Monthly Archives: January 2022

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Morning blogsters:

I see on Mountain’s feed the leviathan is moving in another out-of-sight place.

This time it’s the forced relocation of Din’e families from Black Mesa.

I don’t know the nuances and issues here.  The last I remember hearing about Black Mesa involved a squabble between the Hopi and Navajo over a piece of ground both were occupying.  Must have been a quarter-century ago.

I gather from Mountain’s blog a law was passed to resolve it all, and that the Din’e must have won and continued to occupy the land until now.  Maybe the Hopi were relocated.

Now, evidently, the issue’s a different one.  Peabody Coal wants to strip mine coal there, and there’s the threat of relocation for the ones left on the Mesa.

Seems to me there are several separate issues here.

As for the relocation:  the Din’e are a numerous folk.  The Rez is the largest in the US (I suspect).

If they believe this is wrong and want to stop it, they’re able to do it, and they know perfectly well how do do it.

Mountain’s blog’s asking for petitions to be signed.  Sometimes petitions and legal action still work, even against the leviathan.

The Zuni managed to stop a strip mine cold through a lot of stirring and insisting through the legal system.  (That mine notice at the top of this entry didn’t happen because of Zuni determination, fighting the leviathan alone, and winning.)

But at the end of the day, this one might well come down to Din’e determination in other ways, standing alone, or with whomever else believes enough, is concerned enough, to join in.

If it comes to Din’e warriors drawing a line in the sand and facing the dragon alone, to people dying, so be it.  Sometimes that’s just how it has to be.  Sometimes we just have to gore our own oxen, sometimes we have to die doing it because we know what we are doing is right.

It’s what makes us men.

We’ve never been afraid to die for something we believed in.  If something’s changed that, we deserve whatever we get.

But any day is a good day to die if it ain’t in some drunken car wreck, some drug deal gone sour, some slow death of diabetes or fast one of suicide.  Wiggling and twisting in the web and calling it struggle until the leviathan comes to suck out whatever’s left of life in us.

We can go along being bought and paid for an awfully long time.  We can sell our souls to the leviathon a piece at a time, as mostly we’ve all done.  Until the leviathan comes to just believe it’s the way of all things and demands a piece that ain’t for sale.

We can beg and shuffle, and when he says, “YOU MUST!”, lower our eyes and say, ‘Sold’.

Or we can look him in the eye and say, “Come on ahead and do your damnedest.”

The Din’e can win on this one if they believe and if they’re determined enough.  But sometimes we all get so accustomed to losing in this life we forget how to win.

We’ve got to sing the song of life each day so when the time arrives to sing the song of death we’ll recognize it and know how to sing it.

Jack

(I see I’ve only talked of a single issue here.  But there’s another I’ll discuss later.  The strip mining of my, and your deserts so folks in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Tucson, El Paso, can fire up their hair dryers and air condition their homes.  I’m going to say some things about that, but in another entry.)

The King Is Dead
Long Live The King

Behold, sweet sovereign of song,
creator, keeper, carrion king
of Rock and Roll,
how we miss you.

Old now, my liege, how we hum
how we whistle distant echoes
of your reign
and remember!

Not for you, sweet prince,
mediocre marble monuments,
bronze busts in barren halls.

How you were us!
How, in your dotage,
your swollen jowl,
your sallow cheeks,
your leaden eye
became our own.

Not for you, the canvas likeness hung on walls
with saints, small children, gods and golden men.
Not you!
For you, lord, the paper likeness,
the image on black velour;
in plaster lamps,
plastic icons,
and now this final homage
to your fiery youth.

With every moist touch of these lips, this tongue
we wash away the mucous of those later years
of yours and ours;
summon forth the young prince;
call back those vibrant times
of yesteryear
when the bud shot forth from the vine
and you emerged
and we emerged.

Every touch, sweet prince, to brush away
the bloated darkness of those later
aftertimes
and stay the past within this tiny,
glossy image forth.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright©2002, Jack Purcell

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

The tiny Alamo Band – the unforgiven:

Probably the most destitute Native Americans in the US .  Descendants of the Navajo and Mescalero scouts who helped the US Army during the Navajo War of 1864.

When the Din’e and Mescalero were taken to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico there was no obvious place for these scouts and their families.  Even the US Army was unwilling to send them to Bosque Redondo for slaughter in punishment for the assistance they’d given.

Alamo, a temporary, tiny, rocky Rez was created for them north of Magdalena, New Mexico until a better place could be found.  Later Alamo was placed under the umbrella of the larger Navajo Rez, which didn’t want them, didn’t welcome them for tribal rites and ceremonies.  Didn’t claim them as kin.

They’re still there, the Alamo band.  Inbred, poor disfranchised.  Bereft of any tribal benefits that can be deprived by the Navajo.  Unclaimed by the Mescalero.

The forgotten and unforgiven.

However, the Alamo Band is unique in one regard.  Even though they began as only temporary stewards of the land, they took care of it.  Today, the Rez hasn’t been made a parking lot, a strip mine, a garbage dump, nor a nuclear waste disposal site.  It hasn’t been over-grazed and eroded into a blanket of abraded arroyos.

Maybe it ain’t so bad, being forgotten and unforgiven, even though it’s hard living for them.

Jack

Old Jules, have you experienced any mind-boggling revelations yet?

This recent discovery by NASA that the tops of thunderstorms sometimes create/release beams of anti-matter [ http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/12/stor… ] might possibly finally explain something I’ve wondered about almost all my life: Outside the town I grew up near in the 1950s a man working in his cultivated field spontaneously combusted before witnesses also working in the field. Naturally not much time passed before it was declared not to have happened because it couldn’t happen. Same as a number of similar incidents over the decades. Once the traditional residue of it not being able to happen wears away maybe someone will figure out it can happen, whether that’s the explanation, or something else NASA hasn’t discovered yet.

Old Jules, has any government conspiracy ever been proved true?

A US president resigned because of the ‘minor’ Watergate conspiracy, and a lot of high-ranking officials went to prison. Andrew Jackson never denied his conspiracy and intent to take Texas into the US, despite treaty and personal assurances to Mexico it wouldn’t happen. It finally happened the last day of his administration. The result was the Mexican War and eventually the US owning the SW [now] states of the US. The Zimmerman Telegram, which was instrumental high profile in getting us into WWI was proven conclusively in the 1960s when the information was declassified that it was a piece of the conspiracy between Britain and the US government to draw us in. The government also conspired to misinform the public of the nature of the Lusitania, the fact it was an armed merchantman, as opposed to an unarmed passenger liner when it was attacked by the German Navy. Roosevelt and Churchill conspired to bring the US into the WWII by the ‘secret war’, which was secret to noone except the US public, and the intent of cutting off Japanese oil at Singapore in August 1943. Lyndon Johnson eventually admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a US government conspiracy and complete fabrication intended to insert more US troops into Vietnam and increase US involvement. JFK and Johnson conspired to assassinate President Diem of Vietnam, Johnson admitted to it Is this enough? There are plenty of others, but probably not enough to spoil your complacency.

Old Jules, would you rather date a rich girl (for her money) a smart girl (for her brilliance)?

Rich girls still exist in the 21st Century. If I was determined to date one of the two I’d be forced to choose the rich one by the process of elimination.

Old Jules, what three things would make your life better, or make you happier?

Attitude adjustment: 1] Lowering your common denominator for what you believe is the minimum required to allow you to be happy. Example: When this cold front hit a lot of things went awry. My refrigerator went out in a way that resulted in all the lights dimming when it came on. Might have caused the capacitor/starter for the well pump to go out, but I can’t tell yet because the pipes are frozen. So I’ve been several days without water and refrigeration. Hauled water down from the neighbor place for the cats and chickens, but lost all the stored up frozen stuff from my garden and everything in the fridge. Meanwhile, the cabin is staying around 40-50 degrees F. This would probably have made a lot of people unhappy, and I’ll confess frustration has almost intruded a time or two, but I’ve remained reasonably content. My expectations aren’t high anyway, and while all this is a setback, I still have a place to live, blankets, animals I love, a life I love. Now, however, ecstacy: The neighbor went to town today and I was able to go up and wash the clothes I’ve been wearing 18 layers of for a week, shower, and wash my dirty dishes. Absolute heaven. Then I lounged around their place in front of the fireplace, let my hair dry and the washer/dryer finish, took a nap on their couch. Revelled in being warm. Tonight I still feel the residue. Now, all that happiness wouldn’t be possible if I required a lot more to allow me to be content, or happy. You asked for three, and there are more, but I’ll save them for another time.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006, to introduce himself in a new blog:

Hello blogsters:

Just beginning this thing, so this qualifies as a test.  Only a test.

If this were actually an emergency alert you should turn your radio dial to 640, or 1240 to the National Emergency Broadcasting System and listen for further instructions.

But this is only a test.  (Which is a plus, since the National Emergency Broadcasting System and CONELRAD appears to have gone belly-up sometime during the past 40 years).

So this will have to do.

_______________________________________________

Okay.  That stuff posted.  The test?  If my memory serves me correctly I never scored higher than C- on any test.  I haven’t seen the scores on this one, but I’ll confess I didn’t study for it, so prospects don’t look good.

Fact is, I’ve been out of school several decades too long to care, much.

I’m more interested in psychic surgery, at the moment, than I am tests.  Psychic surgery, some specific aspects of southwestern US history, a wide range of metaphysical avenues including energy conversion, dowsing, Reiki, ‘thrust dowsing’, and nailing down a Unified Random Numbers Behavior Theory.

Fairly humdrum stuff, I think you’ll have to agree.

But this ain’t likely to bore you, because there’s about a zero-to-none chance anyone will ever read it anyway, what with tens of thousands of blogs starting every fraction of a second.  Thank goodness.

So there.

One more thing to add to my affirmations of gratitude.  I don’t have to search for those, but when one jumps out of the sky, as this one has, and lands spang on my dinner plate, trust me.  I’m going to jump on it like ugly on a monkey.

That about covers it for my self introduction to non-readers.

Jack