A visiting guinea? A ‘possum in the dining room? What strange and wondrous occurrences can one expect while living on an Ozark mountaintop for thirty-five years?
These lyrical adventure stories feature chickens, raccoons, bugs, dogs, cats, and natural critters of this woodland home. Throw in a few neighbors who shoot copperheads or remodel the dirt road. Ponder the passage of time through a philosophical lens of wonder and delight. The seasons bring summer heat, winter snow, pouring rain, the power of fire. Lessons learned, questions posed-who has lived and died on this land? What is our responsibility to this place, its creatures, each other?
Come meet the goat on the road.
Now available for only $6.95. A lovely gift for anyone. Amazon buy link
“I enjoyed all these stories and especially admired the author’s ability to describe the creatures she encounters with a naturalist’s eye and a pet lover’s emotions. My favorite story was ‘Summer,’ a languorous description of a 102-degree day on the mountain where the smallest movement seems difficult and time slows down. The author’s prose is lyrical and yet unsentimental. You can feel the heat and the sense of relief when the day draws to a close. A beautifully-written series of stories…” Reviewed by Annamaria Farbizio for Readers’ Favorite
Obscure laws often become weapons used selectively against people who offend prevailing social sensibilities. This was the case examined in A Crime Unfit To Be Named. In 1949, a local man in this small Bible belt town became the target of extraordinary police scrutiny. Despite his advanced age and the private nature of his activities, if found guilty John William Campbell would face hard time. Swept up in this vendetta, two younger women would also become entangled in the notorious Arkansas criminal justice system.
Now for a limited time, this paperback is available for only $6.95, marked down from its regular price of $9.95. Amazon buy link
“I started reading ‘A Crime Unfit to Be Named’ and just didn’t stop. It’s really interesting and well written. Excellent research, too. Very fine job.”
—J. B. Hogan, Historian and Author of “The Apostate.”
One of my fondest holiday memories is of my mother making Pineapple Candy. Without a candy thermometer to ensure the mixture had boiled long enough, she would pace and mutter, repeatedly dipping out tiny portions to drop in cold water to see if it would hold a soft ball shape. I particularly remember that part because I happily retrieved the test portion. Yum! Somehow, despite all the drama, many a Christmas morning found us enjoying this delicious treat!
Pineapple Candy
3 cups brown sugar, packed
1 8-ounce can crushed pineapple
2 cups English walnuts, coarsely chopped
❧ Stir sugar and pineapple together in medium saucepan over medium high heat.
❧ Cook to the firm end of soft ball stage, 240° on candy thermometer.
❧ Cool pan in water bath, beating while it cools.
❧ When mixture has mostly cooled, add walnuts and continue beating until it starts to thicken, then quickly spread into buttered 8x8x2 pan.
❧ Let set until fully cooled, then cut into 1-inch squares.
Enjoy this and other down home recipes in my cookbook, Recipes of Trailside Cafe and Tea Room
Yes, there are about as many cheese ball recipes as there are cooks. I’ve used this one since 1969! It’s an easy tangy treat that never fails to please! Makes a great holiday gift, too.
Cheese Ball
12 ounces cream cheese (1 ½ 8-ounce packages)
4 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
1 cup sharp cheddar, shredded
⅓ cup finely chopped red onion
1 clove minced garlic
1 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Soften cream cheese. (Remove from package and microwave 30 seconds) Place in mixing bowl and mash with spatula until fully blended and softened. Add other ingredients and mix well. Yield: about 3 cups.
Cheese Ball shaping and decorating options:
1. Divide into three portions. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a work surface and put one portion of the cheese mixture onto the paper. Gently roll cheese inside of paper into a log shape. Repeat for other two portions. Place the three rolls into refrigerator for at least three hours, until fully chilled. Remove paper. Logs may be rolled in minced fresh parsley or chopped toasted pecans. Place on serving plate, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate. Allow to come to room temperature about ½ hour before serving.
2. Place full recipe of cheese ball onto platter and spread out into a Christmas tree shape about 1 inch thick overall. Form 4-5 limb end points along each side. Use roasted red pepper strips or pimento strips to create a garland that zigzags from side to side. Slice green olives with pimento centers to create tree ornaments. Alternately, the entire “tree” can be sprinkled with minced fresh parsley and then ornamented with red pepper strips and olives as described. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Allow to come to room temperature about ½ hour before serving.
3. Using waxed paper between your hands and portions of cheese ball, roll balls of various sizes. Coat each ball in a different material: minced fresh parsley, toasted pecans, toasted chopped almond slivers, finely sliced green onion (include some of the green part), diced red and green peppers, diced green olives, diced black olives, or other ingredients of your preference. Arrange balls on serving platter.
Serve Cheeseball with cheese knives and any of the following:
Savory crackers, toasted pita bread or pita chips, raw vegetable sticks such as carrots and celery, toasted french bread thinly sliced, sliced apple or pear
This yummy recipe for vegetable soup is sure to cure whatever ails you from the common cold to a lousy mood. Simple, flexible, and easy. From my cookbook, Recipes of Trailside Cafe & Tea Room.
Vegetable Soup
1 large onion, chopped small (1 ½ cups)
4 ribs celery including leaves if possible, chopped small (1 ½ cups)
2-3 carrots, chopped small (1 ½ cups)
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 15-ounce can petite dice tomatoes
1 ½ teaspoons sugar
1 ½ quarts water
2 baby yellow squash (or 1 medium size), bad skin areas and seeds removed, ½ inch dice
½ tablespoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 large potatoes, ½ inch dice
❧ Heat large soup pan, add oil, sauté onion, celery, and carrot over high heat until they start to soften (about 10 minutes).
❧ Heat to boil, cover, reduce heat to gentle simmer for about 1 hour.
❧ Add potato, cover, increase heat until bubbling, immediately reduce to very low heat so mixture barely simmers. Cover and cook until potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. Too long or too hot cook time will cause potatoes to break down and broth will be milky.
❧ Taste for seasoning, add salt if needed.
Options: Use leftover cooked vegetables such as lima beans, English peas, green beans, or corn in addition to or instead of the squash.
Strange dim light, shifts in time, in perspective. Can we experience past lives? How do we survive the inexorably slow loss of love? Why do epiphanies slip up on us?
A man drives his aging Volvo into another day and out of any world he’s ever known.
A woman retrieves an old trunk and finds hidden treasure of inexplicable nature.
Delores is eager to discuss the details of Carlos’ file, which she appropriated from Records across the corridor. “He’s a bright young man, girls,” she says, reorganizing the lettuce on her sandwich with her long nails.
Josie’s room in an ancient hotel built over a Mayan temple leads to intimate hallucinations. Or are these men real?
What quirks of the universe drive us to the thoughts and deeds that ultimately define our lives? Does magic happen? Do dreams transport us?
These lyrical short stories explore pivotal moments, realizations, and inevitable conclusions in lives of unexpected dimension.
With a December 5 release date, this anthology of eight short stories is available as an ebook or paperback. Pre-order the ebook through December 4 for only 99¢. Amazon buy link — http://www.amazon.com/dp/1519372639
EXCERPT from Her Natural Home:
The dining room opened from the lobby through an archway of gray stone and onto a patio where flowering plants, shrubbery, and vines formed a low wall around the perimeter. Candles and torches illuminated the space. The maître d’ led Josie to a corner table close to hibiscus shrubs with papery yellow blossoms. A starched white cloth spread over the table, which was set with white cloth napkins, a fat white candle in a saucer, and a squat glass vase with vibrant red flowers. Night air wafted over her and above she could see the stars. She sighed and leaned back.
“Tequila,” she ordered when the waiter came.
She imagined throwing the burning liquor down her throat in one quick toss and slamming the empty glass onto the table before demanding another, as if she were some dusty outlaw in a Clint Eastwood western. In planning for the trip, she had pictured herself ordering wine with her meals. Something elegant. Yet the idea of ordering tequila seemed familiar, as if she had considered it without acknowledgement. It surprised her that she had entertained that train of thought and kept it hidden from herself, only now to discover her self-deception.
If that’s what it was. The term seemed unduly harsh.
The waiter set a small glass of amber liquid on the tablecloth in front of her nestled on its own personal round coaster, white and scalloped around the edges. He also delivered a small plate with a mound of coarse white salt and several wedges of lime. All of it glistened beautifully in the light from her table candle. She waited until he left then sipped the tequila. The offensive liquid burned then sweetened explosively in her mouth. The salt and lime relieved her discomfort and by the end of the portion, she felt a relaxing glow in her biceps and throat.
The waiter appeared at the table.
“I’ll have another,” she said precisely, aware of the movement of her lips.
“Senora,” he said with a slight bow.
She turned with unusually greedy appetite to the soft enchiladas and guava and meaty sauces that swam in the plate. Sips of tequila diminished the fiery tang of the sauce. Shadows flickered on the tablecloth. She cut her eyes sideways at the waiter as she ordered her third tequila, and he brought a double, along with more salsa and fresh avocado. Red tiles underfoot emanated warmth through her thin sandals. The faint breeze shifted, heavy with the scent of blossoms and chilies and scorched flour tortillas.
What other life had she ever known? What house, what furniture, and why had it ever held any meaning? Who were the people she knew, neighbors, coworkers, relatives she saw on occasion, people at the familiar stores where she bought gas, milk, hosiery? She knew the streets of Woodson Terrace, even of the inner city where she could merge into speeding traffic and compete with the most aggressive drivers. She kept a list of reliable repairmen. She was an assured adult, someone who on a whim entered a contest for a digital camera and won instead something she did not want at all. Something she had not expected and could not explain, now that she was doing it. It was happening. Something she enjoyed very much. Whatever it was.
Some Facebook posts circulating since the Paris tragedy voice outrage that the U.S. and its allies failed to stop ISIS at its inception.
To those I ask what, pray tell, was the beginning?
Was it during the three hundred years of Crusades when Western European Christians invaded the Middle East to drive out Islam?
Was it after WWI when the Western powers reorganized the colonized Middle East, shifting borders to suit the desires of various Western nations regardless of existing ethnic, tribal, or religious boundaries?
Was it after WWII when Western powers again reorganized Arab lands, shoving the Palestinians aside to carve out a homeland for the Jews? Couldn’t we have predicted that Arabs would resist? Perhaps that would have been the best time to nuke the whole region.
Was it when we armed the Afghan Mujaheddin in the 1980s to help them overthrow Soviet occupation? Couldn’t we have predicted that once the Cold War ended, we would abandon Afghanistan and leave tribal leaders like Osama bin Laden to take what he’d been taught to organize his devastated homeland.
Was it when we marched into Iraq, toppling the strong man government of Saddam Hussein and unleashing sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shias?
Was it when the 2011 Arab spring spread from Egypt through other Middle Eastern nations and Syria’s President Assad fought back against his nation’s rebellion? The U.S. and allies hurried into Syria with support and secret ‘advisors’ to assist the rebels, bringing in sophisticated arms and other supplies that are now in the hands of ISIS. Gee, how could we have guessed?
The claim that the U. S. could have inflicted a fatal incisive strike against ISIS at any point along this tortured path shows ignorance and a single-minded obsession to heap criticism on President Obama. ISIS has never existed as a discrete target. Any attack on ISIS would result in massive collateral damage.
The entire mess points to one overarching conclusion: the more we intervene in the Middle East, the worse things get.
We’re good at meddling in other people’s affairs. At what point do we have an honest national dialogue centered on the question: Why are we in the Middle East at all?
I can tell you. It’s because of money, oil and religion. And money. Did I say money?[i]
According to a 2013 report, “over the last six decades, the U.S. has invested $299 billion in military and economic aid for Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries currently in turmoil. Egypt tops a list of ten nations, receiving $114 billion since the end of World War II. Iraq comes in second, getting nearly $60 billion from the U.S. (over and above war costs). Far outpacing those ten countries is Israel, an ally that received another $185 billion in U.S. aid in the same period.”[ii]
Why not just hand all that arms money over to the arms dealers and let them keep the weapons?
Are we getting what we paid for? If the objective is to keep the region destabilized so that we can maintain a level of control over the oil, yes. If the objective is to undermine Arab strength in order to further prop up Israel, yes.
We continue to send billions of dollars of foreign aid to the region, larding the already excessive oil profits lining the pockets of the region’s leaders. With all that money, leaders so inclined can invest in distant terrorists or add to their nation’s arsenal by purchasing arms and equipment manufactured in Western nations.
Supporters of Israel dismiss dollar amounts because their agenda is religious. People concerned about U. S. energy profits dismiss dollar amounts because their agenda is oil. Both groups fail to recognize the larger agenda behind their pet projects: money.
According to a 2013 report, “Each year, around $45-60 billion worth of arms sales are agreed. Most of these sales (something like 75%) are to developing countries. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (U.S., Russia, France, United Kingdom and China), together with Germany and Italy account for around 85% of the arms sold between 2004 and 2011.[iii]
Nearly twenty years ago, an incisive review of our foreign aid pointed to this folly:
“An examination of $13.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid activity for Fiscal Year 1997 reveals that almost half of the aid is military in nature. This assistance, in conjunction with large-scale arms exports, may actually be working counter to many stated U.S. foreign policy objectives such as promoting sustainable development, protecting human health and fostering economic growth.”[iv]
George Washington famously cautioned against the quagmire in which we’re now floundering:
“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.”[v]
Just six days ago, the columnist citing this wisdom called for an end to all but humanitarian aid to foreign nations. He’s not alone.
Opponents of a hands-off approach will cite the potential for increasing interference in the region from nations like Russia and China. In theory, our presence at the arms trade table balances their influence. But we have to ask ourselves, who was there first? I can tell you. It was us.[vi]
If we want the violence to stop, we’ll have to
stop giving our tax dollars to nations who spend it on arms,
eliminate any and all subsidies to arms dealers and manufacturers,
remove our forces entirely from the region and let them sort it out themselves, and
rescind and renegotiate any treaties with other nations so that any and all foreign aid is in the form of food, educational materials, medical supplies, and other humanitarian assistance.
The Family of Sylvia and Tom. Left to right, front: Una, Sylvia, Thurston, Tom, and Sula. Back: Joy, Carmyn, Graydon, Tomazine, Douglas, and Durward.
Great strength comes from family tradition. I’ve seen it once again for myself, a gathering of elders I’ve known all my life. In the days and hours leading up to this October reunion, trepidation warred with exhilaration in the prospect of seeing my kin again. Three days past my last contact, I am only now able to let the anxiety fall away.
Tomazine, oldest of the girls and third oldest of Sylvia’s children. Mother of seven who adopted four more orphaned children. Gardener, artist, advocate for common sense and women’s liberation.
Why anxiety? The clan was the community, at least for many of us older ones, and gathered each summer for a week of Rook tournaments, debates on myriad subjects, talent shows, and general mayhem. These people were my judges as well as my mentors, the audience for baby pranks and elementary accomplishments. Like my forty first cousins, of which I was the fifth oldest, I was subjected to quizzes and scrutiny on everything from the ruffles in my skirt to the cleverness of my retort.
A person would think that by the age of sixty-seven, I would have grown past the traumas and dramas of childhood. But no, like the genes we share, interactions with the pantheon of my mother’s family remain a strong influence. I should be glad of the genes—of my Grandmother Sylvia’s nine children, six remain among the living. The oldest recently celebrated her 96th birthday. The youngest, feted at this recent gathering for his 80th, remains—like all of them—in remarkably good health.
My mother Carmyn, mother of five, gardener extraordinaire. College graduate, family historian. Early advocate for environmental protection and organic food.
Matriarch to her own tribe of five offspring, my mother was the middle child of nine born to an even sterner matriarch in Sylvia. Herself the oldest of nine, Sylvia followed a lineage of strong women who simultaneously chafed at the yoke of traditional wifedom while, at least in theory, subscribed to the religious role of subservient ‘helpmate.’ Sylvia’s mother Zeulia raised nine in a marriage with a man never far from his Bible but nonetheless willing to watch his aging wife wade out into mid-winter snow to gather firewood. Zeulia’s mother Armina enjoyed a few years of happy marriage to Jeptha Futrell and the arrival of two sons (one of whom, Junius Marion Futrell, became a governor of Arkansas) before losing Jeptha to pneumonia and remarrying during Arkansas’ devastating aftermath of the Civil War. Armina’s mother Frances Massey, as the fabled family account goes, grew up in the lap of southern luxury at her father’s plantation only to elope at age thirteen with the property’s caretaker Jimmy Eubanks. Their first child, born when she was fourteen, was said to have a head the size of a teacup and yet grew to robust male adulthood.
Joy, fourth youngest, mother of four. College graduate, school teacher, gardener, comforting presence.
By the mid-1840s, Jimmy and Frances crossed the Mississippi River on a barge and set up housekeeping in the northeast wilds of the new state of Arkansas. Subsequent generations married and lived in similar barebones circumstances in the farmlands near Crowley’s Ridge. After the Civil War, some of the family settled in Texas, and by the time my mother was born in 1923, entire households pulled up stakes each season to pick cotton in Texas before returning to “God’s Country” for the winter.
At the time Sylvia gave birth to her first child, her mother Zeulia was still producing children of her own. Both generations lived together at times in dog-trot houses on Ozark dirt farms, scraping up a livelihood from gardens, milk cows, and free range chickens and hogs. Despite their often desperate economic conditions, the families pursued education. Of my cousins, several hold graduate degrees and many more undergraduate degrees, while others have become successful entrepreneurs, engineers, and educators.
Una, mother of eight and third youngest of Sylvia’s children. College graduate, world traveler, genealogical researcher, firecracker in general.
We are told that our genes carry not only the codes for our biology, but also the encoded experiences of our ancestors. I’m left to wonder if my tendencies toward worry derive at least in part from the epigenetic traces of the Civil War and the Great Depression. Is my desire for solitude and rural landscapes the result not only of my own life but even more from the generations of ancestry that found safety and sustenance in the land?
As far back as genealogical research has taken us, efforts largely spearheaded by one of my aunts, the family follows a long tradition of yeoman farmers. Perhaps we were serfs not too many centuries ago, tuned to the change of seasons and the requirement to please a rich master. Our histories find sparse mention of cities and their trappings. We care more about the weather than women’s clubs, more for landscapes than local politics. Yet we do care, passionately, about our freedoms and the direction of the nation despite the fact that we divide fairly evenly between conservative and liberal.
Sula, second youngest and mother of four. Avid Razorback fan, gardener, loving wife. Current holder of the Rook championship trophy.
Of the forty cousins, only fourteen made an appearance at this gathering. Only six or seven lingered for more than one evening. My oldest, now turning forty, waded in and was welcomed as were a few other grandchildren. My mother and two of her five siblings live in this area. Three others, two from Texas and one from New Mexico, stayed for six days, variously taking naps, visiting graves and old homesteads, and arguing over Rook scores. Wrenched to see them come and equally wrenched to see them go, I have since stared out my office window to contemplate the emotions set in play by the event.
The cousins who did attend agreed not to let our next meetings occur only at funerals. Inevitably, the funerals will come, not just for our aunts and uncle, but for us. There’s the strange comfort of time and conversation with those we’ve known all our lives, even though as adults we have little in common, hardly know each other at all. There are our children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren of which we are barely cognizant, yet each of them remain connected in these threads that grow ever thinner as the generations expand.
Thus is the history of all man’s tribes.
Thurston, youngest of the clan. Father of five, loving husband, modern day farmer and Razorback fan.
As children, my cousins and I not only played together at the annual family reunions but also at reunions of Sylvia’s siblings. We learned the names and faces of great aunts and second cousins, many of them still firmly entrenched in the lands of northeast Arkansas. The rest of us have remained as near as northwest Arkansas or as far as Georgia, California, and all points in between. There’s a mathematical impossibility to any attempt to acquaint the offspring of the forty cousins, or even to gather the forty cousins in one place.
Whether knowledge of one’s ancestry holds any relevance may be debated from various points of view. Whether I want to have these ties or not, I can’t imagine life without them. The huge array of people linked to me through family offers an oddly reassuring backdrop to any of my peculiar interests and life patterns. I’m no longer a child intimidated by their observation or awed by their arguments. They care about me as I care about them, not because we’ve done anything in particular to earn the caring, but simply because we are connected by inheritance.
Money doesn’t just appear of out thin air. Somebody has to build something, repair something, grow and harvest something. Value begins with some real thing that people need: food, shelter, clothing.
So where does wealth come from?
I don’t pretend to be an economist or any other form of expert on financial matters. I get that there’s a need for advertisers, wholesalers and distributors, transporters, and retailers. I agree that those who work hard should gain appropriate reward. I agree that for each phase of ‘handling,’ additional value is added so that the end product costs more than the producer’s price.
My issue is with people whose wealth exceeds imagination and derives from the honest labor of other people. There’s no value added. The only ‘work’ of the rich is to shuffle their money around.
Before the mega rich got mega, local producers of socks made a dollar for every pair the wholesaler purchased. The wholesaler made 25¢ for every pair he sold to the stores in his distribution circles. The store made 25¢ for every pair they sold to consumers. Consumers paid $1.50.
Lots of producers, lots of wholesalers, lots of stores meant lots of employed people making a modest income. They spent their money at the local stores and restaurants and invested in their kids’ schools and city parks. Newcomers could hang up a shingle for their own sock business and get in the game.
Enter the big shots. Sam Walton, for example. His clever idea was to cut out the wholesalers and buy directly from the producers. He sold the socks for $1.25. What cheap socks! Huge success.
Here’s the story. A few years passed and Walton expanded. Pretty soon the producers had no one to sell to except Walton. All the little wholesalers and retailers had been left in the dust as shoppers flocked to the discount store. Then Walton said, hey, sell me your socks for 75¢ a pair or I’ll buy from another producer.
Producers had no option but to seek ways to produce a cheaper sock—lower quality raw materials like synthetics instead of cotton, less expensive sources of raw materials like foreign markets instead of American, compromised design like shorter cuffs and thinner thread. Less expensive labor to produce the socks—foreign laborers who would work for a dollar per week.
Walton was still selling the socks for $1.25. The squeeze on producers tightened—ever lower prices = lower quality. The change was subtle. Yes, consumers noticed the socks were thinner and the cuffs shorter. They noticed the lack of cotton and higher synthetic content. They didn’t like knowing that Walton was sending sock production to China, but hey, the socks were cheaper.
We all went along. Oh, gee, look at these low prices! A big store with everything. Now I don’t have to go to a pharmacy, a grocery, a hardware store, a toy store, a fabric shop, and a clothing store. There isn’t as big an assortment here, and they may not have the same product two years in a row, but it’s cheap!
Meanwhile, income had become stagnant. Where is the money?
Walton started hiring executives to push his money around. Find cheaper sources for socks. All synthetic. All made in Bangladesh.
Walton set up his own trucking company to carry his goods. Truck drivers and other transportation workers came to the corporate loading dock hat in hand.
Walton created an in-store brand that monopolized his shelf space at prices still lower than any previous suppliers. He didn’t have to advertise so his price didn’t reflect the advertising costs sustained by other suppliers. Store brand socks were shelved next to name brands at a significantly lower price.
The sock now costs Walton 25¢. He sells it at $1.25. All the profit flows to the top. To the richest people in the world, the Walton heirs.
It’s a business model that makes grown men weep. They weep not for the loss of mom and pop stores, of local distributors and truckers, not for lower quality goods and the flood of American jobs rushing overseas. The men weep in jealousy.
Why didn’t I think of that? I could be rich.
The model has been emulated many times now in the forty years since the Walton model was set in motion. Corporate is the way to go. Big is best. Everything flows up. It’s a matter of time (and not much of it is left) until all production, distribution, and retailing is controlled by a handful of superrich entities like the Walton family.
Want a pair of nice, well-made cotton socks? Guess what? There aren’t any other stores. Nobody makes socks anymore. Now you’ll pay $2.50 a pair for cheap uncomfortable socks made of synthetics in a fire-hazard factory employing children in Bangladesh.
The horses are out of the barn.
And running fast. Need a house or a car? Need a new roof or a new transmission? Despite “Always Lower Prices,” we can hardly afford the basics of daily life. Our earning power has steadily declined while the mega rich get richer. That giant sucking sound is all the money going to the top.
The solution to your lousy cash flow? Charge it!
The obscenely rich get rich not only by monopolizing the production, distribution, and sale of consumer goods but also by making their money available for your credit. How nice of them! Take your time paying them back—they’ll only charge 15-25% interest. Never mind that you’ll never emerge from debt. This is the new form of slavery.
The superrich have wrangled their way into our political process, our daily lives, and the infrastructure upon which we depend for everything from roads to medical care. Our brightest, most ambitious kids leave college to enter life as indentured servants. They’ll spend ten, twenty, or thirty years trying to pay off student loans—more of the financial empire of the superrich.
In a world where every decision is about profits, there is little hope for the average man. We live our lives in debt, ensuring that we never have time to foment rebellion or even learn enough to question the status quo. The moguls fold their arms and smile down, teasing us along with bits and pieces, at least enough to feed the myth of capitalism’s promise. The great American dream—we wouldn’t want to stand in the way of the little man who thinks he’ll strike it rich.
I can hear the naysayers now. Apologists for greed, for the corporate regime. Look at all the products we have now—all kinds of socks we never had before. But do we need to pay $6 for pink and purple socks? How do we know local producers wouldn’t have offered the same socks for $3?
We knew it wasn’t magic. We knew that the wealth had to come from somewhere. We just didn’t reckon on it coming from us.
Are we hardwired to grovel at the king’s feet, no matter the current incarnation?
Never mind the rebels who try to ‘buy local’ and think outside the box. They’re throwing rocks across the moat.
We wouldn’t want to allow workers to organize for better pay and better working conditions. That might limit profits and you know how all that trickles down.
We wouldn’t want to bust open Wall Street or cap pay for corporate executives—after all, they’re the geniuses who make the world go round.
Is it really any surprise that so much in our nation has devolved into violence? We did this to ourselves. This is our legacy.
We set foot on American shores and through violence eradicated the bulk of the indigenous population. We justified our killing with belief in our superiority, our ‘divine right’ to the land and its resources. Unlike the Natives, we carried a Bible and guns so we concluded God wanted us to have it. Might makes right.
Since the beginning, our westward migration progressed under the rationale that we ‘discovered’ gold and silver, ‘harvested’ virgin timber and furs, and settled the ‘wild’ lands. We wrested wealth from the soil by enslaving not only the surviving Natives but imported Africans and Asians. These ‘lesser’ creatures deserved to be subdued just as a work animal yearns for the yoke. They should thank us.
All to the glory of God, who showed us the path to our greatness.
In truth, our nation became rich not because we’re so clever or God’s chosen people but because we stumbled onto a pristine continent. The world’s civilizations had not risen here, had not built their empires, waged their wars, suffered plague and famine here. The Americas weren’t like the rest of the world’s continents, already ravaged by millennia of man’s turmoil.
We Europeans who invaded this land became rich through accidental opportunity, theft, and violence.
And when the land had been conquered, when the virgin forests had been cut and the hillsides left to erode, when the gold and silver had been mined and the waste pits left to leach impurities into the streams, when the frontier came to a screeching halt at the Pacific shore, we turned on ourselves.
With our eye on the prize, we killed anyone who got in our way. Natives, former slaves, immigrants, those too poor or too weak to stand up for themselves—they were cast to the edges to starve. Or lynched. Taught their place away from our table.
Then the mid-twentieth century arrived with its transformative movements on behalf of the poor, the Black and Native, the handicapped, the gay, and the women, all the people whose subjugation had enabled the white patriarchy to herald its God-given triumph.
The power structure reeled in shock.
Assassinations followed. And the war on drugs, a less obvious form of assassination. It wasn’t drugs that subsequently filled our prisons. It wasn’t drugs who became disenfranchised and even more marginalized. Drugs were the tool, the label selectively wielded against those who threatened the system.
For many in the underclass, the black market in drugs became the only means to reach for the American dream. The bait. The wealth of those markets and the inherent lack of regulation led to the current open warfare in our inner cities. In our war against our own people, we have set our law enforcement against our neighborhoods. We have armed them with military weapons and tactics. We have hidden behind our curtains as they firebombed apartment buildings and battered in doors.
We chose to ignore what we’d learned from alcohol prohibition, that such policies not only failed in their stated intent but also gave rise to even worse consequences. We knew that tax dollars invested in education, in mental health care, and in social support would eventually pay dividends in a healthier more vibrant society. Not prisons. Not guns.
We turned away from what we knew because we were taught fear by those with their own agendas—wealth and power at any cost. Fear higher taxes. Fear the government. Fear programs that help the poor.
Everything we should have gladly given became ‘taken.’
What if we hoard all the guns that can be made? What if our barns, our spare bedrooms, bristle with automatic weapons and crates of ammunition? Does that make us safe?
Safe from whom? From the random madman who lurks unknown in suburbia until the day he pulls the trigger? How will you know today is the day, the school is the place, that you should appear with your loaded gun in hand? None of the mass shootings of the last thirty years have been stopped by an armed citizen.
Safe from gangs roaming the dark streets of a declining city? Why bother? They’re killing each other by the hundreds.
From the government? Obviously you haven’t thought this through. Your spare room arsenal, your heavily armed survival shelter, will last about one nanosecond once the U. S. military decides you’re the target. If the Apache helicopters with Hellfire missiles don’t pound you, the fighter jets, Abrams tanks, and missiles launched from drones surely will. Get over yourself.
Now that we’ve had this friendly chat, can you calm down long enough to talk reason? Let go of the gun. Come, let us sit together.
Poor things, we have become islands of fear. We suffer existential crisis. Torn from our historical and biological roots, we are caught up in a world of machines and corporations. We don’t know our neighbors. Our communities have shrunk to a small circle of friends. We are beleaguered, lonely, and overwhelmed.
We need naps after lunch, long walks in nature, communion around campfires. We haven’t evolved fast enough to keep up with the culture. We’re not ready to travel sixty miles an hour.
We are physically ill—overweight, strung out on prescription drugs, anxious, and undernourished. What we take into our mouths becomes our energy, our blood, our skin. Yet much of our food is short on nutrition and long on adulterants. How can we think clearly or feel anything but cornered with flavored dross in our veins? We use caffeine to put one foot in front of the other.
In this melting pot of a nation, we cling to rituals that have lost their meaning. There’s no passage in our rites of teenage drunkenness, no ‘arrival’ in our coming of age. What is our totem, our spirit guide? Our ceremonies are shells of their former meaning dolled up in slick packages.
Even now, after all this, we have the opportunity to evolve. Live up to our dream. Turn away from our violent past and join together in creating solutions to all that ails us.
We don’t have to create armed camps in our midst. We don’t have to teach our young that violence is the solution. We’ve been too lazy to learn and think, too distracted to look beyond our television. Too eager to label and blame the Other for problems we’ve brought onto ourselves.
Too damn busy trying to stay afloat. Trying to have it all.
Can we save the dream of our nation? Is it too late to make love not war? Too late to treat our neighbors as ourselves? Let’s invest our energy and resources in solutions–interventions for those teetering on the edge of mental illness, for disrupted families and children. Pour our money into schools and teachers, not prisons and guards. Free health clinics in every community with counseling for anyone who walks in the door–that day, that moment. Not after someone brings in proof of income and household bills, not after a two week wait.
We embrace delusions of a past that never was. We got lucky. We got spoiled. We want too much and if we can’t have it, it’s somebody else’s fault. The immigrant’s fault that we can’t buy a new car. The poor man’s fault that our groceries cost so much. The gay man’s fault that our marriage failed.
The police are not yet a force unto themselves but they’re moving closer, fed by fear. Their job is to enforce the laws. The laws are not made by the police. They are made by our elected representatives. Our. Elected. Representatives.
Us.
The free ride is over. The trees are cut, the gold nuggets found. The frontier lies within.
A visiting guinea? A ‘possum in the dining room? What strange and wondrous occurrences can one expect while living on an Ozark mountaintop for thirty-five years?
denelecampbell 