HARD TIMES

tree swimming


Today when Eric was here on his return voyage by speedy new Camaro, he said he'd read what I wrote a few days ago about him, in The Blind Swordsman. He said it took him back to then remembering how he'd always wanted me to appreciate him for who he was. It was several years he never gave me a chance. He brought up seeing my own evolution of, what I call becoming one with the mountain. This mountain is my home. We know each other well. I love it that Regular Baptists held revivals in the house when it was the school house. A lot of people were saved here. I brought Elder Millard Pruitt one day to see the interior with me living in it. It was a mistake. It was where he went to school. It was a sacred space for him. He went to revivals with his family in it. He didn't like it. I didn't foresee the depth of his connection to the place and what it did to his memories to see it occupied with furniture and a wall of books. If I'd had a choice after it was done, I'd have undone it. I didn't know then how painful it is to the people of these mountains to see the changes that have come to the mountains in their lifetimes.



Nobody is willing to give up the recliner and television, let alone bathrooms and water in the kitchen, radio and pickups, to get the old-time ways back. Like the Peter Tosh song says, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So they're gone. Like if it really is cell phone signals debilitating the honeybees unto mass die-out or extinction, good-bye honyebees. The ongoing assault of heedless civilization has brought us to the edge. Here we are, hovering on the edge, an intelligent black man as President the white men collectively hate in a time when we need to be solving problems that are out of control. The Bush Administration was the white man's last stand. The Supremes declaring corporations individuals was an attempt to get power back to the white man. Dirty tricks are not at an end. White men are masters at dirty tricks. We've gone through a major turning point where white man has lost automatic majority and will never have it again. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was indeed decisive in more ways than the wipe-out of Custer's army. It pissed the white men off. From then on, white men went after the Indians with a passion to annihilate them. There was no slowing them down after such terrible press.



I saw a video today of Helen Thomas making remarks about Israel that got her shut out of the national press like Jimmy the Greek was shut out for something he said unguarded. I felt like I understood what Helen was saying. The unfortunate part was it was too subtle for television news people to understand. She was simply talking straight. When she said the Israelis need to go back to Poland and Germany, it was so they could remember why they made Israel. She's too intelligent for television anyway. Best for her to go write her memoir and be on the Diane Rehm radio show. I read that some commentator said her apology wasn't enough. Like losing her career, her income stopped, her name dragged through the mud, an easy target for Limbaugh mind, her life turned into hell overnight for slighting Israel, America's only ally. She knows DC is hardball. She's seen many a misinterpreted slip of the tongue take somebody down. I don't see that she needs to apologize for anything. She's the only one to come out of this thing hurt. The people that didn't like what they heard were not hurt. It was no more than an opportunity for the smug to bark disapproval. But she knew the rules of the game. Those pesky hidden cameras again. Candid camera everywhere, even in my computer. I could post here a picture of myself taken by the computer, but I'm not going to. That's just too out there for somebody who won't give up reading to join the post-literate society.