A tale of Two Worlds
TGIF! Now I can pay some attention to the accumulating dung heap of bad news.
Pond work hasn’t even hit stride yet as the weather warms, but management is keeping me busy- they are friends as well as bosses and they know I need the work. Bill’s (president) wife Melissa knows about my journalistic delusions goals however and yesterday asked, in a friendly manner, “So Dan, is Perky Pelican keeping you from your Substack and BBR work?” I just shrugged, and didn’t answer, “Yes, please cut my hours so I can stop eating and get back to my side work telling the world how crummy things are.”
The only news I hear about during the week is either in the local free paper or the brief stretch of NPR broadcast in between the time my clock radio alarm goes off and the first advertisement when I slam the snooze button. Yes, I call the sponsorship announcements advertising. They are done by a local female with the insufferable NPR pleasant-voice theatrics and I’d sooner listen to a hyped-up, 100% phony-baloney sounding add for debt consolidation on AM radio. As for the local rag, Wednesday was free paper day and the headline was, Chamber adds outreach coordinator.
I should have been an outreach coordinator. I think that was my true calling. Imagine the fun at parties.
-What do you do, Dan?
-I’m an outreach coordinator.
-Oh. Interesting…Hey where did you get that lime cooler? I think I’ll get myself one.
The below-the-fold headlines was Measles cases confirmed in Montana. Katy, bar the door! Time again for masks, lockdowns, uni-directional supermarket shopping and general panic I guess.
Page 3 had a full-page article on dog training. Nested quote: “I love it! I love animals and I love helping people.” -Patty Johnson
Page 2 had a big picture of 8 high-school kids, 6 girls and 2 boys, sharply dressed in navy-blue uniforms- boys in slacks, girls in skirts and heels. They were all smiling and all were blonde- God Bless Montana! The article title was State FFA convention held. Here’s proof I’m a benighted foreigner in these parts- nowhere in the article does it say what the FFA is; you’re just supposed to know. The Bitterroot Bugle has done this before, start with an acronym and never tell you what it stands for. I bet if I asked Ed Masterson or Clay Moore or Sandy Sundstrom they would know immediately what the acronym meant. Anyway, it’s obviously some 4H-type farm organization.
So the reason I titled this piece Tale of Two Worlds was because there are two realities to my current existence. One is the world of news and information- stuff that I get from books and screens- the internet and texts from friends who, like me, search the depths of the rabbit hole. The other is just the physical reality of daily routine: get up, coffee, pond work, sunburnt neck, cracked, dry hands, sore back, Miller Time, shower, laundry, dinner, Saturday breakfast, Sunday fellowship, Sunday soccer, M-F light morning dread, mid-morning happiness, afternoon exhaustion, Monday bridge with the seniors, hope, despair, mirth, repeat. In either of these worlds there is no boredom, thank God.
Speaking of two worlds, I’m reading The Sea Wolf, by Jack London. Oh, now this is a good yarn! How did I miss it? It reminds me a little of my current situation. The hero of the story, Van Weyden, has his life turned upside down when the ferry he’s riding collides with a freighter in the San Francisco Bay fog and he finds himself carried by the strong ebb tide, past the Golden Gate and out to sea, to be rescued by a seal-hunting schooner where he is impressed and doomed to serve in quasi slavery on the high seas. Wolf Larsen is the bestial but well-read and intelligent captain who puts the entire crew through hell. Van Weyden is hardly fit for such an ordeal. He’s lived a comfortable, high-class academic life and knows little about hardship, sailing, and the crude characters on a seal-hunting ship. I see a little of myself in Van Weyden! After a life in education, meaning indoor cush, everything was turned upside down by the disaster of Covid. I come to Montana and befriend people who actually know how to do stuff with their hands. I’m expected to learn to do a few things myself, like work outdoors in the cold and learn how to use hand tools and power tools. I’m no good at it at first but I learn quickly and like Van Weyden, become an expert tolerably competent, sort of. And one of my main tutors is a crew captain named Hansen, close enough to Larsen, also well-read, intelligent and a bit of a beast! And now I enjoy working outdoors, cleaning ponds, installing aeration, spraying biologics, organizing crews, chatting with customers, etc. And sometimes I feel like I could just pretend that things are as they are supposed to be and not worry about all this truth-telling stuff. Watch my kids as they enter adulthood. Wait for grandkids. Keep playing bridge and soccer. Send money back to Japan. Enjoy the sun and fresh air. Read a book after work instead of check the twitter aint-it-awful stream, etc.
But obviously this isn’t a good way to stay informed and sharp- kind of necessary if you are going to pretend to be a solid interviewer and news-and-opinion radio station manager.
On that note let’s get back to hideous reality and take a look at today’s headline and offer some expert commentary.
That was actually two weeks ago. I preface with that older headline because the good prince features in today’s news (plus I like the title, Prince Andrew wipes his brow.) The news for today is that Virginia Giuffre, who announced that she would succumb to her injuries, chose to commit suicide instead.
The Liberty Daily made no mention of Giuffre’s death. They’re too busy fawning over Trump and calling out Chyna.
comment: If nobody is prosecuted for the Epstien stuff, and nobody is prosecuted for the Covid scam, and Cap’n Warp Speed never apologizes or admits wrong doing with his clot shot, and they keep deporting people for political opinions not immigration status, and they keep throwing people in super-max prisons without a trial, and they gut the 1st amendment in deference to the Zionists who run this country, how about we just take our hopium and blow it out our ass and admit that it’s time for a revolution.
Until recently I assumed that the Epstein story was real and not manufactured like almost everything else in the news. Since I am an avid Miles Mathis reader, I am surprised that he waited so long to treat this story or perhaps I missed it but anyway Guifre claims she was hit by a school bus going 110 mph. The picture of her after the alleged accident isn’t believable nor is a school bus going 110 mph. If you look closely at the alleged photo of Prince Andrew you can see that it looks unnatural. That’s because it’s a pasteup. Andrew has been photo shopped in and so has Maxwell whose lighting is much darker. https://mileswmathis.com/amend.pdf
Good word, Dan.
This is the first article I opened up this morning and I thought about commenting on the last paragraph, but moved on to the second article, from which I pulled the last paragraph, as seen below.
"For people to work with the type of energetic attitude reminiscent of the post-war era you have to give them hope; and for now, despite Trump’s blustery chest-beating, unearned “2028 campaign” teasers, and other party gimmicks, down in the real beating heart of society, amidst rising prices and looming threats of war, there isn’t much of that hope to go around yet." -- https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/trump-blinks-signaling-pivotal-shift
Interesting one-two punch! Both mention hope, both sound a note of intense frustration with the current system.
Unfortunately, as it stands right now, the average citizen of the West knows that prosperity and security originates with and arises from the deity "...from which all blessings flow...", the System which produces worthless fiat money, extreme debt and humongous interest payments, eternal wars and devastation on a large scale, and the ruination of societies and peoples world-wide. Until this perception changes, we will continue to sink deeper and deeper into the Pit of Despair, hoping against hope that something, anything, will break in our favor.
An attitude adjustment is in order. Change the way we think and we will change the way we act. Repentance, in other words. Our hope comes from God, not the State, and it is apparent that the State is crumbling and falling apart, as is "hope" in the statist system. Yet, despite all that we see around us, there is still sufficient belief in it to prevent a true revolution, one which begins in the hearts of individuals and permeates outward.
After all, who will build the roads?