Helena

handbasket...

…is where we’re going, if we don’t straighten course.

From Sloan’s house, it’s not too far to Helena, and you make good time on the I-15, even during morning commute; it appears that the approach to the capitol city from the North has no rush hour- yay Montana!

Lewis and Clark Library, Helena. Say what you want about the decline of the nation, but our libraries are still pretty cool. Of course the librarians are all woke, and they choose which books are stocked and featured, but at least there are great spaces for reading and working on the laptop, if you don’t mind the wifi radiation soup you’re swimming in.

Helena library has a little coffee shop nook you can hang out at if you arrive before opening, and share the warmth with some of the local bums. I killed an hour here writing my Kalispell post, then Lukas and I tooled around downtown a bit.

You would hope for a bit more bustle and action in the downtown corridor of our capitol city, but I guess Montanans are like Americans everywhere; they’d rather shop, eat and work where they don’t have to walk more than 60 feet from their cars, box-store type architecture and all. Plus the bathrooms in the pubs and restaurants around here, though clean, are yucky with old plumbing, while Chick Filet is clean and neeeuw!

Maybe there’s an evening scene here that spices things up a bit. I hope so- downtown Helena has some cool, old buildings.

I thought this place was a real mosque, built recently- a sign of the times. But actually it’s quite old- built in the 20’s and is actually the Civic Center. Looks like the Masons had a hand in this one. There’s a cool, old auditorium that was once the 7th largest in America.

This abomination is only a couple blocks from the Cathedral. Thanks, Methodists!

How do you build something modern that can compete with the beauty of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical, or even Art Deco for that matter? It’s a tall order. I hope the Methodists didn’t demolish an older, brick and stone church to put up that monstrosity. It’s hard to compete with the Catholics, but there was an era when Presbyterians and Episcopalians and some others did their best and built some marvelous structures, which are still in use. Here is what they’re competing with in Helena:

Are we in France, or central Montana?

Seriously, I felt like I was in Germany or something. The cathedral is gorgeous.

Catholic universities may promote all the woke thinking crushing the West, but at least this church hasn’t apologized for Columbus, yet. (middle panel, 2nd tier)

They softly pump in Gregorian chants. The acoustics are good and I found myself poking around for an entrance to a room where the men’s choir was rehearsing.

Time was getting on so we left the ethereal and pressed on to the sausage factory, otherwise known as the capitol.

See what I mean by neo-classical? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em with a revival style!

Sturdy architectural beauty, so you don’t suspect that this is where the sausage is made (as in pork spending, backroom deals, palm greasing, squalid compromises, corruption of all sorts).

The inside was nice too:

Hey, I know you!

If you haven’t seen our kla.tv piece on Jeannette Rankin, you should definitely check it out. With me and Lukas on video, and the Bitterroot team doing voice-overs, it was truly a local, grassroots production, but real spiffy like all kla stuff (shout out to Frankfurt team for editing, of course).

Office of the Governor, proudly flying Old Glory, the state flag, and…wha??

Look, don’t get me wrong. Tidings of peace and prosperity to all nations and peoples! But there’s something that bugs me about having this Israeli flag outside the governor’s office. I decided to go into the office and inquire about it.

Dan- Hi.

Secretary dude- Hello sir. Can I help you?

D- Yeah, I was just looking at your Israel flag and was wondering if there’s some kind of event or something coming up.

He paused, then said, “Uh, not that I know of.”

D- So, do you usually fly foreign nation’s flags here inside the Capitol?

S- No, not usually.

D- OK. Are you familiar with Washington’s…George Washington’s words about foreign alliances?

S- Uh, I don’t think so.

D- He said that we should have no permanent foreign alliances. I wonder what the governor would think about those words and his showing of support for Israel by displaying that flag.

S- Well, I don’t know what he’d think about that, but in light of current events the governor thought it was appropriate to show his support.

D- Gotcha. OK, thanks.

If you’re thinking, Sheesh, Shumway, it’s just a flag and can’t we show a little solidarity with the recent victims of Hamas’ campaign of terror?

My answer: I think there is nothing ‘recent’ about favoring Israel above all other considerations or allowing our foreign policy to be dictated by Zionist interests. The war in Gaza just provides a good excuse for Governor Gianforte to show his support to current and future donors, to help keep him in office, and perhaps achieve higher office! In this regard he’s probably of the same mind-set as RFK jr. and our feckless Congress who gave Bibi a bazillion standing ovations at the US Capitol- If you want higher office, you have to bow to Israel.

This from a recent article by Phillip Giraldi you might check out: And being joined at the hip to the Jewish state has a considerable downside, requiring the use of the US United Nations veto at regular intervals to protect the client state as well as involvement in unneeded wars in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Libya with Iran coming up next.

Unneeded wars. That should be on a plaque at the entrance to the Pentagon. And besides our hijacked foreign policy, there’s something else here that worries me. Many states in our nation have enacted measures which disallow or even criminalize criticism or boycotts of Israel in public institutions like universities. Covid ‘hero’ Ron DeSantis signed such a bill in Tel Aviv, for crying out loud! Bills that limit our free speech, signed on foreign shores, are about as un-American as you can get! I don’t know if there are plans for Montana to adopt such laws, but ask yourself, would a governor who flies the Israeli flag be more or less likely to support these anti-1st amendment laws than one who doesn’t?

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After that little encounter, in need of solace and spiritual fortification, I headed out to the front steps to consult Jesus about it.

Some people really take their calling seriously. This guy was the real deal: head to toe garment (of single woven material of course, as per Deut. 22:11), rough sandals (not comfy Birkenstocks), full beard, plus Bible and shofar, which he had blown to wake up the spiritually dead here in the Capitol before he got to the scripture reading.

I stood by brother Ezekiel while he read from Ecclesiastes, and waited for him to finish. He was quite friendly and we struck up a decent-length conversation. It was windy and cold, and looking at his thin garment, better suited for fair-weather carpentry work in Nazareth, I said, “Hey man, if you’re freezing you don’t have to hang around and yack with me.”

-Oh, no problem. I really enjoy it!

-So, what are you doing, exactly?

Ezekiel explained that God had instructed him to travel to all of the lower 48 to spread the message of Yahusha, the correct name for Christ. (Nope, sorry Yeshua fans, if you’re going whole hog you’ve got to use ancient Hebrew, not modern.)

He stands before capitol buildings to rebuke and warn our lawmakers, and remind them of Yahua’s (again, you modernizers, not Yahweh’s) plan for us. He brings his Torah (old Testament more or less) and reads about ten minutes of scripture, or maybe more, unless you’re standing next to him, and then he’ll strike up a conversation with you and tell you about his journey in faith, including pilgrimages to Israel and such. Zeke is happy to share with you.

This will be an interesting topic for a post or BBR feature some day, and I’ll not get into everything we talked about, except for one thing. He references the Torah* a lot and seems to oppose referring to it as the Old Testament. I asked Ezekiel, “Are you familiar with Talmudic Judaism?”

-Oh yes.

-And would you say that the majority of Jews today practice Talmudic, or Torah Judaism?

-Oh, Talmudic, absolutely.

And not being a Bible scholar, I’ll leave it at that. Perhaps one day Ezekiel will be willing to face Pastor Chuck Baldwin in a debate about Talmudic and Torahic, New Covenant vs. Old, Saturday worship vs. Sunday, bacon vs. no bacon, cross vs. menorah, shofar vs. trumpet, and all that fun stuff. Maybe it will be a segment of a regular feature on BBR, Friday Night at the Fights (debates). How’s that sound?

*I’m assuming Zeke uses the word Torah in the wider sense as the whole of the Hebrew Bible, not just the Pentateuch, but I could be mistaken.