people could stay in touch and important communications could happen. Oh no, privatize it. Delivery trucks zooming by every day instead of a predictable delivery time and complete system the USPS has.
Before that, they objected to bringing electricity to rural areas.
The skint bastards that squeeze a penny so hard, it makes Lincoln cry.
Some years ago a rich dude built a road to the top of Mount Mitchell, which I visited towards the end of the vacation and it was located down the road a piece a hundred miles down the Parkway. Bosses could afford the fee to the top and were also the first to have automobiles back in 1927 when this road opened. In time the state of North Carolina came in, and developed the services necessary that would allow everyone to enjoy the views from the Majestic Mt. Mitchell.
Now I’m not a fan of big government, but I enthusiastically applaud the effort of the Democratic Socialists at that time that built such a remarkable road and often at heights of 3000 feet or more where cold arrives early. The area is nearly unspoiled, and the area surrounding Blue Ridge Parkway may be the last hope for the wild things in the Appalachians.
Libertarians don’t think much about “the blessings of Liberty” or “the pursuit of happiness” unless its for themselves. We need a government to cover the basics so there is less suffering among its people, and at least food and shelter for everyone. It wouldn’t cost that much. Just have a moratorium on building new jets or tanks. Sell a couple of embassies and military bases in places where the United States doesn’t belong.
The Park Service needs to double its budget, and you know, sell a tank or something. Reduce the CIA by 25%. What about supply and demand GOP? We demand recreation but are supplied with war instead. A country by the frat boys, for the frat boys, and of the frat boys. Stop giving rich senators their Agricultural subsidies, their million-dollar paychecks for not growing crops. There are many ways to starve the beast called Oligarchy.
Then I got to thinking about Pilot Mountain that I had visited the day before, and I wondered how the Libertarians would manage that park. The sign that says: hikers below, do not throw rocks. Gone, that’s no fun being careful and courteous. The no alcohol in the Park directive? That's a silly Liberal rule by sissy men of today. “How do you like your steak sir,” the waiter asked. “Next to my other steak” was the reply from the macho posturing pinhead.
Fences that prevent people from falling down the cliff would never get fixed. There’d be drinking parties “We have to go kids, the Libertarians are here.” They’d be shooting the crows that use the mountain for resting, after gliding and hunting. Learn what is good government and what is bad government because Libertarians seem to be unable to discern the difference.
We can certainly reduce our military to 500 billion a year and dramatically increase mass transportation for everyone here in the homeland. We can have small-home villages for the homeless, the rarely homed or the nearly homeless.
I can’t say enough about the Doughton Campground and how it is laid out. I had 100 acres of mature trees and steep slopes on three sides to enjoy. I didn't need to travel for hiking, i just wanted to be in the forest.. I prefer, off the trail stuff where I won't get lost and lose my bearings. For someone stuck in Florida for 12 years, even a nearby naturally flowing streamlet was enjoyed immensely by me. Remarkable preservation along the whole Parkway was gratifying to see. Truly the ultimate forest experience for someone like me who doesn't want to hike 6 miles to get a view.
Breathtaking falls short in describing The Blue Ridge Parkway, and that is what I’m thinking about when I try to imagine what a large infrastructure project would look like. Build it and they will come.
Bloodthirsty libertarian predators are ready to buy up the rest of America that isn’t nailed down. They made out with the banking crisis of 2008, and they bought up many of the 10 million foreclosed homes. That's how Bill O'reilly got his 78 houses. Super predators brainwashed by Milton Friedman and others with the Chicago School of Oligarchy philosophies.
Ecosystem health is an important issue, and the corporate naming of the parks is the worst idea I have ever heard. Conservative cranks want to sell off the parks but I say sell off military bases and embassies instead, and stop selling weapons to prop up a dying capitalist system. -the end-
BOOK 2 HISTORY OF THE PAGANS
"Most men are decent really; they just need to be hit upside the head now and then with the dull end of your spear. Theyneed to
be reminded to be civil”--Skjaldmeyjar 985 A.D.
“
D 2-2 DO AS YE WILL
The Eight Directions of Druddism
THE EIGHT DIRECTIONS OF DRUDDISM "1……Encode Liberty ….2……Embed equality…3…. invalidate injustice …..4… Ostracize criminality ….5….humble the mighty …6 …. vanquish cruelty ….7 …. cultivate opportunity and …..8…..sleep on the couch as needed.” goes the credo iof
‘DO AS YE WILL AND HARM NONE’ is something spiritual people often state in one form or another and I would like to introduce this angle to help advance our thinking. In the marketplace, it doesn't matter what religion we are, but how you interact with other people. What we buy is ALSO becoming more important, and I’d like to show you how. Given the choice of a 20 dollar shirt from a company in Bangladesh that pays its workers five dollars a day, or a 30 dollar shirt from Sweden, which should we choose?
Take the example of Lucy in Bangladesh, taken out of school at the age of 9 to work in a sweatshop. Now at 19, her hands are so sore and worn out, she doesn’t know how she keeps going. Every waking minute is torture and she is unable to see the gift that life is. Like many working poor, she is vulnerable to Christianity and Islams message; that it is okay to live with coercive authority, because there will be rewards in heaven for the faithful.
Ignore the world, follow us, and you will be rewarded handsomely in Heaven. No one gets their money back on this one. Easy to promise, with no delivery date of salvation expected till after you die. Could there be a misplaced trust with this heaven bound clergy and their invisible product?
Back to that shirt: why would you want to pay ten dollars more to the Swedish manufacturer that treats its workers humanely with good pay and vacations? They have to compete with Bangladeshi sweat shop workers who are the modern day slaves? Why change now? They need jobs, we need cheap plastic everything.
It was our parents and grandparents purchases in the 60’s and 70’s that precipitated the exodus of clothing manufacturers from the United States. A low-priced product means low wages for someone on the other side of the world. The Lords and Ladies of Fauntleroy need to conceptualize the notion that Capitalism has created an Illusion of Prosperity, not the real thing we can carry into the future.
Buy the cheaper shirt and laugh, you say, it’s not my problem, but then it’s YOU that is helping to expand the sweatshop system that will eventually engulf every worker in the world and perpetuate a growing workplace tyranny as we return to neo-feudalism.
People tell me these lowest paid workers of the world need jobs too. The hidden truth is that were driven off the farm by technology where only the ruling oligarch gains. There will be inflation, if all workers made a decent wage, that’s true. By remaining silent, you allow that encroaching neo-feudalism and your grandchildren will look at you one day, all misty eyed and weary from another 14 hour day at the windowless microchip factory and ask,” Why did your generation just lay down and die, Grandma? How were you so brainwashed, that you couldn’t stand up to coercive authority, and prevent the emergence of corporate theocratic fascism. What shortsighted idiots!. Smart slaves is all we are. Toilers for the rich. " To everyone else who wants a peaceful world, I’m asking you to look a little deeper: do ye harm none when you buy that cheaper shirt or any of the other products created in unsafe conditions or where slave wages exist? Like it or not we are all loosely connected in the global marketplace. We need to see the billions that slave for our low prices today. Low prices means someone is getting low wages.
There has never been this many hungry people in the world. There have never been this many homeless people. Don't all lives count? Shouldn't every country have a volunteer population cap? Billions are suffering as the human population skyrockets out of control; women thrown into factories, men working in a near death state in mines. The most fit work 16 hours a day and the misfits are homeless, living degrading lives. This is the Low Prices mentality and the cheap food policy that has also failed. Your cheap shit is someone elses working misery.
Lucy Thu in Bangladesh, who I HAD MENTIONED BEFORE, is so tired and disgusted that when shop mate Rosuh Rivutah loudly proclaims that they should start a union, Lucy’s hopes rise briefly as she dreams of some joy and happiness in her life. If she could earn more, SHE DREAMED, she could buy a refrigerator and TV for the family, and some rugs and maybe someday have children that wouldn’t starve to death. The next morning Rosuh is found dead with the implied warning that if you fight the power, you will die. Lucy’s despair deepens; it seems like the End of All Hope. UNION IS THE WORD THEY DARE NOT SPEAK.
The fact is that if there was a worldwide minimum wage of a dollar an hour, a pair of sneakers, for instance, would only increase from 70 to 75 dollars. Even though the workers wage has quadrupled, the price only goes up 7% because most of the cost of the product goes to corpulent executives and their sickening greed, along with the transportation costs and various forms of white collar crime that is derived from all this money sloshing around. Most things can be made locally if everyone received fair wages. Or just create a new system of small and local business and ignore that Wall Street monster.
We have more products than we can manage, and we can create dignity, comfort and happiness in the lives of the two billion working poor in the next 20 years, or choose to continue to kowtow to the monied interests and one in 3 workers are destitute and indigent.
Boycotts work. Nestle and Monsanto for a start. It’s a sick, evil greed that has made the lives of billions, a hell on earth, but the concern of right wing wackos and moral high ground hypocrites is gay rights and other contrived moral issues. Being alive isn't enough; you need to be awake also, and you need to push forward or clear a path for others wherever you find yourself. Do as ye will but create a future for all. Be brave enough to confront the hoarders. I need to work a bit on that eighth one, any suggestions?
"1……Encode Liberty ….2……Embed equality…3…. invalidate injustice …..
4… Ostracize criminality ….5….humble the mighty …6 …. vanquish cruelty ….
7 …. cultivate opportunity and …..8…..care for everyone.”
1 2-3
THE MEEK
A book from 1928 called Lady Chatterley’s Lover, describes post-WW1 England. The ruling class has the power because they are the most qualified to lead, they told themselves, and don't forget that he who has the gold makes the rules. That is the actual golden rule.
In the book I mentioned, the coal miners in the town drag their feet home every day after 12 hours of slavery in unearthly, horrible conditions BELOW ground. The local oligarch, the owner of the mine, looks on their parade of gloom with pity, and repeats that he has “been given the burden of keeping the rabble in line.”
Maybe he could give them a free ham for chritsmas and the pitiful masses would be thankful, not realizing the actual criminal class that the Oligarchy is, and the theft of their labor and their lives must never be forgotten and I hope you hear their call from the past.
Oligarchs are mobsters and criminals who keep the great mass of people people in chronic poverty, and it's sad people have been brainwashed to trust the suit and tie and the illegitimate authority. Keeping entire towns impoverished, what kind of asshole does this? Look at these extreme capitalists and how they got their initial wealth; they have many WASPS among their ranks. These are the white people that the people of color should be upset with, not the white working poor. “No lives matter” Ice T.
The people of the single god theory and their political machinations began with burning and banning the meek a long time ago. Hell, they even "burned their own daughters if they playeth the whore" as it says in their book, the Old Testament. Christians crawled into the exoskeleton of the dying Roman world and became the "Holy" Roman Empire.
They banned the Meek in 395 AD and began a thousand-year campaign to eradicate the meek and their thousands of gods and goddesses. A long bloody struggle it was, till they finally conquered the Lithuanians who were the last remaining Pagans in Europe. This was in 1384 when the 15-year-old prince of Lithuania married the 12-year-old christian princess of Poland. An inauspicious start for the purveyors of faith. Sacred fires of the Pagans were kept burning secretly until the last one was extinguished in 1434, it's ashes thrown in the river, just in case. Luckily ancient knowledge never left the forest.
The hypocritical holy people named buildings, rivers, and towns after their saints and they stuck the heads of dead Meek people on poles to convince other Meek people to give up their kind and fun loving cultures.
Meanwhile, a little south of the holy empire, the last prophet and the people of the scimitar began THEIR holy rampage of conquest. They considered themselves great warriors but they married little girls and beheaded many of the Meek and we say in retrospect, "yeah right dude, real manly". The ancient stories of the Meek were burned at the library of Alexandria so all traces of them would disappear. This was something Rabbi's, Caliphs, and Bishops could agree on. The original ancient civilization was removed from history.
The cross and scimitar invaded the indigenous cultures of the Meek of Africa and the Meek of Europe and took their gold as forced conversion became the order of the day. Their great holy leaders surveyed the world years later, and found that the Meek had finally been subdued, the blood and money cults of Abraham were victorious, and the Meek were subsumed.
Today the Meek have begun to make their voices heard. "There is no god" and "there are many gods and goddesses" the Pagans and Atheists declare. These are the new people of the word. The many words of the internet to double check all these con men of history. Human termites infesting
The great goddess holds the lamp of liberty aloft to light the way and the great journey of the Meek has begun, guided by the words of the first true covenant of the people called the mutrfukon United States Constitution, bitches. Every day gets a little brighter as the dawn of civilization approaches and the Meek (today they are known as Pagans and Atheists and Independent thinkers) are cautiously are coming out of hiding to reclaim the cultures of the world. This is the basis of black and white unity.
The white WASP elite needs to feel the sting of the workers discontent from the inevitable worker's revolution. Like in the south during the Civil War, how did the slaveowners with less than 2% of the population, convince the other 98% that secession and war was necessary? 600,000 deaths for bullshit. The slave owners, sent the working and farming white people to their gruesome deaths in the bloodiest war in American history.
In the north, nasty white WASPS opened factories fashioned after slave ships and Catholics such as the Irish and Italian were scorned and abused in them and in outdoor jobs. In todays America every European country has assimilated itself into the industrial greed machine with a white-collar parasite economy perched atop the actual economy.
Maligned no longer, the Meek and their peace-loving allies are poised to rule the earth. Ecosystem Stewardship is the phrase to replace resource gobbling for gold. When the dumb white demographic catches on, we will have another Progressive Revolution and a new attitude regarding wealth and the preservation of our wild lands.. When they realize all wages would go up if we put the 1% in jail. Just for fun. Let them feel the sting of profiling and charge them with a felony and tear up their corporate charter when criminal activity is found.
2-4 Soul View/Secret Rite
All right, what happens if you accidently conjure up some demons? I want to refer you to The Philosophy of Magic WRITTEN BY Arthur Versluis for one of the cures from ancient times. “Another gesture is the extended middle finger, termed ‘the bird’ in American slang, it is a sign of disrespect or hostility. It was used in magic ritual in order to subdue demons. One other gesture which has been retained and which has an esoteric aspect is the most common of signs: the index finger touching the thumb, forming a circle, the three fingers, slightly bent, and extending outwards. Generally acknowledged as meaning that everything is all right, in esoteric terms it signifies the three pillars, or trinity of alchemical principles-Mercury Sulphur and Salt.”
Something the warrior elite have destroyed in themselves and their institutions the last 2,500 years, is……compassion. From the book, Philosophy of Magic. “The realization of Mind is none other than the ultimate compassion, And that is the seed, the emerald stone at the very heart of magic, it’s greatest secret and source of strength. Magic is, in the deepest sense, is compassion.”
So what kind of magic would Gaia and other Goddesses have? If I made up a religion and killed everyone who didn't like it and used various forms of behavior modification such as balming words after the stress they create.for a thousand years, there would be a good chance that its Holy Word was gospel truth. I made up my own creation myth and created a simple structure for others, so as to make up their own framework for spirituality. It would have to be a Pagan religion because Pagans believe whatever they want. The reform in the Pagan Reform Temple.
Intelligent Design was in effect for hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens evolved, you see. The Goddesses and the Ancient Mother sped up the entire evolutionary process on our planet, and Homo Sapiens is a culmination of mammals evolution, for now. There was a last tweak in our genome about 117,500 years ago which led to what scientists refer to as Homo sapiens Sapiens. It was also the last major spike of global warming. It's cyclical, every 100 to 120 thousand years
This is where I tell the Christians and Islamics that their cults of personality are nothing more than histrionics and intellectual vomit, making a mockery of history and intelligence. The meek shall inherit the earth you have heard. Victims of the cross and scimitar are not conquered after all because you can't kill an idea whose time has come, and Pagan freedom of expression has emerged from the misty past to emerge in the land of liberty.
Venus' husband, the first soul bearing primate, was a skilled hunter and he was swarthy of complexion, and he was as healthy a human as anybody today. Venus and the first soul bearing husband then performed a secret rite of sacred sex and he received his soul view, the original umbilical to the Tree of Life, where all the souls are kept. All thirteen children they had, had souls...and all their childrens children, till eventually all homo sapiens had souls. Humans could now potentially connect with the divine. Now you know what really happened. Venus was carried to Earth by angels. Then carried to shore on a clam shell pulled by dolphins.
It makes no sense that there is only a male god, and that's it. The Mother of all Life is a dude? I don't think so. Big GrandfatherJudge, with his anger management problems, and a willingness to torture someones soul for eternity would be a poor role model for a God. Perun, Thor, Priapus, Pan, Odin and countless other Gods would be a better boss of the Universe than the angry desert god called Yeah Way.
The Gnostics and Cathars and Templars are historical remnants of rebels within the Catholic Church. Countless pagan communities burnt to the ground and ironically all the sacred fires were put out. They were destroyed in the Islamic/Christian Holy Rampage of Conquest.
If Three patriarchal religions can say that I, and many others, are going to Hell, then I can certainly suggest that this god they revere is actually the great deceiver. The ultimate wooden nickel, and the all-time, lying, deceitful, Olympic class sack of shit. There I said it. The Loudmouth Huckster God of the Old Testament is actually Satan in disguise. Trying to hide the Venus Creation Myth with an obvious obfuscation. Telling a tall tale at the camel rest area, “god” kept traveling till he found a village where no one had heard of him.
“Churches serve quasi-governmental functions, as do the Cub Scouts, the Rotary, Homeowners associations and Garden Clubs. Government should be our solid edge and vigilant protector of our rights, and all these civic and religious groups should contribute to a "high thread count in the fabric of freedom, ”
Here’s an example that shows that we can’t really know the what it's like in the afterlife or Otherworld
2-5
Angels at the Intersection
Two people are driving hurriedly; one person wants to make sure her young child arrived home safely from school; the boy has sounded unsure of himself on the phone when he has had to call. Another person has turned around to go home because he remembered he turned the oven burner to low; but never went back to turn it off. He had to hustle, burning food awaits, yet he needed to get to his 4 to 12 shift on time.
In car #1 Floyd is racing back to his burning oatmeal and as he approaches the intersection, he’s praying really hard, “Please God please please angels, Jesus Mary Joseph make this light turn green!” In car #2 is Jane the donut shop employee who can’t quite get out early enough at work to pick up her son from school, and so at 9 years old the boy rides his bike for a mile and a half home. Cars go whizzing right by at fifty miles an hour and the snowbirds are back having problems adjusting their medication. It’s worrisome for a parent to give our children the same freedoms we had as children riding our bikes.
Don’t you know she is also praying like the Dickens and her guardian angel hears her plea, “Please please please don’t turn red I wanna get home please please please Diana keep the light green.” Floyd’s spirit guide races ahead to the signal box to delay the electrical connection for the light. At the same time the guardian angel of the Diana Loving Pagan zooms ahead to the intersection to facilitate Jane’s plea. And, well, they meet. The angel says, “Hey, step aside little league.” The spirit guide replies “over my ethereal shadow of mercy.” Can all this be happening? We seem to think so. What are you thinking when you are praying for the light to stay green? It must be really congested in the “Otherworld” with all these angels and spirit guides flying around trying to keep up with all the wishes. How about the Bronx during rush hour?
You can bet God is also real busy with his laptop trying to keep up with all the requests. As one example, four million children in this world got sent to the principal’s office last month and 3.7 million of them prayed so that they wouldn’t get in trouble. This is the base of my skepticism; I believe anything is possible but had no faith in any one answer till recently.
Most religious bugaboo is pretty ridiculous but it’s no reason to be an atheist; the key is this: we are really lucky to be given this gift: just being alive is the gift, it’s all the God and Goddess are really able to give us. Who can tell what to believe but our gut instinct tells us that we have grown beyond slavery and torture and war and need a clean start. I was hoping The Millennium year was the time to build up some positive momentum and I feel Bill Clinton fell short on that although we ended up with a surplus and a reduced government.
What then of the Good caused by religion? In a novel called “The Last Templar” , a secret scroll was discovered that was written by Jesus. Update: this was a TV movie recently and I missed it…arrr. Two researchers and an FBI cop in the story are all bent on revealing whatever they find and near the end of the book a terrible maelstrom capsized both boats during a chase scene and they found themselves washed ashore. The islanders were humble pious Catholic Greek peasants who were heavy on the sign of the cross and selfless kindness. No one had to be kind to the strangers, but the peasants were very gracious and the author was trying to illustrate that many of the peaceful people of the world are devout to their Catholic faith. The good remains, but an exorcism is needed to excise the evil.
When given the choice to reveal a scroll with Jesus’ actual words the female researcher and male cop let the paper fly away from a cliffside, rather than disturb the tranquility that has been created by the good people of the world. Distrustful of each other in the beginning of the novel, the cop and researcher had fallen in love so that probably clouded their judgment and you can just imagine the bad guy researcher, the third main character, saying “Noooooooooo!!!” as Jesus’ actual words flutter down to the ocean.
Before I lose readers who think I seem to be mocking everything and everybody let me prepare you by way of explanation. In the chapter, Gods Idols and Icons, I list Fluffy the Cobra. He’s described as “light god-replaces hard to say light gods like Quetozaotacal”. I’m not making fun of Quetozaotacal. I’m trying to light a path for 21st century people who may find pagan paths a little too strange and easy to ridicule, and letting people know they can have some fun being a pagan. What is great about pagans is that they accept who you are, what you believe and Paganism might be the answer to give freedom to everyone in the world and embolden people to upend coercive authority and the growing Islamofascist threat to liberty.
Seriously though, Fluffy is a God I added to my pantheon of Gods and Goddesses and he lit the way during my pagan pilgrimage to Salem. Never getting lost or delayed, even through New York City which is a white knuckle experience, even at four in the morning. If I can get someone to sit up and take notice of the Pagan resurgence through my attempts at humor, maybe I can get them to turn on the light in the closet of their spirituality. In this book I’m not preaching to the Pagan Choir, I want thoughtful intelligent and independent thinking people to consider becoming Pagans.
I indulge in the serious also. The Wiccan code of morality begins with this statement. “Do what ye will and harm none.” So a Wiccan wouldn’t throw a box of tacks on the driveway of some idiot preacher that made the newspaper with a demented anti-Halloween tirade. We believe that what you do bad or good comes back to you three times as strong. I believe Wiccans and Pagans would be fundamentally better citizens since we aren’t like the Christians who would step over their own mother to smite a pagan OR HURL GOSSIP AND HATE AND BIGOTRY ABOUT SOMEONBE DIFFERENT THAN THEM. Trust me, a child raised as a pagan will be just as likely to be kind and charitable and will integrate an upstanding morality into their lives seamlessly.
2-6 The People of the Short Corn
WIKIPEDIA--- “In the Hopi Prophecy, it spoke of a white man who would come to them and help transform the entire continent into a spiritual paradise. He would be recognized because he would carry the fragment of stone which would complete their Holy Stone, filled with Indian writing characters. The Holy Stone had been preserved for thousands of years. Thus, when the white settlers came to the American continent, remembering their prophecy, they were openly welcomed. The Indians shared all they had. But, in return, all the White Man did was to take. The Indians noticed that their White Brothers had brought a cross. However, it was not enclosed by the circle of the Great Spirit, showing the White Man had lost his way.
The Indians believe that at the beginning of the 5th World, when man was told to disperse throughout the planet, from Four Corners, the White Race was one of the original races that went East. Upon their return to our continent, they had become confused and forgotten the ways of the Great Spirit. Further the prophecy continued, either the White Man would bring peace and harmony or attempt to totally destroy the Indian's way of life and take all his possessions and the land. If the latter occured, (which is clearly the case today) there would come a time when the Indian people would appear to be almost non-existent.
Yet, one day, they would rise out of nowhere, as the white race is falling due to their own ignorance and destruction, to lead a spiritual revolution, so all people on this continent would become attuned to the Great Spirit. To hold fast to the traditional ways even if it seemed that everything was against them. To protect Four Corners at all cost, because there is great power under the land that if it is allowed to escape, great destruction would result. "WIKIPEDIA
"Today, the Indians are going through the test to hold onto their traditional ways and protect the land. The Pahana (or Bahana) is the "Lost White Brother" of the Hopi; a white, bearded deity who appeared to the Hopi and worked many miracles. The Hopi say that he will return again and at his coming the wicked will be destroyed and a new age of peace will be ushered into the world. It is said he will bring with him a missing section of a sacred Hopi stone and that he will come wearing red. Traditionally, Hopis are buried facing eastward in expectation of the Pahana who will come from that direction.”--- WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia turns out to be very helpful with a writers needs. A good researcher can discern facts from fake. As I state elsewhere Romuvan paganism is the closest I can find for my own needs, but the Native Americans are my sentimental favorites. Among them I find the Hopis are most similar to the Romuvans who retained their cultural touhstones for many years. A Great Mother Goddess created the Hopi world and like The Romuvan Zemyna, the world is our mother. A child that is born will become part of the womans clan though naming is done by fathers clan. On the 20th day the child is taken to an eastward facing cliff and held out to be embraced by the rising sun. Did I hear someone say Lion King?
Thanks for all those pagan fairy tales Walt. I know, he forgot about the good witches and demonized the bad ones. Most witches are good so I think Disney needs to straighten it up with a movie about a good witch. Sabrina and Samantha didn’t quite capture the authentico of witchcraft. Magic is real, supernatural powers such as turning people into monkeys is show biz.
If you are open to it , Native American culture is all around when you live in Arizona. Papagos or O’odham were only 15 miles away when I lived on the west side of Tucson. Mother earth and the corn mother loom large with all indigenous people. I like to point out, the west side of the city has Cat Mountain and Kitt Peak the famous observatory, is not too far away. The Hopis live in cliff dwellings in northern Arizona, as many people know, and despite the harsh conditions they can sustain themselves with crops. The lost white brother is certainly a curiosity and since white dominated technocracy could easily fail if their computer system were put out with an EMG burst from China or a mad scientist or something, , it could all land in the laps of the Hopis to spiritually lead the remnants.
Hopis have been on their land for over 11.000 years and I see a link between them and the Black Sea people who settled the land between the Black and Baltic Seas on Eurasian continent seven to 10,000 years ago, even 14,000 years ago according to my Pagan Fairy Tales in ‘The Song oF Ooglok’. Hopis believe in the 4 peoples who drifted from their lands and there could be some sort of unification that the Goddess has in mind with their ancient prophecy of the lost white brother. The Spanish vanquished many of the Pueblo people but were unable to conquer or convert the Hopis.
Corn is very important to the Native Americans, for instance a shaman gives an ear of corn to the young child that the growing child uses in various initiation ceremonies the next 20 years. I know an ear of corn can last 20 years because I want to tell you my own experience with corn. 1978 to 1983 I gardened in Arizona and found it true that the soil is fertile even if some years as little as 8 inches of rain can fall, this is why hoses were invented. I was an uncompromising organic gardener there and used a technique called sheet composting to enrich the soil, and grew some decent vegatables; carrots peppers and peas doing especially well for me.
I may seem not so serious about some pagan ways but growing corn was very special to me and I was respectful to the ways of the First People. In ’84 I moved back to New England and worked extremely hard to re-establish myself in another region. In ’85 I got the notion to grow Indian sweet corn because I was disturbed by the hybrid corn that was exterminating the thousands of locally acclimated varieties in the Americas. I discovered teosinte which is the rumored wild relative of corn.
Teosinte was grown in the corners of corn fields, primarily by natives in Mexico. It was believed to strengthen the corn. It’s a 120 day crop I plant in April to Harvest in October here in Florida. In Connecticut it matured in less time.
I ordered open pollinated sweet corn and planted it in the rich 16 inch topsoil of the Connecticut River valley. Aztec Black among many other varieties including one or two Hopi varieties. Unlike most, I wasn’t going for some sort of purity but wanted to cross pollinate all the varieties to create the New England Rainbow. Blue corn (black aztec) was a dominating color and people would look at them and go, Blue Corn?, who would eat blue corn? Well, a couple of years later a blue corn chip came out that caught peoples attention and survives to this day. I have a vivid memory of me and Ivy shopping at Edwards in in 89 and being hilariously surprised.
After three years I was astonished at what I was producing. Some ears were getting smaller and smaller. I don’t know what scientists call it, but I called it back breeding. There seemed to be majick in the pollen. My goal was to breed a variety I was going to call New England Rainbow, so I ordered different colored Indian sweet corn seeds and wrote to some of these seedsmen and women during my third year and got back some hand written replies. One dude named White Eagle (he later invent the glass gem corn variety, sent me 5 different varieties to mix in with my open pollinated sweet corn and wished me luck. Carl Barnes ah the memory still works. It’s a name of high honor but the return address of the seeds was Nebraska, a company called ‘Corns’. I believe his seeds helped accelerate what I was doing. He gave me one pack of flint corn seeds and that didn’t make sense but I’ll bet he knew about breeding and there was something I needed to learn here. The genetic variety exploded that third year.
Hopi Elder
(79)I woke this morning and knew the spirit was inspiring me to write to you. Though I didn't want to think about it, because it takes time to do these things and I have much to do this time of year. I tried to ignore the feeling that filled my heart and went about my day. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to write to you anyway. Then in the afternoon, I was working at my son's house. I was helping him till his soil for his garden. The tiller hit a big rock, and I reached down to move it. When I put my hands into the soil I realized what the Great Spirit wanted me to tell those of you who will listen to the words of this old man. So once again I am here to share with you my knowledge.
I felt my wife's spirit in the rock I grabbed from the ground in my son's yard today. More than 20 years ago this year, my wife left the mortal life and became one with the ancestors. A day does not go by that I do not think of her, but every spring when I work the land with my son and grandsons, I think of her more. More than think of her, I know I am touching her because our world is made from the bones of our ancestors.
Some people believe in heaven, angels and things like that. Hopi do not in the same way. We believe that the Great Spirit is all around us, so we don't have to go to heaven to meet him. We believe that our ancestors live with us, guide us and share with us, so we don't have to call on angels to help us. Maybe those who believe in angels are right for themselves, but not for Hopi. The Hopi have a different view of their relationship to the Earth. Because when we look at a tree, a plant or a flower we see our loved ones who have gone. We see our mothers, fathers, grandparents. We see our wives, husbands and children. We see our past alive again.
When the Hopi die, they are buried in the ground in a simple way. Soon, with the help of the animals and bugs, they are returned to the ground and become one with the Mother Earth. They return to the Earth that they are made from. Their spirit --soul maybe -- goes on in some way to become one with the Ancestors. But also their spirit and their body becomes one with the Earth. Then, when they are one with the Earth, it is their being we are planting our food in. It is their body we are walking on. They fall as rain on our heads and make our corn grow. It is their body that is in the corn we eat. They hold the key to our continued life. They become a working part of the cycle of life on the Earth in a way they could not be as people. And when we each pass away from this life, we too, in our own ways, will return to the Earth. It doesn't matter if you are not Hopi. It doesn't matter if you are buried or burned or even lost at sea. Your body will return to the Mother that gave it life and you will become part of the chain that brings life to the world.
It is this chain of life that is very real to the Red Man. It is this chain of life that challenges us to remember that in every blade of grass and every ear of corn our Ancestors, and (thus) our own existence lies. Everything on the Earth is sacred. How could you not hold it that way? When you destroy any part of the Earth, you are destroying your past. When you care for the Earth, you are caring for yourself. Our Ancestors surround us every moment of every day. They are not just ghosts or memories. They are the water we drink, the ground we step on. They are the world around us. Our past is all around us. Our future too. For it is the dust that is between your toes that may someday be the things your children and grandchildren are made of. Nothing ever goes away. It is here with us.” ----- Ed White Eagle
I was a Reagan era pagan(but never called myself that), and I did actually pray to what I imagined was the Corn Mother. I used a traditional planting stick to poke holes in the ground after praying and every year became more astonished at what happened. Ears were growing on the top of the plant and at the base. Strange configurations in the rows of kernels that I read were what the primitive corn “carbon dated” to three thousand years ago looked like. Double cobs and most assuredly cobs with both teosinte and corn on the same cob, the same row even. Even more primitive ears emerged that there were not even pictures for, but reconstructive drawings of what the early corn ancestors looked like. I really wish I could get someone who knows corn history to come and look at them. And yes, bring them to the lab to identify the genomic structure. I never quite came up with primitive varieties in my attempts in Florida. Happy ending here. I still have them, the genetic sports of the New England Rainbow Sweet Corn and they are nearly 20 years old, so I can prove I am not lying or kidding.
Back to Connecticut I was more interested in growing the corn as a genetics experiment, eating the ones that came out a decent size and good flavor was gravy. I have an ear that has teosinte like kernels and kernels that look like small kernels of sweet corn. As much as I’d like to believe the corn myths about the corn mother giving corn to people, I believe I back breeded right to the beginning. Corn must have started out as a genetic variation of teosinte, I have cobs with teosinte and blue corn in them; perhaps even triggered by the goddesses intelligent design, the Corn Mother, maybe Freya in disguise, providing the trigger to the change, evolution has to happen on its own. Not, Poof! you are now corn. In a catalog I found a real curiosity, it was a nearly extinct variety of PERENNIAL teosinte. Even though in the 90’s I was drifting back to atheism I prayed really hard to pollinate a perennial sweet corn. Imagine the implication of perennial corn!
As much promise as this breeding showed: my genetic bank is now threadbare and may no longer be viable. I kept ears for breeding in the nineties but have only been able to grow in 98-99 and 02-03. August ’07 and my teosinte comes up every year without planting from previous years seeds and will tassel as usual in October. With everything else I need to do, I’m determined to grow open pollinated sweet corn again.
Genetics is an insidious intrusion into natural evolution. I suspect something is going on behind the scenes and I’d like to speculate about it. After the mid nineties, the perennial teosinte seemed unavailable. I think some corporation has bought all current stocks and are attempting to take a short cut to what I wanted to do naturally. They may be attempting to splice the perennial gene to their hybrid corn. Imagine the money that could be made if you could plant corn one year and have it come up a second year, or even a third. This seed would be expensive I’m here to tell you and the inventing company would slaughter competing companies with this product and could corner the market for ethanol.
The way I wanted to do it would be not to make a sterile hybrid but a perennial rainbow open pollinated sweet corn I’d sell only to the poor farmers in the world. All they’d have to do was put manure between the rows. Then save the seed for the next year to expand their field and share with farmers in other climates and locales and elevations, although Mexico would be the most logical place because this is where the nearly extinct perennial seed was discovered and I presume there would be a minimum soil temperature that would need to be maintained along with otherc compatibility factors. Here’s an odd story from five years back. I went looking for the perennial teosinte again and my search yielded a result. My finger paused briefly, I held my breath, was I going to be able to begin the experiment again? I don’t care what it costs. I pressed to find out more and suddenly my computer had a spaz. Can’t go on line, reboot, fegeddabout it. The Bell South Help Center came on board to repair the problem, something strange here, search for perennial teosinte and get a virus.
People enthusiastically scarf down corn every year and I don’t really have a fundamental problem with this. What happened in the last 50 years, however, is that your average farmer was no longer able to save the seed for the next year because of the nature of these F1 hybrids. Farms became mechanized and ecosystems were torn apart for agricultural production. Small farms went deeper into debt, it was overplanted creating gluts and farms became corn factories. Pollution is created by the mechanized farm equipment, water tables dropped because the mega farms needed irrigation water, corn was shipped much furthur creating more pollution and trucks wear out roads (and especially bridges) increasing highway budgets and on and on. American topsoil has been reduced by 50% the last 100 years a good deal of that by corn. What will they be expected to farm on seven generations from now? The true price of 4 ears for a dollar is not really calculated as resources are depleted, critical resources such as topsoil. What is the diference between the earth and the moon? The simple answer is topsoil. When topsoil is depleted the land turns to desert.
Could the Indians, pagans all, have had such a bad life? Hopis have a strong sense of monogamy so STD’s weren’t common, and so I imagine what my life would be like if I was born an Inca or a Hopi. Get up early in the morning, mutual pleasure assured, go running and breath in air not polluted by automobiles and listen to the birds and animals and not loudmouths on their cellphones. Stop at some eastward facing cliff to stretch and greet the sun. Run back to the corn field to chase away birds or raccons, check for earworm infestation and squeeze them out (or eat them?). Get the bison shoulder bone tool to scrape out the weeds, greet your friends out in the field, because many were involved with growing the food they all shared.
Harvesting of fresh corn was done, the Indian Sweet Corn has only three days when it’s sweet. Take your sack and bring food to your neighbors. Go back home and appreciate and love your partner and help her with things, take a nap, look for people to play games and have fun or help people repair or upgrade living areas. Prepare the supper, maybe talk to the medicine man, wait for the evening star to come out or help other tribe members out with problems.
What are we about in our modern ways? Get stressed trying to go out early to work, feeding children with no relaxing time together as the children spend 7 hours a day learning virtually nothing while our polluting car may have a dead battery and so we are late for a meeting where cut throat competition is the order of the day. Is a community so bad then that is based on togetherness and growing corn? This is not socialism my friends, but a fundamental form of sustainable capitalism.
The Mayas and Aztecs devised calendars more accurate than any other known at that time, people know this if they watch the History channel but do the shows state the reason for these calendars? It was to know the correct time to plant the corn. Corn could be stored for the cold weather, corn meal and homemade food such as tortillas can be made at any time. Tribes concerned with famine would plant enough so two years worth of food could be saved.
People are taking a closer look at the Mayans lately and how many things are lining up for a shock to the earth. Solar flares will be doing their cyclical extreme and numerous other potential disasters seem to be all in the same 2012 basket. The best book on what could happen in 2012 is Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence E. Joseph and he was guided by two Mayans who are modern day shamans. Here is one statement he makes, (50) “…the whole Bible-Quran crowd would feel aced out of the most important prophecy in the history of humanity by a bunch of pagans from the boonies of Central America.” Joseph goes on to explain how the three patriarchal religions are trying to make Armageddon happen, trying to force circumstances to fit Bible Prophecy. The Temple of the Mount could become quite a contentious issue and the Christian Theme Park in the nearby area where the Great Battle of Good and Evil will happen seems kind of odd to me. The theme park should be opened just before 2012. Alas, worst apocalypse ever.
Mayans have no love of what archeologists do on their land and here a scientist gives his view. ”…in one such case I was told about the ruins that we have never discovered. Apparently the Maya are to this day still keeping secrets from the general public about their great history in Central America. I was informed that some ruins were buried by people to preserve their temples till the Gods come back from the Stars. A Mayan informed me that the real temple where the Great Lightning Bolt will hit on December 12-21-, has not been discovered. And most Maya do not know the location.” Or maybe ... the actual date is 12-21-21
A story to end Corn “Yawpa the Mockingbird said, “There is still something to be done-the selection of the Corn.” The people gathered around as the Mockingbird laid many ears of corn on the ground; One ear was yellow, one was white, one was red, one was grey, some were speckled, one was a stubby ear with blue kernels, and one was not quite corn but merely Kwakwi grass with seeds at the top. The Mockingbirtd said “each of these ears brings with it a way of life. The one who chooses the yellow ear will have a life full of enjoyment and prosperity but his span of life will be small. The short ear with the blue kernels will bring a life full of work and hardship but the years will be many. (Meaning the longetivity of the entire tribe). The Mocking bird explained the life that went with each color they chose. The Navaho quickly chose the yellow ear, a short life of enjoyment. The Sioux took the white corn, The Supais chose the ear speckled with yellow, the Comanches took the red, Utes took the flint.
At last two ears remained , the leader of the Apaches chose the longest. It was the Kwakwi grass. Only the Hopis had not chosen. The ear that was left was the stubby blue ear. The leader of the Hopis picked it up and said, “We were slow in choosing. Therefore we must take the shortest ear of all. We shall have a life of hardship but it will be a long lasting life. Other tribes may perish, but we, The Hopis will survive all adversities. Thus the Hopis became the people of the short corn.”
1-2-7
BOOK 3 iNDEX bIBLIOGRAPHY
DRUDDOCCITAN
A LITTLE LONG IN THE TOOTH (TRAD.) Old horses show more teeth
EARTH MOVEMENT start with the earth and everything else will fall into place.
THE WAY OF THE BIRDS when you travel to the next adventure. When your flesh prison fails
4-1 TRIP TO OREGON
After 50 years of "nose to the grindstone,"
