The Northwest Files

Singing with the Choir

Recently my old pal Mike Kicenski commented that I was very lucky to fall in with the Central Oregon Mastersingers, a choral group that I joined in the fall of 2017. Yeah, I was and am, and I wrote and told him that. My note about this got a bit long – so much so, that I thought that with some tuning up, it might make a half-way decent blog post. So here it is.

When I auditioned nearly two years ago, I’d not sung for nearly 15 years. Musical skills – for me, at least – are slow to come and, left unused, fast to fade. When I auditioned, I was not sure that I’d make the cut. But I got lucky.

The director had lots of sopranos and altos, but was short of tenors and basses. Especially Base IIs. I’m more of a baritone/Bass I, or so I’ve been classified by everyone else for whom I’ve sung, but this guy has me as a Bass II – and it’s true: I can reach some of the low notes that some others in our section cannot, though my tone down there in the basement is less than wonderful.  So basically, I got in by dint of a shortage of male singers, not because of any great talent.

My first year, last season, I was hanging on by my fingernails, sometimes really struggling, often singing quietly in the hope that nobody would hear me. I was participating, but was I contributing? And this was with the Vivaldi Gloria in D, last year’s Christmas centerpiece, with which I was familiar.

But then came, early this year, upgraded hearing aids that allow me to hear the conductor’s instruction without also blowing out the voices of those singers standing around me.

And, more important, came eye surgery and a very different pair of spectacles. The result was like pulling aside an old pair of brown curtains. I had not realized how poor my vision was. I was really having trouble reading notes, as well as having trouble driving at night, and more. I thought it was just me getting old. Well, it was, partly, but since the surgery, my ability to sight-read has improved markedly because I now can see the details printed in the score. This gives me great joy.  

And there’s this: In past choirs, I’ve tried to make sure that I positioned myself next to someone who knew what he was doing so I could kind of hitch-hike on that singer’s voice and confidence. I still try to do that, but when it’s not possible, as in the mixed seating being used for this year’s Christmas concert, I find that I now am a little more confident in my abilities to go it alone, very carefully, even if the person next to me is singing a completely different part. I now can try to contribute.

So against all odds, I’ve found new life as a choral singer. I’m uncertain how long I can continue. First, my voice isn’t as strong as it was when I was younger. That happens, I guess.

Second, it takes a lot of time and work to do this at any decent level – and this choir, thanks to the expectations and exertions of our director, performs at a very high level indeed, a higher level, for sure, than the L.A. Concert Singers or Pasadena ProMusica, both of which I sang with during our years in Southern California. That’s because of this conductor. He is that good. Every now and then he reminds me a bit of my old friend and classmate the late Robert Herr, who as a conductor could be difficult and impatient, but who was really good at extracting beautiful music from a choir.

Here's another reason that time is a factor: During season, I absolutely have to be here at home for rehearsals, which are on Sunday night. Miss three concert rehearsals, you can’t participate in the concert. So when we go wandering to explore the majestic sights offered by Oregon, our new home state, we have to be sure we’re done with our wandering in time to be home for rehearsal.

Not only that, the complexity of the music we have been doing is such that not spending time here at home working on the material between rehearsals just is not an option. For instance, this year’s Christmas centerpiece, John Rutter’s Magnificat: I spend many hours each week working on this. I don’t want to be the guy who gets an important entrance wrong.

(Jeez, the time signatures: We’ve got 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/8, 5/8, 12/8, triplets and duplets and more, often stacked together in the same movements. Add to that lots of accidentals, which are random sharps and flats. Including, in at least one place, a double-flat.)

So these rehearsals are, for me, anyway, high-intensity, high-concentration workouts. They have to be. Otherwise, we’re just another choir.

What makes the considerable time and effort worthwhile, I think, is the incredible joy I feel being up on the stage where the music is being made, especially after a performance that you all, every one of you, just nail. There is nothing like it. In addition, sometimes you get these moments – the other night in rehearsal the women sang a passage that made me think I’d been transported to a concert hall filled with angel voices. And I don’t believe in angels.

You can’t buy that sort of experience.

So, yeah, Mike, I’m lucky to have landed with the Mastersingers. I just hope I can hang onto my spot for a while. Otherwise, I will have no recourse but to return to the banjo. You wouldn’t want that.

-JFT

Slipping and Sliding

Interesting winter-driving experiment here today.

Both of our cars feature all-wheel drive. In this case, BMW’s X-Drive. So the systems are either exactly the same, or very similar.

What’s different are the tires on the two cars. Laura’s X3 (my cousin Paul informs me that it’s a terrific “lady car”), wears a set of Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires. My red 330i sedan wears Continental ContiProContact all-season tires.

Last night, we got snow. This morning when I took Laura to the airport, the roads were very slippery with not just snow, but also ice. We took the X3. Things got interesting.

A few hours later when I drove back into town to get what I needed for tonight’s chili, I drove my car, the 330i. The roads were still very slippery. Things got very entertaining indeed.

On ice, which we had here this morning, the Blizzaks were not terribly happy. Great care was required. But we mostly had traction.

On ice, the Continental all-season tires were just crazy. It was later in the morning, temps had risen, the ice had mitigated somewhat. But traction had pretty much taken a vacation.

Result? Seems clear to me that all-season tires are very much not the answer in winter conditions. Some drivers here believe otherwise. In fact, every winter, this is an ongoing debate. My take? Those drivers who believe that all-season tires are sufficient for winter driving here are wrong.

Now: Last winter and the winter before that, we had Michelin X-Ice tires on my car. God, they worked well! But by the end of last winter, they were worn out. Winter tires by definition use really soft rubber, as well as specialized tread designs. So they wear quickly. 

I may have made a mistake by not putting Michelin X-Ice tires on Laura’s car. But I think the Blizzaks, rated above the Michelins by a little, will be fine. I hope.

Oh, what about studded tires? They work really well on ice. But they work less well elsewhere. Plus they tear the hell out of the paved driving surface. So, no.

Bottom line? Lack of traction can be very entertaining! But it is not the way to stay healthy, not the way to keep your vehicle on the roadway. There is no way I would do winter travel around here without winter tires.

-JFT

 

Dinosaurs and Dust (or, No Country for Epicureans)

Laura and I have been promising ourselves an adventure for months. This past week, we took that adventure. We had two goals: We set out to see the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, which is maybe two hours east of our home here in Redmond. And we aimed to see the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, along with a segment of the old trail itself. That’s about five hours east of here.

We had several other goals, as well – these included being well-fed and well-lodged. We were not wholly successful in achieving those goals. But I’ll get to that. First, this: Please click on the thumbnail photos in order to view them fullsize.

The John Day National Monument is composed of five units. We visited just two. Our first stop was at the Painted Hills unit. And spectacular these hills are. They are composed of layers of volcanic ash, debris and chemicals deposited over about 40 million years.

The unit is small, just about a mile square. But it contains stark, amazing beauty – wide, near-horizontal swaths of color decorate these hills, as if some giant, god-like artist took a swipe at these hills after dipping his/her brush into many colors of paint, rich reds, oranges, yellows and white.

And there’s buried treasure there. These hills also are the home of many types of leaf fossils, though I’m sure you’d be prosecuted, shot, then skinned, for trying to find them. But in the overall story of the John Day Fossil Beds, these are small potatoes.

If it’s fossils you want, you have to go to the fossil center itself, a few miles down the road from the Painted Hills unit. Its real name is the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center and it’s located in what is called the Sheep Rock unit. It is spectacular.

According to what we learned there, a 10,000-square-mile chunk of Eastern Oregon is home to the most spectacular trove of prehistoric animals and plant fossils on the globe. The TCPC contains a vast collection of the fossilized remains of those organisms, documenting about 50 million years. It does it through large displays that explain at least seven paleontological eras evident at the site.

The differences between these eras are extreme, ranging from dry deserts to wet, sticky marshlands, to moderate savannas. Our takeaway from this is that Earth never has stopped changing and is changing still.

The fossils run the gamut from predators to prey, to mammals to reptiles to birds, to insects, to leaves, and to fruit, nuts and seeds. The variety is hard to take in.

Next stop was John Day itself, a former booming gold-rush town that now boasts 1,200 residents.

It was here that we got the first clue vis-à-vis dining. There were not many restaurants here. Hey, why would there be? This place is charming, sure, and it rests in a beautiful environment, but it’s tiny.

The solution? When in doubt in Oregon, repair to the nearest brew pub. It will offer pub grub, which usually is pretty good, and craft-brewed beer, which always is excellent. In this case, it was the 1188 Brew Pub. Not a mistake.

Our next stop was Baker City, about three hours east over mountainous roads. This is Oregon’s gold country. Gold is found in quartz, which is found in granite, which is found in mountainous upthrusts that are very different from the vulcanism that formed so much of the rest of Oregon. And these, the Elkhorn Mountains and the Blue Mountains, are real granite mountains, just like the Sierra Nevadas. So they hold gold.

Baker City, it turns out, was the center of Eastern Oregon’s gold rush, which occurred between the 1850s and the 1950s. This was by no means the equivalent of the California Gold Rush, but still it was significant enough for the merchants and bankers of Baker City to become rich.

That wealth today is reflected by a significant collection of magnificent stone buildings that line the town’s wide streets. Those streets today are very quiet, with a number of empty store fronts, signifying that the good times are past and gone. Still, it’s a very pretty little town. I hope that better times are coming.

Those better times would do well to burnish the Geiser Grand Hotel, on the city’s main street, where we spent three nights. Nice old place but to my mind, wanting a bit of a touch-up here and there, as well as some attention to detail.

Not least in the hotel restaurant. We dined there the first night. We vowed never to return. Second night, we hit a brew pub, with the expected satisfactory results. Third night, we hit a Mexican restaurant. It was bloody awful. So back to brew pubs.

We were in Baker City because of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, perhaps 10 miles east of town. What a treat that place is. It sits by itself atop a hill adjacent to the old trail, which remains baking in the sun and stretching into the east and west distance, as it has for 175 years.

The center contains a series of dioramas featuring beautifully realized life-size displays showing pioneers of all ilk during imagined snapshot moments of their trip from Independence, Missouri, the trail’s beginning, to Oregon City, now a Portland suburb, where it ended. It includes trappers, teamsters, whites, Indians, oxen, horses, men, women, children. There also are displays of artifacts.

I think what we liked the most, however, was the hour-long film about life on the trail. This was not an easy trip. It took six months and basically cost everything the travelers had. And sometimes it cost more than that. It is said that the 2,000-mile-long trail is lined by an average of 80 graves per mile.

Mortality at this level seems a very high price to pay for the privilege of carving a new home, a new life, out of the Oregon wilderness, which was still many weeks away from this place.

Though choking dust no longer marks the passage of emigrants, the trail remains very well-marked. The steel wheels of thousands of wagons pounded, battered and packed the trail’s surface to the point where to this day, nothing grows in the trail’s ruts, so the trail remains easily visible. You can see it on Google Earth. Or you can go there, as Laura and I did, and walk on it for a short distance, kicking up our own dust.

I’m mighty happy that I’m walking the trail now, rather than 150 years ago, when it would have been mighty hard to find a brew pub. Those were hard people. They had to be.

Sumpter, a dozen or so miles west of Baker City, contains two wonderful echoes of the gold rush. They are the Sumpter Railroad and the Sumpter Dredge. We found the railroad yards deserted. Seasonal tourists gone, the operation is mostly closed at this time of year. All the better to wander, allowing ourselves to be led by our curiosities.

Same with the dredge, which still floats in a pond that it dug for itself. This thing was built in 1935 and operated – basically eating wide swaths of the valley surface in which it sits – until 1953. The damage is so immense, and so permanent, that you can find the dredge’s damage easily visible on Google Earth just to the south of Sumpter. It is not a positive testament to the greed of men.

Our final stop was Joseph, a high-mountain arts/ranching community in the Wallowa Mountains, said to be Oregon’s alps, about two hours north and east of Baker City. It’s a cute little town with a couple of high-quality galleries, plus the foundry in which the bronze art contained in those galleries is cast using the lost wax method.

I’m still not sure I understand how that works, but I now have a much better idea, having taken the factory tour, which happens only at 11 am, just as the workers are about to take their lunch break. It’s worth doing.

So is a lunch break. Having learned our lesson, which is basically that the boondocks of Eastern Oregon is no country for epicureans, we again hit the local brew pub, then checked in to the Belle Pepper Bed & Breakfast, which is contained in a nicely restored old home on one of Joseph’s side streets. Nice place. But they sure do keep the place cold. And if you are not ready to have breakfast at 8:30 am, you don’t get breakfast.

Dinner that night was at the Wallowa Lodge, adjacent to Wallowa Lake, prime fishing water and also, at its north end, the burial place of Chief Joseph, chief of the Nez Perce. Who apparently were not treated well by the U.S. Government. But tell me, which tribe was? And thus do we have America’s original sin.

But now, except for a quick stop at the woolen mills in Pendleton, the trip is over. We opt for the easy way home, much of the way on Interstate 84. Man, this is gorgeous country. It makes me very happy to call Oregon our home, and to be so situated that a wonderful adventure is just a few hours away from home base. That said, however, home remains the best place of all. Plus, the food is the best!

-JFT

The Marijuana Train

We’ve had visitors this past week, our final batch of a very busy summer. These folks, very old friends, date all the way back to boarding school. So we were thrilled to see them.

They expressed a desire to visit a pot shop. This is not on our usual itinerary when showing guests around, but OK, cool.

As you most likely know, pot is legal here in Oregon, so there are state-controlled pot shops everywhere. The one we visited yesterday, Oregrown, in downtown Bend, is like others I’ve been in: It is clean, neat, well-organized, well-lighted, professional.

We weren’t looking to get high. Rather, we were interested in pot’s healing properties. When it comes to this, there are unbelievers. But one of us, an RN, possesses an open mind. She wanted information. We went to Oregrown to get some.

We came away with information provided by staffers there who were so young that automatically I, a very cranky and professionally skeptical old man, just did not trust.

Never mind. After talking with our disgustingly youthful sales person, I bought a jar of Dragon’s Blend balm, made by a firm called Medicine Farm Botanicals.

Hey, this stuff is not cheap: 2 ounces, 60 bucks. Annie bought some too, different stuff and in a smaller jar. I don’t know precisely what she bought. What I bought is composed of 260 mg of THC and just 15 mg of CBD.

That seemed wrong because THC is the component of marijuana that gets you high, which is not what I wanted; and CBD is the component that has, we are told, healing properties, which is what I wanted. So the percentages, for the result I hoped for, were reversed. I went ahead with the deal, repeating my usual refrain, “I’ll try anything twice.”

We came back home, had dinner, sat around and chatted, then we all retired to our respective lairs, promising to apply our balms and compare notes in the morning.

My area of interest involves my lower back. Several years ago, I had surgery on my lumbar region. The surgery solved the most pressing problem, but left me stiff and sore, unable to stand upright without being very uncomfortable. I’ve been walking around bent over, like the old man that I am, as a result.

So last night before crawling into bed I applied some of my Dragon’s Blend to the skin covering my lower spine. I rubbed in just a small amount and went to sleep, hoping that the listed activation time of 15 minutes was correct.

This morning, to my considerable surprise, I easily walked upright, rather than bent over like the great apes to which I have been so appropriately compared. I had no discomfort from my lower back. None at all.

My co-conspirator also used a bit of the balm she bought. She reported similar salubrious results.

I have lived a very active life, having backpacked hundreds of miles, fallen from motorcycles several times, worked hard bucking hay bales and sacks of poultry feed, so by this point in my life, 75 years having passed, pretty much everything hurts.

But not, for the first time in years, my lower back.

This evening, not quite 24 hours after the first application of my Dragon’s Blend balm, the effect has pretty much dissipated.

But no worries, I have more of the stuff. I plan to use it.

I have little interest in using pot to get high. But if it mitigates the effects of a long, active life that has featured, among other things, broken bones, replaced knees and strained, worn-out joints, I certainly am on board the marijuana train.

–JFT

Music vs. Music

This past weekend marked the beginning of the Central Oregon Mastersingers’ choral season. This beginning was composed of a weekend-long retreat to begin preparations for our first concert, which is maybe six weeks away. 

As much as I love participating in great choral music, something I‘ve done since I was a teenager, I’m sitting this one out.

This weekend also marked the 2018 Sisters Folk Festival. The festival was composed of three days of folk, blues and bluegrass performed on 11 indoor and outdoor stages in Sisters, Oregon, about 15 miles from us. I flat adore folk music. If you know me at all, you know that.

Up close and personal with Claire Lynch, center, and her dynamic band.

I really hated being presented with this choice – folk festival or choral retreat.

I attend the choral retreat, my heart and mind are filled with the precise scholarship of majestically performed classical music. This sort of thing fills my heart and makes me happy not only to be alive, but to be upon stage with my choral colleagues where this beautiful music is being made.

I attend the Sisters Folk Festival, I feast with Laura and our friends Bob and Charlene on the peaceful, raucous acoustic music of Americana, the music of the people, the land, the country. The music of people living, dying, suffering, rejoicing, struggling, prevailing. The music of folks in this glorious, maddening, wonderful country. The music of guitars, banjos, mandolins, fiddles, voices, all in rhythm and harmony.

I love it dearly. I have loved it dearly since I was a child listening to my parents’ old Burl Ives records on a wind-up Victrola.

So yes, the Sisters Folk Festival. It couldn’t be anything else.

Our first year here, 2016, we were too late to buy tickets. They sell out early. Last year, the festival was last-minute cancelled. Tiny Sisters was blanketed with smoke from a near-by forest fire that was so thick that just seeing across one of the town’s streets was almost impossible. Health conditions were horrible.

So this year’s festival? Absolutely!

A small-venue recital by Erin Cole-Baker was peaceful and relaxing.

Stacked here downstairs are two guitars, four banjos, a mandolin and a bass. I play them all and have done so since I was a high-schooler.  Those days, folk music was where I lived. Girls, cars? sure, interesting but confounding. School? Hah! But oh, that dusty, gritty, poetic old music of the people!

I really regret missing out on this first of three concerts of the Mastersingers season - missing this retreat automatically means I am ineligible. But I will pick things up in time for our Christmas concert, and be ready, and in top voice, I hope, for our spring concert – ill-fitting tux, which I hate, and all.

Meanwhile, I will have memories of the acts we enjoyed this weekend. A couple of great dinners. Time with Laura and our pals. And yeah, I’ll also have the event T-shirt. Much better than any damned concert-dress tux. It’s a net gain.

Now, bring on that choral music. I’m ready!

-JFT

Notes from the Culture Wars

Went to a wedding over the weekend. Why? I have no idea whatsoever, since we barely know the father of the bride.

But he is a dairy farmer and milks Jersey cows, so I guess he’s part of our extended Jersey family.

Brother-in-law Bob Tailor and I got there fashionably late, just as planned. Hey, this place was so far out in the woods I expected Ned Beatty to jump out of the trees in full “Deliverance” costume.

Laura and her sister went on ahead to help out, which I think was the real reason they were invited. Those two know how to work. In any case, once there, we were surrounded by people in cowboy hats and ball caps, women in skirts and cowboy (girl?) boots. Country music from the P.A. system. Oh, swell!

I was told that prior to our arrival, someone on the dais with a mic asked if there were any Democrats in the audience. One woman stood up and raised her hand to be counted. The guy with the mic said something like, “Well, you won’t be for long.”

Who knows what that meant?

But OK, now I’m pissed. I missed a chance to stand up and be counted, and that annoys me. Furthermore, I missed a chance to now only declare my allegiance, but to inform those fine Trumpy mouth-breathers that I also am a retired newspaper editor and reporter. And no, those magazine years don’t count. An elitist, I suppose, in their eyes.

Probably I would not have gotten out of the place without being beaten up. But the lawsuit that would have resulted would have been worth it and the results would have been glorious.

Sometimes timing is everything.

–JFT

Bugatti of the Lake

Probably we’ve all heard of the Lady of the Lake, but how many of us have heard of the Bugatti of the Lake?

A few of us have, I would think, particularly if we are gearheads with a special interest in the classics. (Be sure to click on the photographs to see them full-size.)

The story is true, of course. The Bugatti Brescia – a very early Bugatti model – you see in these photographs was dumped into Lago di Maggiore, in the Italian Lakes District, something like 80 years ago because its caretakers wanted to avoid fines associated with nonpayment of import duties by the car’s owner. One gathers that its location was always more-or-less known, and finally someone decided to retrieve it. Full story here:

https://newatlas.com/the-legendary-lake-maggiore-1925-bugatti-type-22-brescia/14045/

I caught up with the car at the Mullen Museum in Oxnard, California, a couple of years ago. Collector and kazillionaire Peter Mullen bought the thing – if memory serves, the purchase price, in the millions, went to charity – and decided that conserving what was left of it, rather than attempting a restoration, was the right thing to do.

A pretty cool and forward-thinking decision, sez I.

The car is very carefully and sympathetically displayed in exactly the condition it was in when it was resurrected from Maggiore’s depths. Check it out next time you’re anywhere near Oxnard.

–JFT

Let There Be Music, They Commanded!

I don’t play my banjo much anymore. I just don’t. Not sure why. But I find myself in a position which requires a concert. Which is strange, because usually, people are all to happy to not hear me play my banjo.

Well, actually, it will be a mini-concert. The items you see here, an ancient Martin guitar and an even older Vega longneck banjo, will be my co-conspirators.

This is all about co-conspirators. The foremost of those will be my pal of untold decades, Mike Kicenski, best musician I’ve ever seen. The others will be maybe a half-dozen boarding-school classmates who are gathering here for – well, just to hang out, chat, visit, hike, watch me grill volcano burgers, enjoy Central Oregon, and remember when we were young.

I’d be happy to leave it at that but two of the most persuasive of these – by name, Marilyn and Charlene, who demanded and received a mini-concert three years ago at a similar gathering – have instructed me that a concert is not just expected, but required. Listen, I was terrified of these two when we were kids. I still am.

Like my sweetie Laura, of whom I’m even more terrified, these are people one does not disappoint. So I’ve assembled a set list and even, like, rehearsed. A little. So yes, the music will ring out in spite of arthritic fingers and quavering voice. And yes, my pal Mike, who as a musician is light years better than me, will chime in. The wine will flow, feet will tap, we will have a ball. And we will miss those who because of distance or early passing, are unable to join us.

-JFT

It's Time for a Reset

I’ve been thinking that we are long overdue for a reset. This current hateful GOP administration, powered by selfishness, greed, and loathing for anyone who isn’t wealthy and white, provides more than enough proof of that. By “reset,” I’m thinking of a change in our national attitudes about the way we treat people, about the way our actions continue to express our national character.

This is simplified, and not strictly chronological, but it gets to the core, I think, of what is so deeply wrong with us as a people.

• We, as immigrants, murdered millions of Native Americans and stole their land – basically, all of North America.
• For more than 500 years, we embraced slavery (from1526, when the first slaves were brought here from Africa by the Spanish to 1865, when Congress and the states ratified the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery).
• In spite of that 13th Amendment, racism continued rampant, with lynchings, bombing of black churches, the murders of white civil-rights activists, and more, right down to today’s very public expressions of hatred for African Americans, expressions seemingly endorsed by the GOP administration.
• Even today, white cops who shoot and kill unarmed black men rarely are punished.
• After Pearl Harbor, for no practical reason, we imprisoned perfectly innocent Japanese Americans who after their release, rarely were able to resume their prewar lives. And their property? Forget about it. That was taken by white people.
• During the period between the California Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, thousands of Chinese people were brought here, were worked hard and paid poorly. Then, thanks to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the inflow of Chinese to the U.S. was stopped. And vote? The Naturalization Act of 1790 prevented anyone who wasn’t white from voting.
• We consigned Mexican Americans to second- or third-class status.

In short, if your skin was not white, you got screwed.

Sure, we did some good things, as well:

• We undid the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Naturalization Act and passed the Voting Rights Act.
• With the help of our allies, we defeated Fascism.
• We supported and enjoyed the benefits of the greatest social benefits ever seen here, thanks to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. These include Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
• We put men on the moon, leading to a blossom of technology that continues to flower.
• We made positive steps to preserve treasured natural resources and parks from exploitation and misuse, and we made enormous strides toward cleaning up unhealthy air and water.

Now, with tacit but very real permission from the GOP administration, racial hatred once again is rampant and out in the open. But that’s not all:

• Voting rights increasingly are under attack, especially in the South and Midwest.
• We celebrate ignorance, regularly ignoring the inexorable rules of science.
• Latino children are being stolen from their parents.
• Fascism is on the rise right here in the U.S., with some voters saying they think democracy isn’t such a good thing.
• People whose religion does not conform to Christian dogma are under attack. Not that this is anything new.
• Social benefits and programs are under attack. So are environmental rules.

And on the economic side, in spite of a growing economy and a booming GDP:

• Wages are static.
• Housing prices are rising.
• The middle class is shrinking.
• The three wealthiest people in the U.S. own more wealth than the bottom half of the nation’s population. (Yes, this is true. If you think this is defensible, you are part of the problem.)

The rug has been jerked out from under – well, almost everyone who isn’t white, wealthy, or both.

All of us are on our way toward becoming serfs, right here in our own country and the votes of some of us even help that happen.

Here are a few of the reasons why, I think:

• They are terrified of losing their gun rights.
• They fear and hate abortion and a woman’s right to choose.
• And maybe most important, no matter their economic status, they see this hateful GOP administration as the last bulwark between them and people whose skin is not white. They fear those people, hate the fact that their numbers are growing, and are appalled that they actually have all the same rights as white people.

So yeah, time for a reset. A reset that renews our faith in education and science, in the value of working people, and in the necessity of paying working a decent living wage, of treating everyone – everyone – with dignity and respect.

As things are, we are on a frightening downward trajectory. Our institutions, our ways of life, are under attack.

There are a few things we can do about that. Most important is to arm ourselves with facts. I mean real, objective facts. Read some newspapers, god damnit, instead of getting your “news” from the TV, or, worse, the Internet. And then think about what you read. Use your head.

Then decide. Which side are you on? Are you on the side of hate and divisiveness, of poverty for all but politicians and corporate presidents? Of disaster for everyone who isn’t white and privileged? Or are you on the side of a decent chance at a decent life for every person?

Seems like an easy decision, no?

After you decide, get out and vote. In every election. Vote for schoolboards, city council members, county commissioners, and more; vote for people who reflect your values, who will work for the common good. Educate yourselves on the issues and vote. But for god’s sake, do it from an informed perspective that it is backed by facts, rather than bullshit generated in political echo chambers.

Most important, vote in the 2018 mid-term elections. They are just a few months away. And then, whatever happens, avoid complacency. Get ready to vote again in 2020.

Make no mistake, we are on the verge of losing our country. Whether we do or not is down to all of us rejecting the hate and divisiveness that has enflamed our country. We – you and I – are the firefighters who can put out those flames.

-JFT

Doomed, I tell you!

Fires in the Swedish Arctic and across the rest of Europe, rising sea levels, melting ice packs, a complete refusal by the GOP administration not just to recognize climate change, but to do something about it – in short, scanning the big picture suggests that we are toast. I believe that sooner, rather than later, we as a species will become extinct.

Earth will be the better for that. Look at how badly we’ve fucked the place up.

It has happened before. We were down to as few as 40 breeding pairs, one study suggests, worldwide. Or maybe as many as a few thousand. Those who survived were the lucky ones who just happened to live in microclimates in which subsistence farming was possible.

Don’t believe it? Here, read this:

Almost Extinct!

For this new disaster, subsistence farming may not be possible. Gonna be way too hot for farming.

A lot has been said about “saving the Earth.” Here’s a news flash for you – Earth does not need to be saved. It will do just fine. Over time, temperatures will return to normal and animal and plant life eventually will thrive.

Will humans be here to witness that? I do not think so. I just hope that our national patrimony, now on the verge of being destroyed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a dickhead who puts exploitational profit from our public lands ahead of historic preservation, can survive until extinction. The way things are going, that patrimony – preserved public lands, cliff dwellings, rock carvings – doesn’t deserve us.

This pretty much started for us in the U.S. with our refusal to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, one of the first international agreements to try to tackle climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gasses.

“Too expensive,” business interests moaned. Republican business interests, naturally, tied to the politics of selfishness and greed.

So we’re about to go extinct. Don’t doubt it. It is in the cards. It will happen. Your progeny are doomed.

Thanks ever so much, you Republican asshats. If you vote Republican, you own this.

-JFT