Category Archives: History

December 2, 2011 – Good Prospect for Nothing Happening

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | 1 comment

Looks as though everything’s going to be okay.  Human beings have been doing a pretty good job of wrapping things up, getting things that needed doing out of the way so’s it’s going to be a quiet one.

Here and there all over the planet the people assigned to keep Old Sol happy, praying Him up mornings and praying him down evenings seem to have gotten the situation well in hand for now.  Not much danger of anything falling on our heads out of the sky or jumping up out of the earth to surprise anyone.

The Emergency Box that’s caused so much trouble in the past is now securely locked away from the kinds of people who’ve been sneaking around doing monkey-tricks with it.  In the US the government’s been cooperating in a world-wide effort to quiet things down. 

One of the things they decided to do that might help is shut gradually down the US Post Office, which ought to give a strong shove in the right direction away from anything more happening.  And not a moment too soon, either.

Those people have been creating headaches for the citizenry all the way back to Ben Franklin.  If it wasn’t electric bills it was jury-duty summons postcards, registered-return-receipt letters from people trying to make things happen and shiny envelopes telling us we won a sweepstake.  Or delivering some magazine about golf, or pictures of houses and kitchens and clothes.  No end to it.

Generally speaking the newspapers all over the place telling people what happened somewhere are getting their comeuppance, too.  All those little daily and weekly papers struggling to tell people who died and what the local rich people are doing with their private lives are sinking into the woodwork.  Good riddance, says I. 

Especially the part about jury-duty summons post cards and electric bills.

That Emergency Box might find itself completely detached and rusting away if we can keep at it.  Without juries they’ll be able to just lock people up who need it without all the fanfare.

Everything’s going to be okay today provided nobody went to sleep at the wheel while praying up Old Sol.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Country Life, History

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Half-Century of Male Evolution – Bullying Part 3

Posted on November 14, 2011 by | 22 comments

I’m going to get away from the brave new world of the 21st Century and the animal kingdom for this segment and go back a few million years to my childhood.  I explained a little about that farm on the other side of the railroad tracks here:  Could you choose to live on the street?, but to pursue the bullying issue I’ll elaborate a bit.

The kids who lived on the other side of those tracks were overwhelmingly tough, poor, and ‘bad’.  The families were farm laborers or otherwise unskilled, lots of kids, and Hispanic or considered ‘white trash’.  The kids living there went to Lindsey Grammar School, and the RR tracks defined the boundary between Lindsey and the other two grammar schools.

In 1949, when I was starting school my mother went to war with the superintendent of schools and the school board to make certain I went to East Ward, not Lindsey.  She succeeded.

Meanwhile, on this side of the tracks and the highway there were a few neighborhoods of kids who belonged in Lindsey, but were doomed by geography to go to school with the regular population at East Ward.  One of those was a boy named Floren Villianueva and his siblings.  A tough, bad, mean as hell youngster with older brothers meaner than him.  He and I entered the first grade in the same class.

Floren and I somehow got crosswise with one another almost the first day of classes during recess.  He gave me a blow to the stomach that knocked the wind out of me, doubled me over and might well have been responsible for the hernia of the goozle that’s caused me trouble to this day.

After school each afternoon Floren and his brothers walked home the same route I did, and for a few days they went the extra distance to chase me home, throwing rocks at me when they couldn’t catch me, beating hell out of me when they could.  Me finding safety only when I went through the door to the house.

That naturally came to the attention of my mom after a few days.  One afternoon she was standing on the porch shaking a rug and saw me running across the tracks chased by Floren and his brothers.  They came right into the yard, and she grabbed a broom and chased them off, yelling insults.

When they were gone she turned on me in a fit of rage, grabbed me by the ear and dragged me into the house where she kept her switch.  While she was beating hell out of me she was yelling, “If I ever see or hear of you running from a fight again this is nothing compared to what you’ll get.”

When my step-dad got home she told him about it and he just shook his head.  “Running from a bunch of God-damned Mexicans!” 

I went about in disgrace a few days, the story circulating among the adults with me in hearing distance, all of them dumbfounded by my cowardice.

But I never ran from a fight again.  I started carrying a heavy stick with me walking home and only had to whack one of those other kids upside the head with it one time.  Afterward Floren and I fought a lot of times during recess and I never whipped him, but I took the beatings rather than the alternatives.

This is too lengthy for me to continue where I’m going with it, but it’s necessary background to get in place before going forward in this segment.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, History, NM, Portales, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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Discarded Jewelry

Posted on October 26, 2011 by | 12 comments

Ruidoso Steak-House
Glanced at her reflection
In the plate-glass window
New squash-blossom turquoise
Sassy Stetson
Patted 50ish blonde curls
And wished
They’d eaten at the casino
Where this didn’t happen
Wrinkled pretty nose
“Don’t give him anything
He’ll just get drunk!” Stage whispered
To her Houston lady friend
As though he wasn’t there
She was right of course
Except the old man Mescalero
Was already drunk
He turned away
Then turned back and mumbled
“Sing the Song of Life each day
Or when the time arrives you won’t know how
To sing the Song of Death.”

Old Jules

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, NM, Relationships, Senior Citizens

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My Genes Apologize to Your Genes

Posted on October 24, 2011 by | 21 comments

It’s become popular during the past few decades for individuals believing they have come connection to a group of dead men judged by hindsight to have harmed other groups of dead men, to apologize for the offending activities of the deceased they believe they’re responsible for to living people it didn’t happen to.

My granddad had a cap and ball pistol he inherited from his granddad.  The butt had a lot of notches carved into it, which probably meant the weapon had been the instrument of the untimely deaths of a good many people who might otherwise have lived longer.

Genetic karma?

The man pictured above owned slaves in his lifetime, fought in wars and feuds.  He was the great-grandfather of the man below, my biological father.

But his daughter was the mother of this man:  Cole Younger.  Killer, bank and train robber, rider with Quantrill during the Civil War.

Meanwhile the same genetic pool was spreading itself across the continent like some sexually transmitted disease.   Cherokee, Choctaw and other tribes sneaked into the mix.

So here’s the problem: 

I want to make all this right with all the people in the gene pool derived from the dead people who were wronged by the dead people within my own gene pool.  I’d like to offer them an apology for the ugly stuff those who share my gene pool did to them.

For instance, the guy with all the hair on his face was part of the ugliness perpetrated against the Cherokee and Choctaw and the Trail of Tears.  Naturally, if I’m to rid myself of the overwhelming guilt I need to apologize to some group of living people those painful things did not happen to.  Cherokee and Choctaw, preferably.

But, whoooowah!  The people on the Cherokee and Choctaw side of my gene pool are me.  How can I convey my regrets to the Cherokee and Choctaw in me from the guilt-laden Anglo side?  And can I assume without fear of error that my Cherokee and Choctaw genes don’t include someone who did something to some other group I need to absolve?

Is there some living group of people out there seething over something that didn’t happen to them, but happened to their ancestors as a result of some offense committed by holders of the Cherokee Choctaw genes?

And what’s all that turmoil and guilt churning around in my gene pool doing to my cells and whatnot?

Just to be on the safe side and try to set things right I think I’d best give myself a present as a gesture to calm things down.  Yeah, I think I’ll eat an orange or banana.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, Uncategorized

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Mobs, Violent Protests, and Riots

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | 8 comments

I find my views about rioting to be possibly artificially drawn away from magnetic north by several personal experiences with them, as well as having been an adult during the giant city burning episodes around the time of the MLK killing. 

From personal observation and experience I feel a high level of certainty that every riot since the 1960s was and is heavily infiltrated by police or other government provocateurs, pushing, inflaming and instigating to direct events toward violence.  I’m not suggesting the riots wouldn’t have happened without them.  The riots would almost certainly have happened anyway.   I honestly don’t have a clue why they’re doing it.

But my first experience with it was Halloween, 1960, in Borger, Texas. During the days before Halloween the kids in high school were all gearing up for it, but I was a newbie in town, had no reason to anticipate what they saw as the normal way to celebrate Halloween. Wild and wooly oil-field worker traditions combined with a boys-will-be-boys tolerance on the part of adults left the options wide open.

The newspaper the next day described it as a quieter than usual Halloween with the main damage being someone starting a bulldozer at a construction site and driving it through a house, nobody hurt.

A few hundred teenagers drunk on main street armed with eggs, veggies, rocks, jars of gasoline, cornering police paddy wagon with barrage after barrage, following them back to the station house and setting fire to the lawn was just a beginning.  I never saw anything like it, even during the riots at the University of Texas I was a part of a decade later.

My point is, rioting is fun, it’s joyful, it’s seductive if the anonymity of a mob can be maintained and when there are no consequences. It doesn’t take much to get people rioting under those circumstances.

On the other hand, the day after Kent State and afterward throughout the remainder of the Vietnam War the temptation to riot was always there so long as it was someone else stepping off the curb into the street. The police and a lot of the rest of the country made it plain by word and attitude they felt tolerance for what happened at Kent State and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

I recall what a letdown it was when I realized I wasn’t the gutsy hotshot I had people thinking I was, that I was just a loudmouth coward when it came to offering myself up for what I claimed I believed in by making myself a target for all those cops to practice on.

I don’t think things are much different now. My near-certainty about riots in the US is that the government response will determine whether there are riots, or won’t be.  I don’t give advice, but if I did I’d suggest anyone involved in a peaceful demonstration immediately remove himself/herself from the area as rapidly as possible at the first sign of violence.

I’d suggest carefully exploring the route and area of the demonstration on maps and on the ground beforehand.  Pre-arranged escape routes memorized to allow getting the hell out of dodge.  Cell phones set with standby text messages to friends and cohorts to get the message out immediately that things are going sour.  But I won’t suggest it.

But I don’t have a lot of reason to think having a riot going on and being in the center of it is a place I’d want to spend a lot of time.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 1960's, 1970's, 2011, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Survival, Uncategorized

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Occupy Utopia

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 43 comments

Chaos just isn't all that rare

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about the ‘Occupy [fill in blank] phenomenon.  The hints of panic from the powerful, the ambiguous hopes of the demonstrators, the near-certainty what’s happening is both the beginnings of a time of public expression about dissatisfaction, and a manifestion of unsatisfied expectations.

Seeing all that brings insistently to mind how intrusive the illusions of a utopian ideal penetrate and embed themselves in the tiny fragment of humanity where chaos took a break long enough for non-chaos to become the expectation.  Mainly in Europe, Japan, the US, Australia and Canada post-WWII.

For the remainder of the world chaos never went to sleep and never expected it to slumber.  Africa, the Middle East, much of South America, Cambodia, Vietnam, the former USSR and other Eastern Block countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all experienced so much chaos within living memory there’s probably no danger of them occupying Wall Street.

It might be worth noting it’s an illusion being protested.  Copshops and politicians have never ceased being corrupt in the US, Europe, Japan, anywhere.  The super-wealthy were never not-greedy, never unwilling to sell their countries and their souls to become wealthier.  Religious zealots have never ceased being willing to slaughter disbelievers, rob them, enslave them, though they’ve briefly been restrained somewhat inside defined boundaries since WWII. 

The protests are against the entire history of human behavior.

It might also be worth shaking the head in horror and awe that this comes as a surprise to anyone.  Where have these people been for the past half-century while populations were slaughtering themselves and one another all over the planet except where  they lived?  How could they have come to live inside some bubble of belief that the venal aren’t venal, the greedy aren’t greedy and the corrupt aren’t corrupt?

The bubble is probably an artifact of improved communications, television, public education turning a blind eye to anything outside the sphere being brainwashed into the malleable brain tissue of those vulnerable to it.

Suddenly the bubble bursts.  Chaos yawns, stretches and begins to reawaken.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Relationships, Solitude, Survival

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Fifteen Flags – Ric Hardman

Posted on October 7, 2011 by | 2 comments

A Chief-Executive War Half-Century Before Vietnam

[They didn’t come back even when it was over, over there]

Sometimes we get lucky and a fiction work sets us off on a journey of discovery.  For me, this was such a work.  Fifteen Flags was a launchpad.

One of the defining events of the 20th Century was the Russian Revolution.  The International response, both in diplomacy and military intervention set the tone for the next seven decades of Soviet interactions with Europe and the US, and to a lesser degree, Japan.

I’d done a lot of reading years ago about the US troop involvement at the time of the Russo-Japanese War and  had a vague background of reading about the International forces guarding the railroads while the White Russians fought the Trotsky forces.  I even knew US forces were involved.

But what Ric Hardman managed to do with this tome was to broaden the scope of what happened there in my own perception enough to cause me to want to know more.  Hardman’s characters, whether they’re US troops, Japanese cooperating in the International venture to guard the railways, Chinese, Czech, or German POWs trying to survive being prisoners awaiting release in a time of military chaos and famine:  “Life is cheap.”

If I had to make a one sentence summary of this book, this set of events, this episode in world history I suppose no better words exist.

WWI — Russia

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/events/w/ww1/russia.htm

Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

Polar Bear Expedition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Bear_Expedition

American Expeditionary Force Siberia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force_Siberia

——————————————–

Book Reviews:
Do you enjoy reading reviews of books as a part of planning what you’d like to read?  Jeanne, the lady who administers this blog, is a library employee  in KS, and tells me about books, sometimes calls me when she’s picking through boxes of books in an auction parking lot waiting to be hauled to the dump after an auction, to find out if I’d like to own them.

But Jeanne also put me on to this newsletter library people evidently read:

Shelf Awareness
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html

Full of reviews of books soon to be published.

———————————————-

How to sell your war to the cannon fodder:

Cagney/Cohan, “Over There”, from Yankee Doodle Dandy [WWI] (1942)
http://youtu.be/d-z98aBCe8E

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Posted in Book Reviews, Books, History, Reading

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This Anonymous Manifesto

Posted on October 4, 2011 by | 21 comments

I’d wondered when something of this sort would happen without actually believing it ever would.

Someone keeping better track of current events than I do will probably see this as a yawn. . old news.  But when someone sent me an email after talking to me on the phone about it yesterday you could have knocked me over with a feather.  After pondering it a while this entire grassroots Occupy [fill in the blank] thing strikes me as rhyming a lot with what happened during the early 1990s when the Eastern Block, the USSR, and Iran all fell to pieces in less time than it takes to tell it.

Rich, a close friend, sent me a link to a site, We Are the 99 Percent, which if there’s any substance to it, might be the beginnings of something unpredictable enough to keep it interesting for a while.  I suppose I didn’t think there was enough of that left in the world to even consider.  My initial reaction was a bit of a ho-hum.  These seem to be peaceful folk demonstrating peacefully, which, while gratifying to see going on isn’t likely to undo anything. 

But then, in walks someone, or some group called ‘Anonymous’ and joins hands with the Occupy folk. 

PC Magazine Article

Here’s the transcript of the latest Occupy Wall Street video from Anonymous:

Greetings, institutions of the media.

We are Anonymous.

The events transpiring within Wall Street have caught our eye.

It seems that the government and federal agencies enjoy enforcing the law a little bit too much. They instate unjust laws as mindless automatons, blindly following orders with soulless precision.

We witness the government enforcing the laws that punish the 99 percent while allowing the 1 percent to escape justice, unharmed, for their crimes against the people.

We have observed this same government failing to enforce even the minimal legal restraints of Wall Street’s abuses. This government who has willingly ignored the greed at Wall Street has even bailed out the perpetrators that have caused our crisis.

We will not stand by and watch the system take over our way of life.

We the people shall stand against the government’s inaction.

We the people will not be witnesses to your corruption and ill-gotten profits.

We will not labor for your leisure.

We will not assist you in any way.

This is why we choose to declare our war against the New York Stock Exchange. We can no longer stay silent as the population is being exploited and forced to make sacrifices in the name of profit.

We will show the world that we are true to our word. On Oct. 10, NYSE shall be erased from the Internet. On Oct. 10, expect a day that will never, ever be forgotten.

Vox Populi, Vox Anon.

The Voice of The People is The Voice of Anonymous.

We are Legion. We are the 99 percent.

We do not forgive. We do not forget.

Wall Street: Expect us.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394071,00.asp#fbid=_qbOvyUs5hm

That seems to shine an entirely different light on things.  I don’t know whether anyone’s actually able to jiggle remote computers in a way that allows them to shut down something like Wall Street Stock Exchange, especially after giving warning ahead of time they plan to do it.  But I think making the threat is bound to have every capability in the kingdom concentrated on keeping them from doing it, first, and hauling their butts off to the slammer as soon as they can slap a pair of handcuffs on them.

Gutsy stuff, or a level of confidence surprising from the perspective of a person who figures the powers-that-be can do anything they want to do with impunity.  If they manage to do it the resulting power-shift leverage would inevitably seem to make a sharp turn in favor of the people calling themselves the 99 percent.  But do or don’t, it pulls things out of the realm of peaceful demonstration and gives the powers the excuse they might have been wishing for to drag out the machine guns against the 99 percenters.

The people posting on the 99 percent site appear to be just regular people with a lot of justified bitterness about how things are going and a determination for legitimate change.  But thinking back on the history of revolutions, the signs and banners walking out in front of the parade have always been followed back in the baggage train with enough guillotines to separate a lot of fact from fiction after the dark underbelly of human nature is exposed.

What comes out the other end tends to look a lot different than anyone thought it would going in.  If this isn’t just a flash in the pan it sounds as though the people in the collateral damages zones might be in for some interesting times.  But, hell.  I guess we’re all in the collateral damages zones.

Revolution – The Beatles

 http://youtu.be/KrkwgTBrW78

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Posted in 1990's, 2011, Adventure, America, Communication, Education, Emergency Preparedness, History, Music, Politics, Survival, Uncategorized

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Eavesdropping on Homeland Security

Posted on September 28, 2011 by | 14 comments

One of the ways I keep up on world events and amuse myself when I’m alone in an eating establishment without a book involves eavesdropping.  I gaze at the food, a picture on the wall, something outdoors through the plate glass, and I listen to conversations at the nearby tables.

It’s curiosity, as much as anything else.  And mostly I lose interest quickly because so often the talk is about some sports event, concert, or a television show.  But sometimes it’s pay dirt.

A while before I left New Mexico I was doing the listening routine to the goings-on among several BDU and otherwise uniform clad people of both sexes, all toting large-bore automatic pistols in holsters hanging from their waists.

Turned out these folks were part of a conference between Federal and State Homeland Security forces (whatever that might be).  I’d never seen that particular uniform combination, nor the patches and medallions, so I listened as closely as I dared without drawing attention to myself.

The eating establishment is on San Felipe Tribal Lands.  Maybe that’s why the conversation drifted in that direction.

Fed:  “Do you have any issues dealing with any of the tribes?”

NM State:  “You wouldn’t believe it.  Everything’s an issue.”

And so on in detail involving a lot of ‘issues’ a person born in 1943 (me), would never have believed could ever be discussed by government employees as though they should be part of any reality here.  The attitude was clearly that the tribes were being irresponsible in reluctance and obstruction of the aims of Homeland Security.

The topic broadened in a while.

NM State:  “I think a lot of people just don’t understand what we’re doing.  They don’t realize how dangerous things are for them.”

Fed:  “That’s a problem all over the country.  I was in Phoenix a few weeks ago .  . ., etc”

That NM Homeland Security lady all dressed up with a gun and nowhere to go was wrong.

I believe most people understand perfectly well what they’re doing and have an inkling of why they’re doing it.  It isn’t a lack of understanding that makes me smile and cheer inside, knowing the tribes, at least, are dragging their feet.

I think people are beginning to ‘realize how dangerous things are for them’, to the extent that dangers actually exist in this hostile reality we’ve chosen for ourselves.   But at least a part of the ‘danger’  people feel involves a new kind of policeman who thinks the US Constitution is obstructionist.

They just don’t know what needs to be done about it.

Tom Russell–Claude Dallas
http://youtu.be/MzYTh2xV5NU

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Posted in 2011, America, Country Life, Current Issues, Emergency Preparedness, History, Human Behavior, Native Americans, NM, Politics

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The Yin Yang Conspiracy

Posted on September 19, 2011 by | 7 comments

In 1970, the University of Texas was squared off against itself.  The frats, the student government, the sororities, the administration, the ROTC department, and the cops on the one side, and us on the other.

The Vets against the Vietnam War, the Wobblies (IWW), the Panthers, the Young Socialistist Alliance (Trotskyite), the RYM2 (Revolutionary Youth Movement faction of the Students for a Democratic Society), Weathermen (the other, more interesting side of the SDS), and hundreds of other splinter groups were taking a fair beating, though we had the numbers.

I was in the middle of all that, writing for the alternative newspaper, the RAG, and trying to get an education dovetailed with sex, drugs and Rock and Roll with helping organize an occasional riot, march or rally thrown in for good measure.

That’s when we invented the Yin Yang Conspiracy.  An ad hoc political party.  We ran a longhair named Jeff Jones for student body president, and we threw the bastards out, lock stock and fraternity pin.  Lordee we thought we’d done something fierce, beating the system that way.  Hot diggedy-damn.

Anyway, this blog entry is in memory of that microscopic triumph among people who had in common only that they opposed the War. 

The Yin Yang Conspiracy.  A tiny piece of winning the Vietnam War by bringing the troops home.  Winning the easy way.  Coming out in the open, looking those cops, those stay-at-home flag-waving patriots in the eye through their riot masks, and saying, “Enough is enough!”

We learned a lot.  Surveillance, provocateurs, intimidations probably weren’t so pervasive in those days.  No yes-man Congress had passed a Patriot Act, so we still had some rights and protections under the US Constitution.   It would be a tougher gig today.

But, if that was now we’d be doing it again.  We’d be working in both, subtle and overt ways to bring those boys home.

Trying to get them out of there before too many more get all shot up and crippled up and be completely forgotten by the patriots who are waving flags back home.

Old Jules

Country Joe McDonald – I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag http://youtu.be/3W7-ngmO_p8

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Posted in 1970's, Adventure, America, History, Human Behavior, Texas

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