About William Dudley Bass

Author, Analyst, Creative Freelance Writer, Speaker, Storyteller, Adventurer

Deer Park to Maiden Peak along the Grand Ridge Trail: A Birthday Dayhike

Two old friends head out on a blustery day hike in Washington’s Olympic National Park to celebrate  the younger one turning half a century old in late August of 2023

* NOTE: This foto-essay has 61 fotos & 8 short videos. Enjoy! *

Views out across Olympic National Park from the Grand Ridge Trail, Tuesday 29 August 2023.

Edan Z & William B on the “Happy Birthday Trail.” We had planned to celebrate Edan’s birthday together out in nature. Edan chose the hike, and I provided the car & gas. 

Yuppers, we’re only 50 & 64 years in age. Hey, do you like my bonnet? LOL! It’s a sun hat to help me prevent a recurrence of skin cancer.

Rugged old mountains shredding clouds in the wind.

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Intentional Communities and Good Neighbors

Sometimes it’s time to change

A major revelation occurred while sick with the flu recently. First time ill with influenza in many, many years, and I was vaccinated, too. During my illness and recovery, however, insights emerged for me to understand and now share. Have struggled in recent years with the idea of living in an intentional community. Struggled with the pros and cons of people choosing cooperative living. Grew up in a conventional nuclear family. Much of my adult life, however, was spent living in intentional communities of one kind or another, and also with others in quasi-or-semi-intentional communities. I’d placed high value on sharing resources, minimizing individual space, minimizing expenses, supporting each other in living the lives we chose, and all the joys and life lessons from living cooperatively with other people. ICs made economic, environmental, and ecological sense. One learned and improved skills in effective communication and conflict resolution. Such communities were a great cure for loneliness and a wonderful place both to raise children and to age in grace. People had the freedom to explore and practice living alternative lifestyles such as polyamory. They provided a network for spontaneous social interaction of a kind rapidly disappearing from our fractured, mobile, technologically-focused civilization.  Continue reading

Nikki Haley and Racism in the American Country

Yes, slavery caused the Civil War. Remember the Race Wars that followed. Remember the genocide of Indigenous Americans. Learn the truth.

Nikki Haley blew it with her clumsy responses to questions from her audience regarding the causes of the American Civil War and whether or not the United States is a racist nation. She bungled this during a campaign rally in New Hampshire in late December 2023. Found this sad and disturbing. Why? Because I like Nikki Haley even tho I disagree with her on a number of domestic policy and social justice issues. I won’t waste my vote as a protest in favor of a third party candidate. President Joe Biden is too timid and wobbly when it comes to national security and waging war. He did a great job up to his shameful abandonment of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Biden was nearly FDRian during his first year and a half as POTUS in the manner he pulled the nation out of the chaotic near-collapse the Usurper Trump had pulled America down into. 

Now the tribulations of being elderly have caught up to him. It’s painfully obvious, embarrassing, and dangerous. The vice president who once elevated his ticket as a candidate is equally painfully way in over her head a la the Peter Principle. Kamala Harris is now a burden. Nikki Haley, however, is razor sharp, blazingly brilliant, witty, and surgically precise. She can be folksy and wonky and a spitfire all at the same time. This South Carolinian daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants is fierce, combative, and courageous. She’s accomplished as a former two-term governor and UN ambassador. Yes, she’s too conservative for me on many domestic issues. She’s anti-woke but not asleep, a rare combination these days. She failed and continues to fail to call out Donald Trump for what he truly is: a fascist, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, bullying usurper and traitor. She even vowed to support Trump in the first Republican debate back in 2023 even tho she derides him for his chaos and even tho Trump refuses to debate. Haley may be moving towards revoking her past promise to support Trump if he’s the GOP nominee as she currently escalates her criticism of the Usurper as chaotic and incompetent. In her surprise cold opening on a recent Saturday Night Live episode in early February of this year, Haley roasted Trump as a buffoon. She challenged the goofy loser, portrayed by Nashville native, actor, and comedian James Austin Johnson, to a mental competency test. Trump, or rather the man behaving as Trump, flubbed it in the silly skit designed to drive the Red Maggots mad. Continue reading

What would the coming world war look like?

Postmodern Medieval Pandemonium with AI & Nukes

We often seemed trapped in the past regardless of how far we peer into the future. It’s part of human nature. We trust in what we know. Or, rather, we believe in what we think we know. So future world wars may be more kinetic than World Wars 1 and 2 with missiles, rockets, cyberattacks, killer robots, swarms of AI drones, economic strangulation, space combat, EMPs, and total mobilization of the nation by the state. Then as the losing side, or rather those who fear to be losing, grow desperate, they resort to messy chemical and biological weapons. At some point they unleash nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. The other side does the same almost simultaneously. Humanity and most life in Earth ends in a scared fury of omnicidal madness.

A future world war may resemble the European Wars of Religion more than the Second World War. Nation-state regimes lose their power and status as stateless-nations, religious groups, and ethnic tribes reassert themselves. In addition, other non-state actors such as terrorist groups, transnational corporations, mercenary groups, criminal gangs and cartels, and private militias continue to assert themselves. The Westphalian System of governance breaks down as a neo-feudal, neo-medievalist world with current technology rises into primacy. Instead of world government, even a democratic world republic, we get a hodgepodge of overlapping, quarreling jurisdictions waving many flags. Continue reading

Text to a Young Friend for Thanksgiving

While hanging out with a friend and his son, a young adult, watching football, debated and wondered if he should reconnect with his family of origin on his mother’s side, especially his grandparents. Should he go over there alone on Thanksgiving? He felt they were estranged. His father had looked forward to spending Thanksgiving with his son, but also encouraged his son to reconnect with his ex-wife’s family. Either way, he would not be alone. Family is community, especially among these particular folks. After giving the topic some thought, I picked up my smartfone after I’d returned home to text the lad. The following is what I wrote: Continue reading

The Fury of Fury

A troublesome film goes incandescent

Recently finished watching Fury. It is a strong, visceral, powerful film in its realistic depiction of combat and the horrors of war. To watch it on a tiny little screen while bouncing around in an airplane would be a grave disservice. Glad I was able to watch it on a large screen Smart TV. It’s so intense I had to stop halfway thru it last night. Glad I came back to finish it, too, as, wow, felt mesmerized, even garbled by the chaos of war. One really must be in the right frame of mind to watch this movie set at the end of the war when the Germans were sending out everyone inc little boys & girls & the elderly to fanatically defend their Fatherland from the Allied invasions…& the Nazis killed their own if they wouldn’t fight. The Germans devastated American and Allied tanks. My goodness, what we humans put ourselves and our world thru as a species. Continue reading

What did I see at the door?

A simple thing becomes an eerie mystery

Was it her? A ghost? What kind of apparition was this? Or was it merely some form of psychological projection from within the mysteries of the mind? Or a projection from her via an unconscious spooky action at a distance entangling time lines and quantum places? Perhaps simply mental errors in the interpretations of what my bodymind perceived amidst reflections of lights on glass conflated with old memories? Doubt is indeed corrosive.

Strode out of the elevator thru the lobby towards the double-doors of the entry to the apartment complex where I lived. My long-time friend Syd was coming over to visit me and my wife Faithlyn this Wednesday evening on the last day of January 2024. Entered the lobby looking down at the floor as I stepped over the boundary between elevator and the lobby floor. Don’t trust those two to be even. Seen too many movies of bad things happening with elevators and elevator shafts. 

Looked up and there she was, standing on the other side of the glass. Syd wore a white rain coat, one I’ve seen here wear many times before. Her longish blonde hair was out and down to her shoulders. The rainwater, glass, and lights slightly distorted her face, as if it was somewhat folded in as she looked back at me. I smiled, looked down to check my clothes, then grunted as I pushed open the glass doors to the lobby to open the outside doors for her. She wasn’t there. What? Confused and perplexed, I pushed open the door and stepped outside. Maybe she had to scoot back to the car? Except there wasn’t anyone there. Whoa…there was not a single human visible anywhere along the sidewalk or walking up to a quarter of a mile away. The only people I saw were off in a few cars and trucks or still back inside the lobby. That was so weird. Our texts indicated she was near so I quickly went down to greet her. Then got a text something urgent came up – she was still at work, I learned later – and would be a half an hour late. She did not already come and leave. Continue reading

The movie Us

Us!

From Apple iPhone Txts from me to Farbie:

OMG This Us movie from 2019 is one creepy shuddery movie! It’s a horrifying horror film, too, with underlying themes of racism, class war, privilege, zombies, shadows, the mirror universe, & demonizing the Other. It is well acted & Lupita Nyong’o is superb playing her dual roles. Scarier than those monster flicks! Continue reading

Is the USA a Republic or a Democracy?

Do we live in a republic or a democracy?

What kind of country do we live in?

One often hears or reads some strict conservative gleefully pointing out with a know-it-all winky wink the United States of America is a republic, not a democracy. Then you encounter progressive liberals speaking and writing frequently of the USA as a democracy. They rarely ever use the term republic. Both claim to speak for the US Constitution while lambasting the other’s interpretations. Some wryly and deliberately use the term capitalist republic, but such a label hasn’t caught on. Furthermore, one encounters so-called conspiracy theorists, people labeled as such by the mainstream mass media who ignore the fact our history is full of real, documented conspiracies from before the assassination of Julius Caesar to beyond the assassination of JFK, who warn and remind the rest of us corporate oligarchies of ultrawealthy elites, the plutocrats of the less than 1%, influence and control matters from behind the scenes. Not to mention the religious types who view us as under divine manipulation or torn between God and the Devil or between other Olde Gods. Or the UFO types who wonder or claim Alien agendas guided by NHIs or Non-Human Intelligences are at play. Others say our country is a nation-state composed of many countries, of many stateless-nations such as indigenous tribes. Yet others laugh at the notion we are a republic and point out we are an empire, a new kind of empire, an extraconstitutional empire of neofeudal transnational corporations and far-flung military bases and interdependent, neo-vassal allies. Continue reading

Kate Z & Moose Dog & Baby Whales & the Lone Ranger & Moose on the AT

A text from a father to his adult daughter morphs into creative chaos

Dylan, my oldest child, moved to New York from Seattle just in time for the Covid Pandemic. Somehow Dylan managed to graduate Summa cum laude (tho too shy to openly admit it) from the New School in Manhattan in 2021 with a Masters in Creative Writing (Nonfiction). They gifted me with a copy of this book from one of their favorite authors. Ms. Zambreno’s writing moved and inspired me as well during those uncertain times. Damn, we still live in uncertain times.

Good Morning over there in New York, dear Elder Daughter, it’s Midnight here in Seattle…

Hey, I still wanna hear more about Moosie Moose Dog^^^ and it dawned on me as I read a little more of Kate Zambreno’s weird, yummiliciously quirky Screen Tests from 2019 and went back to gaze upon its pinkishly pale crimson book color the image there was a horse on the cover. A frickin’ horse! Was so cool to have Kate Z’s black ’n’ white foto of her jamming on a piano peeking thru a jagged, torn fake hole in the book. Cool in a discordian kinda way. Tonight close to midnight an idea dawned on me, damn, that ragged rip in the spacetime of a 2-dimensional image is really a cutout of a flat horse. 

How many times have I peered at this cover? And not realized this? LOL! Perhaps looking hard past her cleavage as if it was merely what it was, a black gown, strapped, dressed for zany Zambreno performances. At least there weren’t any pictures of her baby rolling off the piano bench and falling to the floor to burst out with startled wails. Because her kids were human babies and not baby whales. Baby whales with tails to tell tales in cetacean code? So all these things flashed thru my pretzel brain supercharged with neurodivergence and strong black coffee before wondering if the cowboy on the horse was some weird ode to the Lone Ranger, to those iconic cowboys of old black ’n’ white cinema, or just a Mormon man who smoked cigarettes and drank Pepsi when not inside a church for Latter-Day Saints. But I always got LDS mixed up with LSD. So, was cute little Moose Dog really kidnapped in Seattle?

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Why I left the Radical Left

This is not about the many serious issues we face, but about my experiences and the general mindset of the many groups reacting to these issues from the Far Left side of the spectrum

For what reason did I leave the Far Extremes? Why did I leave the Radical Left? Who cares? Well, I care, and so do the people close to me. When you’re deep in the haze of revolutionary fervor blinded by righteous struggle, Far Extremist groups don’t seem far out at all but quite normal. Go too damn far to the Right or too far to the Left, however, and it’s a buncha damn crazy people. They’re obsessed with ideology. They worship symbols as icons. Their ego is inflated with self-righteousness and a distorted sense of history. Their self-confidence is poisoned by a wild, cerebral mix of low self-esteem buttressed by delusions. They focus on what should be, what could have been, what would come to pass, and what ought to be, not on what is actually true and factual.

So many people I encountered among the Far Extremes are paranoid, revel in feeling oppressed, and live in constant, never-ending “struggle.” And the struggle never ever ends. There’s always the next revolution, another group to demonize, another cause to get enraged and bitter over, and even deaths of “those against us” to celebrate. Acceptance is alien. Forgiveness is mocked. Compassion and empathy are absent. Love is conditional, prosperity scorned unless either shared or aggregated, and we’re all expected to march, fight, and struggle. Fight! Fight! Fight! Struggle! Struggle! Struggle! The big, evil “System” is to be overthrown or infiltrated and demolished. Reform is just a mask. The complexity and range of human nature is reduced to a simple “us versus them” mentality. Science becomes religion. Religion becomes science. Economics becomes politics. Imagine what happens when the race up the Tower becomes a race to the bottom…and one breaks on thru the bottom to the other side?

Economics is held up as some kind of holy religion, but few within these cults bother to check the math. Or even apply the math. Instead most just parrot, and they parrot nonsense. If one keeps hearing 2+2=5 long enough, and hearing it spoken as true by so-called credible authorities, and echoed often by one’s peers, then guess what one assumes is true? Why bother to check the charismatic demagogue’s math? Why have the demaguru and all your new cult friends mad at you and angry enough to revile and ostracize you? Hello? History, the interpretations as well as records of people and events, is instead gazed upon as a mess of tea leaves and goat intestines in search of arrows pointing to utopian futures. Go be the future now! Yeah, right.

Radical used to be a cool word. It means to return to one’s roots. We radicals would return to our roots and rebuild the foundations of civilization. We would destroy and wipe clean the earth to rebuild a better world for all. The problem with this thinking is believing the masses, the common folk, the working classes, whatever, regardless of how difficult their lives may be, would prefer instead to live amidst carnage, destruction, and annihilation. Few of those who have endured revolutions and civil wars have any desire to keep reliving such violence, bloodshed, and hatred in the pursuit of justice. 

A major reason I left radical activism is I grew tired of ideological rigidity and cultish groupthink. History and actual economics were ignored if they did not fit group ideology. Pragmatism and practicality were scoffed at. Any serious attempt to question and challenge ideological authorities led to demonization, ridicule, and ostracism. Group ideology became group idiocy, altho those within the group failed to recognize it as such. So many so-called radical intelligentsia confused critical thinking with harsh criticism of the Other and the Other’s minions. Critical thinking skills had atrophied inside the groups I experienced. Critical thinking was instead replaced by circular thinking and the babble of confirmation biases.  Continue reading

Lucid Coffee: A dream of ice cubes and chocolate

Coffee while Sleeping

Was this a lucid dream? Isn’t a lucid dream one where one is self-aware one is dreaming while dreaming? And unlike an out-of-body experience one can control the dream, or at least direct some degree of actions as a writer writes, a gamer games, or a movie director directs? Well, a big “yes” to all of those questions. This event happened sometime across late Saturday night to Sunday morning of the 4th-5th of November 2023. It wasn’t the first time experiencing a lucid dream either, and it was the first remembered in a very long time.

In the dream I was in the kitchen where I live with my wife in an apartment complex in Shoreline. This is the small city immediately north and northwest of Seattle, south of Edmonds, and west of Lake Forest Park. There was, however, only one person in the dream, me. And the dream rendered apart reality to expose its holographic frailty. Continue reading

Loose Screw Guy

~ Stories from the streets & buses of Seattle, America ~

The time’s about 8 in the morning on Veteran’s Day 2023 in the Pacific Northwest, I’m the son and grandson of United States Navy men from Virginia, and was deemed too deaf to serve when I tried to enlist way back in college. Now I jounce along on the local metro bus as it barreled down Aurora Avenue South from Shoreline into Seattle on my way to work Downtown. The bus is one of those newer red-and-yellow express lane coaches, and already it bounces like some old sad hag tossed up on a trampoline by mean kids at some stupid Animal House frat party. Gosh, I’m losing it already.

My beloved, troubled country is a wreck even tho there’s many promising things going on, too. The wrecks, however, make the evening news. So, like many sick of neverending chaos and political paralysis, I am sick of conservatives and their rigid narrowmindedness. And I’m deathly sick of liberals and their rigid, ideological delusions. I’m sick of them all. Aren’t you? Are are you still yelling at your “brothers and sisters” on the other side? Where the Hell are all the normal folks in the center? The moderates? The so-called Radical Middle? Gone, baby, gone. Gone with the flood. They’ve fled, or have themselves been radicalized by extremists.

We’re long, long gone from the 1970s and 80s when my father used to joke he was a Republican who kept voting Democrat. The centerfolks are so far gone as to be beyond desperation and resignation. Instead they burn with whatever mob comes along as beacons of rage, hate, and stupidity. I know. Aye, I know, dammit, because I used to be one of them. Used to be on the Far Left on most issues and on the Right on others. For years! Liberating myself from these political-economic cults, however, has not made life any easier. Such freedom has allowed me the liberty to see everything with absolute clarity.

Homeless young White man gets on the bus in Shoreline wearing only a white T-shirt and new, too-long blue jeans. He’s tiny, lean, bushy headed, and his jeans are bunched up over dirty sneakers. He’s babbling and gesturing to invisible people. His arms and fingers jerk in jagged jumps like bolts of lightning. He’s not at all smooth in his movements. Even his head turns in rough jerk-and-stops like a robot’s with bent gears. He scares me. Definitely would not want to end up in a fight with someone who reminds me of a rabid raccoon. Temps outside are now in the 40s. Got down into the 30s overnight. It’s wet outside. Damp and misty. He’s cold. Exhibits what seem to be signs of schizophrenia, but I don’t know for certain. He sits down hard in the seat across the aisle from where I sit, so hard its almost as if he plunged down from Outer Space.

The man seems oblivious to the cold other than pulling his t-shirt up over his face for a moment or two, then he stares around seeing thru everyone on the bus as if we’re all invisible to him, but he can see all those people invisible to us. Or entities. His speech is intelligent gibberish, and he jabs his finger around the bus as those invisible creatures up in the air. I feel if he actually saw me, and if had an axe in his hands, he would immediately render open my skull out of some mix of unrestrained curiosity and evil duty to some prehistoric old god whose call he is unable to resist. Continue reading

Are we the Cows?

Are we?

This regards my comment upon Ryan Robbins, aka UFO Jesus’s YouTube channel, Post Disclosure World, video “David Grusch Speaks: Unpacking Key Quotes from New Documentary!” 6 Oct 2023.

As I responded to Mr. Robbins astute observations these Non-Human Intelligences or NHIs are “a mixed bag” of “dark with light…just like humans.” We may be generous and compassionate, but we also kill and eat sweet ol’ cows for food. Yes? Are we malevolent or benevolent for killing cows to chop and grind them up for food? No, not really, altho the cows may think so! Perhaps at least some of those Alien species are the same way?

His references to cows, humans, and “lower sentient species” reminded me of the brilliant journalist and researcher Linda Moulton Howe’s trailblazing work on animal mutilations, primarily those of tens of thousands of cattle and horses. There are cases of other animals as well, including a few of us humans.  Continue reading

President Biden’s Inflection Point

Pay attention to what the American President … and the Chair of the Fed declared

Inflection Point with what’s next. On a rare, hand drawn graph…

“Good evening, my fellow Americans.  We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.” ~ from President Joe Biden’s Address to the Nation Thursday night on the 19th of October 2023.

“We’re facing an inflection point in history…”

Those words are significant. He’s preparing the world for war.

“That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight. “ Except he really did not further address the inflection point. Continue reading

Drunks in the Parking Lot

~ an urban vignette ~

Old Black man sat bundled up in the sun with a ragged, cardboard sign propped up on his knees begging for help. He sat on the sidewalk with his back to the brick building of the Walgreens drugstore. The sidewalk was stained with gum. Torn candy wrappers and cigarette packs and bottle tops and wadded up tissues littered the area next to the store and out in the parking lot next to a line of trees and bushes. A dusty Subaru Crosstrek with a mud-encrusted mountain bike locked on top sat in the back of the lot. Some traveler looking for a place to pull over and nap before pushing on to the next adventure. The old gentleman sitting on the sidewalk wore a large, helmet-like hat with big, fuzzy earflaps. The outside of the hat was a dark-grey, and the fuzzy fur on the inside was an orangey yellow. He never spoke. Nor did I. All kinds of humans ambled by, either lost in their own worlds or staring all around on the look out for crazed, desperate folks lacking emotional self-control but possessing guns, knives, syringes, and drugs. 

My prescriptions were ready for pick-up. As I walked across the parking lot to enter the store, the Walgreens in Shoreline immediately north of the Seattle border, a car almost ran over the sidewalk and into the old guy sitting silently with his big, Elmer Fudd hat on. A sedan with WA plates lurched in from Aurora Avenue, slammed into the high curb of the Walgreens sidewalk, bounced with a jolt, and stop. Was a hard park. The beggar man on the sidewalk didn’t even seem to flinch. Maybe he wasn’t all aware. Or maybe he was astutely aware. Continue reading

Fone Guy & Eye Patch Man

Stories from the Streets and Buses of Seattle

First noticed Fone Guy at a bus stop sitting inside the shelter on a wet, wintry day speaking passionately into his old-style flip fone while I waited for the bus. His voice was as crisp and clear as a lawyer arguing in court and as fiery as a street activist bellowing into a bullhorn. Most of the time, however, he could’ve been one of those YouTubers pontificating like Joe Rogan on the state of everything from wars to boxing matches. We were up in the north end of the City of Seattle where the neighborhoods of Greenwood, Bitter Lake, Carkeek Park/Broadview, and Crown Hill come together in one of Seattle’s somewhat chaotic, funky, octopus intersections. There I stamped around waiting for the southbound # 5 to head south down thru Greenwood and up along Phinney Ridge. Fone Guy was dressed like a laborer but without any particular jobsite uniform. His heavy coats hung open around his burly, middle-aged frame. Dawned on me he was probably homeless and the bus stop shelter was his office. In those moments, however, he was King of the Shelter and Emperor of the Flip-Fone. Continue reading

Tears for Years over Eons of Blood

Cry. Suffer. Violence. Cry all time. People suffer. No one cares. Just make money & go go go like a UFO!

Violence carves up the news. Violence renders history. Mutilates art. Destroys life. New wars break out as yet more bloody reruns of neverending dramas. Tears flow for years and years then dry up as deserts fill with sand and dust. Years of tears. The biggest desert, however, is the ocean, and it is full of salt.

Recently watched HBO dramas The Pacific and Band of Brothers on Netflix about American units in the Second World War. Was appalled by the savagery of high intensity combat. These shows captured the ultimate essence of violence, it’s banality and senseless destruction as well as how those contradict with the necessity for violence and survival. Grim. I felt the same watching the horrors of melee combat in films set in Ancient times such as The Gladiator and The Eagle. Felt the same grimness watching the Medieval combat within The Last Kingdom series, Braveheart, and shows set in the Crusades. First World War movies such as every version of All Quiet on the Western Front and 1917. There are amazing war films and shows set in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, and many others whose titles jumble together in a carnage of memories set free with tears. The glory and the heroism itself brings tears as well as the horror of heroism.

Oh, the vastness of wars stretched out over time and place. Who remembers those where many hundreds and many thousands died in longago wars and battles so remote in the mind even history buffs must look them up? There are wars lost to history where not even the names and places are remembered. Often the tribes, cities, and civilizations of everyone and anyone who could and would are extinct. Continue reading

Little Boy with Toy Truck

A little Seattle vignette

The ramp in the story. We staff were rearranging the store as we transitioned from spring and summer to fall and winter.

A child, one little boy – maybe two, three years old at the most – pushes a yellow, toy Tonka truck down the ramp here at work in the Downtown Seattle REI store. He’s fierce, determined, and lost in focused joy. His Mom stands at the top of the ramp watching, bemused, as he takes off a pushin’. My coworker the Bandana Man stood near the bottom and off to the side, chuckling, chuckling hard enough to make his belly shake. Continue reading

Ripples Sparkling in the Sunset

From a magickal evening at Lime Kiln Point State Park, San Juan Island, Washington

Ripples sparkle in the sunset on our honeymoon.

Faithlyn and I, newlyweds, sat in a restaurant on the edge of Friday Harbor and asked our server where do locals go to enjoy the best sunsets. 

“At the old lighthouse at Lime Kiln!” she blurted as she stood up straight with a grin. “My parents used to run the lighthouse there back when it was a real, working lighthouse.”

So that’s where we went. Continue reading

The Girl at the Register

A vignette, stark & blurry

The girl working the register is sick. Red faced, sniffling, swallowing repeatedly, more sniffling, sneezing, watery eyes…don’t know & can’t tell if she suffers from allergies or sinusitis or, hell, the latest, horrible variant of COVID-19, but she looks so miserable. I feel sad for her. Neither one of us wears a mask. Continue reading

Sitting in my car like a man sitting on his horse back in the day before horseless motor carriages were a thang

Yup

Here you are

and

Here I am

Sitting in my car like a man
sitting on his horse back in the day before horseless motor carriages were a thang Continue reading

Street Scenes from the Neighborhood

Three Vignettes from Shoreline, a small satellite city on the NW border of Seattle

There’s a mentally unstable young bearded White fella dancing, leaping, and spinning around in the intersection of N. 155th and Aurora 99 near our apartment complex in the south-central Shoreline neighborhood of Westminster. He’s acting like a dumb ass goofball. The man dramatically waves around a cardboard sign as he squats and jumps as he begs for money. He acts silly because maybe he thinks his showing off out in the streets looks cute, but all he’s really doing is pissing off every driver around as he frolics right out there in the middle of the road as if he’s up on stage. At least he got some pants on, a pair of blue tropical-print board shorts. And they’re pulled up, too. Some folks out on the streets don’t even have their britches up.

Had noticed him earlier as I drove uphill to the pharmacy at Walgreens. Passed him crouching at the corner of McDonalds munching fiercely on whatever food he got a hold of. He chewed in a hurry as he peered all around with feral intensity. Reminded me of a wild beast backed into a corner and about to pounce up into your face. 

Drove into the parking lot at Walgreens and stopped. Parked. Garbage was strewn around the store on the Shoreline side of the Seattle boundary. Most of it was the kind usually associated with the trash left behind by homeless people and too many lazy ass bus riders who don’t give a shit about much of anything anymore. Not just metro riders either. Saw plenty of people pull up in cars, park, open their doors, and toss handfuls of garbage out across the pavement. A primal urge rose up, a desire to slam my car into theirs and dart over and smash them in their stupid fucking heads with … something … a caste-iron granny skillet, and, of course, the feelings pass and I shrug and let it all go like my parents, my teachers, my therapists, and the authorities have showed us over the decades. Yes? Pick your battles. Not worth going to prison over. No right to play god. We aren’t in their shoes. Practice acceptance, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, and agape. Yeah, I get it. Still wanna kick their careless, apathetic, dumb, stupid asses, tho.

There was a young White lady in Walgreens with longish blonde hair, dressed like a hooker in a tight pink stretchy outfit. She’s dirty and bruised. Maybe she’d been evicted from those two sleazy motels the cops shut down the other day on North Aurora for human trafficking, sex slavery, drug dealing, rapes, illegal prostitution, violence, shootings, and even a murder. Minors barely into their teens were being forced into prostitution. There pimps operated them out of the Seattle Inn and the Emerald Motel. Some pimps were teenagers themselves. All those hookers, however, had and have to go somewhere. Saw this woman moments earlier while waiting for the traffic lights to turn green on Aurora. She’d lugged an enormous tote bag full of her belongings across the street. Ah, gosh, I feel sad, curious, frustrated, and resigned. Wouldn’t it be so much better to legalize, regulate, and tax prostitution? Seems having licensed, adult professional sex workers would be a good idea, yes? What would the consequences, however, for all the illegal ones and their criminal pimps, especially the minors?

Here she was again, the woman in stretchy pink who crossed the street with all her belongings, now in Walgreens, bent over the check-out counter speaking agitatedly. She desperately tried to get the cashier to convert a wad of bills into … smaller bills? Didn’t make any … sense. I couldn’t hear them well. Difficult to understand. Hard of hearing anyway, I am. But the cashier, of an East Asian ethnicity, a woman who struggled to speak English clearly, could not understand the young White woman either. She quickly got frustrated, saw a line of other customers forming behind the dirty, bruised lady, and tried to wave the assumed-hooker away out the door. The hooker lady grew more desperate and tearful. All this transpired in seconds as I walked slowly down the aisle past the counter. Walked slowly because my low back and knees hurt like hell from chronic injuries. OMG what are we to do? What are we to do? I texted my wife about this. My wife and I are both messed up as it is, lol but not LOL, as we have our own problems piling up, but at least we aren’t like those fellow humans. Our fellow humans.

Makes our squabbles over messes in the closets seem utterly frivolous by comparison. Continue reading

The Anti-Woke Need to Wake Up

If you’re not woke, then you’re asleep. Time to wake up!

Those who harshly criticize and condemn Woke folks and Woke culture live in dreamy, self-righteous fantasies of Far Right hatred and bigotry with murderous intolerance of everything else. Many are well-organized and armed. They behave as a cult, and cults of any kind bring out fanaticism and stupidity.

Religious cults, political cults, personality cults, ethnic-based socio-cultural cults, sports cults, social media cults, hey, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Cults are cults, humans are humans, and the desire to belong to the point one surrenders their personal sovereignty makes them puppets for any string jerker on a power trip. Cult followers and their leaders may or may not be charismatic, but they are all wacko weird and hungry for the promises of whatever belief system they made up in their own minds and collapsed with “truth.” They’re anxious about losing whatever status and power they believe they have left. Cultists are quick to demonize anyone and everyone outside their belief system. They fail to tolerate dissent or even mere disagreement. They fail to tolerate criticism and seem unable to abide by rapid changes in the status quo. They fail to understand distinctions between criticism and betrayal. Continue reading

A Close Brush with Death on the Freeway

Unexpected terror & confusion as the author and his bride returned from their honeymoon up in the San Juans

William & Faithlyn goofing around at Roche Harbor on the day before the near-miss on the freeways home. Definitely did NOT look this jolly after such a close call. Grateful, tho, for all’s well with life, limb, and property.

Selfie of us earlier the day of the near-miss. We’re in San Juan National Historical Park at the British camp.

Our car earlier Thursday in San Juan National Historical Park.

Another ferry passing ours on our way home Thursday afternoon from Friday Harbor, San Juan Island, to Anacortes on Fidalgo Island (connected by a bridge to the mainland). We had no inkling whatsoever over what was yet to come.

Called 911 yesterday for first time ever. Faithlyn, my new wife, and I were heading home to Shoreline from our little honeymoon to San Juan Island near the border with Canada. I drove. Our car was a white, 2020 Subaru Forester, Touring Model, in great shape. We were southbound on I-5 outside of Lynnwood when I realized I entered the entrance lanes to I-405. Traffic was moderately heavy, typical for summer evening traffic in our urban corridor. We were passing thru lower Snohomish County heading for King County where our home is. The day and date was Thursday 3 August 2023.

Looked both behind us & to my left, open lane, & so merged left. Our Subaru has flashing yellow lights to warn of vehicles in our blind spots or passing, but they did not go off, i.e. the lane was clear. Local time was about 6:50 PM PDT. Suddenly a large white sedan rocketed around me at high rate of speed as in pursuit. I immediately thought police car, unmarked, but did not hear sirens or see flashing lights.

The “cop” sedan swerved between cars and cut in front of us – its brakes squealing as its tires sent up black smoke of burning rubber. The car slid and spun in front of us as the driver fought for control. They lost control. The car spun around backwards into traffic to face oncoming cars and trucks. I continued to drive forward even tho slowed way down. For a nanosecond of eternity the careening sedan spun right alongside our Subaru as I drove ahead. I saw the white car and its bumper inches away from us thru violent smoke. The car slid in a cloud of burning rubber across 2-3 lanes of traffic. The sedan skidded off the pavement, slammed against the steep rise of a brush-covered bank on the driver’s side, and rolled over uphill as it flipped into small trees and bushes. Other drivers slowed down everywhere and all seemed in control. All of this happened in seconds, in seconds with the heft of hours. Continue reading

William & Faithlyn’s Wedding

Shoreline/Seattle, Washington

Wednesday 26 July 2023

A snapshot of our journeys from Virginia and Jamaica to other places and eventually Washington where we became engaged and eventually married. Ours was a pandemic romance that occurred quite by happenstance and twists of fate. Our partnership and marriage became our destiny. Faithlyn created the video with Final Cut Pro from many fotos and videos by and from us, family, and friends. We had to cut so much out! Frank Sanborn, the wedding photographer, provided his services without charge. Enjoy!

 

William Dudley Bass & Faithlyn Ann Robinson Bass
Sunday 30 July 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol

 

Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass and Faithlyn Ann Robinson Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author, his Descendants, and his Wife Faithlyn until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

watch my wheelchair go and stop

i sit n wheelchair
strapped in tite tho i feel no pressure
i numb below neck
feel like hollowed out farm punkin
plumped up tite full wit
gritty beach sand & red raspberry jello
my head falls over sometimes
so it gets bolted in place
my tongue moves as bacon smokes hot in pan
i dream of my momma
when i was small boy
we pick berries
all kinds of berries all colors
strawberries
raspberries
blueberries
huckleberries
blackberries
marionberries
even thimbleberries
i help her cook berries down
help her put in too much sugar
help her make the berry jam
but now I dream of red raspberry jello
smooth
sweet
tart
wiggly 
slips & rolls as big wave in ocean
slop my mouth full of the sea
knock me down underwater 
grind my little boy body
upon broken seashells & gritty beach sand
my dada pulled me out of water
he laughed as if no serious matter
tho i see the love in his eyes i see his fear 
i smell the relief of my father’s release
i remember when he hold my hand 
in the muddy pumpkin field as he
smoked a cigarette with other hand
his cigarette lighting hand Continue reading

What keeps 21st Century Humans from Accepting UFOs/UAPs Exist?

Oh gosh, how much more dumb and stupid can smart, educated humans get?

What drives otherwise intelligent people to refuse to even consider UFOs and NHIs are real? Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? That so many human beings refuse to even consider the reality of UFOs, UAPs, ETs/IDs, and NHIs?

Such denial and accompanying ridicule persists despite all of the evidence, the whistleblowers, the witnesses, the experiencers, the records, and the artifacts from even before the Second World War. It is the same type of mindset that called Pagan folk healers and midwives “witches” and burnt them at the stake. It’s the same mentality that condemned scientists such as Galileo and Copernicus as heretics. Fear is used as a tool and has often been the case. It is, however, the alleged covert aggregation and maintenance of power that appear to drive those in the so-called UFO secrecy groups to extreme measures beyond patriotism and national security to shield, control, and profit from their positions.

Another reason for governmental and corporate transparency is not to reveal details of a true, ongoing national security situation but to acknowledge the global reality of non-human “Alien” existence, the nature of it, the cover-up of it, and so forth. We need a Federal level of open forgiveness with mechanisms for increased transparency, truth telling, disclosure of discoveries and their coverups, immunity from prosecution, and also reconciliation. This can be extended throughout the United Nations Organization as well. Those who participated in murder and torture, however, must be held accountable.

What do these labels even mean anymore? UFO still stands for Unidentified Flying Objects, which is what they were called for decades. “Flying saucers” was the original term to describe these alien machines, but many were in the shape of pyramids, cubes, triangles, cylinders, cigars, orbs, tic-tacs, discs, giant toy tops, and many other shapes. Some even changed shape, would divide or partition into multiple craft, and merge back into one. Only one of the several UFOs I’ve encountered, the one a group of us witnessed from the top of Mt. Erie, Washington, was shaped like the typical rotating flying saucer before it blinked out of visible existence. Unfortunately, however, the term UFO has become associated with ridicule and career-destroying nonsense.

There’s also the term USO for Unidentified Submersible Objects that “flew” underwater as well as thru the air. So the US government invented the term UAP as a serious term for serious studies of serious mysteries. UAP now stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena as these mysteries exhibited transmedium capabilities, i.e. moving thru space, the atmosphere, underwater, and if some claims can be believed, even thru solid rock. Yes, some even claim such craft move or phase thru the lithosphere itself. The “A” in UAP did briefly stand for “Aerial,” and that was quickly supplanted by the broader range covered by “Anomalous.” Point is, we need transparency with protection for those courageous enough to come forward so we can know what is true and what’s false.

NHIs = Non-human intelligences. NHI is an insider term new to the public, especially thanks to the recent revelations of David Grusch. Grusch is a decorated US combat veteran who also served many years in Air Force intelligence and in the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency who came forth at great cost to his career to fight corruption, retaliation, and to tell the American public the truth.

What, however, are NHIs? Possibilities include AI (artificial intelligences and robotic machinery), extraterrestrial beings (ETs), extradimensional and interdimensional beings (EDs and IDs), and/or cryptoterrestrials (CTs, secretive NHIs either native to Earth or originally from beyond Earth but who immigrated here long ago). Alleged numbers of “Alien” species range from 20-30 to several hundred. Another possibility is these “Visitors,” as some call them, are transtemporal, i.e. time travelers. Not necessarily humans and/or post-humans from our future, but also those of other species able to traverse time as well as space.

Then there’s also the possibility of UTs or Ultraterrestrials, entities with their machines that exhibit paranormal, even supernatural abilities and may include what humans consider mythological deities from gods and goddesses to angels and demons to elves and vampires. Such boggles the mind. Personally, I am skeptical of these craft being of demonic or even angelic in origin for why would such entities need machine craft? I’m with Captain Kirk in 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, when he asks a vast alien entity, “What does God need with a starship?”

Again, we must have transparency on these matters. NHI, by the way, does not include non-human test animals sent up into space back in the early days of human rocketry. Dogs, chimpanzees, and rats are intelligent animals, of course, and they are not designing, building, and piloting UAPs.

When you dump all of this atop people rooted either in current, everyday science and/or religion, no wonder they feel overwhelmed and reject outright “such crazy nonsense.” Paradigm shifts break down and world or cosmic views collapse before the mind and heart can embrace change and transformation. Disclosure is already a slow-moving process, and sometimes it takes a while for people to digest and integrate new information. Low-key confirmation is far likely to occur, what some refer to as “soft disclosure.” Such has been going on for awhile, especially since late 2017 with the release of tic-tac UAP videos and the concurrent emergence of the Admiral Wilson/Dr. Davis memos. Continue reading

Finding Childhood’s UFO Sphere Picture

Hunting down a long-ago Machine of Ghosts

Image of metallic spherical UFO/UAP found online that closely resembled the one the Bass Family saw over their Virginia farm in the late 1960s. The only difference is the sphere witnessed by the author’s family was silvery and stainless steel in color.

When I first came upon the image recreating what a particular spherical UFO/UAP looked like from a particular event, I felt exhilaration! It’s the first clear, uncluttered image of exactly what I remember what the UFO looked like my entire immediate family of origin witnessed near our home in rural Virginia during the late 1960s. I was an elementary school farm boy back then, and yet I recall the event as clear as if it happened yesterday. Continue reading

Bad Bad Bus Ride…& the Decline of America

A crazy sad madcap urban bus ride vignette 

My bus ride this morning was epic bad, the kind that makes me not wanna ride it again, LOL…well, lol but not LOL.

It’s not funny. No. Sad, yes. Madcap, maddening, tragic, stupid, bonkers Seattle. 

Was insane!

Yes, I’m with the progressive PC Woke crowd, and it’s all gone too darn far, way too far, dammit!, when chaos, anarchy, and disease take over, fear dominates, and citizens are cowed into submission, apathy, and violence.

Apparently the buses bombing straight up and down Aurora pick up the worse of the worse – about 75% if not more of the riders seem homeless. Most appear to have bad mental health, drug & alcohol problems. One old, White man with a shaggy beard kept shuffling around with his pants down around his ankles and no underwear – he tried to hold them up by hand but gave up as the bus lurched around traffic – and tried to hand folks a one-dollar bill. No one took it. Why? Cuz the money looked like he’d wiped his ass with it! He shuggled forward towards the bus driver and offered her a nasty looking dollar bill, too. He seemed confused and perhaps wanted to somehow pay someone for for his ride on the metro bus. She waved him away. Told him to go sit down and pull his pants up. He turned around looking confused with his britches still down with the money still in hand. He left a wad of bills on his bus seat along with folded pieces of notebook paper, but no one dared grab such nasty looking money or attempted to sit down on the same two-person seat. No way! And there were preteen kids on the bus with big eyes! A family of tourists! God! And the old fellow kept babbling really loud in a obnoxious way – except his babble actually RHYMED in a cute way that also grated on yer nerves. Continue reading

Man on the Morning Bus

A Seattle Bus Ride Vignette

Don’t laugh because it’s really not funny. OK?

A homeless man got on the bus talking vigorously to himself in gibberish. Plopped down across from me in aisle-facing seats. Scratched his head ferociously the whole time with his right hand as he gripped a crumpled stack of cash in the other. A hundred dollar bill stuck out between his fingers like a squished mouse.

He scratched & skritched & scrotched head so mightily I was afraid, truly afraid, he was gonna fling head lice on me with his right hand all the way from where he sat across the aisle from me. Then I thought he was gonna fling cooties into the back of a young Muslim woman’s hijab as she sat scrolling down her fone in a forward-facing seat. Was gonna holler at the bus driver if he did. Continue reading

Between Snotrockets in April

Text chat with my old friend Kurt Snotrockets after fist bumping Young Mister Snotrockets out in the Street

The following occurred in the City of Seattle on Monday the 18th of  April 2022:

Kurt: Hey, Sir William! Still blowing snot after a cold. Life is good.

Me: Dude! That’s nasty! LOL

Aye, I fistbumped a strung out young druggie with enormous snot rockets reaching down thru his red moustache & beard at the bus stop last week who was posturing around like a ruff & tuff gorilla wearing only red & black plaid pajamas with dingy Superman pants pulled up over them & a gray T-shirt and it was cold as Charles Dickens with the threat of snow flurries in the air. Then when I looked the scary guy in the eyes above his snot rockets, I glimpsed sadness & bafflement & fear in his soul. Or were his eyes mirroring mine? Continue reading

Baked Potatoes Faithlyn Style

Love in the Kitchen upon the Eve of a Wedding

Frigidaire! Looks like a 30 inch, 5-Element Freestanding Electric Range in Stainless Steel with a Self-Cleaning Oven.

“Our stove is weird,” my dear fiancé Sweetchickens likes to say. “Every stove is different. This one requires different settings than other stoves.”

“Well, won’t this be in a YouTube video?” I ask. “About hot love in the kitchen with hot potatoes? Y’know, taters and lusty romance?”

“No!”

“OKay…”

“This is what you do, Sweetie.” Continue reading

Cosmic Cockroaches and UFOs

Are we the REAL Bugs?

Ah, the Fermi Paradox! The Dark Forest! Or Paper Clips and Gray Goo? Or mass death by climate collapse, existential pandemics, omnicidal nuclear armageddon, and AI with robots? No wonder Aliens don’t want anything to do with us. We’re constantly fighting with each other, dirtying our own home, and we carry lots of germs! Continue reading

Gone Another Way

The fork in the road
loomed ahead in the storm.
Beyond, two roads vanished into pouring rain
and mud and mist with twisted trees.
Ah, life’s choices.
Sometimes one must leave roads altogether,
but not today.
Was in a hurry,
and already late,
so took the one most traveled.
The road ran fast and straight.
Charged thru the storm,
and broke out beneath starry skies.
Paused atop the hill above those city lights,
and, curious, wondered
what did I miss?

 

William Dudley Bass
Saturday 10 June 2023
Tuesday 20 June 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, WA

Notes: Arose from a dark, sleepless night as I riffed off a mix of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and some of the teachings of the Buddha from the “Dhammapada” instead of counting sheep and box breathing. 

Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

Mowing my Eyebrows

Finally had the courage to bushhog my eyebrows with my beard trimmer.

Kristina used to chase me around the house with scissors. Back when we were lovers and married. I was skeered she would accidentally pierce my eyeballs. It’s not why we broke up and got divorced, tho. 

Alicia, my current hairperson at a funky, post-hipster arty working class barbershop somewhere along the crest of Phinney Ridge, would trim them sometimes. With scissors. With shiny, silvery scissors. I tipped her more, too.

Didn’t want to look like a spooky old grump with barbed wire eyebrows with wild snowwhite hairs lancing out in all directions like mad cat whiskers. Somehow these bouncy thorns would twang up and away as they sprouted from my eyebrows. Yuppers, skippers, my eyebrows were WILD! You could lance a boil on a dead fish with one of my scary eyebrows!  Continue reading

The Difference between the US invasions of Afghanistan/Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Sometimes people caught up in rigid, self-righteous demonization of their own country need to learn to pick a side and crawl into bed with those they despise

A number of people for various reasons anti-this and anti-that, some nevertheless rightfully so, perhaps, are making a common error. They justify their anti-American stance against NATO’s support of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion by collapsing it into the Global War on Terror. These activists claim there isn’t any difference between the American invasions and conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq and the Russian invasion to conquer Ukraine. 

Yes, there are differences, major differences, and they are significant. Continue reading

Elephant Whisperers Mini-Review

A gorgeous, tearful film of love, empathy, and connectivity

Have any of you watched “The Elephant Whisperers” on Netflix yet? Recently won an Oscar for Best Short Documentary, and no wonder. It’s gorgeous and emotionally intense. Set in a national park in South India, it follows in 41 minutes the lives of Bommon & Belle, a middle-aged tribal couple who spend their lives raising orphaned baby elephants. Don’t worry – despite loss & challenges all ends well. Highly recommended and an uplifting break from all the gloom & doom weighing down the news. One could say it’s about climate disruption and mass extinction, for it is, and it’s really a love story, yes, a stand for love. Highly recommended! A warning: the film moves as slow as a languid, tropical river.

Continue reading

BAN ALL INTERNET COOKIES!

ABOLISH THE HORRORS!

Free download of Cookie Monster image from clipartmag.com.

C‘mon, advertising wizards, WTF are all of you doing pushing cookies and cookie pop-ups on us? It ain’t working. [Imagine this space churning with profanity and fed-up energy!]  We HATE them! What’s taking so long for y’all to notice? These corporacratic “tools” are not even addictive so don’t even try to pretend it’s digital fentanyl. Screw fentanyl anyway as opiates are a scourge as bad as any nasty viral epidemic.

Please, for God’s sake, even if you’re an atheist, study basic 21st Century human behavioral psychology. We’re not all slobbering capitalistic Pavlovian dogs! Yes, we struggle with overconsumption, pollution, and affluenza, sure, and we all HATE WEBSITE COOKIES! How cruel it is to tease one with some faint, nostalgic reminder of hot, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies hoping such memories of happy holiday treats will make us consent to installing cookies? My goodness, I rarely write the way I am here in the now. I feel so exasperated, frustrated, and angry as this mini-essay unfolds into a diatribe as businesses continue to bobble senselessly along the edges of the Charybdis of Cyberspace. Continue reading

Trump: Indict and arrest this man

What’s the holdup? Why all the cowardice?

For what reasons are Republican politicians and their media cronies bending over backwards to protect ex-POTUS Donald Trump? Why do they screw up their faces and decry efforts to indict, charge, and arrest him as disgusting, disgraceful, or worse? Of course they holler “It’s political!” as a slur, especially when it suits them to say so. They thus live in a nest of their own lies and denial because, come on, they’re politicians! Everything is political! Understand everything has a political aspect. There isn’t anything inherently right or wrong in recognizing the political nature of human relationship dynamics. Trump, however, is a known manipulator of facts and thrives on distortions of truth. He and his ilk are why the public perceive politicians as, sadly, all rank and foul.

Trump should have been arrested and thrown in jail years ago. Cowardice and fear clearly paralyzed efforts to do so. Evidence demonstrates he was likely a Russian asset (an asset, not an agent), usurped the 2016 election, triggered and even encouraged racist, antisemitic, and neofascist violence, and engaged in an attempted a coup in 2021. Trump can and should be charged with several counts of treason as well as multiple counts of corruption. Period.

For what reason do Trump’s supporters among the GOP believe the former president is above the law? There isn’t any reason other than pious “outrage.” Are they afraid of being targeted next? Do they believe all presidents are above the law? Why do they want to go after Obama and Biden then? Have they forgotten the Founding Fathers and the early presidents they so exalt warned repeatedly of people who seek to behave as kings? Or even become kings? Or in today’s parlance become authoritarian, autocratic presidents-for-life as Trump so desperately wanted? As George W. Bush, despite the warnings of many on the Left and even on the Right, did not want? Did they not warn us of engaging in “factions” or political parties to the point one’s country takes a back seat to party politics? How in the world can such highly educated people be so stupid? Be so damn dumb? Continue reading

A Raincloud for Halloween

My four year old daughter determines to be a Raincloud for Halloween 1998

Morgan (now Dylan) as a Raincloud for Halloween 1998.

Continue reading

This is home now, far from home: Snapshots of Dad on the U.S.S. Midway

“This is home, and so big too.”

Pictures are also from Bill Bass’s time in Boot Camp in Great Lakes and elsewhere.

The U.S.S. Midway, my father’s ship, passes a smoking volcano while sailing across the Mediterranean, 1952. Home away from home, and far away indeed. The volcano is Mt. Vesuvius on the edge of Naples, Italy.

Bill Bass, U.S. Navy. 1948-1952. My Dad before he even met my Mother. These pictures survived my house burning down in March 2010 and thus some damage remains evident. Life is messy.

These picture frame glimpses of my late father, William Merritt Bass, known as Bill, from old fotos and papers recovered from my 2010 house fire. He served in the United States Navy from 1948 to 1952. Bill Bass started out, as did many new sailors, at the historic Recruit Training Command Center at Naval Station Great Lakes. This was boot camp, in the midst of a bitter cold winter, located on Lake Michigan, in the upper NE corner of Illinois between Chicago and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The majority of his Navy years, however, was spent upon the U.S.S. Midway, an legendary aircraft carrier rich in history. Born, raised, and educated in Virginia, Dad lived his entire life in his native Commonwealth except during his time in the military and when he was traveling. Dad was proud of his service to his country during the early Cold War.

Continue reading

In Memory of Dave

A new friend passes & a movement feels his loss

Dave Thompson was a a man who saw the comedy in life and laughed often AND was also a fierce advocate for social justice and for improving the lives of working class folks and their families. Foto was cropped and modified from the one posted on the Socialist Alternative website. Unsure who took the original picture sometime during 2012-2014.

Copied & pasted directly from my posting on the Legacy website:

As time already passes into the past, I contemplate Dave’s various circles of friends, some of which overlapped for the first time at his lovely Memorial Service. I feel impressed how his friends, family, & colleagues from each circle each spoke to his brilliant intellect, his loyalty, his do-anything-not-can-do-but-will-do attitude, his quiet yet ferocious stands on controversial issues, his humbleness & lack of ego, which is rare for us political activists. Dave was funny, too. Made us all laugh together. Continue reading

The War won’t End once Ukraine pushes out the Russians

What really happens when Ukraine “wins?”

The majority of people looking at the Russo-Ukrainian War are making well-meaning but unrealistic assumptions based on short-term predictions. Or they’re so far into the future they’re already talking about coups, a revolution, or civil wars across the Russian Federation. Let’s consider some possible scenarios. As we do so, let’s remember this war did not began with the Russian invasion of February 2022 but with the Russian invasion of February 2014 in the wake of the Euromaiden Revolution of November 2013 – February 2014 in Ukraine. Their war has been going for over eight years now.

First: Ukraine liberates ALL of its territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea, and pushes Russian forced back to the pre-2014 borders. Those borders, by the way, were formally recognized as official and legitimate by the Russia in 1991 and again in 1994. Then what? Yes, what happens next? The war is not going to suddenly end. Russia has the power to wait out its enemies, except for the Mongols and the Japanese of 1905, among others. Russia can rebuild and regroup, yes, and it’s economy seems more broken now than it was at the height of Hitler’s invasion in the Second World War. Today’s version of Allied Lend-Lease programs to help Stalin’s USSR fight the Axis is now going to Ukraine to help fight the real Fascists, the Putin siloviki ultranationalist dictatorship in control of Russia.

Does Ukraine invade Russia in return? For Ukraine to invade would be a horrible mistake. Unless it’s to create a buffer zone from which the Russians can’t easily lob artillery shells, drones, and rockets any longer. Ukraine would most likely lob the same back at Putin’s forces, unless their allies stop supplying such weapons at this point. The war risks being bogged down into a frozen border conflict, which would help no one except the Russians rebuild. Another possibility is Russia collapses into civil wars, and Ukraine feels compelled to intervene on the side of anti-Putin rebel factions. Would Ukrainian military assistance be welcomed even if the Ukrainians were not conquering and annexing Russian territory but helping Russian rebels overthrow the Putin siloviki regime?

Also, if the Ukrainians push out all the Russian invaders back behind the internationally recognized 2013 borders before the war started in 2014, will the Russians resort to Putin’s threat to detonate nuclear weapons? What will NATO do then? After all, Russia now claims much of eastern and southern Ukraine as Russian territory simply because it annexed them in the wake of corrupt, coerced, and fake referendums.

Second: Let’s say Putin’s forces grind down the Ukrainians and bomb them into utter ruin and destitution. The Western allies run out of ammo and weapons and are paralyzed by their terror of Russian nuclear weapons. A weary, demoralized Ukraine, unrecognizable from Ukrainians today 9-10 months into Putin’s invasion, surrender. Then what? The Ukrainian people would be difficult to pacify. The Russian treasury doesn’t have the funds to rebuild Ukraine as Putin once dreamed Russia wouldn’t have to after rolling into people showering them with flowers. Which did not happen. Russian occupation would have to deal with sabotage, protests, partisan warfare, and endless rebellions while also struggling to keep an overstretched, multi-ethnic federation together. At the same time, however, Putin’s forces would roll up to the borders of other countries once part of the old Russian Tsarist and Soviet Empires. Those nations would feel threatened.

Third: Putin somehow manages to assassinate Volodymyr Zelenskyy and decapitate the Kyiv regime. Will the Ukrainian government collapse? Will new leaders step forward and up? Will NATO forces rush in to support Kyviv after all? Then will Putin finally use a few nukes? Continue reading

Stupid Ways Smart Activists Destroy Public Support and What to do Next

There are many ways to champion even desperate causes and draw public support for them. Lately, however, well-meaning but thoughtless activists have failed, utterly failed in generating support for their causes and programs. Makes one sad. No, their actions piss people off!!! Piss me off! Self-righteous idiots dashing about destroying incredible paintings and interrupting football games and blaming corporations and lecturing governments in the name of fringe ideologies too rigid to function in the rough and tumble of reality.

Forget about raising much money to make a difference. Forget about rallying the general public and their many institutions of religion, government, and business to support a wide range of environmental and social justice causes. As the end is apparently so nigh, why antagonize potential allies with stupid stuff when there’s so little time left to take action? To make a real difference? Makes me wanna go, “Boo Hoo Hooty Hoo!” at The End of the World. Let our art stand long after we’re all dead!

The tragedy is we do indeed have little time left as our human lifespans are so short and we reproduce so prolifically across Planet Earth. As a species, we face multiple and convergent global challenges and interlocking local problems. They blur together into a thorny thicket of so-called Wicked Problems, each one in itself a cluster of multiple apocalypses in the making. Continue reading

Car Crash ’n’ Storm outside REI

Motor Vehicle Accident in a terrible storm outside Work down in our rapidly changing planet

Staring thru the windows at traffic in the storm. Tuesday the 9th of November 2021.

Earlier today during a unseasonably ferocious storm somehow a driver got their car got turned around the wrong way on the freeway. The driver immediately drove South into Northbound traffic and crashed. Up on the interstate right outside the huge Downtown Seattle REI store where I work in outdoor adventure retail. I-5 was elevated across the way where it bisected the city and funneled traffic onto and off the mighty Ship Canal Bridge. We watched big tow trucks with flashing lights lumber into traffic to clear the wreckage. Continue reading

Siri says, “Suck my titties!”

Apple’s Siri tells a schoolteacher in a classroom full of young Deaf children to, “Suck my Titties!” LOL!

Once upon a time before the Covid Pandemic struck, a Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing teacher brought her new iPhone to work. She was so PROUD of her new iPhone. The mobile device was a sophisticated piece of technology she regarded with amazement. Twas nearly magical! Her iPhone integrated well with the other tools Deaf and HOH people require to function at a higher level in our complex society. Oh, she was SO proud of her new tool-toy! Or is toy-tool a better description? Depends on the desired function at time of use! For one thing she used her iPhone to FaceTime Hearing people and read their lips and facial expressions. She could also sign in ASL with others who communicated in sign language as well.

This woman taught at a prestigious and world renowned school for Deaf children in the Southeastern United States. She’s a person whose politics skew quite a bit to left of center, but her personal values and lifestyle are rooted in traditional conservatism. Fascinating, brilliant human being with a riveting life stories, and she made me promise not to reveal her name and the name and location of the school she taught at on the day of the incident.

The teacher propped up her iPhone on a desk at the front of the class and asked Siri a question. Siri is the artificial intelligence programmed into Apple products with a feminine voice to algorithmically respond to human inquiries, commands, and requests. Siri was ready to go.

Teacher asks question.

“Suck my titties!” Siri responds. Continue reading

HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?

A Homeless Man asks a question with his pants down, but can anyone really answer?

Gawd, now I know I’m back in my beloved but gone-to-hell Seattle. While changing buses at Northgate Way & Aurora Avenue on my way home from a long trip to North Carolina, I came upon a homeless man of about 40 years old who also happened to be Black and bearded. He stood on the edge of the curb on the west side of Aurora next to the crosswalk, cupped his hands up to both sides of his face, and bellowed out into traffic:

“HAS THE WORLD CHANGED? HAS THE WORLD CHANGED?”

“WELL, HAS IT?” was my automatic response tho only in my mind.

My second response was the temptation to shout at him to pull his damn pants up, but that was before I listened to him.

Then he rhythmically pulls down his dirty gray sweat pants and shows his naked ass to the whole wide world and then swings his cock up and out across the way like the neck and head of a goose jerking forth from a lake. It looked large and waxy in the harsh, September sunshine. Pulls his pants back up with this tip of his penis perched upon his waistband like a damn peacock peeking out. Damn, I looked away, away, AWAY!, but, OH GAWD was too late as it all happened in a flurry of seconds as the crossing lights hadn’t changed yet. Couldn’t unsee this mess. Felt transfixed, no, crucified, crucified! Felt crucified by the clarity of his call and response during the middle of our long, apocalyptic slide into Armageddon. Continue reading

Weird Dream on an August Night

Weird Erotic Dream with Pyramids & Cookies…and Crazy Superheroes

What a crazy ass dream! Once upon a long time ago somewhere in Outer Space I sat naked atop an indoor pyramid, an ancient pyramid evocative of the Mayas, with a long flight of stone steps laddering away below me. Weird, because I was aware of being 61 years along but felt and looked forty. Sat cross-legged facing an even older woman who sat naked under a ragged, carpet-like blanket. She was attractive in her older years and appeared as a horny Sacred Crone Witch Goddess. Her blanket, however, was rather hag-like. Haggish! She didn’t hunch beneath her haggy waggy blankie either but sat tall and poised. She stared into my eyes with a calm, clear gaze, then flicked them down between my legs. Uh-Oh! Looked down at a heavy, pulsing weight down below my belly and blushed. Here I am blushing naked atop an ancient stone pyramid inside a cavernous, futuristic temple. And, wow, this is embarrassing, but my genitals were enormous. Balls as big as those of a giant bull. Felt a bizarre blend of embarrassment and pride. A huge erect penis quivered between my thighs. All mine, apparently, and jiggle-bobbing with a bit of life of its own. My smaller head felt delirious with a certain hormonal urgency. We men are two-headed creatures, aren’t we? Looked as if I was in a ridiculous porn movie, too, but minus the mustache except everything felt spiritual and mystical and serious. Even stranger, however, I felt fierce desire not for her, the older woman who sat naked across from me and gazed upon me in silence, but for another. The other woman wasn’t there, didn’t see her, but I felt her absence. She was far, far away on a secret mission. Continue reading

The Difference between the BLM Uprisings & the Jan 6 Insurrection

What is the distinction between the Black Lives Matter riots and the January 6 Insurrection? The difference is as clear as it is simple: Black Lives Matter as well as the Occupy Movement before it rose up to demand long-overdue justice and accountability. They did not seek nor attempt to overthrow and replace the United States government with a new regime. Instead they sought to reform the current government and demanded the government at all levels from local to state to federal pay attention and listen to their grievances and cries for justice and reform. The Jan 6 Insurrection, however, sought to overturn a free and fair democratic election, overthrow federal and even some state governments, and kidnap and even murder major government leaders from the Vice-President to the Governor of Michigan. There were attempts to take over state governments as far away from Washington, DC as Salem, Oregon. Records show the Jan 6 Insurrection started well before the 6th of January 2021 and continued past it. Some argue it’s still simmering. Perhaps it’s more resembles Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch before the Nazi’s ultimately successful takeover. Continue reading

Beyond Country over Party

During times of strife and division, we often hear others and sometimes ourselves responding emotionally to events seemingly beyond our control. We may remind ourselves and others to remember our priorities. We say and write slogans such as, “country over party.” Or, perhaps, we may feel events have gone so far we must put party over country “to save” the nation. Or that the working class or the ruling class, depending on where you put yourself if not in the middle, transcend politics and thus our country. Or the Goddess, God, or whatever entity you consider as the Divine must rule over country and planet. All of these perspectives, save for country over party, are destructive, self-destructive, and inevitably result in violence and loss of freedom. Here we look briefly at country over party and go beyond that slogan.  Continue reading

Taiwan can only secede from itself

Few seem to realize the only government Taiwan can secede from is itself, the Republic of China. The new US-Sino Taiwan Straight Crisis is rooted in misperceptions of history and anchored in anger, shame, and fear. The irony is the Republic of China, currently ruling only Taiwan and a few nearby islands, has existed since 1912 after the Chinese Revolution of 1911, long before the Chinese Communist Party declared the People’s Republic of China in 1949 during the civil war. The ROC had retreated to Taiwan and neighboring islands, was a semifascist military dictatorship under the Kuomintang, but only became a democracy in fairly recent years. The ROC’s transition from autocracy to democracy on Taiwan took place across the 1980s and 90s.

If Taiwan were to actually declare independence, ironically, it would be from itself, the ROC, not the PRC as the latter has never governed Taiwan. As the Republic of China has existed long before the People’s Republic of China, then it boggles the mind the PRC views the ROC as a “breakaway province” of the PRC. Each government still considers itself The One China. Perhaps it’s time to retire such an anachronistic mindset, altho the ultranationalistic on all sides froth with madness over such a progressive and liberating shift of perspective.

Like it or not, Taiwan is already its own country as the ROC. It is not and never was a province of the PRC. It is not an imperial outpost of the old Japanese or British empires. It was taken back from the Japanese by the ROC Kuomintang Party at the end of the Second World War. Taiwan was never governed or administered in any way by the CCP before and after the Communists declared their People’s Republic in 1949 as the civil war ended. Taiwan and it’s neighboring islands elect and run their own ROC government, collect taxes, maintain diplomatic relations, maintain complex business relationships abroad, operates its own military and intelligence forces, and acts upon the world stage as a small but robust middle power. Taiwan therefore has no need whatsoever to declare independence as it already exists as its own country. It flourishes under the national government of the Republic of China, a regime in existence for decades before the PRC. The country even transitioned from a brutalist military dictatorship into a constitutional democracy with a robust capitalist economy. It could, however, raise a bloody ruckus by changing its name and retiring the ROC label to better reflect geopolitical reality. Continue reading

Guns in America: Paralysis, Polarization, & Do-Nothingism

Yes, address mental health care, and, yes, more importantly,
Amend the Second Amendment

The numbers make mass shootings in America look like war. Certainly feels like a war. Per the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 214 mass shootings in the United States of America with over 17,300 deaths by guns from New Year’s Day to the end of May 2022. There were 42 recognized mass shootings in the first 23 days of the month of May, then several more, then another 14 over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. This warfare seems bookended by the predatory, hate-filled slaughter of Black people grocery shopping in Buffalo, New York, and the equally hateful, psychopathic hunting down of little kids and their teachers to shoot and kill in Uvalde, Texas.

Those on the Left bellow, “Do something!” Those on the Right shout, “Do nothing!” The outrage, deflections, and self-righteous demonization boils over and continues to divide us further from doing the “something” the majority of Americans demand. Most of those in the moderate middle feel “sick and tired” of grocery stores, houses of worship, restaurants, city streets, schools, more schools, and yet still more schools getting shot up and say, “Enough is enough!”

Even the “commonsense” gun control reforms people want enacted at a federal level including strict background checks for all purchases, tighter regulation of and even banning of certain military-style firearms and types of magazines will only go so far.

We often experience the rigidity of political extremists on both sides. We see, read, and hear their demonization of each other and everyone else with the quest for opposing utopias between the libertarian right and the socialist left drowning out the voices of our vast pragmatic middle. “Mental health issues” is a term bandied about without serious action steps taken to address them.

What to do? The solution is to go to the source of the controversy, the wording of our Second Constitutional Amendment, and reform it. This shall override the ineffective crazy quilt patchwork of conflicting state and local regulations or lack thereof. It’s simple. We do what’s hard. We do what’s hard first! Continue reading

Maddy & Diddy

– a short snap of a tale –

She sighed as her iPhone buzzed hard enough on her desk to spin sideways. Maddy glanced at the time and just knew who texted her. Should’ve turned off all notifications, she grumbled. Diddy, her ex-husband, had texted her yet again. They’ve been divorced nearly 20 years now, remain friendly acquaintances even tho they live in different states and have two children between them. But why in hell did she ever married anyone named Diddy? What a stupid, fucking name! Of course, Diddy wasn’t his real name. Austin Willis Wallace was.

His mama used to play Bo Diddley records back when he was a little boy, however, and little Austin Willis would boogey around the house so much his daddy called him, “Diddy.” Name stuck. “Lookit Diddy go!” folks used to say. And when he grew up and married Maddy, he impregnated her. Two twin boys resulted, Dilbert and Data, named after two characters, one a cartoon and the other an android. Maddy rolled her eyes remembering her crazy youth and sighed with annoyed exasperation as her smartfone vibrated across her desk again. That goddamn Diddy!

Maddy worked as a nurse in neuro-oncology and had hoped to retire already, but having kids late in life plus the economic and financial upheavals of the pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine made it imperative to keep chugging away RNing on people’s brains. She was busy, tired, had to help Dilbert pay the initial installment on his reactivated student loans, and just wanted to go home and soak in the bathtub and play with her waterproof vibrator.

OK, what the hell, Maddy decided. She reached out and picked up her iPhone. Yes, sure enough, a text had popped in from Diddy. That goddamn Diddy! What did her ex-hubby have to say this time? She clicked on the message. Continue reading

In Remembrance of Ellen

A wonderful friend from long ago passes on

Ellen died on Thursday 20 January 2022. Her transition was peaceful. She and her wife was surrounded by dear friends local to the area. Pancreatic cancer is a horror. So many people I know have battled cancer of all kinds. Some died, such as my parents, a grandfather, and my partner’s Mum. Cancer is an umbrella term for a complex of nightmarish diseases. May cures for all cancers be found. Put cancer in the past. Make it history. Kill it, dammit. Kill it! Because I miss my friend. Wish we’d had more time to visit. Last saw her in circa 1995 when she and Ron last visited me and Gwen at Orca Landing, an urban cooperative household in Seattle. They were on their way from southwestern North Carolina to bike the West Coast. Decades slid by in time. She and Deb were gonna come out and visit us in Seattle before heading into the North Cascades National Park Complex back in the Summer of 2020. The double punch of the COVID-19 Pandemic and megawildfires with smokestorms, unfortunately, caused them to cancel. So never got to reconnect in person. We texted a few times. She and Deb decided to get away into the Boundary Waters Wilderness instead. There they had a great time canoeing and camping, and that was the last I heard from her.

Yeah, I miss my friend. Ellen had a delightfully chuckley laugh that could range from a loud bark to a jolly trainwreck of silly giggles. Ellen loved animals and spent much of her later life rescuing and caring for them. Was an activist in PAWS. Born in New Jersey and worked in New York. Worked for Playboy even! For the corporate NYC side, that is. Was too much for her. So she met Ron and together they moved away from the big urban corridors for a life of outdoor adventure and rural, small-town living. She had strong opinions and fierce convictions. Loved exploring the wilderness by foot, by boat, and spent many long miles pedaling her bike. Ellen Kilgannon is forever unforgettable.

From my words to her on the Caring Bridge site: Continue reading

Putin is Stupid and Dangerous

*Like many bullies are*

The former President of the USA, wannabe autocrat and racist protofascist Donald Trump was, thank God, profoundly incompetent and too slimy to do anything correctly. The dictator of the Russian Federation, however, and his cowardly, quivering, greedy followers are a fucking, stupid mafia of corrupt, incompetent despots. Fucking dumbasses, every single one of them! And as dangerous as rabid rats stuck in corners of blood, madness, and fear. Putin and his nasty siloviki, the Russian intelligence/surveillance-military/security komplex, have gutted Russia to facilitate their imperialist, fascist fantasies of Glorious Empire. 

How DARE they threaten the planet with nuclear weapons! How DARE they spout lies and distortions of Eurasian history as “historical truth!” Are they aware Muscovy was initially a backwater feudal principality that despite its grandiose title as a Grand Duchy was still a part of mighty Kievan Rus’? Do they know Muscovy was part of a loose confederation centered in what is today Ukraine? And all conquered by the Mongol Empire? With Muscovy being a vassal of the Mongols? That upon independence from the Mongols/Tartars was ruled by bloodthirsty butchers such as the deranged Ivan the Terrible? Have they considered why all empires dominated history with failure? So how dare Putin thinks he can do whatever he wants to do to build an empire before he dies in office?

Vladimir Putin the Invader has been corrupted and isolated by his quest for power and supremacy. He’s sat on the throne for too damn long and has become impatient, chaotic, confused, and frightened. Putin’s become as angry as a schoolyard bully after those he beats up sneak up behind him and quickly jerk his britches down to reveal such a little man. Not even Donolf Trumpler’s “very big, very large, and very, very, very powerful” hands could come to the rescue. And what the hell Old Trumpie’s little big hands gonna do with Old Pootie anyway, pet a cheeseburger in bed? Continue reading

Ukraine/Taiwan: Be Ready Already for a New World War

Escalation towards major regional war and possible world war is in motion

Ignore the doom porn flooding the media

Be aware. Stay alert.

Ignore both blathering soothsayers and smirking pundits who all declare it’s illogical and impossible for such a little bitty border war to blow up across the world because they’re stupid enough to ignore the reality of our human minds

Tit for tat and tat for tit reactions in and over the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is threatening to turn a local conflict brewing with violence since late 2013 into a global conflagration. These tit for tat moves escalated today between Putin’s Russia and the Western Alliance in a rapidly developing crescendo of anger, distrust, fear, hate, ignorance, greed, and even sadness amidst conflicting interpretations of history and culture.

Remember the last four world wars: the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Great War alongside and followed by revolutions and civil wars around the globe, the Second World War, and, finally, the Cold War, a planet-wide conflict in which millions died. As one recalls these massive conflicts, keep in mind none of them began as world wars. Each one of them began as local wars that grew into regional wars. Multiple regional wars merged into a world war. Even World War II was a hodgepodge of interconnected local and regional conflicts with different timelines for each one. Each global conflict spawned a range of insurrections, revolutions, and civil wars as well.

The same will likely occur with Putin’s escalation of the Ukrainian border war into a global conflict. Only in today’s 21st Century the speed of our interwoven global communications and economies will rapidly accelerate the blossoming of such dark, bloody flowers. Cyberattacks and the reluctance to engage in massive kinetic combat may compel major enemy forces to use tactical battlefield nukes in combat. Such may quickly escalate to widespread EMP detonations and worldwide exchanges of strategic nuclear weapons between the primary adversaries.

There are significant local and regional conflicts that could easily spiral out of control and merge with others into a planet-wide war. These include the wars in and around Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, the fighting in Kashmir with India and Pakistan on nuclear hair triggers, Indo-China border conflicts, spreading violence in Venezuela and Colombia, the interrelated wars across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, and a raft of others. Two of the most serious “others” are the Chinese-Taiwan conflict and the problem with North Korea as it keeps firing rockets and missiles to provoke attention. In the midst of these conflicts we face global climate change, a still-raging COVID pandemic, political instability, and economic turbulence. What to do?

Continue reading

What does it matter?

Do you know people who keep pointing out nothing truly matters in the big scheme of things? Because we all die anyway? Nothing really matters anyway whether or not one votes, demonstrates, takes action, even run for office or find other ways to serve others, yes? What does it matter what happens in government and in business and with our families when civilizations rise and fall anyway? Wars, peace, and pandemics ebb and flow, right? Religious and political belief systems come and go, OK? Things change all the time and then again they remain the same, yes? In the big scheme of things the entire universe, heck, the multiverse will eventually come to an end, so we’ve been told. Perhaps the Afterlife itself isn’t as infinite or as eternal as we’ve been taught? So what does anything matter, really? Perhaps some of these “enlightened” folks are dear friends and beloved family members.

Here’s a different perspective next time such cerebral people dismiss the value of voting for everchanging politicians or why concern one’s self with climate change, nuclear war, the AI singularity, giant asteroids, rapacious extraterrestrials, or prepping for disasters or marching in the streets to rally for a cause: It does matter. It matters. They all matter.

It certainly does matter!

It matters to me!

Continue reading

MLK Jr Blues on a Cloudy Day

We see you. And we’re not messin’ around.

Today is the official federal holy day honoring the late, murdered Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. I’m in Seattle with my Sweetie Sweetchickens. Both of us are FV & Boostered, we don’t feel well, and she feels worse than me. We’re waiting for the results of her test for COVID-19. Got tested Saturday. So with all due respect to MLK we avoided marches, rallies, and social gatherings indoors. We chose to go for a meandering ramble up in Shoreline at Richmond Beach Saltwater Park. We need wide open spaces with healing views of big sky, open water, and a breeze. Temperatures were in the low to mid 40s. Fahrenheit.

Contemplation of stillness amidst vast spaces…and those waves of energy rippling out thru air and water.

We contemplated the winter sun, the sea, and overcast skies. To our surprise one lone boat was way out there crossing the Sound. Then it dawned upon me the Salish Sea appeared so bereft of boats because of the threat of tsunamis from earlier in the morning. Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai, a submarine volcanic mountain in the South Pacific, had exploded in spectacular and deadly fashion. Tsunamis shot across the Pacific in all directions, battering other islands including Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. These walls of water reached from Japan and Australia to the entire western coasts of the Americas all the way from Alaska to Chile. I wondered if any waves crashed up on Kamchatka in the Russian Far East.

In the Vast

Ahhh, yet another dreadful yet mesmerizing apocalypse. Fell into a funk as I considered the current state of voting rights in my country, the creeping and creepy push towards an American dictatorship, the clamor over civil war, multiple pandemics and not just COVID, the economy, asteroids, comets, Earth slowing down and cooling off, the paralytic crises in governments, the weather, the climate, murders and robberies…aye, twas a deep funk. So I opened wide into the mystery, the majesty, and the terror of it all.

Continue reading

Afghanistan, August 2021: Ramifications

Joe Biden has severely damaged his American presidency. We can argue the history and legacy of 43 years of constant warfare between multiple sides in and over Afghanistan since 1978, but the cameras are on what’s happening now. We can repeatedly declare no one was prepared for the rapid collapse of the Afghan state with bloody chaos in the wake of Biden’s acceleration of American withdrawal despite intelligence reports to the contrary. The perception rings true, however, the events of August 2021 overshadow Biden’s progressive agenda. Who’s thinking about his trillion-dollar FDR-style bipartisan infrastructure package now?

Biden is correct most Americans want to get out of Afghanistan and indeed out of all the “forever wars.” A withdrawal wasn’t supposed to be defeat, however, and now the United States has fallen face down into the Graveyard of Empires. Biden failed to remember Americans hate losing wars more than they hate being stuck in them. Even neverending wars draining the US and its NATO Allies of blood and treasure “should” or “could” have been won despite what Clausewitz wrote of war and politics. Yes, Americans don’t like wasting time, lives, and money in endless wars in faraway, remote places distracting them from more immediate concerns back at home, but they hate losing even more. Continue reading

Health is Health

Our healthcare doesn’t need to be locked in battles over definitions & costs with sociopathic bureaucracies fixated on loss & profit

 

Top world athletes from Naomi Osaka, a professional tennis player from Japan, to Simone Biles, perhaps the leading Olympic gymnast of all time, to a group of 20 to 22 male athletes of all kinds from different nations, have compelled the rest of Humanity to pay attention to mental health issues. Different labels persist: mental health, emotional health, neurological health, and psychological and psychiatric health. Perhaps the most accurate is neuropsychological diseases and injuries, but such is too much of an awkward mouthful to speak. “Mental” is short, two syllables, and rhymes with “dental.” Thus such wording becomes part of the problem. We humans live in an ocean of language as fish swim in water and birds fly in air. We don’t always see our “water.” We don’t always see each other.

Many have speculated upon a chicken and egg type of question: which came first, the mind or the body? Did mind arise from body, i.e. matter, or did the world pour forth from the mind? It’s an inquiry dividing both scientists and mystics from the beginning of human time.

Truth is they are one and the same, body and mind are. We must grow up as a species to acknowledge such and reevaluate our healthcare systems, including the financing of our healthcare. It’s long overdue.

Continue reading

Wounds of War

Visible & Silent

Reading of the current horrible war in Tigray with massacres and atrocities on all sides, especially by Ethiopian Federals and Eritreans, and watching the videos of massacres reminded me of an earlier time in my life. I was a licensed massage therapist and master bodyworker with a clinical practice in the Green Lake area of Seattle. My clients included people from all walks of life. They came in for reasons as varied as relief from pain from auto accidents, sports injuries, chronic pain, general health and well being, pregnancy, depression and anxiety, and a host of other reasons. The bulk of the people seeking bodywork were White with a smattering of Black and people of South and East Asian ethnicity. I myself am White, originally from Virginia.

Once state laws changed and insurance began to cover a greater range of treatments with what was formally called Complementarty and Alternative Medicine, or CAM, we began to see a greater cross-section of humanity upon our massage tables. I began to get a number of men, mostly slender Black men who spoke minimal English, as clients. Nearly all of them had scars from bullet wounds and sharp blades. As one of my backgrounds was world history and current affairs, I realized I was working with people seeking relief from old war wounds from the Horn of Africa. Being with these men and their injuries felt humbling, tragic, and even awe. 

As time progressed and more of these African immigrants began to open up, I felt startled to discover they were from different formerly warring groups. I worked on men who identified as Ethiopian, Amharic, Eritrean, Tigrayan, and Somali. A few were impressed I was aware of the complexities of the Ethiopian and Somali Civil Wars including the Ethio-Somali Ogaden War. I don’t know if they were combatants or refugees or both other than they were all former hostiles living peacefully as immigrants in the same city in the United States.

The horror and tragedy of multigenerational wars perpetuated back and forth across time and space hit me. Had to fight down tears. These men were all silent. They had endured bloodshed and terror and agony.

William Dudley Bass
Wednesday 30 June 2021
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol

 

Copyright © 2021 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

Fighting on the Drama Triangle: Rights and Responsibilities

Names & circumstances were changed to protect privacy and to better illustrate points of view

“She’s a grown ass woman!” Myriam declared as she described the behavior of her sister Rosie and shook her head in resignation and sadness. “She’s old enough to do whatever she wants to regardless of what the rest of us think. She has the right to do as she please, and so she does.”

Oh, lord’n’lady, yo, I’m beginning to wonder if Rosie might be better off named RoZilla? Is she a bit like Godzilla? No? Alas, that would be cruel, wouldn’t it? So let’s stop the name calling even if in jest. 

Opposite of narcissism and psychopathy. To feel empathy for others. Compassion for one another. To have the courage to look another in the eye, or, if one or both has a face empty of eyes, bore straight ahead anyway and forgive one another and each other. To forgive one’s self. Choosing to love the essence of another’s humanity even when is otherwise consumed by fear and hatred. Choosing to love the same in one’s self in spite of one’s own loathing.

After listening to Myriam awhile, I felt deep truth rising up to take a stand. “Yes, Rosie does have such rights. And those rights must be balanced with accountability,” I declared. Her rights must be tempered with her own self-responsibility.

Ultimately, Rosie has responsibilities deeper than the right to act out her urges of the moment. Yes? Must she be held accountable for the impact of her actions upon others? Must she hold herself responsible for the effects of her behavior upon not only others who love her but also on her own self? Continue reading

WandaVision-In-A-Gaddus-Da-Hexa-Marva-Hexa

Get Spoiled: Surfing the Excellence and the Hype of WandaVision

Oh, goddess, “In-A-Gaddus-Da-Hexa-Hexa” sounds SO STUPID, and, hey, I’m having fun, so I’m a gonna run-runna-run widdit. Certain scenes reminded me of Iron Butterfly’s trippy, psychedelic, early heavy metal hippie anthem, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The more than a quarter-of-an-hour song spladdled with drunken, stoner spirit and mixed with mystical, psycho-religious romance and sexual innuendo was unleashed upon the planet back in 1968, tho. Some of WandaVision’s mindshows began even earlier, didn’t they? In old movies and even older comic books? At least in some minds…

Marvel’s WandaVision premiered on 15 January 2021 and concluded on the 5th of March. One can watch it on the Disney+ streaming service. For those new to the MCU, make sure you watch the mid-and-end credit scenes at the conclusion of each episode. And, wow, what a show! What a series! 

WandaVision is one of the most sophisticated, elegant, and trippy deep television shows ever created. Not only was the so-called Fourth Wall convention routinely broken and broken in quirky ways, but all of the barriers of illusion were perturbed with fiendish delight. One can imagine the actors and production staff giggling off-stage. The show is the equivalent of multiple shows nesting one inside the other like some bizarre blend of Russian dolls and Chinese boxes. With all of the dolls and boxes in motion as well. Aye, this rabbit hole burrows deeper and deeper yet into a warren of rabbit holes. Continue reading

The Verdict: Justice Achieved

George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, and the United States of America

Encounter with Cops and Protesters in a strange demonstration

To many a surprise and with great relief, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a White man, was found guilty on all three counts in the murder of George Floyd, a Black man from Texas, originally North Carolina, who had recently moved to Minnesota. There was not any hung jury nor partial rendering of justice. The jury, itself composed of people from different ethnic groups including Blacks and Whites, deliberated quickly and returned their verdict to the court. The verdict took mere minutes to read out loud, and the world changed. Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, guilty of murder in the third degree, and second-degree manslaughter. Sentencing is set for two weeks, why so damn far out I don’t know, but the killer will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. Although Minnesota abolished the death penalty back in 1911, the murderer of George Floyd is more likely to be killed in prison by fellow convicts than to die of old age.

Faithlyn, my fiancé, first notified me by text while I happened to be on a break at work. We are both hard of hearing so we text to stay connected. She’s excited, riveted, and texted me “…The verdict is about to be read!” Moments later, she wrote one text: “Guilty.” Then, “On ALL counts.” Later on, she texted me it felt “so surreal.” Sent me an image of her avatar crying, “TEARS of JOY.” Full disclosure here: my Beloved is Black, Deaf, and an Immigrant naturalized as a US citizen while I am White, Hard of Hearing, and a native-born US citizen. Aye, tears of joy! Continue reading

Earth’s China – Taiwan Conundrum in a Planetary Perspective

Will these opposing sides step back from the brink?

What steps will we as a species take to peacefully unify Earth?

Isn’t national sovereignty a Twentieth Century anachronism as obsolete as the Divine Right of Kings?

Taiwan and its surrounding small islands constitute the last outpost of the Republic of China. This republic was declared on the 1st of January 1912 following the Revolution of 1911. The Revolution in turn set in motion a nearly continuous era of both internal and international warfare and massacres lasting well into the 1950s and later. 

After decades of civil war mixed with two world wars, the Communists proclaimed the People’s Republic of China on the 1st of October 1949. Although fighting still continued, the bulk of the civil war was considered over with the Communists victorious on the mainland. 

The Republic of China was declared over 38 and a half years before the People’s Republic of China was declared. Both republics still exist. It is ludicrous for the PRC in Beijing to declare Taiwan is a separatist region in rebellion against the central communist government. Are other nation-state regimes unable to see this fact? Most prefer to duck in fear or to focus on short-term financial profits. How in the world can the ROC, a national government existing nearly 40 years before another, the PRC, be considered in rebellion against the newer regime? Are not the Communists then the actual splittists engaged in separatism? They declared the civil war over in Red victory back in 1949, but wasn’t that premature? They conquered Hainan Island from ROC forces, invaded Tibet, and intervened in the Korean War all in the same year, 1950. They got pummeled in efforts to bombard and otherwise attack ROC forces on Taiwan and surrounding islands in battles and skirmishes that flared intermittently thru the 1950s into the mid-1990s. Meanwhile the PRC regime literally devoured the mainland as they sought to pacify their conquests, killing millions of fellow Chinese in the process. If anyone is in rebellion, isn’t it the revolutionary totalitarian dictatorship squatting astride the mainland in on-going revolt against the Nationalist forces held up in their island fortresses on Taiwan? Continue reading

DEFCON 5 or 4 over the Ukrainian Crisis?

A long-simmering crisis people have long shrugged off is quickly blowing up

One website in particular from among private citizens’ global military and intelligence sites held a debate on whether or not the DEFCON warning system should move from the current 5 to level 4. The majority argued persuasively in favor of maintaining the defense readiness system at 5 while a loud minority argued it should be raised to 4 even tho nothing has happened beyond localized, sporadic fighting in the Donbas, large-scale and threatening-appearing military maneuvers, which is one of the reasons countries engage in such behavior, petty name calling between the leaders, and doom porn by the few news media remotely aware of what’s happening. Another site, however, recently escalated to DEFCON 4 as military mobilizations far from Ukraine and saber-rattling has turned to repositioning doomsday weapons. What threat level is realistic here without getting caught up in alarmism or turn dismissive and in denial?  Continue reading

Waking up early is an abomination

The Author explores a socially charged minefield of complaints and efforts to understand the whats, whys, and hows so we may find more effective resolutions to chronic sleep deprivation in our 21st Century Earth

“Wha…? Hey! Don’t wake me up! Leave me alone. Please!!!” The Author awakes from a short afternoon nap at 17:06 from having to get up at 6:00 after 4.5 hours of sleep, Wednesday 24 February 2021.

Getting up early is an abomination. Abominable! Unless one is a morning lark or a lion chronotype, of course. I’m neither as I’m a night owl. My chronotype is the wolf. We creatures of the night represent about 15% of humanity. Apparently owls and wolves are more creative than larks and lions, hunt better in the evening, but are not as “healthy, wealthy, and wise” as the early birdies. Hey, who and what determines the rules here? See, waking up early for me feels horrid, even painful. Embarrassing as well as our work culture frowns, no, scowls down at people who don’t naturally jump out of bed early and quickly to joyfully pounce upon their jobs.

Societies the world over, especially those disrupted by constant violence including warfare and further perturbed by industrialization and electrification, have nearly destroyed our natural sleep cycles. Electrification and resulting technoeuphorias under capitalism, indeed, under all -isms, has led to fantastical material progress. They’ve also generated nonstop media agitation, addictions to social media and video gaming, and even more online distractions such as celebrity gossip and multiplatform video streaming. One may get obsessed with nonstop global news of faraway local events or constant sports events in play somewhere on this planet. These factors have disturbed all of the chronotypes from their natural Gaian order. This disruption seems to be intensifying as well, altho such perceptions may be skewed by repetitive interruptions of sleep.

Even so, nearly 55% of people are bears, the middle-middle folks, those who prefer to get up “at a reasonable hour” neither “too early” nor “too late.” Bears tend to go to bed at a “reasonable” hour as well. While one can force their sleep and wakening patterns to change per their work and family schedules, such changes do not alter the underlying chronotype. Me, ah, I’m a sleep-deprived wreck. You?

Grew up on a farm where we got up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning if not earlier to be at work by 6 o’clock. Every day. Still had to milk the cows and feed the livestock even on the most sacred holidays. Ditto as a kid when my sibbies and I woke up early to eat breakfast with my family, get ready for school, feed our pets, get on the school bus, and ride 30-45 minutes further to arrive at school before classes began at 8:00 AM. Those kids who got on the bus earlier often spent a full hour on the bus. The afternoon bus rides home, or perhaps team sports, school-based clubs, part-time jobs, and chores left little time for homework and studying before going to bed. There were times when I was in high school I would have football practice at school after class, drive home in a car as the busses have long since left, do homework, engage with my family, do house and yard chores, study, then go up to the barns and do chores. I used to climb up into the barn loft and shovel grain for cow feed over into a big chute at 1 in the morning so whoever feeds the cows about 6:15 or so will have enough grain ready to flow. Then come home and get ready for bed. To get up early the next morning. My siblings had their own responsibilities, too. We were chronically sleep deprived even back when we needed sleep the most. Continue reading

Coming Home to Spider Meadows, July 2009

A challenged family returns to a home in the wilderness during late July of 2009

Note geographical and grammatical purists conspire to punctuate conversations with comments such as, “Oh, you must know the correct term for the Upper Phelps Creek meadows prior to the uppermost Basin is Spider Meadow. The designation is singular without the plural “s.” OK?” ¡LOL! The greater majority of people, however, stick a wee s on the end as “Spider Meadows” rolls off the tongue with greater ease and verbal grace than “Spider Meadow.” Besides, there are multiple smaller meadows before and especially after the main meadow of the valley separated by little copses and fingers of forest and boulders and riven by small streams. Finally, English is an incredibly dynamic language as it is so expansive and unusually inclusive. So, we shall refer to those lovely high mountain meadows along Upper Phelps Creek as Spider Meadows with an s, thank you.

Mother and Daughter contemplate the Universe. Sunday evening in Spider Meadows, GPW, 26 July 2009. Foto by William.

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Remove Trump Now! The Usurper’s Cowardly Rebellion & the Hypocrisy of the Police

As of 21:46 PST today over 3,746 Americans died today from COVID-19. They join a total of 361,123 confirmed deaths and up to a half of a million more deaths likely to have been caused by the coronavirus. Mobs of fascist Far Right and Alt-Right puppets rioted in the national capital city today. They also demonstrated, often with violence, in other cities around the country, especially in state capitals. At the same time, the fascist violence stoked by Donald J. Trump, who usurped the presidency in 2016 via manipulation in plain view of arcane legal procedures, climaxed earlier today with his supporters storming the Capitol in Washington, D.C. It was an insurrection to allow an incompetent and criminal president to seize power. This was an assault on our constitutional democratic republic, not a demonstration for justice and reform. Enough is enough. Enough is enough! Remove this psychopathic, narcissistic, cowardly, and dangerous idiot at once! My God, this same man commands the most powerful military forces in the world. Think about the consequences!

Leaders of these United States of America! You in the Congress! Especially you groveling, irresponsible Republicans and moderate, afraid-to-rock-the-boat Democrats! Hey! Find your spines! Sit up! Stand up! Brave losing your jobs to vote against this would-be tyrant and his gangs of racist, sexist, conspiracy-swilling thugs and impeach Trump. Now! Impeach him again. This time convict him. Leaders of America, those of you in the Cabinet, and you, Mr. Vice President, gather up your courage and invoke the 25th Amendment. It’s in our Constitution for a significant reason. Use it. Remove this man from the White House. Install VP Mike Pence as Acting President until the moment Joe Biden is rightfully inaugurated on the 20th of January. Continue reading

I feel a dread coming…

Good Morning. I feel a dread coming. Happy New Year!

It’s a feeling, this dread, this existential, apocalyptic dread. Feel it coming round the mountain, I do. Feel it coming down the pike. It’s already loosened from our heads, this mighty dread.

I can’t help it. We live in an apocalypse of multiple, grinding, prolonged calamities. The weather turns gloomy one day, storms rage, and happy sunshine sparkles again. Then more darkness falls from skies heavy with silver and gray. The news cycles seemed trapped in their own circular inertia of addictive doom and gloom. Social media ricochets between apathy, denial, and toxic vitriol and self-righteous hatred. Facts and truths are buried under landslides of lies and illogical, insane, so-called conspiracy theories. Continue reading

Beaver Hill Wild

Two crazy parents have fun getting their kid to do a steep, grunt hike up a local classic in the Washington Cascades, Saturday the 25th of July 2009

“I don’t wanna hike. I’m too tired!” Talia, my youngest, says as she lays down in the trail on the way up Beaver Hill. She’s rebelling, fussing, and laughing all at the same time. And she’s game! Tater Tot does make it to the tippity top. Her mom, Kristina, watches patiently before gently nudging her to stand back up. “C’mon, Bug, let’s go!” Kris finally says. Foto by William Bass.

We parked at the Phelps Creek Trailhead. Got out of the minivan to stretch and look around before opening the rear hatch to pull out our packs. The three of us were about to start our backpacking trip up into Spider Meadows when we realized something weird was going on like some kind of spacetime distortion from a shimmery syfy show. Because, what? Where were…hey, our backpacks aren’t in the car. What?!? I was so flabbergasted and confused I even peered up into the bushes. Darn! Where were OUR PACKS! Even peeked underneath the car. Ugh, not there either. OK. How? How could I forget? I’m SO CAREFUL and METHODICAL! It’s how our post-multiple divorce, remarried, extra-blended, postmodern, post-polyamorous family managed our logistics amidst chaos! Truth was we’d forgotten the packs. Nope, I’d forgotten the packs. Me. I failed to doublecheck back at the River House, our base in the Greater Leavenworth-Lake Wenatchee-Plain-Spider Meadow area. My goodness, was I upset! Mad, despondent, but also laughing at the absurdity of it. Deep down I felt grateful, tho, as a menacing tumult of heavy, dark clouds rolled in, the wind blew, and a few raindrops fell. Kristina thought it all ridiculous, and yet so divinely perfect as we didn’t have to camp in the rain. She was more peeved at how grumpy I was. Talia threw back her head and rolled her eyes in her most perfect act of pretend delirium. 

Stormy skies thunder into the Glacier Peak Wilderness here at the Phelps Creek TH where the hike up to Spider Meadows begins.

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Make DC the State of Douglass

Expand self-determination for people in U.S. territories…without any further delay

People of America, fellow citizens of our constitutional democratic republic, let us grant DC statehood. Let’s add the District of Columbia to the Union as a state and rename it the State of Douglass. Let’s forward similar processes with Puerto Rico and other territories. All equally deserve to be liberated from anachronistic shackles of population requirements especially on islands and other areas constrained by geography so they may all engage with their fellow Americans as full citizens able to vote for their President and Vice-President of our United States. Yes, let’s grant DC statehood now.

The District of Columbia is constrained by geography, history, and territorial conflicts. DC can exist as a state, however small, simply as it is, especially as it’s population is larger than several other much larger current states. DC can be a state without any additional territory, altho it would be to the benefit of DC to have more territory. Having a larger, viable state in and around the current DC, while a territorial, voting, and tax loss in the short term for Virginia and Maryland, would most likely in the long run be in the best interests of the greater region including those neighboring states. Continue reading

Overnight to Lake Josephine

Two friends reconnect during the COVID-19 pandemic after first meeting 20 years earlier…with nature as much as with themselves…and must one confront the Trail to embrace the Wild?

*Note: This foto-essay has 103 fotos and 13 short videos*

Lake Josephine from the Icicle Creek Trail in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA. We left the PCT to head downhill to the lakeshore.

The magic of this adventure surprised me as I rarely go on overnight backpacking and camping trips. Once one has experienced going out for several days and nights it’s difficult to go back to merely one or two nights out. Such trips can be a lot of work and takes time to prepare for and to clean up afterwards. Edan had invited me to go with him. He’d encouraged me, and chose a fairly easy trip with low mileage as we both felt out of shape. Having had a surprisingly wonderful time overnighting solo on the PCT a month earlier, I agreed. Glad I did. Rediscovered the joy and ease of overnighters. Turned out to be one of my most favorite backpacking trips ever. We had balmy Autumn weather with a burst of Indian summer conditions. The scenery of Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness is magnificent. And two long-time buddies, both divorced with kids all grown up, got to spend some rare time together in a place neither had been to before.

Edan Z and William B, friends for 20 years, pose at the Trailhead. The author’s on foto right holding the camera. Sunday 4 October 2020.  We left parking lot on foot at 11:18. Bit of a late start for an overnighter, but not as late as those we encountered later in the dark. All’s well, tho, as such a later start isn’t ideal. Yet we were well-rested from a good night’s sleep. Edan drove, and we were determined to enjoy the journey anyway.

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Life in the Time of COVID-19: A Broken Journal

Notes from the Beginnings of the Apocalypse

Thursday 9 January 2020
There’s much to say and write down as existential dread grips the beginnings of this new year. Therefore, silence. Silence was my first language. Silence was The First Language.

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On the Kendall Katwalk Between the Sun and the Moon

Unexpected surprises on a short journey to a long-sought destination

(This is an unfinished work in progress. Welcome anyway, thanks for your patience, & enjoy what’s here in the moment.)

Sunset alpenglow from the Kendall Katwalk on the Pacific Crest Trail, late afternoon/early evening of Tuesday the 1st of September 2020.

Video Sweep of Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, Cascadia, on Tuesday afternoon the 1st of September 2020 C.E @ 14:31:31. Love this place! Gateway to great rock climbing, skiing, backpacking, dayhikes, camping, & yummy food & more!

Hello! I’m William, the author of this piece. Enjoy!

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To the River House

Our blended family’s joys & sorrows finding, gaining, enjoying, and losing our dream house and the many wacky adventures & jolly mishaps in and around the area, 2007 – 2010

*Click on any picture to expand and enlarge*

*This is a graphic intensive foto essay with 246 fotos & 1 video, and the larger the screen the better*

Kristina out in front of our new home with our realtor Randy V. We called it The River House. I took this picture with a LG smartfone camera at the time, Tuesday the 16th of October 2007, down in Mule Tail Flats outside Plain, Washington, in the Greater Stevens Pass – Leavenworth – Wenatchee Corridor.

The River House, Monday 18 August 2008.

Our back yard ends here at the river. The Wenatchee River flows thru the Cascade Mountains from Lake Wenatchee down thru several canyons before merging into the huge Columbia River. Wednesday 26 December 2007.

Blended family dynamics, y’all! Trying to get ourselves togerther for a family portrait by our comic genius Emily, one of my oldest daughter’s closest friends. I’m on my knees in the snow. Behind stand L2R: Talia, Kate, Morgan (now Dylan), & Kristina. Wednesday 16 January 2008.

Kids were at the right age for goofy pranks, too. Here my oldest, Morgan/Dylan discovers, well, this shower stall doesn’t quite work like one of Dr. Who’s TARDIS booths. This one here just sucks people screaming down the drain merrily, merrily, merrily into oblivion. OK, well, I don’t know exactly what she’s up to here, LOL! But Emily does! Mid-January of 2008.

Talia & Kate wrecked & laughing at the Sledding Hill over in Lake Wenatchee State Park close to the River House. A big day for Talia as she got back into snow sports after breaking her leg in a sledding accident on the same run two years earlier. Taken on Monday 15 February 2010.

The back side of the River House, the side facing the Wenatchee River. Yeah, I cleared and cleaned up what was an overgrown, debris-strewn yard. “Parked it out,” as the locals say. Took many long days and weeks. Had to for wildfire insurance, too. Hot tub on the deck picture right, and an onion swing, a fun gift for the kids from family friends up in Edmonton, Alberta just left of center. Aye, we love this place. Took us a long time to get over its loss. Was a house we’d expected to leave to our kids and their kids and have family & friends from around the world visit us here. Monday 18 August 2008.

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The Usurper versus The Challenger: Trump vs Biden, 1st Debate

Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden squared off tonight in the ugliest, most brutal, and cringe-inducing presidential debate I’ve ever witnessed. Many older journalists say it’s the worst such debate in U.S. history, at least in the history of television. The majority of observers pointed to one participant in particular for the emotional squalor and mean-spirited bullying, Trump, the man who kept harping upon his belief he “won” the 2016 election for president. Did he? A valid case can be made Trump usurped the American presidency. Trump hijacked the GOP as he bulldozed aside traditional conservatives, neocons, and libertarian Republicans alike. Trump barreled on to lose the popular vote by about 3 million people. The candidate and his Far Right base interfered with the Electoral College’s vetting of candidates, forced the states to ignore third party and independent candidates, and intimidated the Electors to vote for him. Faithless electors rebelled against having to vote for either Trump or the also-unpopular Hillary Clinton. Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party attempted to get votes recounted in controversial states in an attempt to move the EC towards Clinton. The EC certified him the winner, Congress then declares whom the EC certifies as the winner, and then the winner is inaugurated. Trump apparently saw far more people out upon the Mall before him on Inauguration Day than actually existed. And all of this without adding in election tampering by ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin and the Russians. Yes, Trump is the Usurper, the Goliath in the house, and Biden stands firm as the Biblical David, the Challenger with a slingshot firing stones of truths thru Trump’s torrent of lies and distortions.

I’ve never felt such weird, unpleasant anxiety before a presidential debate before. Such debates are politically vital to the campaign, and they’re also regarded more as drama and entertainment rather than a serious debate over policy differences as to what are the best steps to address critical priorities. There was so much more at stake tonight than media-driven personality dramas. Trump pulled out his dirty mob boss attitude while Biden dug into this working class, small town, and suburban roots. Tonight’s clash proved ferocious. We stand at the brink of our own dystopian apocalypse, so if you’re one of those who doesn’t give a rip, wake up! Stop running around so oblivious and pay attention. If and once a fascist dictatorship is established, the tyrant often devours his own minions early on. Are you a minion? Or of the Resistance? Choosing doesn’t make you a “radical.”

The Challenger stood up to the Usurper in the White House tonight. A global pandemic rages as a recession worse than the Great Recession chews up our economy. Human-driven climate change is destroying our habitats. Gun violence, social justice conflicts, a partisan Supreme Court struggle, severe income inequality, an opioid epidemic, homelessness, underemployment, and Black Lives Matter versus the Police rips thru our neighborhoods like wildfire.

Perhaps conflating Trump with Goliath does a disservice to the Biblical giant. The Usurper in the White House built by Black slaves violated debate rules, ethics, morals, and boundaries. Trump demonstrated a stunning lack of respect for anything and everything. The man simply did not give a shit and delighted in throwing metaphorical turds. Trump was dangerously infantile and out-of-control as he narcissistically made the election all about himself even tho he bullied everyone around him including the moderator, Chris Wallace. There were several moments when Trump was so disrespectful and shamelessly rude Mr. Wallace, a prestigious journalist from Fox News who spent years prior with NBC and ABC, would have been justified to terminated the debate and send Trump packing. Either way, the real losers were not only the American people but people from all around the planet who deserved to hear the candidates present their platforms. Instead the world had ringside seats to witness a bully in action as a most unpresidential president attempted to hijack the first debate. 

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200,000 Dead Already: COVID-19 versus the Spanish Flu

Think about it, people

Conditions in the United States of America are on track to allow deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic to surpass those from the Spanish flu outbreak. The Spanish influenza pandemic is often held up as metric of comparison against the current pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Think about it, people: an estimated 400,000 Americans dead in one year from COVID-19 versus 675,000 Americans dead from the Spanish flu across four waves in three years. Continue reading

Response to a Video Speech

The President and CEO of the company I work for released an internal video speech addressing support for Black Lives Matter, human and civil rights, the challenges of helming a unique business thru such turbulent times including the currently ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and his inner struggles with recognizing his own White privilege. His presentation moved, inspired, and even humbled me as well as others. As his presentation is itself confidential, the words below constitutes my otherwise public response:

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Eric. Thank you. Powerful presentation. I appreciate your empathy, especially when such a vital quality of our shared humanity seems absent among much of our national leadership. Let’s learn together our various lessons from these events as we find constructive ways to move forward beyond or even with our disagreements. At different times in our nation’s history many have spoken up for justice, representation, and, indeed, recognizance – to simply be seen, and, yes, sadly, resorting to violence when they don’t feel seen as human beings. The list is long: Native Americans, Latinx, women, Blacks, Asians, working class folks, immigrants, children, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, those with chronic illnesses, people from different religions and subcultures, people from across the spectrum of different sexual, gender, and relationship identities, on and on, as, gosh, the list of our diversity is so very rich. Continue reading

Red Car from Minnesota

Vignette from the Palouse in Summer

We barreled along freeways across ancient landscapes, the two of us, strangers unknown to the other, me in my beat up, old, green minivan, she in a little red car. One could tell hers was a new car even tho dusty from long hours on the road. Both of us headed West across Palouse Country toward the Pacific. The Palouse is a mix of rolling hills, wooded groves, and raw, naked canyons carved by ice and water thru prehistoric fire and lava. Now the Palouse seems quiet aside from the sound of blowing wind and heavy farm machinery. Local farmers and ranchers worked off in the distance churning up clouds of dust and chaff as they brought in the last of the wheat harvests.

Howard, a migrant farmworker during my youth in Virginia once told me one of his most cherished life experiences was the magic of working the wheat harvest. He and his fellow laborers would start in the South and work their way towards the Far North across the Great Plains of the American and Canadian Heartlands. They called it, “following the harvest.” Howard considered it a pilgrimage, tho he didn’t use such words. It clearly affected him deeply in a religious sort of way. He did chuckled once as he reminisced following the harvest was about as close as going to church as he was ever gonna get.

Today the hills rolled forth under a hot August sun and all seemed earthbound shades of yellow and brown ringed by evergreen trees. I-90 stretched across the Northern states and out here ran from Spokane in Eastern Washington near the Idaho border all the way into Seattle on the Salish Sea. Along the way the interstate traversed multiple ranges of the Rockies to cross the Palouse. Then the blacktop zooms across the Channeled Scablands of Washington Desert, an arid, rocky morass of steppe, sagebrush, and astonishingly huge canyons carved by immense Ice Age floods, to push on thru the mountains and passes of the heavily forested and still icy Cascade Range. The road dropped down the mountains into the urbanized lowlands along Puget Sound where ships come down thru the Salish Sea from the Pacific Ocean. 

She zoomed towards me from behind in her little red car, passed a line of trucks barreling west, and then passed me on my left. Curious, I glanced over as we sped along around 75 to 80 miles an hour. Young White woman. Blonde hair. Aquiline nose. No glasses. Not even sunglasses. Looked straight ahead. Unwavering. Hunched over and gripping the steering wheel. Sun visor down. She kept steady, tho, and, I, uninterested in racing, slowed down a tad to give her space. Her short, little red car shot on by. Continue reading

Crazy Love on the Go

A Vignette of a Man on a Mission to meet his Mate

COVID-19 is a vicious disease and as ephemeral as smoke. There isn’t any social distancing at the airport. Oh yeah, people start out 6 feet or 2 meters apart or so, and then all efforts fall apart with kids underfoot, cantankerous libertarians, confused idealists, families freaking out over minor technoapocalypses such as all their flight information seemingly vanishes from their smartfones between cybercracks in the wifi, officials in uniform interrupting and waving their arms ever whicha way, clouds of shampoo and sweat and coconut pomade and invisible floating parasites including vast hordes of invisible killer cooties, i.e. invasive novel coronaviruses. We’re at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, too. I’m traveling solo, and I am in the company of fellow bipedal social mammals.

Wow, a whiff of sage from someone somewhere lingers in the air triggering flashback memories to explorations of Washington Desert Coulee Country.

Anxious people grow more fearful of missing their flights or keeping their jobs. They strain and push out in all directions beyond social distancing markers on the floor and lean over human fencing straps as if searching for … God? Continue reading

What does telepathy feel like?

Can we overcome what divides us with it?

Are there Oxford commas in telepathy? Will technology such as electronic biotech implanted into our brains allow for direct mind to mind communication? What will such an experience be like? Will there be chunks of letters, words, and sentences appearing in our minds similar to what our eyes perceive as text messages on a mobile fone? A plethora of symbols? Hieroglyphs? Are there smells? Pictures? Will any images be cartoonish or real-life-like? Will telepathic pictures be sharp and clear, or faded and blurry? 

Would such mental images, smells, tastes, and other sensations be altered by brain damage from injury, aging, drugs, and disease? Hmn, would the thoughts and images projected by the transmitter person be perceived the same way by the receiver? What techniques would be needed, if any, to determine whether telepathy is restricted between two individuals or three or a global hive mind? What of privacy, transparency, and secrets? What does one do to defend one’s mind from unwarranted intrusions? Are there to be capital letters and punctuation in telepathy? Gosh, what will telepathy feel like?

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The Killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter Right Now, and Overhaul the Police Immediately

Sing Kumbaya later. Here’s Four Primary Points to Reform our Police First.

George Perry Floyd, a Black American, was pulled out into the street, lynched, and murdered at age 46 by four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His killers were three White or European American cops and one Asian American cop. Mr. Floyd’s criminal background is not relevant here. The man had served his time in prison and served his Houston, Texas community for years as a volunteer. He finally moved north into the Upper Midwest to start life anew. There wasn’t one single thing George Floyd did or was alleged to have done that warranted his slow, brutal death by a man who taunted him at times with what sounded like sadistic glee.

Yes, we need major police reform now all across the United States of America. The entire United States, a constitutional, democratic republic, needs urgent reform now and desperately so. We must not abolish our police forces, but instead reform or replace them immediately in three primary areas.

First, we need community oversight that is also democratic and transparent. Every city, town, parish, tribal reservation, and county jurisdiction, if they have not yet done so must shift to democratic community oversight. This may include re-creating the role of police as defacto paramilitary enforcers to instead become community servants. Cops must live in the jurisdictions they work in as part of belonging to the community.

Second, defund, not abolish, the police. To implement what “Defund the Police!” actually means, i.e. to review funding and reallocate police resources to non-police agencies and departments such as health care, dealing with addiction, homelessness, affordable housing, public sanitation, public infrastructure, etc. Doing so will allow for a stripped down, leaner community-based police force more focused and thus more efficient on policing, i.e. to serve and protect the public. Indeed, police reform may require increasing the number of police to actually serve and protect the public while non-police agencies focus on non-police public health, housing, infrastructure, and other social services.

Third, demilitarize the police. Yes, we must move to demilitarize the police and stop the flow of military hardware from the Armed Forces to the cops. Yes, SWAT teams for certain jurisdictions, of course, but how many, where, and for whom? Reviewing the relationships between local law enforcement and the FBI, ATF, ICE, Homeland Security, etc., is a necessary aspect of such purview.

So, three reforms: democratic community oversight, defunding and reallocation of resources, and demilitarization.

There’s one more reform, one perhaps more serious than the other three and one that certainly presents difficult challenges: reports and allegations of police brutality shall be reviewed with serious efforts to break apart the insidious and unethical Police Code of Silence. This code of silence corrupts the Thin Blue Line between cops and their communities, allows for both corruption and brutality to go unchecked. Criminality and division results. Criminals, including crooked and abusive cops, must be brought to justice. Securing and upholding our individual liberties demand we all hold each other and our public servants accountable. Our singular freedoms work only if we also acknowledge and uphold our social responsibilities. One large city, Camden, New Jersey, abolished its police department largely in part to exorcise entrenched, endemic police corruption and brutality.

The latest round of killings of Black Americans by police are clearly acts of murder. Indeed, they are lynchings, abusive and hateful lynchings by those sworn to serve and protect. These murders have convulsed our country again. First Ahmaud Arbery was killed in Brunswick, Georgia on the 23rd of February this year. Then Breonna Taylor was murdered in a fusillade of bullets in Louisville, Kentucky on the 23rd of March. The sadistic, slow, asphyxiation of George Floyd on the 25th of May blew open a nation already torn apart. The deaths and injuries kept coming. They keep on coming, too. Tony McDade, a Black Transgendered man, was shot dead by cops in Tallahassee, Florida, on the 29 of May, 2020. David McAtee of Louisville, Kentucky, known as Yaya the BBQ Man, was shot dead by cops on the 1st of June 2020. The list keeps growing. Continue reading

Before you jump into a Time Machine…

Often overlooked problems of time travel to consider before you go

Hey, before you dash off and jump into the shiny, new time machine parked over there enticing you with fantasies of seeing dinosaurs and solving major historical mysteries, consider a few possibilities. Much was written in recent weeks in regards to possibly the most dangerous place in Earth’s history, the Kem Kem beds of the prehistoric Sahara rain forest. A concentration of dinosaur superpredators lived there some 100 million years ago or so during the Cretaceous Period where they clustered around waters rich in gigantic fish. Those dinosaurs inhabited and dominated three domains: land, air, and aquatic/marine. Apparently there was so much prey these carnivores didn’t waste vital energy eating each other.

A frequent observation of the palaeontologists and those who wrote of their discoveries is any time travelers visiting the Cretaceous Kem Kem beds wouldn’t last long. They would die quickly. Packs of dinosaurs wielding giant jaws spiked with huge, sharp teeth would converge on our time travelers within moments and devour them. So, yes, before you zip away anywhere in any time machine, consider a variety of safeguards. OK?

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Goddess of the Galaxy

~short prose thru a window~

The metro bus rumbled past below, squealing outside my windows as the driver braked to make the corner. Nash laid in bed against a stack of pillows as he listened to the bus and imagined its mix of passengers cringing from one another’s imaginary cooties and flu germs. Real ones, too, he wagered. Nash took another drag from his cigarette. Watched the smoke glide back out of his face to curl aimlessly up toward the ceiling. There he watched the smoke snake across the ceiling as ghosts of long-dead ivy. Outside above the city, bright blue sunshine hollowed out the sky to fill the man’s apartment.

Oblivious to the gargantuan maw beginning slurp at the icy cloud surrounding the solar system he dwelled within, the skies had poured rain for weeks and weeks, a damp, dreary rain. Started out romantic, tho, the kind of rain where lovers walk through the drizzle arm in arm murmuring over cups of gently sloshing hot coffee.

After one week, however, after just one lonesome week romance frayed into irritation. Another week later melancholia gripped even the cheeriest soul. Darkness more prehistoric than their sun grew closer and grew large as it sucked at tatters of soul. Many spurned lovers drank themselves dumb. Nash was glad to have quit all alcohol. Didn’t miss it much, well, maybe a little bit, yeah, the feel of a can in his hand, or a bottle, or a cup. Yeah, he knew he needed to quit these cigarettes, too. Loved his smokes, tho. Ghosts of many a death from old cancer wards swirled around the glowing end of his cigs reminding Nash of gravestones and mud and damp, musty magazines and libraries turned inside out of buildings with all their books facing into the rain. Aye, must quit those damn cigs. 

Soon people began to shoot and stab each other. A darkness greater than any moon obscured compelled them to violence and lunacy. Love became unrecognizable, as if one’s heart burst with lust and devotion but mutated swiftly into shattered glass jars of strawberry jam. Nash craved one more cigarette, just one more, but the round-the-clock news media flashed one horror after another. He felt as if they were all watching plague, pox, and parasites eating up the world on TV. So many people became so numb Nash thought they may as well have been watching a spooky, goofy old movie about an apocalypse on another planet far from the world of his ancestors. 

“Nash! Hey, G’Nash!” she called up to the man in the window. “Good morning!”

“Mornin’. What up?” Nash barked back thru the open windows into the big wide blue.

“Quick! Look at me!”

The man sighed a tired, lazy ass sigh, embarrassed at being caught behaving like a sloth in his own mind. He got up out of bed, snuffed out his cig, and stretched towards the ceiling. He quickly pulled down his shirt and walked over without anything else on to the window. Bathed in bright, blue sunshine, he stood in the large, open window and grinned down at the person commanding his attention.

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Did the Spanish Flu cause the Great Depression?

Covid-19 is causing a severe recession after an economic boom built upon a foundation left shaky by the Great Recession. Similarly, did the influenza pandemic of WW1 lay the groundwork for the Great Depression after the even-shakier Roarin’ 20s boom? What’s next now? And what can we learn?

Construction booms in Seattle, the once Emerald City now known as the City of Cranes. Yet high rates of homelessness left over from the Great Recession and the Occupy revolts has led to a dead-end of cynicism, apathy, and despair ravaged by an opioid epidemic. The increase in employment masks over the high number of jobs considered dead-end, part-time, low-wage, reduced benefits, or regions scarred by stagnant economies and dead industries. So many barriers to progress! Even in a boom city! Foto by the Author, Monday 2 April 2018.

Was the “Spanish flu,” a disease pandemic whose awful memory was shoved aside by the Roaring 20s, a so-called Invisible Hand? A negative, indeed a “dead” invisible hand of capitalism at that? What lessons are relevant for us today as the new coronavirus recession arrives so soon after the Great Recession? If history does tend to repeat itself, then it helps to remember what’s often forgotten.

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Dirtyface Love: Sweaty Romps up Dirtyface Peak

Two eccentric, adventurous lovers hike, scramble, and explore a rough and tumble mountain in the backcountry of the Greater Leavenworth – Lake Wenatchee – Stevens Pass Area one frosty midweek day in February 2007 and again one blazing hot Saturday in July of 2008. For love is a choice, and a relationship may be as strong and as fragile as one’s trusty, old, hiking stick.

Dirtyface Views. Saturday 26 July 2008. Fotos by the author & his partner.

Kristina on top in the bright, bright sunshine.

William Bass on Dirtyface.

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A Family Dayhike up Little Si Mountain one July

Part of a Postmodern Age blended family goes for a hike & scramble up a small mountain near Seattle as they wonder about the future amid echoes of the past, Sunday the 6th of July 2008

Talia, the stepdaughter I helped deliver and raise as one of my own beloved children, with her dog, Joline. We all called our doggie JoJo, tho.

Kristina, my then-third wife (now ex) atop Little Si. A few spires and avalanche chutes rise into the fog behind her on Mt. Si, aka Big Si.

Today is surprisingly chilly for July for a low mountain peak so close to the Sound. The damp fog, brooding clouds, and the threat of rain amidst silence of the unknown felt foreboding at times as the financial collapse of the Great Recession accelerated thru our lives.

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Father’s Day on The Mountain, June 2008

Snapshots of a family in the Great Outdoors playing in the shadows of volcanoes, Sunday the 15th of June 2008

The Mountain. This massive, majestic, and dangerous volcano loomed above us wherever we went this bright, sunny Father’s Day.

The author with 2 of his daughters: Foto Left to Foto Right: Katie (10 & a half+), me (49), & TaTa (6). Kate performed over 30 cartwheels nonstop earlier this day, her personal record. We all encouraged her, of course, coached her, too, and, to be clear, it was all hands off. Left us in awe. As did being up in the snow at Paradise in Mt. Rainier National Park wearing sandals and flip-flops.

Breakfast for Daddy! Red eyes for the camera & all! Kate & Talia surprise William for Father’s Day 2008. Foto by Kristina.

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Tauroidalus Babbleyonno Riddim Polyammo

Spun forth from pre-Covid-19 txts w my oldest child Dylan in NYC…

Yep, this is me, LOL! Goofin’ by the railroad at Carkeek Park, Seattle, a few crazy days later on a Wednesday afternoon the 12th of February 02020, a Taurus in a Toroid.

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Big Snow at Brew Creek

Cocooned by record breaking snowfall, a man in training to be a psychospiritual counselor allows himself to rediscover, accept, and integrate long forgotten aspects of self only to later find out ugly truths as he extricates himself from the remnants of overlapping Canadian-American cults gone supernova.

~Early January of 2007~

***This article remains a work in progress. Enjoy the journey!***

The author at Brew Creek Centre, a remote sanctuary roughly halfway between Squamish & Whistler, British Columbia, on the morning after the snowstorm. A friend of mine in the training took this foto of me with my camera. Early January 2007.

*Fotos taken in cloudy, darkening conditions with an older LG (Life’s Good!) smartfone with a slide-out pushbutton keyboard bought thru Verizon.*

Snow fell so deep and so fast as to bury the entire part of Canada where I planned to immerse myself in a psychotherapy training.

The main lodge after the storm.

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Joshua Tree: Rites of Passage

Sun, Rocks, Sand, Stars, and Scuffling with Fear out in the Desert
Friday 24 March – Thursday 30 March 2006

*Click on any foto to open up & expand the picture.*

On the rocks in Joshua Tree National Park! Morgan (now Dylan), age 12, learning to rappel with her climbing instructor on Sunday the 26th of March. Gravity rocks!

Stepmother & stepdaughter grinning together in the desert.

At Joshua Tree looking across the California desert to the mountains beyond. March 02006.

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Before I leave Facebook: FB Posts November 2018 – May 2019

Stories & Observations from a Social Media Memoir 

Preface

I avoid full names & Facebook hyperlinks to maintain some degree of privacy. As people gripped in the passing urgency and speed of social media rarely spell in Standard English or punctuate, I left all actual comments copied over as they were and are, ergo as (sic), Latin for the English thus. Quotes are placed in quotation marks. Ellipses preceded by quotation mark and followed by text imply the name of the Facebook friend addressed was removed, such as “…gotta go there!” People’s names in conversation were replaced by, “Friend.” I also broke up the long, socmed style blocks of sentences into shorter paragraphs.

Plus I use a version of an international dating standard for calendars that makes more sense to me as it’s logical and less tainted by religious and nationalist hubris: day, date, month, year, era.

This series of socmed vignettes begins in the eleventh month of the previous year.

My exit from the corporatized commons of socmed began back in the Great Global Recession as my life fell apart. Felt too overwhelmed by a crush of shame, hurt, fear, anger, and melancholia to write much at all. Those times gradually faded and I began to reemerge. But I began to leave once and for all in late summer of 2017 in the wake of heartbreak as a romantic relationship that seemed so serendipitous with a “this is it, finally!” quality faded away on the Pacific Crest Trail as ghosts between trees.

More and more information emerged as well as to how so many corporations including high-tech, internet-related, and social media companies were manipulating, misusing, and even abusing our private, personal data. Governments were engaged in this toxic stew as well. Criminal hackers, corporate spies, and government controllers interfered more and more with our lives. The rise of populist and extremist politicians of all stripes left and right further poisoned socmed and their rabid, ideologically rigid, slobbering followers turned social media into a toxic wasteland of dueling echo chambers where so-called Influencers dominated with their capitalistic narcissism. I got frakken sick of what I once loved and enjoyed becoming a putrid void of well, vomit, blood, and shit. I had to get out!

Leaving this emotionally distracting digital world began to speed up in November of 2018 and by Spring of the following year I was done. Didn’t delete my account, however, as the task to save fotos, especially of my children as they grew up to explore their lives is a laborious one. As is gathering the contact info of so many wonderful, faraway friends I desire to stay connected with regardless of socmed. Aye, this is my Exit back into the real world, my exit to a wild Cascadia, a world where even Terabithia is more real than socmed.

Peace.

 

Sunday 11 November 2018

The horror of World War 1 ended with a ceasefire 100 years ago today, although people continued to die by the millions in the numerous revolutions and civil wars left blazing on nearly every continent while the Spanish flu pandemic burned grimly around the globe. My paternal grandfather, Carol M. Bass, served in the United States Navy in those terrible times. He fought in the North Atlantic hunting German submarines. His ship sunk subs full of sailors from the other side. I remember asking him what it was like way back when I was a preteen lost in fantasies of glory.

Pops, our name for him, struggled to describe his experience. He didn’t say much, and he died of cancer when I was 12, so all I can recall were impressions as if splashed with black and red paint and cold water. Pops said being on a ship out at sea during the winter was freezing cold and sometimes scary. The ocean was immense, dark, stormy, and deep. The ship was small and noisy. He and his fellow sailors lived in dread of being torpedoed by German U-Boats and going down far from anywhere. Even when the ocean was calm and beautiful. Continue reading

My Journal: 2019

My various journals, diaries, memoirs, and personal letters range across the times and spaces of my life. Sometimes I kept extensive private records, usually with an eye toward possible publication. Nearly everything I wrote was written with the intention, indeed a commitment to share with the world. Most anyone was welcomed to at least read my work. For perhaps too many other times, unfortunately, I didn’t record anything. Most of what I wrote prior to the house fire of 2010, boxes filled with letters, journals, and diaries are gone forever. All burned up. Regardless of what others thought, however, I wrote with the determination to show, tell, and share the truth as I believed and experienced events and the emotions, thoughts, and feelings related to them. Of those matters I felt too ashamed, embarrassed, hurt, or afraid of to address in public, well, I simply didn’t even write about such things. Those things may follow me into death for all I know. This diary-journal hybrid represents 2019. One last thing: I don’t use the full names of certain friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Some of them are disguised. Thank you.

Me in the middle with my two youngest daughters all so grown up. On picture-left (my right) is Talia. On your right is Kate. Both are children I chose to take on, love, and raise as my own. My oldest, Dylan, formerly Morgan, was unable to get off work. This was taken shortly after Talia’s dance recital at Broadway Performing Arts Center, Seattle. Saturday the 4th of May 2019.

Wednesday 23 January

Life is like a rollercoaster off the rails, ha ha! I’ve a muck hole fulla crappo, and ya know what? It sux, lol! And life is great anyway! Yeah, I’m good. 

Sometimes in the Silence I can feel energy from afar like water in the body. Can’t explain it, really.

In the moment an opening existed thru which I could feel you far away. I was reminded what a beautiful, brainy, emotional, & sensual woman you are way over there. It’s all reading energy by feeling into the energy as the conscious mind expands out into the world.

Praying for lots of peace & healing. Altho I don’t really pray. Not in a conventional sense. Maybe it’s time we just frakken beg for all we desire without any shame. Continue reading

Deep Civilization and the Long View on Peace

Can we “deep think” our way out of our messes?

Apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and other forms of dystopian thinking seems to dominate both our fiction and our daily news cycle. “Fiction” includes movies, TV shows, poetry, photography, paintings, and music as well as prose. Such strains have run thru human thinking since Ancient times, of course, as one only has to look to the various holy books alone. Our obsession with all things “doom and gloom” as worldwide catastrophes, however, dealing not only with the global collapse of human civilization but with the extinction of our species, with omnicide of the biosphere, and with even the destruction of the planet itself seems to emerge en masse during the First and Second World Wars and the Great Depression. This fixation really took off during the Cold War and became even darker during the Global Long War on Terror, the Great Recession, and the unexpected rise of proto-fascist authoritarianism. The End Times have always been nigh, but never more so than at any time right now. What must we do then to deepen our thoughts, open our hearts, extend our minds, and expand our collective consciousness?

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Existence: Questions of Consciousness and Soul to Answer

An Inquiry in need of answers to unhinge our doors of interpretation

Assume the following is true:

Consciousness exists beyond the body.

The body of work in regards to common anomalies such as near-death experiences, after-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, astral travel, shamanic journeys, psychedelic openings, and cases of reincarnation is as vast as it is deep. These included numerous documented events, cases of research, experiential knowledge, anecdotal accounts, and historical recordings seemingly at odds with the current limitations of science. The mystical and spiritual aspects of many of these events also transcend the limitations of religion.

We humans have many opinions of these matters. Many humans are quick to object to each other’s views and take offense in regards to such things. Both our history, our archaeology, and our current affairs demonstrate we humans are all too quick to kill others as well as die for our myriad and opposing belief systems. All demonstrate the oxymoronic qualities of being “common anomalies.”

Without evidence that is tangible and measurable, then all we have left are not facts but the competing truths of quarreling opinions and other belief systems all made up in our human minds by our brains. Yet by allowing ourselves to acknowledge what is intangible and nonreductionist, indeed immeasurable, we open to novel and transformative understandings of ourselves and the world we abide within. Such newfound presence and clarity may allow us to see hidden mathematical formulas.

Therefore many questions remain for us to answer. Among them are:

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Will Climate Change Drive Global Cooperation or World Dictatorship?

Will it? Shall we allow climate change to drive global cooperation or world dictatorship?

Either way, apocalypse looms. Doesn’t mean it’ll land in our laps, tho. Better get ready to growl. Yes, start growling.

Greta Thunberg chastised her fellow humans the world over for our collective failure to act and to act now to address the engines of our own extinction. She pointed out we already have the solutions. We know what to do. We already know what we must do to successfully address our current interlocking, wicked problems of global climate disruption, Anthropocene global warming, and the Holocene mass extinction. She doesn’t need to wait to grow up and earn her PhD. She can’t. We cannot wait. Yet we do. 

We as a species remain divided into hundreds of squabbling nation-states and thousands of quarreling stateless-nations. We remain divided by socio-economic class, ethnicity, culture, religion, politics, economics, finance, sexuality, gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, appearance, and levels of education. So many things split us apart from one another we fail to recognize how much more we share in common as Homo sapiens of Earth, third planet from the Sun. We still argue with each other over our isms while secretly wishing all of those on the other side would simply die or somehow vanish. We debate the intricacies of global cybersecurity and of the space race between China and the U.S.A. to colonize the Moon and Mars without considering these may all be silly and moot with our world roiled by crises of our own making.

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Cooperation and Genocide in Concurrent Homo species

Evolutionary Cooperation, Prehistoric Genocides, Ancient Myths, Self-Domestication, and Humanity Now

 

Our knowledge of our and other human species has expanded rapidly. The chrono-frontiers of Homo sapiens has been pushed back to at least 300,000 years ago, further back in time than the 150 ka or kyr as initially believed. At one time we coexisted with at least eight and possibly up to ten different human species up to about 10,000 years ago. There were probably more hominin species and subspecies, too, still unidentified from the fossil records. Unknown or mystery genetic markers point to the DNA ghosts of such distant and remote ancestors.

Clearly the different hominins interbred with each other, including together with and apart from Homo sapiens. How much was consensual versus coerced is unknown, but clearly we know Neanderthals, Denisovans, and what we now call Early Modern Humans (early Homo sapiens) intermixed frequently and even lived together. The different species, not counting their various hybrids, are as follows:

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“Where are all the weapons?” asked an Incel Joker in the Store

Paranoia, revenge, & murder as fantasies in the mind being acted out wherever all the world’s a batshit crazy stage

“Where are all the weapons here?” Squirrelly Clown Dude asked me in a British accent. Like he came to America for the damn weapons. His CO2 gun with a big, plasticky pistol grip still shoots even tho it is not a “real” firearm but a sophisticated “toy.” The barrel looked primarily red and blue with an accent of white. 

This crap all started when a murderous, clown-brained incel dressed himself as the Joker, a fictional comic book character, and shot up a Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado back in July of 2012. The guy was a mass murderer idolized and revered by the incel movement. “Incel” is codeturd for “Involuntarily Celibate.” These are mostly men who view themselves as physically unattractive, even ugly, are often broke, and many of whom seem addicted to porn. Incels feel they have some degree of divine right to get laid and laid by beautiful women.

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The Horrors of Neptune, or, really, the Void beyond the Vastness of Inner Space: A Belated Review of 2019’s Ad Astra

Science Fiction and the clash of myths & psychoanalysis amidst Deep Space

Felt like shooting one of Elon Musk’s “Giant Fucking Rockets” at every review I read of Ad Astra where the film critic moaned, groaned, and bitched about frickin’ “daddy issues.” C’mon, people, of COURSE there exist daddy issues. And son issues, too! At least this wasn’t some twisted, incest-addled blood, sand, & sandals Ancient Empires kinda flick set up top in Outer Space! But they did have space pirates on the Moon, and bloodthirsty, psychotic baboons took over a corporate spaceship lab. The cinematography was gorgeous.

Best of all, the movie captured the vast expanse of space with a lush, incandescent magnificence where we teeny tiny, itty bitty bipedal social primates from a small, rock and water planet were overwhelmed with a mix of dread and awe. Drama interplay between top actors including Brad Pitt, Donald Sutherland, and Tommy Lee Jones was accented by short, intense performances by a number of others among the cast including Ruth Negga, LisaGay Hamilton, Greg Bryk, and others. So many people played so many bit parts I was often left wondering more about these characters, wanting to see more, yet mildly irritated as to see more would be a tangle of tangential distractions. Seeing Natasha Lyonne, a star rising once more from later shows as diverse as, Orange is the New Black and Russian Dolls was both a surprise and a delight. She is so goofy, fun, and gnarly!

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UFOs & Windmills: A True Spoof

Orbs! Flying Round Things! Gigantic Windmills! Interdimensional Spaceships! Time Tunnel Funnels! Galloping Extraterrestrial Kangaroos! But no cuddling with cuttlefish wearing 3-D glasses!

 

Pulled off the freeway & recorded me some UFOs, yo!

Stormy weather, a filled-up bladder, and mischievousness combined to spew out UFOs like bubblelicious tic-tac UAPs from a bubble-making machine going all barmy swarmy at a little kid’s birthday party. Been a busy three days for me. Helped my middle daughter move in and out of winter storms from Seattle and Pullman up and over to Spokane for school. I like Spokane. Small city in the center of Eastern Washington close to the Idaho border where you can see the sky and hear the wind.

Bought her a snow shovel, too. After goodbye hugs & I-love-yous, I’d left in the early afternoon for Seattle. It’s a long haul across a wild mix of Palouse Country and the Channeled Scablands before climbing back up into those Cascade Mountain passes. Big storms been blasting those peaks. But I had to pee, y’all, cuz, hey, I’m a well-hydrated man! After all my favorite two beverages are plain water and black coffee. So I pulled off I-90 into the Ryegrass Safety Rest Area West Bound, just east of Olmstead Place Historical State Park & then Ellensburg, and west of Vantage & the Columbia River Gorge. Woo HOO, I saw all KINDS of delightful oddities!

Whoa! Lookit! Video of flying orbs and Unidentified Flying Objects reclassified as Unformed Aerial Patterns. This is a real video without any thing faked or hoaxed. It is simply me the author recording an overhead parking lot lamp at a freeway rest stop in the center of Washington State. What you see is the light from the lamp post, 3 UFOs as a smartfone camera lens flare, and me quivering & shimmering the camera as I grinned like hell.

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East into Winter Woods and Frozen Deserts

A wacky Father-Daughter Winter road trip East across Washington State into Cascadian forests around Lake Wenatchee and the River House then on into the deserts of the Channeled Scablands carved by gigantic Ice Age floods into vast, prehistoric lava plains, themselves formed by even more ancient basalt lava floods, January 2010.

Road Trip! Zooming deeper into Coulee Country in the Scablands of the Columbia River Basin, Monday 18 January 2010.

Lake Wenatchee in the Cascade Mountains on a beautifully gloomy day as more storms roll in this Sunday the 17th of  January 2010.

My oldest child, Morgan Hannah years before she became Dylan Blair, as she strides thru the icy edges of the Potholes Reservoir Lakes, Monday the 18th of January 2010. She’s 15 still, only two months shy of turning the Big 16.

Me, her Dad, at the River House on the Upper Wenatchee. In good spirits, too, as I love road trips & being outdoors. I’m only 50 here. Gosh, be 51 years in about 3 months. Foto by Morgan/Dylan. Sunday 17 January 2010.

Emerald Isle, Lake Wenatchee, Lake Wenatchee State Park. Sunday 17 January 2010. It’s a cold, cold late afternoon as dusk approaches.

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In Memoriam: A Letter to Nancy’s Family

Rev. Ms. Nancy Patricia Griffin Hughes, 1932 – 2019. Foto from one provided to the public by the family for her obituaries in various newspapers.

This letter was written to the family and friends of Nancy Hughes, the mother of my ex-wife Gwen and grandmother to our two children, Dylan (formerly Morgan) and Kathryn, aka “Kate.” Although she passed in June of this year, her family elected to celebrate her transitions this past October at a wake they dubbed Momfest, held out at the Hughes family cabin at Willow Lake outside Lynchburg, Virginia.

Had hoped to attend and read a version of this letter, and was unable to do so. My printer wouldn’t work, didn’t have everyone’s email addresses, and didn’t wish to burden my ex-wife with reading my letter out loud for me at such an emotional gathering nor make copies to hand out to people. I think she emailed it forward to her siblings, but not everyone in the family knew of the letter. So now this letter is shared here this Xmas Eve for anyone to read. For Nancy was a Gift for the whole world.

Goodbye, Nancy. May the Afterlife be the journey you always imagined it to be. Thank you for sharing your life with so many people from Egypt to Tibet, from Canada to Ireland, from France to all over the United States and elsewhere. Here’s my letter as follows:

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Day Trips with Li’l Butterfly

Remembrance of Journeys Past with my Stepdaughter across the last month of 2008 and the first three months of 2009

Talia debates going to the top of Kite Hill at Magnuson Park, Seattle. Tuesday 31 March 2009.

She was my third and last child, the stepdaughter I read to while she was in her mother’s womb and caught in my hands as she was born after long hours of struggle. Kristina, TaTa’s “Chee Chee Mommastina,” called her daughter, “Little Sitting Buddha Girl,” for she would sit still and quietly observe everything around her with precision and presence. As her “DaDa William,” however, I called her my Li’l Butterfly.

Distant Olympics on a ferry ship sailing across the upper part of Puget Sound as we traversed the Salish Sea, Washington. Sunday 4 January 2009.

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The Little Girl on the Floor

A little girl playing on the floor of the store melted my heart and opened my mind. In doing so she tilted the fabric of spacetime as one would water pour from a pitcher into a drinking glass. Doorways of mind and heart closed momentarily and yet holographically appeared as a line of portals between parallel universes. My timeline felt bifurcated. Both lines vanished into the future as quickly as turning the water tap in the kitchen sink on then off. All drains still lead to the same underground pipe. All was done inadvertently from her end, however, such was her power on those around her. She was one of the most adorable little toddlers I’ve ever been fortunate with whom to engage. This child was not only incredibly cute, but she also demonstrated a degree of presence unusual for any human being. Usually I’m one to shy away from the young children of others. This little girl with shaggy blonde hair, however, reeled me in with her playful curiosity, intense focus, and ability to seemingly anticipate adult commands.

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Atomic Mushroom Clouds at One in the Morning

Sun of Godzilla

Staggered downstairs into the kitchen for a bite to eat, and thru the windows saw a strange, orange yellow red glow growing swiftly on the horizon. Forgot all about nom nom nomming on a post-midnight snack. Felt confused. Fear came alive as I watched the weird glow expand into a raw, giant, golden, Godzilla cloud.

Big windows looked west from the great, long hill in North Seattle called Phinney Ridge. I currently abide there within an old, dilapidated house built over a century ago. Shared it with two other single, divorced guys, too, plus two elderly brothers down below in the daylight basement. From an old, grandma kitchen we could look west over the top of Ballard across the Salish Sea into the Olympic Mountains. The United States of America maintained one of the world’s largest stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons right in the guts of Cascadia just over there across the water from Seattle.

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West Beyond Kitchen Windows

(Aye, another jolly ol’ bad, bad poem here for ya)

1.
Mountains layered in rows of blue, indigo, and violet
advance and rise between the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea
into sunshine as clear as fresh-scrubbed panes of glass.
They uplift the frontier out there,
out west beyond large, old-fashioned kitchen windows.
The day is glorious outside, the Sun shines bright, 
there’s snow up high in the Cascades to our east,
and planets and stars align in night skies bereft of moon.
All my friends are out and about doing fun things,
Playing hard up in the mountains and relaxing down in the city.

I, however, sit at home where maritime clouds of silver and gray
hang heavy inside the bones of my mind,
heavier than when those clouds sprawl across Cascadian skies.
Instead of being outside hiking, paddling, climbing, skiing, or
perusing book stores and funky shops with cups of coffee in hand,
I burrow down into the self-isolation of self-partnership gone awry to write horridly-wrought, quasi-autobiographical prose poems and binge
on Netflix videos in a bottomless hunger to
satiate my addiction to online vicariousness.

Energy spent to hold up and push away the weight of heavy clouds
leaves me exhausted, my excitement obliterated, and my wants and desires to get outside into this spectacular and beautiful day buried
under Pyramids of Forgetfulness.

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Sky Orgasms over Richmond Beach

Bending the fabric of space, time, and memory

Storms roll in over mountains and sea create

Orgasms in the Sky

“Dynamic clouds – the whole sky is an enormous wet orgasm,” I posted on Facebook back on Wednesday the 31st of March 2010.

Three friends, all women, responded:

PPB: “love it……perfect……..”
GVH: “I did not quite see it that way 😜, but yes it was very dynamic.”
JAG: “Goodness William, I want what you’re having”

My house had burned down, and all I could do today was to look up and see orgasms in the sky.

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Kulla Kulla Blues for a Neverfind Trail

A dayhike into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness to a mythic lake with a friend doesn’t quite go…& we had a blast anyway, like, literally, as in Ka-POW, LOL!
Monday 1 October 2019

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Almost done, tho! Enjoy!*

Gazing across Washington State’s incredible Alpine Lakes Wilderness from the summit of Mt. Defiance (5,584 ft or 1,702 m). Foto from an earlier hike & climb. The largest lake below is Lake Kulla Kulla at about 3760 ft in elevation. Further over to your right is the next largest, Mason Lake at about 4,183 feet. As you can see, one doesn’t scramble 1,053 ft straight down. Ya gotta go up & over & down & around & then down. I took this foto on Monday 22 June 2015.

Finding Lake Kulla Kulla had a grip on me. Still does. Ever since I first saw it from the top of surrounding ridges and peaks. Especially from the top of Mt. Defiance on a day hike one Monday in May 2015. An attempt earlier this year in May with my middle daughter Kate stopped at Mason Lake. A later than anticipated start combined with choosing to return for a family gathering to say farewell to my oldest was the reason then. A couple of other planned trips including camping out overnight ended up being canceled for odd reasons.

Zooming in on Kulla Kulla from Mt. Defiance on the same trip in June 2015. Steep, rocky, brushy, & woody!

Kulla Kulla is an anomaly, remains a mystery, and as such I wanted to at least find a way to get down to its shoreline. There weren’t any trails on any maps except a faint, dotted line on an old map I found online for an overgrown fishing trail. Best reports indicate one turning off on a rough trail just before reaching Sir Richard’s Pond to follow a ridge sloping down to the lakeshore. The terrain is rugged, steep, and without any good beaches. Trip reports were scarce. A few were rambling, toppling over snowy boulders and logs snowshoe romps. One was a hilarious tale of woe and misery by a guy who claimed to have barely made it out alive. A Bigfoot family of hairy Sasquatch people was imagined to abide down in these remote sections of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Yet it was a glorious lake with a stunning view. So I asked my friend Michelle RM, a coworker within the same outdoor adventure company, if she would join me in finding a way down to the lake from the main trail. Yes, of course, she replied. She was game! Woo Hoo! So off we went.

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Then What? UFOs, Consciousness, and the Afterlife

A Conundrum of Brief Inquiries

What follows below are my remarks in the Comment section on YouTube. They’re in response to UFO researcher & Cold War historian Richard Dolan’s interview on The Richard Dolan Show with Alan Stivelman, a filmmaker from Argentina, about the UFO and controversial Shamanic and spiritual experiences of Juan Perez back in 1978. This film involved the research of UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, someone who came to view UFO phenomenon as more to do with the mysteries of consciousness and the spiritual, metaphysical aspects of reality than with nuts and bolts space craft piloted by biological organisms or their machines arriving here from other planets and times. Juan Perez himself is a hunter and gaucho from a remote, rural region of Argentina who had a traumatic and transformative experience with UFOs and ETs more shamanic and psychospiritual than material and tangible. Stivelman’s documentary film about Perez’s experiences along with the research Jacques Vallee and the insights of indigenous Shamanism, Witness of Another World, is expected to be released worldwide in seven more days.

My brief inquiries from the Comment section, revised from one long paragraph into shorter ones for ease of reading, are as follows:

Consider there may be multiple origins and explanations for what we may call ETs, EDs/IDs, CTs, Afterlife beings & spiritual entities, et cetera, etc. Seems we humans are so quick to lump everything into one category or its opposite when life is messy. 

Could be some of these UFOs and associated entities are intelligent animals &/or machines or some new category of life & technology altogether from other planets & moons. Perhaps some are from other dimensions & timelines inaccessible to us at the moment in ours. Could be manifestations of what we call “spiritual.” Perhaps what we call the soul or our spirits, words from our various religious and mystical traditions, are but forms of consciousness we don’t yet understand…consciousness within and beyond ourselves, beyond our living human bodies. Maybe these entities in the so-called Afterlife are but manifestations of consciousness we don’t understand because we can’t measure & reduce them down into neuropsychological biochemistry.

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A Mt. Rainier Dayhike with my Daughter Kate, 2019

A Ramble with my Middle Daughter on the Burroughs Mountain Loop Trails out of Sunrise Village, Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington,
Thursday 25 July 2019

Kate goofin’ for her Dad’s camera. Posin’ on the Burroughs Loop Trails at Mt. Rainier one hot Thursday in July of 2019 waaay back yonder in the early 21st Century C.E.

Ti’Swaq’, the Mountain that Wipes the Sky, or simply, The Sky Wiper, as the Alliance to Restore Native Names wants to call Mt. Rainier, looms above the surrounding Cascade Mountains to 14,411 feet or 4,392 meters in elevation. Taken from Sunrise Point.

Kate and I planned a dayhike, and it took awhile to jumble our stuff together into one car. I had to take a bus to the UW Huskey Stadium light rail station with my backpack, then take the train south to meet her at Rainier Beach Station while she drove north to meet me there. Logistics were barmy nutters. We grumbled and laughed and made things work out anyway. Especially as we had to scoot on back to North Seattle to meet the rest of our Seattle family for Dylan’s farewell picnic. My oldest was soon to ride across the continent with a friend and move to New York City for grad school. Meanwhile, however, Kathryn and I were in the here-now of Mt. Rainier National Park.

What happens when Daddy doesn’t pay attention to what shoes he grabs outa the closet in the dark. I didn’t realize this ridiculously comical error until I was in the parking lot at Sunrise Village. Ended up wearing my worn Chaco sandals I drove up in out on the hike. Glad Katie & I weren’t on a more serious climb! Worn my Chacos on plenty of hikes in the past. They’re old & worn out now, tho, & pebbles & grit tend to get caught between sole of foot & top o’ sandal. But how in the world?! Two Altra trail shoes! Same brand, aye, but for the same left foot and two very different models, HA!

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Big Dawg in the Parking Lot

An urban vignette

After I parked my old green minivan at the Greenwood Fred Meyer store about 21:50, a young couple with a pit bull bounded down the entry steps mad as Hell. They were yelling & arguing over whether or not their dog had taken a big poop. Made me forget for a wee bit why I drove all the way there after work to buy food & toiletries. Did the dog take a big doggie dump inside the grocery store? Next to all the food? Or not? Well, dayum!

People are something else. Humans are a mess. Life is messy, and people will choose to do what people do when they remain unaware they have choices. And Big Dawg in the parking lot? Big Dawg clearly didn’t give a shit and wasn’t about to shit for the asshole yanking back on its leash as they both bounded down the concrete steps from the store into the parking lot ahead of the woman yobbling out behind them. Dayum! Oh, shit, are these too many damns and shits for thee? Read on, thy fair readers. Tis merely a vignette!

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MAKE IT STOP

Insanity in the City of Cranes

(Early 21st Century Americana with short Audio-Video further down below)

Found art by a tagger cartoonist as construction noise roars across traffic. South Lake Union/Downtown area of City of Seattle. Discovered one Thursday morning on the 5th of September 2019.

My beloved Seattle has mutated into a nightmare. The once Emerald City, the former Jet City, is now the City of Cranes. We’re the Abyss of Homelessness for those whom the Great Global Recession never ended and for whom the well-to-do would rather eradicate from view. Left my creaky old minivan at home, walked up the long, steep hill to the top of Phinney Ridge, and caught the bus to work. The #5 dropped me off with others 3 blocks further away than where it used to do as the cancer of over construction tore thru our city of dust & mud & noise. Dammit, I must zig zag this way & that way just to get to work!

Gosh, thought I would get to work early! Not now! Streets seemed closed in all directions. Sidewalks, too. I must cross the wrong way here to get over there to go the right way. To go west to east to get to work, I zig north, then south, then north, then east, then south, then west, south again, north next, north again, then east, then zag around the darn corner to end up going east again. Why? Because every block is different in a city cluttered with octopus intersections. On one block the sidewalk is shut down on one side and on the next shut down on the other side. Just like that, back & forth block to block.

People are both amused, stressed out, befuddled, giggling, and pissed off. Uber & Lyft drivers block honking buses. Lime-green & orangey-red app bicycles litter broken curbs. Hashtags litter all languages. Tourists peek back and forth between smartfone screens and big, floppy maps. Both are already obsolete. The lights take forever to change, traffic is too heavy for me to leap out into the street all skippity dippity dooby doo, and, ya, there’s ewwie random piles of doggie poo oozie-oozing outa tossed plastic baggies to hop over, too! Work is waaay up there beyond the top of the next hill. If I can just get outa this crazy ass place! Construction is so LOUD I turn off my hearing aids merely to keep my eyes open to see my way thru the madness.

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Family Beach Trip to Moclips & Pacific Beach 2006

Memories of a magical & unorthodox beach trip to the Washington Coast,
July 2006

*This is a work in progress. Most of the fotos of this place were lost in the 2010 house fire. Enjoy anyway!*

The Three Sisters playing in the sand. Morgan, age 12, who later changed her name to Dylan, sits partially buried on the upper center right. Kate, about 6 & a half, is on foto left. Talia, bottom right, is 4 years along. Tuesday 1 August 2006. Foto by Daddy William, age 47.

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Cape Disappointment Happy Blues 2007

Snapshots in time of a family in the wind

Early January 2007

Cliffs at this edge of ocean were forbidding, terrifying, and hypnotic in their power. We felt mesmerized as we watched massive waves roll in thru wind and rain to explode upon the rocks below and roar up cliffs into the sky. The Columbia River surged down from the Canadian and American bowels of Cascadia into the vast Pacific Ocean. River and sea currents smashed together to form one of the most chaotic, dangerous, and dynamic river deltas in the world, the Columbia River Bar. Kristina’s Dad goes out fishing in it all the time.

Bass-Katayama Family near cliff’s edge at Cape Disappointment, Washington. L2R: front row: Talia & Kate; middle: Kristina & Morgan (now Dylan); rear: William. Pics recovered from Kristina’s old camera fone. Tuesday 2 January 2007.

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Surfing the Deep Blue Void

Stay on & surf it, woo HOO! Just remember all rides come to an end.

Today I feel alone and overwhelmed. I pace with anxiety. Yet when I step back and take a few deep breaths, when rumination becomes contemplation, suffering becomes the past. The flesh of my body, however, holds the pain of all my yesterdays. My mind seeks to leap ahead via quantum gravity loopholes it’s certain to untangle with the creative power of consciousness. Must be some technique of mind and machine to burst apart and push aside those illusions we behold as consensual reality. Or are such actions merely humdrum fantasies built up from staring impoverished into mists of silver drizzle from the windows of one hundred years plus of dilapidation? Continue reading

When liquid dissolves, does it harden?

Well, does it?

Profile shot of the activist author from a solo 2015 trek into the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Cropped for my User Profile shot for Alex’s Liquid Solidarity efforts.

“I use labels, & we aren’t our labels. I struggle w/ being & doing including being a stand for love, kindness, forgiveness, firmness, compassion, service, & courage in the face of rage, hate, injustice, tyranny, fear, greed, & shame. What is justice without judgment? I jump into rabbit holes thru The Big Picture.”

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Upside down in Snow

A romp in the woods with my lover at the time & two of our kids goes, well, upside down! Our winter ramble in Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, near where the old Mountaineers Cabin used to be one Sunday on the 22nd of January 2006.

Silly Daddy leads the way. Kristina laughed & refused to follow. “I’ll just take pictures. How about that?” she said & chuckled again.

Kate & Talia can’t wait! Kato’s in purple & purple, and TaTa’s in pink & polka dots. Sunday afternoon on the 22nd of January 2006.

Four of us rode up together in our blended family minivan. We all wanted to go play in the snow! Except for my oldest girl, Morgan, now called Dylan, and I cannot recall why she stayed behind. Probably because the future Dylan Blair preferred to pal around with her tween friends. Especially as she was 12 years old back then and soon to turn 13 in less than 3 months. Hmn. Never mind my pet baby name for her was my Li’l Twinkle Star. Katie Kate Kate could barely wait, tho, and she was already 8 years along. No longer was she just my Li’l Kitty Kat. Our youngest, Talia, or, ahem, TaTa the Tater Tot, as we called my Li’l Butterfly back then was still an adorable 3 years old. I drove thru the village of Snoqualmie Pass, known for its concentration of ski resorts, hiking, climbing, and even a small, rare cave system, and parked in a cleared-off lot near a snowy lane leading to where the old Mountaineers’ old cabin is.

Or was back then in January of 2006. Cabin is a misnomer. Aye, it was a palace in the forest! The Mountaineers Club, however, called it a lodge. Snoqualmie Lodge. Hey, this place was historic! Snoqualmie Lodge was a major hub for backcountry action for over half-a-century. A quasi-medieval frontier fort of a sort, the lodge looked ramshackle and all teeter-tottery after the snows melted, but altho rustic, it was built solid by engineers and carpenters. By men & women who knew what tools they held in hand, knew what they were doing, and if they didn’t, they knew how to work together to figure things out and make it so. The snow seemed to help hold it up, but truth is the snow exerted walls of pressure on the famous old building. This was before the Fires of Spring.

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Exploring Spider Meadows, 2006 & 2007

Two journeys deep into the Glacier Peak Wilderness, one alone with my lover Kristina in August of 2006, and together with our youngest in August of 2007. One was an erotic, lust-drenched, sweaty exploration of high alpine meadows & a rocky mountain pass above a dying glacier. The other was a family misadventure awry with unexpected misery, voracious, nose-stuffing flies, & insane giggles.

*This is unfinished, a work in progress. Most of the pics & associated journals were lost in a house fire. This help builds what remains. Thanks for being here. Enjoy!*

William & Kristina in Spider Meadows. Timed selfie shot from the top of a rock left in the meadows from some long ago avalanche. Sunday 13 August 2006.

Spider Meadows sprawls deep within the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Phelps Creek rushes down the middle of wild copses of dark woods and open mountain meadows to plunge down a gorge of its own making to eventually flow into the Chiwawa River. Glacier Peak is one of Washington State’s still-live stratovolcanoes and dominates as the central giant of the USFS Wilderness Area named after it’s Anglo-American name. The Native American tribes referred to it as DaKobed, among other names. The volcano rises as a giant pyramid cone at the head of the Dakobed Range to a lofty 10,541 feet or 3,213 meters, but one is unable to see it from Spiders Meadows. The meadows is edged by a ring of 8-9,000+ foot-high peaks. During August of 2006 I ventured into the wilderness into what became an alpine celebration of hot, lusty, forest love. A year later, however, proved harrowing and disorienting. Two very different trips! Such is the joyful, tearful, giggly ass messiness of Life!
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Winter Romp at Twin Lakes, December 2005

Taking my Seattle, Washington family to romp about old haunts from my youth at Twin Lakes State Park in rural Virginia, on the day after Christmas,
Monday 26 December 2005

Hey Hey Hey lookit us FLY! Kate & her Dad goofin’ off. Foto by Kristina.

Our family of five liked to play outside in nature’s Great Outdoors. We still do, altho we aren’t quite a family of five any longer. We had flown out to Virginia, the five of us, to celebrate Christmas with my Family of Origin. Especially my Mom. She lived alone as my Dad had died a little over a year earlier on the 1st of December 2004. Strange thing was the First was also the 3rd Anniversary of my relationship with Kristina. Mama lived on to pass on my brother’s birthday in November of 2006. This time, however, she was very much alive, her cancer in remission, and she couldn’t wait to see us. My brother, Joe, and his family lived down the road from our mother.  My sister, Beth, with her new husband and little daughter, had moved all the way from Arizona to the family farm to be near Mama. This day, however, just the four of us out in these Virginia woods. As our intertwining journeys of life played out, tho, this trip was the last one we would ever make back to my old Virginia homeplace as a Family of Five.

We somehow thought we would always be together other than the kids growing up and out. Such ideas seem a wee bit silly nowadays as we look back across the warping, moving fabrics of spacetime and timespace. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s on a family farm anchored in the dairy industry. Riverview Farm was located in Piedmont hills & gully country. It sprawled along the edges of the Sandy River drainage of Prince Edward County. The farm sat between the little country village of Rice to the East, Green Bay towards the South, and the town of Farmville towards the West. This place was home for me. It’s where I grew up playing in the woods and fields and swamps of my farm boy childhood. The area is haunted, forever, by the ghosts of slavery, Civil War and Reconstruction, racism and sexism and class warfare, religious intolerance, and the revolutionary turmoil of the 1950s and 60s. Many of those who lived there lived in denial of their own damn history. So I had to get outa there! But, where?

After a few spectacular adventures West of the Mississippi River, I knew the American West was where I must go and live my life. It was sad to depart my family of origins, and I did so anyway. My parents felt incredibly sad, the guilt ate at me, yet I felt compelled to follow my own heart and play my own drum. Made many mistakes along the way, still do, and, well, as you must surely know, life is a flippin’ mess sometimes. Most of the time I love it. Ended up in Seattle. Started out goin’ to California by way of Wyoming, but fell in love with Gwen from Virginia and ended up with her in Seattle, Washington instead of Alaska. Yeah, wanted to keep going north as far as I could get, but she refused. We headed back to Virginia, then North Carolina, paddled rivers and backpacked around the nation, finally returning to our beloved Pacific Northwest in January of 1992.

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The Story of this Website

YAY! Guess what? THIS website is AD-FREE! Yes, no advertisements. No commercials. No popups & clickbait, woo HOO hooty HOO!

Origins of this & related Websites & Other Techy Stuff by the Author

William Dudley Bass on Earth at the Brink arose from the merger of two earlier websites and in some ways a third. This all began in November 2006 as a homework project for a year-long psychospiritual counseling practicum I was in near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I was a middle-aged student back those days. At the time my fellow students and I used Blogger to create and post our essays and insights. Blogger is a personal-website public-publishing platform bought out by Google (itself owned by Alphabet) in 2003. Google hosts the blogs as well as blogspot.com.

Years later, however, I wish I could change the name as “Earth at the Brink” sounds so damn dire. Yet things are dire for humanity! Back in the beginning here marketing gurus were conflicted on whether or not to attach one’s personal name. Those advocating for fast marketing identities, declaring using one’s personal name has little to do with ego, won out back in those earlier times.

Regardless of changes in naming conventions, my first website was called, Cultivate and Harvest. Felt Inspired by my agricultural roots and how I often approach things in life. It’s still up. Anyone can find them online at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com. My last post there was around the Autumn Equinox in September 2011. I no longer update or comment there. All writings and fotos published there were transferred here where they were revised, updated, and republished.

This is posted at the top of Cultivate and Harvest: Continue reading

Feedback Letter to “Giggles” regarding News Feed

Feedback note to Google in response to certain types of articles appearing in my news feed of the Google browser app on my smartfone

Hi! I appreciate most of the articles you place here for my perusal. If, however, the article’s publisher demands I provide an email address or subscribe before letting me read further, then to hell with their greedy asses! I’ve not any time for such capitalist pennysnatchery. Continue reading

Snakes & Horses! Lake Wenatchee Family Camping Trips 2005 & 2006

Memories & Restored Fotos from two family camping trips a year apart to Lake Wenatchee State Park and nearby Nason Creek Campground in the surrounding Wenatchee National Forest, May 2005 & May 2006

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Please enjoy anyway. Thank you.*

Snakes! Kate with a corn snake, Monroe, WA. Memorial Day Weekend, Monday 30 May 2005. Here’s she’s about 6 and a half years old.

Horses! Talia upon a horse in Lake Wenatchee State Park, WA. Sunday 28 May 2006. Talia had recently turned 4 years old.

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Goofin’ with my Fam on Cam: An intersection of family & technology captured in time

Fun Family Moments with technology & the Memories they generate recaptured from May 2000 & June 2001

The Bass-Hughes/Hughes-Bass Family goofin’ around on their new LogiCam attached to their Compaq computer where they lived at Orca Landing, a small intentional community as urban cooperative household  in Seattle. L2R: William, Baby Kate, Morgan (now Dylan), Gwen, & housemate Baby Dylan (under Gwen’s chin). Tuesday 9 May 2000. Foto by Computer!

These pictures are not by any means “good” as far as quality of photography goes. They are fuzzy, blurry, and fusty. Nor is this a traditional article the general public may seize upon with joy. This is more of a family legacy post, a digital heirloom for now, nearly two decades later, and the future beyond every tomorrow. Yet these capture a certain nostalgia, a few moments back in yonder spacetime of joy and befuddlement, of tears and misery, of surprise, confusion, and laughter. Even moments of glee!

All but the last three fotos were taken by what was then an amazing new tool, a Logitech Webcam mounted atop and connected to our Compaq Presario desktop PC running OS Windows 98. At the time the Internet had shifted from bulletin boards & Gopher protocols to MS-DOS-based programing for Microsoft programs, IBM Peanut desktop computers, and Apple’s Macintosh to the growing, glowing World Wide Web with way cool browsers such as Netscape. Oh yeah, remember MS-DOS? And those fancy, old Peanuts and sublime early Macs? Gosh, remember Netscape? What an astounding expression of technology the Netscape browser was! All of these artifacts are today considered “vintage technologies.”

Morgan & Kate. Morgan now goes by Dylan. Here they are focusing on this hypnotic vintage technology! In the age between TVs and smartfones, too! Here at Orca Landing, Seattle, woo HOO! Wednesday 3 May 2000.

While we were having so much fun posing & goofing around with our new Logicam, these hi-tech companies were booming themselves right up into a massive financial bubble. The Dot-com Bubble began around 1994, the year my first daughter Morgan Hannah (now my eldest child Dylan Blair) was born, and ended in 2000. This hyperspeculative bubble finally burst, many companies died, the economy crashed, and a recession kicked in. The bursting of the bubble was a process lasting into 2002. Around the same time Compaq, once one of the top leading brands of personal computers, fell apart and was gobbled up by Hewlett-Packard.

This particular recession, which in some ways began a decade earlier in Asia, continued in parts of North America into 2003 and across Europe till around 2004-2005. This crazy tech boom of the 1990s laid the foundation, however, for stunning digital transformation of civilization over the next two decades. This remained true even into the midst of the Great Global Recession, an economic and financial catastrophe that began in late 2007. These events greatly affected our family and friends even as we carried on our daily lives. Our vintage technologies allowed us to preserve some of the good times amidst all of the gloomy news. Such memories remind us our glasses were more than half-full rather than half-empty or knocked over. So let’s raise a toast to those happy moments of yesteryear and be present to the little joys all around us even now, woo HOO! Yes!

Here we are, however, back in the day at the turn of the Common Era’s 21st Century in awe of those blurry, silly, and spontaneous “vintage tech” pictures. Digital spontaneity is one of the keys to understanding this brief time in history. The astonishing speed of computerized camera technology reached the point people felt free to be spontaneous in the moment. These were the beginnings of the digital selfie boom! People were goofy! Solemn. Smiling! Frowning. Weeping! And grinning, too.

Momma Gwen gets in on the action, too!

Small, precision-image camera technology making the Logitech cams and then the tiny iPhone and Android fone cams were initially developed back in the 1960s by the NRO, the secret National Reconnaissance Office. This unique technology was finally released into the public marketplace, seized upon by private companies, and made its way into mobile devices such as cellphones. The NRO was a clandestine Federal intelligence agency formed in 1961 but wasn’t officially declassified until 1992 after the Cold War was over. It’s early cameras are considered superior to those in the later Hubble Space Telescope.

Social media entered the global picture, and, boom! Our planet would never be the same again. At the same time, sadly enough, this the lull before the storm, before the growing, intermittent Global Long War on Terror exploded into a worldwide conflict with the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States Home Front in September of 2001.

In the meantime, while this long war still burns and smolders around the world, let us nevertheless enjoy these precious moments in time. Perhaps they will fortify us to more closely re-examine our history of violence as a species. Perhaps doing so will illuminate and motivate us to find ways to generate peace and love instead of war and hate. Meanwhile, we move forward. Life is messy! Enjoy the pictures!

“Shirley Temple Kate.” Kathryn Elizabeth stylin’ at Orca Landing in Seattle, Tuesday 26 June 2001.

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The UFO Conundrum

*This first appeared as the category header for. “UFO Events, History, & Analysis as far back as 2011. This continued to evolve until becoming an essay in its own right. Thus it’s been edited and republished here. Thank you for reading, and enjoy the mystery.*

UFOs exist. What are they? What did people experience? Why the odd mix of cover-ups, disclosures, harassment, ridicule, and staged hoaxes? For what reasons are cases with clear and compelling evidence buried or ridiculed by the media? Similarly, what are the reasons credible witnesses including those with meticulous documentation are ignored and dismissed? Why the extreme hostility and violence toward an issue of great planetary significance?

What effects are so-called whistleblowers having upon UFO communities and Disclosure narratives with their amazing yet unverifiable stories? How will the growing pushback by evidenced-based researchers, activists, and those whistleblowers who verify their claims impact our larger socio-cultural narrative as a global species? Is there a distinction between witnesses and experiencers? The so-called insider experiencers tell stories so fantastical they blot out the more mundane descriptions by people such as myself and my family.

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Morgan at Whitehorse Mountain, June 2010

A father struggles with PTSD as he idolizes his daughter in the wake of tragedy and before she changed their name to claim a deeper, truer identity

Dylan Blair, age 16, nine years ago as I write this, back when she was known as Morgan Hannah. She stands in a roadside field in the Stillaguamish River Valley below the bulk of Whitehorse Mountain.

Being outside in nature can kill you. Or nature can heal you. My family and I needed nature’s medicine. We lived in Edmonds, Washington at the time. Just north of long, skinny Seattle. Been there only three months. Moved in on the 20th of December 2009. Five hectic days before Christmas. Our large, rental house, a temporary abode in the wake of losing our homes and finances in the wake of job losses, embezzlement, and the Great Global Recession, caught on fire and burned down one Saturday morning in March of 2010. My oldest daughter, still called Morgan back then as she hadn’t yet changed their name to Dylan, was celebrating her 16th Birthday with a close circle of friends on the weekend following her actual birthday. I was out and away picking up her two younger sisters, Kate and Talia, from different sleepover parties at their respective friends down south in Seattle. Kristina, my third wife at the time, was at the vet with our dog, Jo. Apparently so much thick, toxic smoke rolled up from the basement rooms no one could get out the front door. Her friends, all high school girls in their mid-teens, had surprisingly expensive belongings downstairs where they had spent the night. The day was warm and sunny for March. Indeed, this Saturday the 20th was the first day of Spring.

The flames spread fast in a big house designed to function like a tipi merged with solar panels and a hot rock room. The home was a gorgeous experiment built on a steep slope near the head of a large ravine. It faced out to look west towards water and mountains, and had been designed by an already deceased husband-and-wife team of architects. Thick, toxic, black smoke billowed up the stairs from the lower levels where the kids had slept. The girls made a flurry of fone calls to 911 and to parents, but began to panic. They were desperate to race downstairs to retrieve personal items such as sleeping bags, clothes, shoes, gifts, smartfones, iPods, toiletries, luggage, school books, papers…when Morgan shouted at all of them they “all need to get out now! We need to get outa here now! That way! NOW!!!”

Following her lead, they raced across the house towards the back, the side facing water and mountains. There the teenagers climbed up over a wooden railing and jumped off the deck. Jumped off wearing a mix of t-shirts, underwear, pajamas, gym shorts, socks, and bare feet. Depending on the incline, the deck was anywhere from one to half-a-story up in the air. They were terrified! Fire and smoke and poisonous stench and crackling, crashing noise seemingly everywhere. Within moments after all of the teens climbed over the wooden railing and jumped off, possibly within seconds, the whole back deck, the one facing down a wide ravine to look out across the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains, collapsed in fire and smoke and disintegrated.

Foto of our house in Edmonds erupting in flames moments after the birthday party girls jumped off the back deck in picture left and fled before it collapsed.

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Back to the Olympics! Wacky Family Fun in the Great Outdoors, 2008

A blended family returns to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas again and yet again in the Year 2008

*This is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway, woo HOO!*

Kate & Talia playing in the stinky seaweed. Makes Morgan retch, so she hangs back outa site. Friday 8 August 2008.

The Olympic Peninsula is almost a separate state from the rest of Washington. Kinda like West Virginia is to my native Virginia. It’s small, compact, remote, and rugged. Unlike West Virginia, however, it’s bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Salish Sea on the other two. Kristina, born in Seattle, grew up out there. Her dad, a dentist, a loner, and a survivor of US internment camps for Japanese-Americans, took her on numerous fishing trips deep into the river canyons of the Olympics and out into the straits even in stormy weather. We can see the peaks of Olympic National Park and the surrounding national forest wilderness areas from across the water in Seattle. I am always in awe of the everchanging views, even those of rain and clouds, whenever I gaze across the Salish Sea toward yon Olympic Mountains.

The ONP is also where Gwen & I came together as a couple back in the Summer of 1986. The wild combination of mountains, forests, glaciers, whitewater, meadows, and seashore made the ONP my favorite national park to explore. The proximity of the Olympics to Seattle is a primary reason Gwen & I raised our kids out here in Washington State as well as why Kristina & I continue to return there. At the same time, however, the Olympics are so close to Seattle yet so far away. Transportation times are long with the combination of big-city streets, ferry ships, and congested, winding, two-lane roads. Didn’t matter. For years we returned there time and again to nurture our blended families.

This little essay is my recreation of journeys and experiences in which many of the things often used to jog our memories and anchor ourselves across the fabric of timespace were destroyed in a 2010 catastrophic house fire. So many fotos were lost. So many journal entries and kids’ drawings were burned up or blotted out by smoke and water damage. If you see more pictures of some people more than others, well, the ones you see were those salvaged from the watersoaked ashes of the fire, not any judgment or demonstration of preference. The remains of recollection hereby present themselves. Enjoy anyway, and may we all learn even more from the many lessons experienced from living the lives we choose to live.  

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Twin Falls on a February Sunday: A Dog, Kids, Love, & Waterfalls

A Family Dayhike into the Twin Falls Natural Area, Olallie State Park, Washington,
Sunday 13 February 2005

*This is a work in progress as rediscovering “lost” stories, documents, & pictures salvaged from the 2010 Fire continues. Have fun anyway! Click on each foto to blow it up big. Enjoy!

The Author & his kids & the family dog at one of the overlooks along the Twin Falls Trail in Olallie State Park. L2R: Talia (in pink jacket), Katie (just behind her), me, William (in back), Morgan (who now goes by Dylan), & Jo, short for Joline, our English Springer Spaniel. Foto by Kristina. Sunday 13 February 2005.

We were a blended family, a goofy family, & we loved to get silly. We faced many challenges of blending post-double divorce family born of a wild and yet strategic mix of polyamory, intentional community, and devotion to conscious parenting. Kristina & I sought to ground our blended family outdoors in nature and indoors with fellow communitarians. For us, deep relationship was a spiritual practice, a challenging practice, and one demanding constant practice with ever-evolving self-awareness. In the moment, however, hugs & fun & even an, “Uh, Dad, what is going on?” is everything. And now, with the passage of time, forever gone.

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Mowich Lake Snafus: A Family Camping Trip goes off the Rails

Everything fell apart, we grumped and fussed, and we all laughed anyway. Laughed some more, too! Ahhh, what a strange misadventure into the beauty and awe of Mt. Rainier National Park, September 2005

*This is a work in progress with more pictures to be recovered from the wake of The Fire. Enjoy anyway! More awaits.*

“Hello, I see you!” Talia, my stepdaughter I’ve raised since birth as my 3rd & youngest daughter. Her cold weather clothes got left behind at home sho she had on my 1986 wool shirt and Gwen’s old anorak from the Appalachian Trail. Life is funny. Life is messy. Yes, it’s cold outside, colder than it’s supposed to be for summertime, and, hey, we’re having fun anyway!

Sometimes everything goes wrong. Nothing is as expected. Certain private fantasies and anticipations get pushed aside. Expectations turn upside down like toddlers flipping bowls of wet, mushy food. Whatcha gonna do, huh? Call Ghostbusters? From many miles deep in a national park? Where there aren’t any payphones to “quarter out” from nor cell towers for cellphones to connect thru? Well, you share everything you have, take a deep breath, grin, giggle, and chuckle at the gauntlet of predicaments until hysterics take over, and laugh. Laugh at the silliness of the living as we live ones sort out our messes from being too busy living without paying attention to…well, as most parents may understand, parenting children in the midst of everything else provides those perfect storms where focus scatters when priorities themselves become distractions. How in the world does that  happen? No matter. Gotta go potty. Real bad, too! Figure it out on the way there and all around trying to get back from lost, not-lost. As we did back in the Summer of 2005.

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Snow Lake 2019: A man hikes with his oldest child on Father’s Day

William & Dylan (formerly Morgan) hike up to Snow Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness on Sunday the 16th of June 2019

*This is a work in progress. Click on fotos to blow up big. Enjoy!

Snow Lake from the rocky overlook on the trail up from Alpental, Snoqualmie Pass, WA. Sunday 19 June 2019.

Father & Child…William Dudley Bass & Dylan Blair Bass, formerly Morgan Hannah… Selfie-shot atop the ledges overlooking the lake.

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“Are you hitting on me?” asked a Redneck Nazi

A vignette of unexpected homophobic dumbassery sprouting from the grotesque American intersectionality of Nazism and Trump in the Spring of 2019

War could break out in a clothing store faster than cranes can collapse. In April a crane broke apart and collapsed killing four people and injuring others. The deadly collapse occurred minutes before I was to drive into the exact spot cars were crushed. Sad. Tearful. Terrifying! Felt tragic. And sobering. Gravity is Still, the world felt on edge even as people joked and kidded and complained about things. Two burly men rambled around the urban Co-op where I worked alongside many others in the outdoor adventure and travel industry. While officially retail, our positions often felt more like education and instruction than sales alone. I felt proud to work in the Mothership. One of the perks working here was this store is one of the top three tourist destinations here in the City of Cranes. We meet so many people coming and going from all over the planet. Yes, not just from all over the city, the county, the state, and the region, not just from North America, but from all around the world! Welcome to the one city in North America with the most cranes! 

These two guys stood out, however, but so did many other people passing thru. What was different, however, is these men appeared uncomfortable in their own bodies. They energetically felt uncomfortable to me with an odd mix of quiet, minding their own bidness alertness, squirminess, and nervousness. They were dressed in everyday clothes: blue jeans, flannel shirts, and baseball caps. Dirty and greasy from long hours of hard work. Without any laundering, too. So what? I’ve dressed like that myself, altho it’s been awhile. The way they wore their clothes, however, made them stand out from the all the others who wore similar clothes. To be clear, we get a fair number of homeless people and travelers passing thru, many in various stages of being unlaundered. These two guys gave off airs, a pretense of menace, as they pretended not to pose while posing. They walked quickly and heavily, as if they were stomping but not trying to stomp so they pivoted and swung around the sunglasses and stomped quickly towards me. Bam! Boom! Bam!

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Experiencing Pete

Well, for starters, the farewell tribute to Pete at our company Winter Holiday Party made me cry. I couldn’t stop crying either, darn it. About a quiet and humble but fierce man of fish and shoes. No, no jokes about walking in the shoes of the fisherman. The slideshow was especially wonderful. I felt moved to see all those changes in the life of a man and his family. And seeing pictures of his younger daughter, whom as an adult worked for a time at the same place her dad and I did, seeing her as this li’l bitty ol’ thang out in the woods by the river moved me, too. Then more pics of her growing up long hair and all was fun to see as most of us know her as one with very short hair. I felt both sad and happy as I was reminded of the many changes my own daughters went thru as they grew up into young adults. Plus, alas, even a little sad for myself as I head out of my middle age years into whatever comes next. 

Yes, this slide show was as evocative as it was inspiring. Aye, kudos to those who worked to put it together! After all this was about an Inspired Guide who steered his family thru the ups and downs of living life all out with the sorrows and joys of lives fully lived. The slide show wasn’t just about Pete, tho. Heck, it wasn’t even about fish! Instead it was about all of us sharing our common essence as human beings. We all resonated with his story as we remembered our own stories. Continue reading

The Strange and Beautiful Mundane: A Rare Father-Daughter Dayhike to Mason Lake

*This is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

A 60 year old dad & his 20 year old daughter go on their first hike together in nearly 4 years, just the two of them without any other family & friends. Double selfie shot on Thursday 30 June 2019.

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Smelled a flower today

An urban vignette

The flower.

Stopped and smelled a flower today. Just now. Moments ago. A magnificent iris flower! A densely purple blossom on the edge of the sidewalk here in Seattle. Smoofed it this Sunday afternoon at about twenty minutes to five. I mean I walked over there, bent over, and sniffed the darn thang. No, no snorting! Stuck my nose into its blossom, tho. Like a lover too embarrassed to be seen mounting his beloved in public. Gently, slightly, carefully yet a bit brusquely I plowed my nose between its petals until they barely touched my cheeks. Lingered a moment all too brief in time, then pulled out quickly lest anyone among the general public would think I was a flower snorter or some kind of foolish and possibly dangerous nutter. 

Oh my goodness, the scent of these blooms stimulated my mild synesthesia. Made me horny as a dog, too! This iris smelled so intoxicating I felt lost in enchantment. For a moment I could barely move as I smelled colors and saw smells and felt sounds all around. As light and shadow turned inside out beneath the brightness of day on a planet spinning toward night, right here within the next moment already passing I realized just how much of a ghost I’ve become. Aye, a damn ghost! Been ghosting thru life as if I was some broken and forgotten clumpenproletariat of chunky concrete abandoned against some godforsaken wall of a cobblestone alley in a rundown factory town on the edge of perpetual shadow. Continue reading

From Nights of Darkness to Days of Burning Light: Family Adventures in Olympic National Park 2011

*Note this is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

Saturday 27 August – Thursday 1 September 2011

Kate & Talia running along the edge of the Hoh River in Olympic National Park, Sunday evening of the 28th of August 2011.

Recollections and dynamics of a strange and beautiful Family Camping Trip to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas, including the Elwha & Hoh River Valleys including the Hoh Rain Forest, back & forth thru the village of Sekiu, out to Lake Ozette & the Ozette Triangle with Cape Alava on the Wild Olympic Coast, & finally, the Upper Sol Duc. At the time our family was recovering from a series of personal catastrophes and severe financial losses related to the Great Global Recession and a house fire. We felt great disruption and distress as a household. As I look back after nearly 8 years, it’s clear to me now all of us in our own way unconsciously used this grand adventure to reset our blended family. Families are, after all, constant works in progress, and being outdoors in nature was the primary way our family found to heal our relationships.

We looked for light in a dark time. I speak for myself, of course, but share what I sensed in those who lived with me back in those days and nights. Perhaps I am wrong, and being wrong is acceptable. Such is life. As I experienced those years of Hard Times, we searched for anything to give us hope. Ironically, however, we weren’t the type of people to usually waste time “hoping” for something to happen. We took action steps. So for us to hope back in those times was a measure of our collective despair.

Life is messy from birth to death. Struggling to choose freely regardless of our circumstances, we sought to focus on beauty and joy and to let go of dread. This road trip into a spectacular and diverse national park was not a distraction for our family but a trip of purpose to reclaim our fractured identity as a family. We sought to heal amidst nature. There was a drive to redefine what and who we were as individuals, as a family, and as part of a larger network of communities. We sought to anchor ourselves in a national park we all had been to many times in the same way people venture forth to those special sacred places on pilgrimages as physical as they are spiritual. I was, unfortunately, particularly prone towards melancholy and rumination back then as I did not understand depression as disease. These group and individual deliberations were not necessarily conscious intentions at the time but arose from the understandings of hindsight.

Perhaps we forgot the journey itself was as vital if not more so than the destinations, although deep down I sense we all knew somehow the destinations were internal and buried so deep as to feel unreachable. Indeed this road trip of sorts into the Wild was a build-up to an intense Native American Church house blessing ceremony for our then-temporary home. This was the one we had moved into following the losses of our previous homes including one to a devastating fire only to have the “new” house damaged by a natural gas explosion in the house next door. Led by an NAC group inspired by the Rainbow Hoop Prophecy. These events both past and planned loomed over this family adventure into Olympic National Park. At times I felt haunted, lost in what could have been, and at other times I felt joy in the present moment and felt by coming together with others for such a significant ceremony we were in action to accomplish results.

My then-now-ex-third wife Kristina, the mother of my stepdaughter Talia, grew up just outside of it in Port Angeles where she spent much of her youth exploring the national park and surrounding areas with her parents. Her father took her fishing up every stream in the peninsula it seemed. The ONP is also where my then-girlfriend and eventual second-ex-wife Gwen spent the Summer of 1986 back after we began to date earlier in the spring. She worked at Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort during those magickal months. This incredibly varied national park is where the two of us grew into a couple. Gwen showed me the Pacific Ocean for the first time during a camping trip to Second Beach on the Wild Olympic Coast. Years later we had children, first Morgan (now goes by Dylan) and then Kate. We kept returning anyway, Gwen, Kristina, & I, in various combinations with each other, our children, and our friends.

Yes, all six of us experienced many trips to the ONP with our children and sometimes other friends. Camping and hiking trips into the Olympics were a regular odyssey for all 3 of my daughters. Kristina and I wanted to create a sense of continuity and normalcy for the kids, but our different approaches began to clash more and more as we struggled to emerge from the strain of mounting crises. 

As such this 2011 adventure proved to be especially bittersweet in hindsight as it was the last journey to the Olympics for this particular Bass (Katayama-Bass) Family. We had many adventures on this one crazy fun trip anyway. All of us felt blessed to have shared these great road trips together as a family with so many wonderful memories of camping, hiking, swimming, roasting marshmallows, and, yes, even arguing. So…Enjoy!

Family tree hug around a giant Sitka spruce! L2R: Kristina, Morgan, Kate, Talia, & me, William. Foto by an enthusiastic stranger with my Nikon D90. Monday 29 August 2011.

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Sailing in a Porta Potty gripped with the Semiahmoo Bloos

Once upon a long time ago, at least it felt so, felt so for me, I spent a full day sailing upon the Salish Sea, tipped a sailboat over so much the outermost lip of the starboard-side gunwale dipped underwater, and I ended up rocking a porta potty across the deep inner sea. It was a perfect summer day blessed with happy yellow sunshine and cool breezes. Sublime views of mountains, islands, and sparkling seas reaffirmed our decision to move out here to Cascadia. Gwen Hughes, my wife at the time and one of my exes today and still a dear friend, had moved together with me to Seattle from our native Virginia. We had previously been out here for parts of 1986-1987 and wanted to get back West. After living in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and briefly even Vermont, we said farewell to the East Coast with our 1991 thruhike of the Appalachian Trail. In January of 1992 we returned to our beloved Pacific Northwest.

Gwen had worked for a small, model toy sailboat company during her earlier time in Cascadia. Tippecanoe Boats was founded in 1983 by a lovely, wackyfun couple from places back East. These were anti-electric motor toys back in those days, too, real sailing model sailboats, not merely whirring, radio-operated, mechanical robots. Years later, however, the company evolved into making exquisitely crafted, stunningly gorgeous, radio-controlled model sailboats. Back in the 80s, tho, Gwen helped cut and sew the sails from real nylon spinnaker cloth, pack and load up inventory, help sell the boats at art fairs, craft shows and outdoor festivals, and lots of grunty-grunt work.

Even I did some work for a few short weeks, soldering rudders plus a few other things. I was a lousy solderer, however, as too much made the rudder too heavy. Such distortions left the toy model sailboat off-balanced, and while my clumsy efforts became more refined as I progressed, even earning an occasional kudos, Will, the primary owner, and I realized I wasn’t playing to my strengths. The cool thing was Chris, one of our other T-boat workers, also worked at the magnificent Honey Bear Bakery. Occasional treats came our way, and even more as the primary owner of Tippecanoe disliked ingesting yummy bearilicious refined white sugar products. Aye, those were halcyon days for us early migrants to the then-Emerald City. The worldwide Cold War had ended, the forever Global War on Terror was a ways off, smartfone and socmed addiction was yet to be, and there were mountains to climb, trails to hike, and seas to sail! Continue reading

Travel Quickies: Need a new pack? What kind of hiker are you?

The first question I ask anyone who seeks help with being properly outfitted for outdoor adventure and travel is exactly what type of activity do they want to do? Not in three to five years, but now for today and tomorrow and this year. Often they’re looking at laptop bags instead of hiking packs as they’re imagining themselves rambling down trails thru forests and deserts. Or they’re looking at mountaineering packs with lots of straps while dreaming of zipping around Europe or East Asia on planes and trains. Sure, one can do most anything with any kind of pack, and, yes, one can argue gear is so hypercompartmentalized these days. This means more choices for a better fit, however, and so once I’m clear what they want, then off we go!

You want to go hiking and camping, right? Backpacking, too? Great! It’s beautiful out there! Even in the rain! OK, what kind of hiker are you? What kind of camping do you want to do? What’s your big dream you’re gonna make come true this year?

Let’s have five quick looks at five different broad categories of hiking. So whatcha wanna do? Continue reading

e1x0p1e1r0i0m0e1n0t1.z.omega.alpha.a

Our love was imbalanced.
We were too early and not long enough.
One night and one morning was all we had in the bed.
After we orgasmed one behind the other,
and I found myself bodiless inside the layers of her flesh,
I had to fight and struggle to return to my own body

Love is powerful,
so powerful it perturbs the scales of life to disrupt the universe.

Vise grips the size of a coconut crab’s crush the back of my neck.
My occiput throbs and thunks till the bones scream home.
Too many timelines between space rip me open to beauty,
to beauty so deep only the stars may gaze upon it without blindness.
Sometimes in a blur I cannot distinguish truth from fact from belief
Nor lies from fiction from relief. Continue reading

Abducted by Space Aliens from Outer Space

A true lie that really happened just last week!

Got’dang’it all, I got abbyducted by Space Aliens from Outer Space last night! And impregnated! Impregnated aboard a UFO! All abbyduckyfied and impregnaciously messed up! Aboard a space ship shaped like a giant, flying zucchini squash. And I’m a man! A true human being! An Earthling! A Homo sapiens man! Got impregnated with a cluster of teeny-tiny baby octopus-crab hybrids plooped deep inside me bowels somewhere. Oh god. Goddess, too! Shit! What are we all gonna do? It’s worse than a face hugging chestbuster from Aliens. Yeah, remember Aliens? From 1986? Eeeewuh! And these Space Aliens who kidnapped me & my royal man nuggets had puppies & kitties, too! For breakfast! They feddem poor li’l ol’ cute puppies & kitties to each other, those hybrid octopuddy-crabby critters did! Tore those itty bitty mammals apart! Made me cringe! Then they impregnated me with a long, worm-like thang what looked like a, a, um, a giant squid pecker I guess!

Twas no fun! No, it was NOT! 

They probed me anus & said they be lookin’ for Uranus. I told ’em, hell, it ain’t down in there but way up yonder. I pointed up high to the sky. Pointed with a crooked, li’l ol’ pinky finger I did, cuz they had me belly down, knees scrunched, and all lashed up tight. They said, “Earth Dude, lookit, you fool. If we turn yo body inside out, then all we can’t see becomes revealed as everything outside becomes yo insides. See?”

¡¡¡Oh, NO!!!

You don’t rilly wanna know about the evolutionary consequences of intelligent, deliberate panspermia, do ya?

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Beautiful Days before our next Civil War

“Verily, my mercy prevails over my wrath.”

– The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, describing what God had him write down.

Today is a beautiful day. Oh, my, this Friday’s a gorgeous day outside! The First of June 2018, it is. Ah, late springtime in the Pacific Northwest out here in Seattle. Feels like Summer already! Flowers are out, the birds are singing, the clouds are fluffy, and the bees are buzzing. Hope and joy ripple the air, and any sorrows subside into the majesty of these magickal, blue-sky moments.

People are outside running up and down hills, for goodness sakes. Pedaling bicycles! Out there on the lakes and rivers paddling kayaks, canoes, and stand-up paddle boards! Men and women aboard those small sailboats working together to unfurl and set the sails! Woo Hoo! Paragliding and scuba diving, too! Sweat is flying! Altho, yeah, those joggers are wearing the same clothes they wore back when they ran thru bone-chilling winds, freezing rain, and mashed, slick-as-ice snow back in the wintertime.

Yes, today is a beautiful day, and may yours be, too, wherever you are in this world of ours. It’s a beautiful day indeed, and as our country sinks into cesspools of raging neo-tribalism and slides further towards civil war past the eye-rolling, head-shaking mirth of overly optimistic deniers, may our mercy prevail over our wrath, to paraphrase God and the Prophet from an Islamic Hadith. Aye, may our mercy prevail over our wrath, yours, too, please, and mine.

We are at choice. We always have a choice. This choice is an expression of power, and we all have this power. The storms of war approach, and these are our storms. Whether one believes in any deity or sacred scripture and even if all one knows is dialogue from a TV show set after the zombie apocalypse is irrelevant. What matters is what we choose to be and do now.

Together we can choose a reign of mercy over terror and annihilation.

 

William Dudley Bass
Originally written Friday 1 June 2018
Published here Wednesday 6 March 2019
Seattle, Washington
United States of America
Planet Earth

Copyright 2018, 2019 © by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we humans establish our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

Excuse me, Sir, I’m starving

Seattle, City of Cranes, 2 April 2018.

“Excuse me, Sir,” the man called out. “I’m starving. Can you help me please?”

Frank was out in the streets again struggling to move his broken body this way and that way as he pivot-twisted and zigzagged from curb to curb only to give up from exhaustion and wander right down the middle of the road, getting run over by humans in cars and trucks be damned and indeed goddamned. Spring 2018 in Seattle, Washington. Giant construction cranes hovered overhead like those gigantic Martian battle tripods in the 2005 War of the Worlds movie. The Emerald City, once the Jet City, has now become the City of Cranes, a muddy, noisy, chaotic mess of hope, despair, greed, beauty, boondoggles, and opportunity.

I shared this with Rockcatcher, one of my managers as I came into work thru the employee entrance. He earned the nickname for catching a large, softball-size rock bouncing down the mountain directly into his face when he and a few others were climbing over in the Olympics. Snagged the rock with both hands without toppling backwards down the cliff, too. Both of us, however, had encountered Frank plunging into traffic to declare his hunger.

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100 Years after the Armistice

Granddaddy in the First World War with Contemplation, Tribute, … & a Warning

The horror of World War 1 ended with a ceasefire 100 years ago today, although people continued to die by the millions in the numerous revolutions, civil wars, and ethnic conflicts left blazing on every continent except Antarctica while the Spanish flu pandemic burned grimly around the globe. My paternal grandfather, Carroll Melvin Bass, served in the United States Navy in those terrible times. He fought in the North Atlantic hunting German submarines. His ship chased and sunk subs full of sailors from the other side. Born on Sunday the 9th of April 1893, he turned 24 years old three days after the U.S.A. declared war on Imperial Germany. He achieved the rank of MM1, Machinist’s Mate 1st Class, short for Machinist’s Mate Petty Officer First Class, USN.

I remember asking him what it was like way back when I was a preteen lost in fantasies of glory. Pop, our name for him, struggled to describe his experience. He didn’t say much, and he died of cancer on Wednesday 10 March 1971 seven weeks before my 12th birthday. My paternal grandfather’s gravestone is dominated by references to his service in the U.S. Navy during World War I. In death his experiences during the Great War seemed to have formed the defining, even pivotal period of a life lived across nearly eight decades. All I can recall, however, were impressions as if splashed with black and red paint and cold, cold water.

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The SSP & Blue Avian Trademark Issue and the Bigger Picture: My Take

Trademarks, ideally, should be abolished, all copyrights replaced with Creative Commons, and patents reduced to public acknowledgments of those who created the product. These are all idealistic woulda-coulda-shoulda-oughta-bees, unfortunately, for our capitalist system compels such division, profiteering, withholding, deceit, exploitation, and thievery by those with the resources to command. Specifically those efforts by Corey Goode and his attorneys to trademark SSP (Secret Space Program) and Blue Avians, among others, are unwise, ill-founded, divisive, and just plain wrong. Drop the TMs!!! Please. Yes, you all seem to be at heart good people, and being good people doesn’t make you or anyone else right on this trademark hoopla pookla.

The most important aspect is the originators, designers, and builders are recognized, acknowledged, and even celebrated as such. They all belong to the creative commons of our planetary and solarian commons. Yes, solarian, as our species is already well on its way, our way, to explore our solar system. There are already plans to mine asteroids, build settlements on Luna and Mars, visit Titan, and send more probes to other worlds around Sol. All as Voyager exits our Sol System.

The larger question is what and how do we make a living in an economic system based upon capitalism and debt slavery? We lack a 21st Century economic system balancing individual liberties and social responsibilities or even know what such would look like thru the haze of our mutually conflicting opinions. How may such a new system function, especially as people keep doing what people do?

Capitalism has provided many opportunities, allowing entrepreneurs and small businesses to flourish, compete, and even cooperate. This system, however, i.e. the mix of codified and unspoken relationships between people and people, people and products and services, and people and consensual concepts of money, has gone too far. Many feel our system is broken beyond repair. Efforts to reform our fractured system have not always worked and even seem to accelerate the rise of fascist movements to strong-arm capitalism in a more authoritarian, nationalist, and racist direction.

Systems are not always all good or all bad, and they change over time. The numbers of humans and even other living things who benefit increase greatly in the beginning then decline as those who secured the top echelons of power for themselves place more and more barriers out of greed and fear. This isn’t the place to delve further into this morass, however, especially as people continue to argue for the future based on 18th and 19th Century isms. Those terms are emotional trigger words these days. They are no longer relevant except in a historical context, yet we seem unable to see beyond such labels.

We must understand, however, this global chaos, whether one perceives it as a Marxist analyzing the “anarchy of the markets” or a Finance Capitalist agreeing with the proto-fascist Trump as he declares, “We function very well in chaos,” allows for more and more people to manipulate, abuse, and exploit both laws and loopholes in the laws. Such are these efforts to scoop up and hoard trademarks in arcane or obscure areas while the rest of us are distracted by the mainstream news and putting food on the table while juggling debts. The UFO community has been further riven by animosities unheard of even a decade ago.
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Sun shines now

The Sun shines now.
She pushed her stroller uphill from the SeaTac airport train & bus station,
the same steep hill I plodded down to catch the light-rail.
Young woman with serious face.
Eyes direct, staring forward,
both hands fierce upon the pushbar, her
Supergirl lasers scorching the steepness rising before her.
She appears a plastic beauty of mixed East Asian & Eurowhite descent, but who knows from where anyone arises anymore?
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When God sings it ain’t always pretty


Rediscovered this image of a rudimentary draft of a poem jotted down on the side of a brown paper bag in public then forgotten about. I hurriedly revised this weird dive into the messiness of life. Here it is.

When God sings
They don’t always sound sweet & pretty.
Sometimes such a song
Wakes us up
And stops our dancing.
When we stop to listen,
A lament of such deep sorrow
Rumbles up from the bowels of our planet
And vibrates loose the stars from Heaven.
Comets & moons, asteroids & planets collide,
And space dust skreeks across the void
In tangles of broken violins & cosmic rays
So violent the Kosmos wails.

We humans do not get the message.
Don’t even wanna know there is a message.
We have dropped The Key.
What we don’t understand is not all souls are
Automatically immortal.
What we don’t understand is spirituality is hard work.
What we fail to understand is God is NOT Love and never was.

We had it backwards, sort of.

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Ghosts in the Forests: Family Adventures in Olympic National Park 2004 & 2005

Memories from Family Adventures in the Mountain Forests

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

Long ago memories: Talia before a downed tree in Sol Duc Campground, Olympic National Park. Kate is on the distant left. The boy on foto right is one of their new “campground buddies.” Summer of 2005. Foto by Morgan Bass.

Our blended family enjoyed many adventures into the wilds of Washington State. We spent more time in Olympic National Park than in any other national park or wilderness area. Memories of these trips, while wonderful, flitter like ghosts in a sad happy kind of way. Most of this is due to the disruption caused by the March 2010 housefire in particular. We lost about 90% or more of our print fotos, slide transparencies, and digital pictures from the time before the Fire. We had many hundreds, almost 2,000 pictures from family trips to the Olympics after the Fire such as from the Summers of 2010 and 2011. Only a small few images remain from some of our adventures before then. In some cases, however, nothing survived the Fire.

These losses led to a blurry fragmentation of memories as we all struggle to recall what happened when. These pictures, for example, stem from two family camping trips to the Olympics, including both Salt Creek Park – Clallam County Recreation Area and the national park as well as visits to other local gems in the area. One set of fotos is from our August 2004 trip there and the other from 2005, possibly August as well, altho the those pictures stamped February 2006. They clearly were taken in the summertime thus placing them back in 2005. These digital images have been copied and shared several times. Often the time dates reflect the time copies of the now-lost original images was shared, saved, recopied, reshared, and saved again. My family’s story here is as much about our relationships to our memories of places, times, and people as well as the road trips and camping adventures we found ourselves upon. Sometimes all this feels as if we’re chasing ghosts thru the forests.  Continue reading

Grove Avenue Blues: Scenes from Richmond’s Fan

Scenes from Life in The Fan District of Richmond, Virginia, 1985-1986

All Fotos by the Author unless otherwise stated.

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Enjoy anyway!*

Me in December 1986. A rare throwback foto rescued from the 2010 Fire & cleaned up, a still ongoing project. I’m 27 yrs along then & soon to graduate the same month with my MFA from grad school @ VCU in Richmond, VA. Foto by friends David Wilson & Tina Ennulat, who lived across the hall from me in an old row house in The Fan, the Bohemian area back then. I’m in their apartment holding EJ the Kitty Cat. EJ’s short for Emma Jean. Funny thing you wouldn’t catch me dead in that shirt today, but back then it was among my favorites, lol… Hair’s a lot longer now, way pass my shoulders, but no where near as thick. Ahhh, train wrecks on Memory Lane!

The Fan was the Bohemian part of Richmond, Virginia. Those of us who lived there back in the 1980s and earlier fancied ourselves to be living in the Southern, post-Confederate equivalent of New York’s Greenwich Village or San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. New Orlean’s French Quarter probably had a better claim, but The Fan was unique and bizarre back when I lived there for two years in the mid-to-late 1980s.

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Seattle Vignettes: A Prose Poem in Five Parts

  1. Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
  2. Bag of Dimes
  3. Tattooed Hands
  4. Donuts, Needles, Jelly, and Blood
  5. P.S. Box of Donuts in the Rain

 *All of these vignettes are interpretations of real events I experienced in Washington State along my way to work from SeaTac to Seattle and back again during the Cascadian Winter of 2017 – 2018. ~ Author’s Forewarning

Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
Rain poured in torrents
as dawn broke sunrise into silver and gray.
I hurried down South 176th Street in SeaTac towards the airport to catch my train to work.
Can’t be late again.
Won’t be late again.
I shall arrive early to work
to keep my job alive.
My commute is 3 hours long roundtrip.
Why do good people scatter their trash along the streets?
I passed all kinds of trash, mostly food related, as I approached the SeaTac Visitor Information Center,
also known as Seattle Southside Visitor Center.
A man lay curled upon the lower steps. Continue reading

How to End Gerrymandering

If you are serious about working to end this abominable practice, then don’t even waste anyone’s time unless you seriously intend to replace the greater political and socio-economic system gerrymandering is embedded within.

What steps do we make to end American Gerrymandering? The solution itself is simple. Achieving positions of power to affect such revolutionary reforms will be difficult. Gerrymandering is embedded in our body politic as dense clusters of ticks with their heads pushed deep into the flesh of sick dogs. Gerrymandering is a loathsome, despicable, and corrupt practice. Anyone who supports and engages in gerrymandering should be arrested, and if convicted, sent far away to frigid prisons built on the Moon where they can draw as many lines in the lunar dust as they wish. Of course such a penal colony on Luna is a metaphor and rehabilitation is far more desirable. The point, however, is gerrymandering has to go and removing it poses challenges.

Gerrymandering itself is an expression of a sick, distressed economic and political system moving from systemic dysfunction towards paralysis and collapse. Rooting out these symptoms of a deeper, greater illness requires systemic transformation. U.S. Federal law must be changed to abolish gerrymandering. To do so, however, means we the people must find healthy ways to strip the two primary parties, the capitalist Democrats and Republicans, of their power. The rule of law must be by and for all people in reality, especially the working classes. The latter includes the professional middle class. The power to determine what the rule of law is must be established once and for all by and for all of the people and not merely for the wealthy neo-aristocrats of Capitalism, i.e. those who write the law to benefit those in power, i.e. themselves, not those they allegedly represent in this clever sham of a democratic republic.

The Duopoly of Republicans and Democrats is referred to as “The Two-Headed Snake” for a number of reasons. The majority of two-party members have far more in common than not including sharing positions thru the same so-called institutional revolving doors in industry, academia, finance, secret societies, the military, intelligence, non-profits, and nepotic pseudo-dynasties. Democrats and Republicans are anchored into systems rooted in capitalism, imperialism, racism, rigid religiosity, and ignorance. How many understand, for example, what the definition of “imperialism” is? This ignorance, including the ignorance of science, geography, and history, has gone on far too long already. This Duopoly puts party and power before people, country, and planet. We must allow independents and alternative parties to campaign and govern. The term “third party” needs to be dropped as the use of it maintains a collective mindset overdue to be purged. Americans can then begin to roll back Federal laws capping the size, shape, and architecture of the Legislative branch.

The solution to gerrymandering is simple. Abolish the existence of all legislative districts and the curse of their ever-mutating borders. We do not need separate legislative districts, and we don’t need them because we already have them. Simply declare our counties, parishes, and independent towns and cities to be legislative districts.

Continue reading

Waiting for Bags of Bones to Sing

To whom do old bones sing?
The burlap bag found half-buried in woods
chock full of dog bones, cow bones, and, yes,
bones from pigs and humans including several women?
Do they sing to the crows and the ravens?
Do they sing to seagulls and eagles?
Do they sing to the whales from ghosts of long-ago canoes?

This bag is enormous!
Extends deep into the earth, it does.
Up come bones of fish and birds, of otter and bear,
and bones of snakes.
“There, there! Look!” I shouted after I spied
bones of orcas and dolphins in disarray
with all clatter muted by clay and charcoal
within this old burlap bag matted tight with mud and ash. Continue reading

Cherry Blossoms in Twilight

Images from an evening stroll across The Quad on the University of Washington campus as cherry trees blossomed in the wake of the Spring Equinox, Wednesday 29 March 2017.

Students, staff, & numerous visitors gaze in awe at the profusion of cherry blossoms across The Quad on the UW Campus. The Sun going down with temperatures dropping didn’t stop anyone from walking amidst these giant organisms.

This magnificent burst of life so soon after the end of Winter upon the Spring Equinox heralded for many the rebirth of life and the promise of hope amidst the uncertainty & violence plaguing our planet.

Continue reading

She Cries in the Cold, Cold Rain (The Poem)

She cries in the cold, cold rain
hunched over two worn, tattered duffel bags
and a pile of dirty blankets and clothing.
Every thing she owned is soaked in pain.
Her nest is chaos.
I stand there, already late for work,
overwhelmed,
sad, angry, and ashamed.
Afraid I may be fired for being late after I miss the train.
Again.
I feel helpless.
I rage against our economic, political, and religious systems.
I feel stupid.
And I am late to catch the train to work.
Again.

The woman camps upon concrete floors at the bottom
of a partially open stairwell across from an elevator
next to a bus stop
across from the
SeaTac Airport Link Light-Rail Train Station.
One wall is solid;
the other heavy, rubberized wire mesh.
Water ripples across the floor.
Wind blows in raindrops.
Every drop explodes
as flogs once lashed the backs of wayward sailors
and slaves.
And sometimes still do.

She glances up and stares around in wild desperation,
as crazy as a fox hemmed in by hounds
gone mad with hunger lust
and fear.
And she is hungry,
this fox,
and scrawny as a walking stick
dying in the silver gloom of December in Seattle. Continue reading

Smoke, Rocks, and Trees: Four Days on the Wonderland Trail

Record of an attempt to thruhike around a massive volcano as wildfires raged in the forests nearby. I went to grieve, to mend a broken heart, and to walk my own talk with the Divine. Hiking thru deep grief was an initiation. In doing so, however, I also made new friends, one of them a dog. I struggled with aging as I pushed thru smoke and dust, darkness and light, and came face to face with…myself.

*This is a work in progress. Feel free to enjoy in the meantime. Thank you!*

Click on any image to enlarge the foto. Enjoy.

Wayne & I gaze up into the smoke-choked Tatoosh Range from where we stood along the banks of the Nisqually River, Mount Rainier National Park. Tuesday morning the 5th of September 2017. May the fires stay far away! May the long-promised rain finally fall!

Wildfires burned along the eastern edges of the national park, spilling out from the Norse Peak Wilderness from lightning strikes during a short but severe mini-drought. Even so, aye, even so, the Trail beckons and calls my soul forth to walk these paths thru mountain forests. I felt the energy of the area shift when I walked thru this place between trees. Felt like I passed thru a portal in spacetime. This is a section of the Wonderland Trail on the western flanks of the park near Longmire, Day 1 of 4.

The Sun burns thru smoky haze in the late afternoon at Klapatche Park on the Wonderland Trail, Day 2 of 4.

Tahoma Creek thunders below the infamous swinging bridge across the gorge. In the morning of Day 2. Felt like I was walking into the apocalypse and all was beautiful anyway. Living and dying are but processes as we move thru our experiences toward wholeness. Isn’t what we do as we choose how to live, however, what really matters as we journey along the way? 

I went into the wilderness to grieve. My attempt to thruhike the Wonderland Trail, one of the most celebrated of the short long-distance trails, wasn’t to conquer nature or rack up another win on a list of long-distance hiking trails. In fact I didn’t even trail for this expedition as I have rigorously done so for all previous adventures. I trusted in my extensive backcountry experience and felt confident enough to push thru any pain. My bodymind would adapt. Right? Wouldn’t my broken heart still be heart enough to carry the rest of me onwards? Even with guts? The intention was to immerse myself in solitude so as to engage the Divine one-on-one with what the hell happened and why. Especially while deep in the backcountry far away from crowds of people. Truth is I went into Nature to heal, to heal my soul, to heal my capacity to open to love no matter what. An adventure hiking the famously beautiful and difficult Wonderland Trail provided the canvas of nature to paint my sorrows and joys upon.

This solo backpacking trip would be my own Walk ‘n’ Talk with God & Goddess, so to speak. For while I didn’t always show it, I remained in deep pain from the heartbreak of being ghosted and feeling abandoned not quite two months earlier by an otherwise extraordinary woman whom I loved and adored and, it appeared at the time, she, me. At least she seemed to love and appreciate me in the beginning of what was to be a remarkable and unusual albeit short-lived relationship. The irony is she was a bit of a globetrotter herself. She sought out long-distance hiking trails to heal and in doing so strip away the faux veneer of urban civilization. Aye, in many ways we were so much alike our similarities felt uncanny. Yet it was not to be. Nor did I see the end coming. 

Life goes on for the living, however, and tears heal. Grieving is healthy albeit painful for those grieving. It’s uncomfortable for those around the bereaved. So I chose to hike around the massive bulk of a giant volcano as my way of moving forward in this life. For as I took one step after another and one breath upon the next the immediacy of the Trail demanded such total focus as to push out all thoughts of anything else but the next breath and the next step and the next bite to eat and water to drink. These demands plus the threat of rapidly-spreading wildfires during a short but severe drought in the wake of record breaking snowfall and flooding all became part of my healing process.

Continue reading

Sunset & Darkness: October on Granite Mountain

An afternoon Autumn hike up a mountain to watch the sunset turns into one cold scramble back down towards midnight in 2017

*This is a work in progress. Feel free to enjoy in the meantime. Thank you!*

Click on any image to enlarge the foto & enjoy.

Grunting up to the summit late in the afternoon of Monday the 9th of October 2017. All fotos by the Author.

Gazing deeper into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness from near the mountain summit.

I seem to end up hiking in the dark a lot lately. One reason I always bring a headlamp with extra batteries for me. Today was one of those gorgeous fall days of Indian Summer bright with autumn foliage amidst the evergreens. Winter awaited me at the top of the mountain, however, and accompanied me back down into darkness. There wasn’t any ambush. Instead I embraced the elements and went into it. All the way into it, too. Yes, it was a glorious day.

“Epic!” another climber declared as he hiked back down as I scrambled up. Low-angled beams of waning sunlight lit up the mountainside in shades of fiery golden reds before the encroaching shadows of sunset.

Continue reading

Golden Leaves of November

Walking back to catch the train home after a dentist appointment brought unexpected surprises as a late blaze of Autumn glory swiftly turned into a fierce storm in mid-November of 2017

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Please enjoy what’s here as I complete it. Thanks!*

Click on each picture to expand it. All fotos by the Author.

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Pound Cakes & Cigarettes

“You’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, haven’t you?”

She looked up at me as I bent her legs back to pound her pussy till she made me fly and fill the sky.

“Yes,” I said and grunted.

We both grunted.

“I’ve been waiting,” she murmured as we gazed into each other’s eyes.

Her eyes closed as she turned her face to one side upon the pillow.

I studied her freckles and the undulations of her breath and belly. Continue reading

Midwinter atop Hurricane Ridge

One cold, sunny day in Olympic National Park in January 2016

*This is an unfinished work in progress. In the meantime please enjoy what’s here. Thank you!*

Click upon any foto to enlarge the image.

Gazing across mountain wilderness from Hurricane Ridge (5,242 ft / 1,598 m), Olympic National Park. Sunday 24 January 2016. All fotos by the Author.

The Mt. Olympus Massif, heart of the Olympic Mountains. This crown jewel of the maritime Pacific Northwest stands at the elevation of 7,969 feet or 2,429 meters.

After visiting a troubled and isolated friend afflicted with both a chronic autoimmune condition and agoraphobia outside of Sequim, Washington, I drove alone towards Port Angeles. In addition to catching up on life together and cheering her up, I interviewed her about what she believes to be extraterrestrial or intradimensional beings and creatures creeping around her house when she was lived with her parents and siblings many years ago. She declared those series of events felt as if they occurred just yesterday. When it came time for me to leave and return to Seattle, I invited her to join me on a Sunday drive up to Hurricane Ridge. My friend declined. She felt fragile and all those people and wide, open alpine spaces filled her with a dread she couldn’t explain other than as a highly sensitive person she felt unusually vulnerable. So I drove alone, feeling a little sad, and began to reminisce about my own trips into Olympic National Park with my ex-wives Gwen and Kristina and our children Morgan, Kate, and Talia. Oh, how I miss them! And yet I grew to appreciate my time alone with only myself and the world. Up the icy mountain road I drove deep into my own Dreamtime.

Continue reading

Dreams of Sasquatch: Solo to Mason Lake & Mt. Defiance

Conversations with the Invisible on a day hike to Mason Lake then climbing up to the top of Mt. Defiance in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness of Cascadia

*Click on any picture to expand the foto. Enjoy!*

This is an unfinished work in progress. Feel free to explore what’s already here. Thanks!

Looking down from atop the summit of Mt. Defiance (5584 ft / 1702 m) into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. Lake Kulla Kulla is in the lower left. Mason Lake beyond over in the right center. Bandera Mountain rises behind Mason Lake, followed by Pratt & Granite Mountains further back towards center ridge side. Foto by the author. Monday 22 June 2015.

Gazing deeper, steeper from Mt. Defiance into the belly of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

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Spider in Autumn

A large female Cross Orbweaver Spider, Araneus diadematus, becomes the Queen of the Front Porch where we lived in Green Lake during Autumn’s last gasp before the onset of Winter, 21 November 2014.

This is an unfinished work in progress. Feel free to explore what’s already here. Thanks!

Queen of the Porch

She scurries quickly.

Continue reading

Bandera Mountain: Solo in the Mountains for a Day

Bandera Mountain: 5245 ft / 1598 m
False Summit (West Peak) of Bandera: 5157 ft/1572 m

This little adventure turned out to be medicine for mind, body, & soul. Record of a stiff dayhike & a madcap scramble up a modest but steep peak in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness as I nurtured my spirit and trained my bodymind for more demanding adventures. 

***Unfinished work in Progress. Please enjoy what’s here to see & read, and thank you for your patience.***

*Click on any image to blow it up big for a larger view. Enjoy!*

Mason Lake from the summit of Bandera Mountain. Several good campsites lay in the woods below beyond talus & scree.

Summit selfie from later in the evening. Sunday 31 May 2015.

Seattle is surrounded by exceptional outdoor adventure riches. An hour’s drive east took me to a trailhead into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. I was off work and alone on this Sunday at the end of May 2015. I chose Bandera Mountain for a steep dayhike. Part of my training for challenging hikes and scrambles in the mountainous backcountry of Cascadia. But really I went to heal my body, mind, & soul. This short, little, madcap adventure allowed for all these things to occur.

Mt. Rainier amid turbulent late Spring skies from my grunt up Bandera Mountain.

The weather was warmer than normal as an extended drought persisted, most of the snow usually around was gone. With so much going on in my everyday life, I felt a deep-seated need to get out onto the trails into the backcountry. Even felt compelled to push off-trail thru rocks & vegetation to find sanctuary for deep inner peace amidst outer beauty & physical hardship. The woman I was dating at the time, Little Sky, had to work this Sunday. My friends were already busy, and all of my kids were away doing their own thing. My oldest daughter, Morgan, was back east thruhiking the Appalachian Trail. While I would have preferred some company on the climb, sometimes going solo is the most satisfying way to go. So solo it was!

Continue reading

Solo among Crowds: A Dayhike to Bridal Veil Falls

Dayhike up Mt. Index to Bridal Veil Falls on Sunday the 10th of May 2015

Low water already & it’s only May…Bridal Veil Falls in the 3rd year of a drought.

 

 

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A Slime Mold comes to Visit

Two Weeks in the life of one Fuligo septica in Pictures

Meet Bobby Sue, a beautiful Dog Vomit Slime Mold, who chose to visit us in Green Lake for a month. Bobby Sue appeared on the edge of the front steps around the 10th of May 2015. This foto was taken on Tuesday the 12th of May after the slime mold had already crept a short distance.

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An afternoon ramble into the Alpine Lakes one day in May

The author tramps into the woods with an urban friend to show her a taste of the Wild with a view of mountain lakes

 

Olallie Lake from the ridge connecting Pratt & Granite Mountains, Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area, Washington/Cascadia. Monday 25 May 2015. Foto by the Author.

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We buried Grandpa up in a Tree

Night falls with rain
Darkness and pain
Heart opens into oblivion
Without even one hemisphere of brain
Wholeness is Whole
Our planet’s heavy with Child
After we buried Grandpa up in a tree
For buzzards and insects to spread him
Upon the wind for God to inhale
Yet God dances Wild
In the mists of creation
Flinging limbs in our direction
As every bloody stump stamps
Stars and flowers across tapestries of dirt
In the distance screams echo among howls
Love isn’t lost
Continue reading

Great Blue Heron, Descendant of Dinosaurs

Great Blue Heron, Descendant of Dinosaurs, landed in the Wilds of Green Lake, a park in northern Seattle, Washington State, Cascadia, one day in May.

Ardea herodias dinosaurus avianus

The large, elegant bird stood as still as a Buddha, except this Buddha was a predator. All action froze as matter flowed thru time except for those ripples in the lake and around us in the air. In the still point left unturned, my mind awakened from the erotic distractions of being with a new lover those early months of 2015, already a bygone year bereft of present moments. This great blue heron, however, this Descendant of Dinosaurs and as regal as an Avian monarch, brought everything into a focus as sharp as the spike of its beak.

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In the Wake of the Storm: A Winter Journey into the Coulees of the Scablands

A Chronicle of a Father & Daughter’s Changing Relationship as they travel deep into Mose’s & Frenchman’s Coulees in the Channeled Scablands of Cascadia’s Washington Desert searching for connection as much as for adventure one long February weekend in the year 2015.

***This is work in progress with apologies for the delay. Go ahead & enjoy anyway! The rest shall come.***

See! My daughter does love me, LOL!

Moses Coulee expanse from the old, two-lane highway, Monday 9 February 2015.

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Travel Quickies

Attitude over Gear


Hey there! Wow, an entire planet to explore! Cool, huh? So, welcome. Let’s go! Let’s have fun! Because adventure travel can be pretty darn hard sometimes. Difficult, dangerous, even scary, and always incredibly rewarding. Furthermore, it’s OK to make mistakes! Life is messy. We all mess up. So own it, OK? Own it now! Make mistakes & learn from ’em, but don’t mess around. We don’t want anyone to get sick, hurt, or worse.

Oh, my goodness, lookit! Leave all that heavy stuff at home, LOL! Quickly, too, before I start typing in blankety-blanks here.

Think about it. Your pack’s gonna be your home away from home. So treat it with respect. Protect your home as you would your body as the temple for your soul. You wanna be light and nimble on your feet. Even lighter if you’re on crutches. Here we’re gonna dive into a warren of rabbit holes crawling with Cheshire Cats.

You are invited to give feedback and share from your own experiences & knowledge. Consider we’re all in a way forming a community here online. We’re on the same team! We’re certainly all on the same planet. So share & bam bam boom it out across all yer socmed platforms. I’d appreciate you doing so. Don’t worry about not looking suave & professional either. No worries! Yeah, no worries there, and no worries here. Bring yourself and share your stories, too. After all, life is messy! Let’s go make a few more messes, woo HOO!

Thank you.

Update:

Travel Quickies was originally an idea for a new category and page section for a series of short articles geared toward preparing for trips to travel in different countries or into the wilderness in your own. A dynamic customer named Christina inspired me to take such an approach after I worked with her and her fiancé to travel into both cities and the backcountry. She thought I should do YouTube videos, and I hesitated as I didn’t want to be bound by their rules and cybersecurity concerns. Anyway, the process morphed into mini-articles. So moved this into posts as an article. 

“Travel Quickies” encourages a way of thinking about one’s self and others when one is traveling whether by foot down a remote wilderness trail, a train abroad, or in a megacity on the other side of the world. It’s more attitudes, aye, more for mindsets and even heartsets (hey, coined a new word there!) than it is about gear and clothes and luggage. Such is always changing even if so much appears to remain the same.

Enjoy the journey!

William Dudley Bass
Saturday 17 September 2017
Friday 17 April 2020
Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Sol

Image Sources:

*Top Image: https://pixabay.com/en/earth-earth-at-night-night-lights-11595/ CC0 Creative  Commons.

*Bottom Image: https://pixabay.com/en/earth-planet-front-side-back-11593/ CC0 Creative Commons.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 *  *  *

Facing Fear (Your Deepest, Innermost Fears around Love)

Sometimes the Dragons we must eventually face hide within the wilderness of our own hearts

Often in the pursuit of adventure and facing one’s terror amidst avalanching mountains and flooded whitewater rivers, one may forget the Hardest Work and the Greatest Challenges lay not at Death’s Door in the Wilderness but in being with people including those we love and those who love us. Much of the time, however, it’s face to face with the mirrors of your own self.

This speaks especially with those we love or used to love. Our most difficult practices arise within the relationships we form among ourselves, with other people, and especially our selves.

The greatest Dragon we must someday face is not some monster in a cave abiding over those hearts we treasure the most. No, the greatest Dragon is us as we face our own shame, anger, & fear, yes, fear of turning back around to look those Others in the eye and atone for the consequences of damaging our relationships with them. Perhaps the hardest work is facing those whom we have hurt and wronged. Oh, the messes I have made! And cleaned up, too. It’s a neverending process at first, and, over time, the more one practices the easiest such practices become.

“Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love but in reality, love is the only thing in the world that covers up all the pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in the world that does not hurt.” – Liam Neeson

So, yeah, listen up. Love doesn’t stop. Who turned it off? Stop pretending. Do the fucking work. Stay with the pain. Transmute it with breath and blood. Face me. Let me face you. Choose to keep on loving no matter what. Awaken into the Oneness we once shared and, yes, still exists. Whether or not you believe in Twin Flames and the Twin Flame blues is up to you, and besides, doesn’t change what we had felt so true. Keep the fire burning before the last flame blazes out taking with it every precious memory of what was & what almost could have been.

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 10 August 2017
SeaTac/Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

NOTE: The quoted statement from Liam Neeson was borrowed from Wild Earth @ http://wild-earth.tumblr.com/post/136230670895/everyone-says-love-hurts-but-that-is-not-true.

The image of the red dragon & heart is a Free Download from Public Domain Pictures, License CCO Public Domain, @ http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=4445&picture=dragon-heart.

This essay/cry out was first published to my Facebook page on the evening of Thursday the 10th of August 2017.

Copyright © 2017 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

Swarm of Ants on a Sunny Day in June

Ants swarm upon a sidewalk in Wallingford.

I wanted to walk home from work at least once as one way to say goodbye to where I’ve lived at the time. Finally did so one sunny Saturday in late June of 2017. At the time I lived in the Tangletown-Latona neighborhoods of the Green Lake area in North Seattle. Lived there for a little over four years in an informal cooperative household.

For various reasons of timing, I didn’t make the walk to where I worked in the old Cascade neighborhood of South Lake Union. Today, however, I declined the offer of a ride home and chose to proceed on foot instead. And I did. Walked all the way home. Passed thru the long, strung-out-along-the-water neighborhoods of East Lake, skirted the edges of the U-District, and crossed under I-5 into Wallingford. Eventually passed north thru Wallingford into Tangletown-Latona.

Took me about an hour and 45 minutes. Could’ve walked it in an hour and a half or less, but I dawdled at viewpoints and took my time before spurts of speed. I felt at peace in and with nature and enjoyed my little adventures along the edges of the urban wild. Continue reading

Lost My Wife

Foto by William Dudley Bass on Saturday morning the 24th of July 2017.

Walked down the street on the way to work recently & came upon a haunting illustration at the rear of an abandoned restaurant slated for teardown. Felt intrigued by the bittersweet mix of symbols & metaphors. What’s the story behind a mystery as old as time when the first dawning of love went awry?

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Baby Spiders!

“Facebutt” is deluged with videos of silly, cute videos of kitty cats & puppy dogs. So much torment to sit thru, LOL! Well, shit, then, here’s a short video I recorded of sweet little animal babies doing what cute little animal babies do:

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Videos for Rose

There’s a story behind these videos. Both are personal and initially intended to be private. As I’m a beginner with handheld videos, these are, from any professional and even personal viewpoint, terrible in quality. They are shaky, unedited, and thus raw as Hell. Even so, I’m sharing them. Doing so is, for me, a breakthru in shame and embarrassment, of breaking thru mental barriers of not-looking-good, not-sounding-smooth, and worrying about what others may think. Toss all that crap. Yes! Even so, I feel shy in making these videos. My hearing impairment’s there. My speech impediment is there. The TMJ (temporomandibular joint) injuries from long ago gradually worsen over time and increasingly affects the ability to open my jaws properly to speak. Still, I go for it anyway, damn my own fears.

Besides, these videos are not for me. I wouldn’t put them up except to get those videos to someone special who lives far away more than halfway “down” the planet. She is one of the most amazing, inspiring, funny, romantic, and eccentric women I have ever met. We are so much alike with so many unexpected and startling synchronicities we wonder if those esoteric spiritual descriptions of Twin Flames are true. Seems so for us, anyway. Especially as we met by accident in such a fantastical way with mindboggling results. So of course the possibility of us being Twin Flames feels real for us. Besides, even if Twin Flames are more of a mythic fable, it doesn’t matter for we are both at choice to choose the next step together…or apart…moment to moment.

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Trump Usurped the Presidency when the Electoral College Failed America

YES, THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE FAILED AMERICA

ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

TRUMP IS A USURPER

Donald Trump usurped the Presidency of the United States of America. He did so by exploiting divisions and corruption within the two dominant parties. Trump ascended to the  Oval Office upon the backs of the Electoral College as the electors failed to properly vet the candidates and failed to vet them independent of party and state pressure. The Electoral College of the United States failed not because Trump lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history to carry 77 more state delegates than Hillary Clinton or anyone else to win the EC vote. Thus Trump was declared POTUS with the assumption the Electoral College did its job. It did not.

The EC failed America and yes, Earth, by failing to do its Constitutional duty. As such the EC failed to consider all of America’s presidential candidates, not just those from the Democrat-Republican Duopoly, i.e. the Two-Headed Snake in bed with the Giant Octopus of Big Business and Bigger Banks. This Duopoly distracts us all with its superficial drama while deep down below “the two heads” the body of the snake quietly and pursues its agenda. This pursuit is nearly unconsciously and habitual as if programmed from long ago. As an expression of Duopoly control, the Electoral College failed to deliberate over the candidates’ qualifications and character. The EC electors failed to even consider any of the strengths, weaknesses, and integrity of any of the women and men competing to become POTUS and VPOTUS to best determine who shall most faithfully execute the responsibilities and carry the burdens of such high offices. If the electors had done so, both Clinton and Trump would most likely have been dismissed as not worthy of the office. Unethical if not illegal practices became habitual over the years to eventually become normalized. What became normalized became established and accepted as “real” and thus “legal.” The Constitution gives little guidance to the otherwise helter-skelter structure of America’s overlapping jurisdictions in regards to the Electoral College.

The EC was designed by wealthy adult White male Capitalist revolutionaries to prevent demagogues and what they feared as those demagogues’ rabid mobs of ignorant and dangerous goons from the so-called lower classes from storming the political process to take over the country. The EC allowed itself instead to be manipulated by the Fifty States and by two corporatocratic political parties to allow Donald Trump to usurp the Presidency. Events since January 2017, a mere four months ago, have cemented the disastrous results of the Electoral College process as yet another example why we must abolish this institution.

Meanwhile, the country’s gone nuts in a world already on fire. It is as if the nation’s mind is seriously afflicted with the political and financial equivalent of toxoplasmosis parasites and brain tapeworms. This is yet another example of a much deeper malaise: so many of our actions arise from fear, hurt, greed, anger, and reactivity rather than from love, forgiveness, acceptance, courage, and responsiveness. This point is acknowledged here and is best served for another time.

The Electoral College of the United States nearly fractured in early January 2017 thanks to the lack of courage and foresight among many electors. The electors allowed themselves to be intimidated by the State regimes to vote for one of the two dastardly primary party candidates. “Nearly fractured” is not the same as “fractured,” obviously, but enough EC electors threatened to vote their conscience for whom they felt would be the best for their state or threatened some kind of mutiny some were removed by their state regimes and replaced with docile and obedient people. Yes, the states suppressed elector independence as well as full vetting of the various candidates.

Imagine being told you would not be allowed to vote unless corporatocratic political party operatives in control of any one of the fifty American state regimes, a corrupt setup that would have appalled those Founding Fathers who opposed political parties in the first place, commanded you to cast your ballot for a particular candidate. And you thought you lived in a democratic republic, albeit a capitalist one, where one puts country before party.

Despite all of the obstacles placed before them, seven electors survived attempts or threats to remove them from the EC to cast their vote for candidates other than the one from their party. None of the seven voted for either Clinton or Trump. They came closer than any of their colleagues to vet at least some candidates. One Republican elector stood up and dared the other electors of the College to vote their conscience to prevent Trump from becoming President. Clinton received 232 Electoral College votes. Trump, however, received 306 votes. Trump carried more states and counties while Clinton carried more of the population who actually voted. None of these hundreds of electors, however, gathered as an actual college to vet all of the candidates and then deliberate amongst themselves for whom would best serve the interests of the American people and their United States. Most of them voted for the political party they represented rather than on behalf of the population of their state. They obeyed the demands and expectations projected by the political machinery and governments of the states, all controlled by the Democrat-Republican Duopoly. Indeed to not do so would have those electors be branded as “faithless electors,” as were those seven “rebel electors.”

Political parties were not supposed to dominate government and political systems. Yet networks of wealthy capitalist oligarchs control two of these parties. As such “their” Republicans and Democrats rule and distort the electoral process. Voting in America is a shameful and asinine mockery of democracy. Instead of voting for one despotic puppet one gets to choose between two despotic puppets cloaked with illusions of liberty, prosperity, and peace for all. The Dem-Rep Duopoly dominates all Fifty States and thus determines for whom EC electors must vote.

Enough electors cast their votes without any attempt to deliberate to thus select Donald Trump as the next President. They did so even tho Trump LOST and LOST BIG by THREE MILLION votes! In an election riddled with accusations of electoral fraud by both sides, too. Ironically much of the current evidence beginning to emerge damns the Republicans altho they’re the one crying fraud the most and the loudest as the Democrats seek to point out Russian interference in the 2016 Election. The United States Electoral College of constitutional, capitalist, quasi-democratic republic thus elected a loser as President. Continue reading

Full Disclosure and World Democracy Now!

View of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean with tip of Africa visible. Composite NASA image from the Scientific Visualization Studio for the International Polar Year 2005.

View of Antarctica from low orbit if the ice cap was removed. Created with Bedmap2 by the British Antarctic Survey with NASA’s ICESat and Operation IceBridge, 2013.

We live in the midst of a time of transition. Now is a time of final endings and new beginnings. We live during a time of great volatility, destruction, and fear, yet also one vibrant with dynamic and revolutionary possibilities.

Together we experience what seems to be the ending of the Modern Age as global capitalism breaks down, nation-states grow increasingly obsolete, Earth’s sixth Mass Extinction unfolds, technology races ahead, nuclear warfare returns to threaten all of us with obliteration, A.I. emerges in disturbing new ways, and global climate disruption accelerates. New energy sources and technologies begin to emerge as the old dinosaurs of coal and oil still roar.

Marx, Engels, Trotsky, and others are being rediscovered upon the centenary of the Russian Revolution as more information is uncovered to discover what actually occurred and not the slander and falsehoods portrayed as “history.” Socialism continues to evolve in the 21st Century as it integrates more with democracy and uncouples from authoritarianism. Newer, greener versions emerge such as Democratic Socialism, the expansion of democracy into all areas of life. The Left is in a process of rebirth and renewal even as its advocates are challenged not only by the rise of newly-confident and violent fascists but also by the grim realities of life in despotic, self-proclaimed “socialist” regimes such as Venezuela and North Korea who blame all of their woes on capitalist imperialists. Yet the Fascists and their authoritarian, nationalist allies are the ones currently in ascendance.

Both the Right and the Left have reached the limitations of isms rooted in the terminologies of 18th and 19th Century language so even dead giants polished off and reclaimed such as Marx soon end up abandoned by a world enthralled with the euphoria of our technonarcissism. At the same time our scientists discover more and more stars with more and more planets likely to support life. In the midst of such turmoil Humanity experiences more UFO and ET phenomena than ever before.

Growing numbers of whistleblowers dare come forward to disclose what they claim to know. These people include not only everyday folks, but top scientists and engineers, astronauts and pilots, military officers and intelligence agents, corporate CEOs, and high government officials. Most are credible people in their own right regardless if one agrees or disagrees with their individual politics and religions. Their testimonies and who they are can be verified. More and more experiencers are also coming forth, however, who appear believable, even charismatic, but who are not credible or verifiable. Many of our fellow Humans who risk all for the truth face ridicule, harassment, loss of jobs, dismissal, threats to families, and in some cases what appears to be murder disguised as suicides or accidents. Those who seek truth without leveraging critical thinking skills risk finding answers within the circular reasoning of cults. Or they struggle to free themselves from the groupthink of our societies at large.

Yet incredibly the mainstream mass media behaves as if these “UFO people” are stupid and insane. Mainstream academia, beholden to bureaucratic tyrants and the financial reins of their corporate overlords, remains too terrified and astonishingly ignorant to address these challenging subjects. Thus the people who most need to pull their heads up out of their smartfoneholes won’t even look at these life-changing issues. They will instead debunk these matters even when confronted with clear evidence governments deliberately created and engaged in debunking and smear campaigns during the height of the Cold War to distract the public from the enormity of the truth.

It is vital we human beings continue to awaken from old patterns of self-destruction to build new political and economic systems. We can do better than the horrors we visit upon each other and ourselves. We must ascend our current and prehistoric limitations.

We must support the establishment of a Constitutional, Democratic World Republic.

Creating a Democratic Socialist World Parliament with all representatives subject to recall in a participatory republic is a primary step in this direction.

We must find ways to wrest control of the world’s money powers away from central banking cartels, corporations, big banks, tax regimes, and energy conglomerates.

Demanding Full Disclosure now is imperative. We the People of Earth must know exactly what in the world is going on. Now!

What must we do now? Continue reading

Deep into Mountains Beyond the River

(***This is a work in progress. All is Copyrighted. Enjoy!***)

William & Morgan’s Father-Daughter 50-mile, 7-day Backpacking Trip in Olympic National Park with Way Too Much Weight,
Sunday 31 August – Saturday 6 September 2014,
or
A father & daughter rediscover each other on the Trail before tripping out on the edge of the Ocean

*Click on each foto to blow it up big if you like. Enjoy!*

White Creek Meadows along the O’Neil’s Pass Trail, Olympic National Park, 3 September 2014, Day 4.

Picture of goofy Dad by Daughter. Enchanted Valley, Day 2.

Picture of Daughter by Dad. Upper Quinault, Day 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Morgan was born in the bed at home of an apartment in Seattle a little over 20 years ago before our first backpacking trip together. Both experiences were initiations. I didn’t realize the latter was one, too, however, until a couple of months later. Backpacking with my oldest of three daughters changed my life. It changed hers, too.

This journey was a spiritual and deeply physical reconnection with nature and wilderness. I was also compelled to drop down into deeper levels of awareness of what and who I am as both a self-aware man and as consciousness beyond self. This was my first backpacking trip in 7 years. Suffered from my most severe blisters ever, and I’m the kinda of guy who rarely gets blisters and when I do they’re little bitty thangs.

This trip was also Morgan’s longest backpacking trip up to this point. She was concerned about old injuries flaring up. This trek was a big test for her for she planned to attempt a thruhike of the Appalachian Trial in 6 more months. Most precious, however, was a Father and his Daughter re-creating their parent-child relationship as adults. Being halfway up a steep mountainside with a river below you miles and miles from civilization does things like that to people in a hurry to do-do-do.

Afterwards we both admitted we were afraid we wouldn’t get along, would argue constantly, and wouldn’t find anything to talk about or for. We laughed as those fears didn’t even come close to materializing. Plus this proved an incredible adventure in its own right. Wild weather, bizarre people, magnificent scenery marred by global climate disruption, and unexpected surprises including stumbling into a psychedelic festival on the edge of the ocean made this end of summer backpacking trip unforgettable.

An invisible dynamic was the complex relationships we had with her mom and step-mom, both whom were also my ex-wives. Gwen Hughes, Morgan’s mother, and I thruhiked the Appalachian Trail all the way from Georgia to Maine back in 1991. Gwen and I were known as The Pregnant Rhinos back in our halcyon thruhiker days.

We did an estimated 3,500 kilometers or almost 2,200 miles plus about 150 to 200 miles of crazy ass side hikes. The length of the AT keeps changing. It’s 2,190 miles per 2016 but was 2,168.1 miles in 2001, 2,179.1 miles in 2010, and was about 2,000 miles in 1937. It was 2,184 miles when Gwen and I thruhiked the AT in 1991, and 2,189.2 miles when Morgan attempted her thruhike the following year in 2015.

The Pregnant Rhinos on the AT! aka Morgan’s parents before she was born. 🙂 Here Crazy Gweeyin buzzes off Yeldud the Mad’s hair while he pretends to be scary. This is during a crazy stop at Rusty’s Hard Time Hollow on the edge of the Shenandoahs in Virginia sometime in early Summer of 1991. At the time of this picture, William is 32 years along & Gwen is 26. Foto by Weathercarrot.

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Jackie Screams in Silence

Silent are the many Class War dead buried beneath the myths of Camelot

Watching Jackie felt like eating jagged broken glass thru my eyes as if eyeballs were little, bloody mouths wired directly into my brains. The movie is intense, jarring, and rich with excellent and challenging performances. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Texas six days before Thanksgiving 1963 was a sucker punch to the American gut.

One could quibble about actress Natalie Portman’s attempt at Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy’s accent, but her harrowing performance rivets and horrifies. Portman becomes Jackie with such wrenching intensity it’s as if we’re invading the former First Lady’s privacy. The film portrays the Journalist, played by Billy Crudup, as an unnamed man but understood to be Theodore H. White, a historian and journalist turned propagandist and Camelot mythmaker.

The movie is in part a portrayal of a woman’s grief and shock at the public murder of her husband while at the pinnacle of their power. The film also, less convincingly but nevertheless disturbingly, illuminates the collusion between the chain-smoking former First Lady and the Journalist to control the public narrative and secure the myth of the American Camelot as “truth.” In its own unique way, Jackie reflects the legacy of Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama enmeshed with blood and brains in the way of American movies.

What makes this collusion even more bizarre was Jackie’s sterilization of her dead husband’s true legacy. To his credit, JFK was in many ways a traitor to his class of wealthy, bourgeoisie capitalists, and this article addresses this further down. Jackie Kennedy, however, fought, plotted, connived, and strategized to elevated JFK to the lofty, neo-feudal status of Camelot. A powerful and determined person, she was also relentless and ferocious as she grabbed the helm of history. Continue reading

Fighting Back against Trump and the Right beyond Inauguration Day Weekend

No flash in the pan protests! Sustained demonstrations are required.

Building Massive Resistance against Trump and the Alt-Right helps build a Democratic Socialist world.

Major demonstrations are being planned across the United States of America over these two days to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump as President and Mike Pence as Vice-President. Other marches and rallies in solidarity with this insurrection are planned in other cities around the world. These protests, even in the midst of winter, are expected to be huge. Already over 25,000 people took to the streets of New York City on the Thursday before Inauguration Day to demonstrate against Trump-Pence and their ugly and dangerously stupid agenda.

It would be naïve to think all these vigorous acts of defiance, resistance, unity, and courage will have much immediate effect. And with today’s technologies at our fingertips with social media, anything is possible. Even more naïve, however, is to believe we can simply pack up and go home and plop down as if OK, look how LOUD we showed Trump-Pence and the Alt-Right we roared! No. This is a long fight shaping up. We must be prepared for a long, long struggle!

Know, too, when we on the Left fight, we win in the end. To fight and win, however, we must come together to educate and organize ourselves to fight effectively.

Consider examples in American history of what efforts activists took to win. Let’s look at our own history. Struggle takes time, and the more we fight we win. Perseverance is key. The Civil Rights Movement lasted from the early 1950s all the way thru the 60s into the mid-1970s. Significant high points were the Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 followed 10 years later by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Then the Voting Rights Act and the Immigration and National Services Act passed in 1965, and the Fair Housing Act in 1968.

The anti-Vietnam War movement began protesting in 1964 and grew so vigorous President Lyndon Johnson of the Democrats was compelled to withdraw from seeking reelection in March 1968. These anti-war demonstrations also compelled the next President, Republican Richard Nixon, to withdraw U.S. forces from the Vietnam War in March 1973. These civil rights and anti-war protests merged with other movements as resistance to Nixon exploded yet again during the Watergate crisis. Nixon resigned the American presidency in August of 1974. The labor and environmental movements are other classic examples of struggles taking years to manifest a string of powerful successes.

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Videos and Stories from the Unfinished Struggle for Workers’ Rights at REI

Six Videos, the Petition, and our Stories…and it’s not over

Note this article with its compilation of videos is not marketed or sold for profit nor is anything in this article being marketed and sold for profit. This article and the videos within may be freely shared as long as various sources and authorship are acknowledged.

“There is one word missing. One word that makes all the difference. This word is ‘organized’. That is: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, ORGANIZED citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It speaks to the power of people mobilization; the power of true change that starts from the bottom wing…there is a growing, if naïve belief that all you need is a lot of passion, a lot of commitment, a lot of good intentions and lots of mavericks, rebels, disruptors, contrarians and challengers and, alas, change will happen. It won’t.” – Socio-cultural change activist Leandro Herrero of Spain on the necessity for activists to organize and organize quickly.

A workers’ revolt had brewed within REI since at least 2015. Matters came to a head in July 2016 as groups of workers rose up openly in nonviolent direct action. Among their issues at stake were demands for a living wage, for secure, predictable scheduling, and for democratic representation via a union. These demands burst open the heart of the matter to reveal whether the REI Co-op would be a truly cooperative business. Or a lie.

This is our story as a brief summary from my perspective. Thus this is only a small part of our big story from only one person’s point of view from a particular time and place. Indeed, the record of this peaceful uprising may even be your story. Much work remains to be done by we the working people. Our story, your story, remains unfinished. The truth, often forgotten or unacknowledged, is we who stood up before the media for our co-op and for our fellow coworkers who wouldn’t or couldn’t were scared. Yes, at times we felt terrified! We were afraid of being fired from REI and blacklisted from securing employment elsewhere. And we stood up anyway. We stood up and spoke what needed to be said and heard. Such actions took more courage than simply feeling brave. What made it possible was the support from our collective, cooperative community of REI Members, fellow coworkers, and former coworkers.

In the beginning, actions may be led by small numbers of people determined to organize and act in such a way, as the late, great anthropologist Margaret Meade liked to point out, as to change the world. They may be resisted at first by those who insist these leaders not speak for them but say, “some few individuals.” Progress cannot be stayed. Even the most peaceful revolution has setbacks and is set upon by cynics and automatic critics as well as often ignored by the apathetic and the resigned. It is acceptable to feel afraid, and let us move forward anyway even if scared. Yes, it’s OK to be afraid. Move forward anyway. Don’t let fear stop us, but do let fear keep us alert and on top of our game. Our revolt had repercussions benefiting many workers, although success wasn’t as widespread as initially believed.

One can trace this revolt back to the influences of the 2011 Wisconsin Insurrection followed by the Occupy Uprisings of 2011-2012. Out of Occupy Seattle emerged the political campaigns of economist Kshama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative candidate, for local offices in 2012-2013. She lost her race for the Washington House of Representatives, and won her election to Seattle City Council where she has served since 2014. These struggles overlapped with and were followed by the Black Lives Matter revolts beginning in 2013 and still ongoing. They in turn help inspire the successful Fight for $15 an hour minimum wage struggles of 2014-2016. This uprising was sparked by Alaska Airline employees in SeaTac, Washington, spread to Seattle, and then reverberated across the United States in the form of fast food strikes and other direct actions organized with assistance from Socialist Alternative and allies in the labor union movement such as SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) and UFCW (the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union).

More directly related to REI, however, were the 2014 demonstrations against sweatshop labor in making products for The North Face and against REI’s partnership with The North Face. The anti-sweatshop protests were small but loud, nationwide, and even erupted in other countries. A nationwide student labor union known as the United Students Against Sweatshops or USAS (http://usas.org) organized these demonstrations at REI and TNF stores.

The international horror in the wake of the April 2013 Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh was still fresh in the general public’s mind in 2014. Over 1,130 people were killed and nearly another 2,500 injured in this disaster. A foto of an unidentified man and woman buried in the rubble still embraced even in death became famous. Their nature of their actual relationship remains unknown, and the image of their tragedy affected the world. To be clear, while up to 28 Western companies including Benneton, J.C. Penney, Joe Fresh, Zara, Primark, and Walmart were involved in the Rana Plaza collapse, this list don’t seem to include any companies associated with REI or The North Face. Even so, the Rana Plaza catastrophe left a vivid impression on people about worker’s rights in general within our globalized capitalist economy.

Sweatshop labor is slave labor where predatory capitalists, the kind of capitalists that give responsible businesses and visionary, hardworking entrepreneurs a bad name, leveraged deeply indebted people into perpetual debt bondage and exploited children for their tiny hands and nimble fingers for profit. Such vulnerable people were beaten, fed little, worked with little rest or sleep, sexually violated, kept terrified, and generally traumatized. People died and were maimed in these slave factories. The problem afflicts many companies as human slavery and trafficking is a worldwide wicked problem. To be clear, these problems existed long before capitalism, and we have the power and vision here in the 21st Century to work together and resolve these conflicts.

Patagonia and Apple were among the few to take vigorous action to tackle this problem of slavery and trafficking, but unregulated capitalist imperatives to exploit resources and cheap labor for short-term profits, socio-cultural normalization, and political power makes cleaning up these messes self-defeating. The North Face, owned by VF Corporation in Greensboro, North Carolina, was one of the worst offenders. Only in 2015 did VFC and TNF start addressing sustainability and green energy issues, but still has not addressed its use of sweatshop labor.

See: https://rankabrand.org/sportswear-sports-shoes/The+North+Face.

See: http://reisweatshops.usas.org.

[Upate 2023 insert:] The two above links no longer work and are kept here for historic, archival purposes as original sources that worked back in 2017.

More workers in America and more workers in other nation-states such as Bangladesh are beginning to understand this is an international issue, indeed an international working class issue. Thus an issue that demands we workers hold the capitalist classes accountable as we further organize a new mass movement across the working and middle classes to build a progressive, planetary society. It is up to us to figure out what such action steps look like. We must find ways to rise above the endless arguments over -isms and understand expanding democracy into the workplace expands democracy for all.

What the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used to call “economic democracy” and what the progressive Left today such as Sen. Bernie Sanders call “democratic socialism” is often misunderstood by many and erroneously conflated with communism, totalitarianism, anarchy, Nazism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, and so forth. Those isms are not at all the same thing as economic democracy or democratic socialism. People who believe they are need to learn a few things. Indeed, this movement expanding democracy in the workplace is also an expansion of our individual liberties, human and civil rights, and social responsibilities. Equating such with dictatorship and tyranny is fearmongering feeding hysteria, polarization, violence, and ignorance.

People may disagree on approaches and degrees of this and that, debate whatever ignites their passions, but forget the Big Picture so many of us work to put together and build out. In many ways we are limited by our language. We get lost in fighting and arguing over political and economic -ism terminology from the 17th and 18th Centuries and the horrors of the 20th Century. Together we can choose to build a better local-global system for our 21st Century. Or not. The consequences are dire. It doesn’t work to go all out in support of cherry-picked progressive agendas only to bash labor unions and worker-owned cooperative businesses.

Below is the first of six videos here and is from United Students Against Sweatshops. It is a part of REI history we must remember and Corporate Headquarters wants us to forget. REI HQ preferred instead to distract people’s attention by ramping up its efforts to market the petty bourgeois abomination known as “glamping.”

Before REI workers launched their own petition for real change after so many were fired in late 2015, there was an earlier petition demanding “REI, Drop North Face Sweatshops!” I signed it myself on Monday 2 January 2017. Yes, I am ashamed to confess I was unaware of this petition until recently (2017) and didn’t realize the true nature of the anti-North Face protests back in 2014. In 2014 I was still emerging from almost two years of being homeless or semi-homeless while ill with severe depression and a cluster of autoimmune conditions. That’s no excuse, of course, and I share to give one a sense of what was experienced. As alluded to earlier, these struggles of solidarity for justice, equality, and liberty for working class people are far from over.

Max Silva, an REI Member, initiated the anti-sweatshop Petition for USAS with Moveon.org back in 2014. It still continues to gather signatures. Move On is financed in large part by billionaire George Soros. While I am not a fan all of Soros’s actions, the claims of rabid, Far Right conspiracy speculators his manipulations of geopolitics and unaware Leftist activists fund his faction of squabbling plutocrats to rule the world are not based on facts and reality. Despite such rubbish, Move On still charges hard as an activist NGO in the pursuit of good.

Review and sign the Petition to compel REI to drop North Face products here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/rei-drop-north-face-sweatsho-1?source=c.em&r_by=6189219.

This accelerated worker and member discontent within the Co-op. The first phase of the 2015-2016 REI workers revolt culminated on the 11th of July 2016. A small group of retail workers from across the United States, although mostly from the West Coast, showed up in Seattle to go public en masse before the media. These workers were desperate, afraid, and courageous. I know as I was one of them. My coworkers and I were scared we would lose everything, and we didn’t have much left to lose as our wages and hours were so low and random. The possibility of getting fired and losing what little we had left terrified us. Even more scary was the prospect of being blacklisted from finding other work elsewhere if we were purged. We stood up anyway. We workers took a stand.

We did so with the support of Councilor Kshama Sawant of the Seattle City Council and the dynamic staff of her office. Among them was community and labor activist Jonathan Rosenblum who helped build grassroots networks across the country from New York City to Seattle. He helped us REI activists to distill our long lists of demands into three. We did so with the determined support of Socialist Alternative and UFCW 21. We did so with the support of many Members of the REI Co-op, and we did so with the support of larger numbers of our co-workers from all across the company who felt they had to stay discreet or anonymous but who informed us privately they were still with us. 

We REI Coworkers had many, many even conflicting demands. Dozens! In just a few meetings we distilled them into three primary ones. They were, 1) immediate implementation of the $15 an hour minimum wage instead of a three-year long phase-in, 2) predictive scheduling, and, 3) we need a union. Our first two demands were met. The third was not. There remains the lack of some form of organized, internal democratic representation of us workers as a group to management.

There are several different ways towards building a workers’ democracy. One way is thru a union. Another is thru cooperative ownership of the company as a true cooperative business with democratic deliberation and planning. Or a hybrid of the two. Cooperative worker ownership and/or unionization defends hard-won gains, sustains the network, and advocates for greater democracy. There are successful examples of worker-owned, consumer-owned hybrid cooperatives, and most of them are also unionized. Clearly this struggle isn’t new but is as old as the exploited standing up to those who exploit them. Our struggles are far from over for democratic socialist representation is THE most important battle to win.

Back in the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to recognize there can’t be any political democracy without having economic democracy and one can’t have capitalism without war. He came to champion what we today call democratic socialism. King was assassinated in April 1968 while in Memphis, Tennessee. He’d traveled there to support striking sanitation workers and their new union. Those terms remain highly charged today. The next five videos, however, demonstrate what’s possible when people from across the working classes come together to move what many thought were immovable mountains, especially REI, the mythic icon of the American Pacific Northwest and the Great Outdoors. Continue reading

Arrival Arrives

A review without spoilers and names of prominence.

Saw the film, Arrival. Wow, what a movie! Opens up, takes apart, and recreates language, time, and sensations of consciousness. And without blowing shit up, either. Relationships are the pathways to connection as well as the results of connection. No, not pathways, fields, as in fields of connection. This movie is both cerebral and emotional and thus deeply engaging. At the center of it all, of everything really, is presence. Presence. Awareness and self-awareness. One becomes present to what is deeply precious.

For those who think they really know whom & what Cthulhu is, well, y’alla in for all manner of surprises. Plus Arrival‘s another in a line of fictional films rich with symbolisms of soft disclosure. If it’s not your cup of tea, well don’t drink the damn tea then & go experience the movie.

The premises of the film as serious science fiction aren’t new. Messin’ with perceptions of what is time, explorations of consciousness, and their affect on what is reality and how we humans relate to each other and everything else are staples of so-called “serious” or “literary” syfy. Wordsmiths will love the story’s inquiry into language and the relationship between language and reality. This merges into inquiries regarding such in the relationships between ourselves and especially with those we love. One may be reminded as I was of the late ethnobotanist and psychedelic pioneer Terence McKenna’s observations of language and how the mind uses language to create and define what it perceives as reality.

A close friend, a mother with kids of her own, attended the show with me here in Seattle. She was blown away and moved to tears. Later she helped me fill in what I thought were gaps in my understanding due to my profound hearing impairment. My new hearing aids helped tremendously, and yet they don’t match the capacity of healthy ears and brain. What I discovered was there wasn’t anything to hear. I was so focused on hearing I missed the body language and the temporal-visual language of pictures moving at certain key points. In addition I was confronted with my own inner contradiction: I disliked nonlinear temporal constructs and prefer neatly organized compartmentalization of flow, yet by undoing all of those allows for breakthroughs in consciousness revealing deeper understandings of truth, reality, and ultimately my self.

Yeah, take someone by the hand and dive on into the Dreamtime. Thy minds shall open time.

 

William Dudley Bass
November 2016
Seattle, Washington
United States of America
Bioregion of Cascadia
Planet Earth
Sol Star

Note:
Adapted from my Facebook post of Tuesday 15 November 2016 & revised Friday 25 November 2016.

 

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

Civil War in 21st Century America?

We would destroy ourselves

“Governments without credibility devolve into chaos. … The notion of credibility is why my political preferences don’t align with either of the candidates for president.” ~ Scott Adams

“The spread of fascism in the 1920s was significantly aided by the fact that liberals and mainstream conservatives failed to take it seriously. Instead, they accommodated and normalised it.” ~ James McDougall

Three points must be understood.

  • We in the United States of America are on the edge of civil war. This would be the case regardless of who “won” this election.
  • Few want to see or hear anything about this. Most dismiss it as alarmist rhetoric or far-right wing fantasy.
  • A civil war in a large, developed superpower would be catastrophic for this planet.
  • Let me rephrase what I just wrote, ok: A civil war in the United States of America would be a horror and incredibly stupid, so stupid I want to use the F-word.
  • Here’s another: People don’t want to experience extreme distress. They don’t want to see events race from unlikely possibility to likely probability. Then it’s too late. If more people saw such changes shift from bad to worse they would act to stop war by resolving conflict peacefully.

The United States is the most polarized it’s been since the American Civil War of 1861-1865. As I write these words on the 18th of November 2016, Hillary Clinton is well ahead in the popular vote, Donald Trump is well ahead in the Electoral College count, the Electoral College has not yet voted, the polls predicted Clinton to win, the media declared Trump the winner, Clinton conceded to Trump, and Trump proclaimed himself the President-elect.

Movements are underfoot to both promote and deny Clinton a victory over Trump by having the Electoral College vote align with the national popular vote. Clinton is ahead of Trump by over one million votes with about four million votes left to count. Her margin is expected to increase dramatically.

Both the Democrat and Republican parties are broken even tho their Two-Party Duopoly maintains its dominance over the elections, debates, and state electors to the national College. Independent third party candidates proved insignificant as the majority of Americans were too polarized between Lesser Evils. At the same time about half of legitimate voters even bothered to vote as the election was viewed by so many people as rigged, corrupted, and ultimately irrelevant.

Massive demonstrations were quickly organized in many cities with the majority of the demonstrators peaceful. Initially several of these marches and protests were organized by Socialist Alternative, a small but growing national organization of Democratic Socialists who leverage Marxist dialectical analysis, in conjunction with Socialist Youth and the Occupy Wall Street-inspired Movement for the 99%. Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Oakland, and New York City were the focal points for these protests. Other organizations quickly moved to organize demonstrations, too.

Ongoing protest movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock Sioux against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the banks financing the corporations behind the pipeline merged with the anti-Trump demonstrations. LGBTQI people marched with those protesting degradation and violence against women and immigrants. Students from high schools and colleges walked out of class to join and in many cases lead the demonstrations.

Allegations swirl around claiming George Soros, a multibillionaire member of the so-called globalist Cabal groups and backer of Hillary Clinton, financed and influenced demonstrations against Donald Trump. So far research demonstrates he hasn’t altho he may do so in the future. He has donated millions of dollars to a broad spectrum of Leftist groups in the past, but most of them are neoliberal groups such as the Open Society Foundations.

Socialist Alternative and its allies, however, rapidly organized most of the post-Election protests on Wednesday 9 November, in multiple cities via social media as they marshaled 40,000 or more people within hours. Socialist Alternative also scorned any help from the billionaire class and refuses to accept donations from Soros and his elitist ilk.

Scattered violence ripples across the nation and appears to be escalating rather than decreasing. The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded 437 reports of “hateful intimidation and harassment” by Trump supporters from the day after the election thru the 14th of November. This includes 20 reports of assaults upon Trump supporters. Most, however, were by White racists and fundamentalist Christians upon other ethnic and religious groups including immigrants and by heterosexuals against LGBTQIs.

Other reports demonstrate a surge in bullying in the schools, increase in police violence, interruptions of work, high volatility in the financial markets, and greater unpredictability across the planet as different nations, corporations, banks, and non-state groups review their options.

Protests in support of the Standing Rock Sioux water protectors, accelerated by Trump’s declared victory even tho he continues to lose the popular vote, have since spread around the nation to include demonstrations against the 38 banks including 17 banks directly financing the corporations supporting the Dakota Access Pipeline across the Missouri River and sacred tribal lands. Many others, however, seek to downplay the violence and bring people back to focus upon peace, compassion, positivity, and finding ways to move forward in spite of deep and ugly divides.

Meanwhile immigration hardliners among the pro-Trump Republican leadership propose the United States use World War II internment camps of Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants then in line to be naturalized as U.S. citizens as models to deal with Muslim-Americans today and track Muslim immigrants. Trump is viewed as unstable and continues to elevate White racist, sexist, and anti-immigrant extremists as well as vitriolic anti-environmentalists into positions of power.

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“Locker Room Talk” arises from Rape Culture

Donald Trump

The term, “locker room talk” doesn’t excuse anything. What many don’t get is locker room talk is another expression of rape culture. What many more don’t get is rape culture arises from capitalism.

Rape culture is so deeply embedded in patriarchal society many people aren’t even conscious and aware of its existence. Even some women dismiss locker room talk with shrugs as, “just what guys do, right?” Locker room talk is verbal violence, and verbal violence, for those still waking up to our cultural mess, is violence committed with spoken language. It’s often amplified with body language and facial expressions. Verbal violence spills over into written language where direct use of such insults may be criminalized as deadly threats, slander, and libel. When such violence is sexual, however, it’s often dismissed with eye rolls and shrugs or ignored. People who do use locker rooms are also fed up as what Trump calls “locker room talk” isn’t the norm in their locker rooms.

Donald Trump brushed off recently leaked recordings of his sexist, disgusting, and abusive comments towards women and girls as “just locker room talk.” He was called on it during the second presidential debate of this nightmarish campaign by debate co-moderator Anderson Cooper of CNN. Trump’s words were deeply disrespectful, so deeply disrespectful as to be unconscious of morals and ethics. His language described how he exploited his wealth and fame to force women to kiss and hug him. The billionaire in a fit of excited infantilism called for men to “grab” women by their genitals. Trump’s language was violent enough for others to characterize his speech as the verbal equivalent of “sexual assault.” His words are indeed violent. Trump’s talk is rape talk.

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A Foto out of Place: UFO Disinfo Confusion

Unanswered Questions

What at first seemed an incredible and informative article by one of the leading pioneers of Exopolitics became confused and tainted with disinformation from the US Navy and muddied by enthusiasm to believe a challenging story. Dr. Michael Salla’s detailed descriptions as well as his recovery from the planted disinfo makes for rapt reading. Ultimately the errors were resolved and the resulting confusion clarified. His article, however, immediately raised a number of questions for those already familiar with the narratives of whistleblowers such as Corey Goode and Randy Cramer who repeatedly fail to provide any evidence to support their testimonies. These questions arose before we even get to the controversial foto of a flying saucer on the deck of an American aircraft carrier at sea.

Were the so-called Nordic ETs a distinct species of actual Extraterrestrial origin, or were they one of the Inner Earth humanoid civilizations such as The Asgard Network with its Silver Fleet Corey Goode initially alluded to early on, or the Ansher Saturnalians that Corey Goode referred to later? Or even an interstellar descendent of breakaway human-like civilizations that left Earth long ago? Do any of these beings even exist in the first place? Just because one presents proof of employment or service does not mean the beings such whistleblowers claim to experience exist beyond the confines of their stories. A story is by some definitions a lie albeit a compelling and entertaining one.

Remember Goode’s claims these Inner Earthers developed highly advanced inner-world civilizations, developed humanoid colonies elsewhere in the Milky Way beyond our Sol star system, and fought against the Draco Empire. They also were alleged to assist the early German Secret Societies such as the Vril, but less so the later Nazi ones. What do you think of these possible connections, Dr. Salla? Anyone else? Who is satisfied with the veracity of these claims in the absence of real, tangible data? Free from circular reasoning and charisma? Answering these question will give us all a deeper understanding and greater grasp on a complex and fluid situation.

Dr. Michael Salla’s article presents a provocative and informative read. He’s been a significant contribution to the recognition and development of Exopolitics as a field. I am grateful to Dr. Salla for his diligence and thoroughness, but this time I wonder if excitement interfered with judgment ever since Corey Goode appeared on the scene with his far out tales of sphere beings, galactic slavery, Draco wars, and Blue Avian messages for spiritual ascension. It’s easy to get so caught up in the compelling testimonies of charismatic whistleblowers we forget to scrutinize and validate all of their claims. I’ve done so myself. If the bulk of their allegations are true, which does not seem to be the case here, that doesn’t mean everything they observe or each opinion advanced are equally invalid or even valid. Dr. Salla’s efforts to resolve confusion around the mystery of the fotograf, assisted by others who came forward with inside knowledge of the foto in question, are indeed remarkable in an age of trolls and flame wars. Rather than being defensive and armed with excuses, Dr. Salla was upfront, transparent, and cleared this up with aplomb. Continue reading

Aurora Avenue and the Dark Side of Love

A Nest of Urban Vignettes

Machines break down and stop. People break down and somehow keep going. Machines are all about function and efficiency. People are for creativity, making messes, and love.

Chaos was silent. No blaring horns from cars around me. No one reads beyond the edges of their digital screens any more. Finally stopped wondering how people sitting in cars behind me might respond or react to my bumper stickers. Nope. They’re too busy merging with their, ahem, “mobile devices” as they herd themselves into the Internet of Things. At every stop during the last few days all across the City of Seattle I’d see heads bow down and fones rise up in the postmodern autonomic digital prayers of the unconscious. Can’t even get a HONK! Not even one faint li’l bitty ol’ frickin’ honk. Then, BOOM BOOM CHOP! I had to put my 16-year old blue car in the repair shop up north on the Greenwood side of Aurora Avenue, and I met real people out on the streets in the everyday circus of madness and bliss.

She sat hunched over in the woodchips alongside the sidewalk in the shade of Gold’s Gym under a row of leafy trees with her face kinked between folded arms and knees. Her body was so scrawny the spinous processes of her lumbar and thoracic vertebrae poked out like those strange fins on a stegosaurus’s back called scutes or dinosaur dermal plates. They arched over with her spine in such a way I could almost feel the connection to her reptilian brain, but, hey, she’s a mammal, a hominin like me. We’re hominins in America. Hominins in America! The United States was and is still a quasi-fascist, pseudo-democratic oligarchy masquerading as a constitutional capitalist killer clown republic, Barack Obama was POTUS, and the Dem-Rep Duopoly self-gridlocked. Global Climate Disruption worsened, and the Great Global Depression wasn’t over at all for millions and millions of unemployed and underemployed lost people like us. She sat. I walked. She smoked. I judged. She despaired, and so did I.

A red suitcase lay loosely shut with clothes hanging out next to her. She smoked a cigarette somewhere down there under crossed arms, I could smell its acrid, stale heat, but I couldn’t see her face. I could see the crack of her ass between her shirt and her shorts. She was a young White woman with brownish, straw blond hair and all skinny and boney and all alone. I felt huge sadness and empathy. Oh, she was so alone in this world! I felt her energy as I strode around her towards the Gym. Without even trying, I could feel into her dark pool of synaptic fog just by walking by her. She felt sad, hung over, frustrated, desperate, and zonked out depressed. I could feel the ice-cold glitter of pain screwing thru her veins as the yearning for the next fix built up hot under her long sleeves.

I was in a hurry, however, as my car was in the shop, I had errands to do, and I was walking everywhere without any wheels. I wouldn’t take the bus. Nope, no bus today. Gonna walk for exercise. I stopped myself from going over to her, however, and reminded myself I have an old, bad habit of rescuing people. I am not going to rescue anyone anymore, no more drama triangles in life, and so must hold tight to my boundaries. Yes?

Hurried off into the Gym and trained hard with the weights. Slowly regaining my health after a prolonged and strange illness. Came back out after my workout with a long walk ahead of me. There she sat, more sad and desperate then ever, without looking up. She didn’t need to look up. She was primal enough to sense what was happening around her, even if her senses were warped and fragmented by too many of the wrong kind of drugs. I felt her coil without coiling and sensed the dead pulse of mutant killer kundalini. She cranked taunt as locked gears forced apart and popped as automatically defensive as a robot sentinel left behind to guard some long-abandoned ancient fortress. I stopped. She bristled and the image of her lunging at me with a dirty syringe in hand burst into my mind as real as a wild ass grizzly bear rearing up on her hind legs. I shuddered and recalled being homeless myself not all that long ago…and scared.

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In the Swirl of a Dish

Petri Dish Man’s Urban Seattle Socialist Vignette

Hungry. Sun blazing in my eyes. Making me squint as my belly growled low like a dog guarding a slab of meat. Hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Felt ravenous after I spent too much of the morning in the hospital being poked, pierced, measured, and explored by fantastic doctors and their curious assistants. Prodded me like a damn bug followed by quick pecks on their computers. Felt as if I was a giant insect splayed out and peeled apart in an enormous Petri dish by mad scientists and clever kids. Who behaved as if any moment they would hobble over and slather weird baby food goo all over me to see what monsters might grow. Ahhh, yes, call me…Petri Dish Man! BAM! BAM! BAM! DON’T BAN THE PETRI DISH MAN! ran thru my head over and over, tho I dared not tell anyone at the time, as it felt so strange.

Brought back memories of being in the Battle of Seattle during the so-called Anti-Globalization Revolts, and memories of being in Occupy Seattle and Occupy Olympia. Yes, even brought back memories of being homeless during the Great Global Recession after rich, capitalist pundits declared it long over. Despite being such a proficiently medically inspected man, however, I felt grateful for Obamacare’s ACA here in Washington State. Thank goodness it covered what my employer’s private health insurance plan wouldn’t cover. I shake my head funny too, as it seemed plain old common sense for 21st Century America, indeed all of Planet Earth, to have an integrated single-payer universal health care system, a democratic economic system, a socialist system.

Thus satiated on clarity of vision, I ventured hungrily into The Dish, a funky Seattle café, for a belated breakfast. Call it brunch. Time was 11:30 am. It’s a lively little café in my neighborhood. I currently live in a small, quasi-cooperative household below the landlord’s family in a house uprooted from the I-5 Corridor running north and south across the States between Canada and Mexico. The house sits beneath three immense Western redcedar trees in the Tangletown-Latona part of Green Lake up in the middle of North Seattle. At least till the rent rockets up. Only my second visit to this cafe, too. Rarely eat out anymore. Now it’s a treat! The place was abuzz, too.

Two staffers had called in sick, however, leaving the business understaffed. Only two other people were out front serving including one new worker who admitted she didn’t know how to work anything quite yet. But they were game and smiled anyway. Big, welcoming smiles, too. They bustled in and out among crowded customers, and the one cook in back paced himself as he had to. The warm smells of cooked food swirled with exuberant colors intoxicated yours truly Petri Dish Man.

The ghost of a homeless guy watched everything right over the lip of his big orange coffee cup. He was so invisible it as was if I couldn’t see him but nevertheless still sense his presence. I felt the color of his large, tattered coat fade charcoal and gray. Was his bright orange cup just a reflection of the Sun upon a glass bowl of slivered fruit? No, he wasn’t there, just a coat and a cup and the ghost of a man who gave up everything precious but his dignity and curiosity.

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Goddess Dead

In the end
The woman was a stranger to me.
She laid curled shuddering in blood and tears
At the bottom of her privacy so long
Hot water ran cold as if from faraway graves.
I chose her anyway.
All of her.
Every damn bit of her
I chose.
She couldn’t believe it.
Didn’t really want to, even.
Tho she said she was glad
Turns out she’d merely gone mad.

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Why I’m not voting in the Washington State Democratic Caucus for anyone even tho I root for Bernie

Rally for Bernie in the Key Arena, Seattle, WA. Foto by Kristina Katayama. Sunday 20 March 2016.

Rally for Bernie in the Key Arena, Seattle, WA. Foto by Kristina Katayama. Sunday 20 March 2016.

This isn’t about Bernie. It is for integrity and strategy.

Bernie, of course, is Bernard Sanders, the Independent Senator from Vermont who calls himself a “democratic socialist.” He’s charging forward to secure the nomination of the Democrat Party as its Candidate for the American Presidency. The state caucus is today this Saturday the 26th of March 2016.

It’s unethical to play musical chairs with the fate of our nation and go play Democrat just for one day if you have no intention of actually joining the Democrats to stay a Democrat. It’s shortsighted and self-defeating to get so caught up in Bernie’s amazing rise that one short-circuits the long-term building of a new party for the 99%. If we don’t stay focused on the new movement for the working and middle classes we’re going to end up right where we started, broken upon the altars of Lesser Evilism.

Many of my friends among the Left are crossing over into the Democrat Party to vote for Bernie Sanders in the Washington State Caucus. These people are usually independents and/or members of smaller parties outside the Democrat-Republican Duopoly. Most of those smaller parties represented are the Socialist Alternative and the Green Party with a few Libertarians. While a member of both SAlt and the Greens, I have engaged very little with either in the last couple of years due to a prolonged, chronic illness and due to my work and family schedule. Bernin’ for Bernie, however, burns all across social media.

There’re a sizeable number of my comrades among these same small parties that plan to vote for Bernie if and ONLY if he secures the Democrat nomination to run for President, or, failing to do so, launches an independent bid. They are NOT voting for Bernie in the Democrat Caucus. I am NOT voting in the caucus for Bernie either. “What? What! Why not? WTF?!” is often the response.

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Dead Love Alive

One light shines thru the window next door
All is shadows and spiders twitching
October rains darkness in all directions
Cold seeps from tomorrow’s bones
Flows home to all the stars of yesterday
I turn toward the woods
Rest my hands in my pockets
Feel heartbeats in each hand
Nothing feels real but the pavement under my feet
Nothing feels real but the pain, the forever pain
Oh, I open to the Love
I feel it surge hot as plasma
Searing open the Kosmos with a rip in the sky
The divine laughs like that sometimes,
Like an owl dancing in love with mice
The divine laughs like that sometimes,
As fierce as a nail bent naked
After I am gone forever
She comes to the window next door
And stands watching spiders bob flies in the light
She comes gone

 

William Dudley Bass
17 October 2014
&
now today,
21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

Desert Duolaire

Cold desert sunset
Smokes burnt orange
Over frozen undulations
Of sand, rock, mountains,
And canyons.
Broken asphalt stretches
Before me into
Glowering darkness
My right foot kicks aside
Broken bottles and rusty cans
My left foot crushes
Old cardboard wheezing Made in Milwaukee
Three cars and a pickup truck sit wrecked in the ditch
They rust amid broken coils of
Barbed wired and skeletons of cows and deer
I weave north towards Polaris and not Sirius
I walk thru tumbleweeds
I dread the dawn
Darkness abides its demise
Birth is inevitable
Sigh
If only Ed Abbey was a woman

 

William Dudley Bass
Friday 18 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Human beings establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

Blue Light White

So tired of Facebook love
So tired of falling in love with beautiful women so far away
Brilliant women, too
Remarkable women
Deep soulful women
Most seem too young
Oh, there’re a few close to me in age
Some even older
Every one a Goddess Incarnate within the human animal
But all too far away

I throw my smartfone into the darkness
It glows back at me as blue as a UFO
Keeps me up at night
Keeps me awake all night
Until I go crazy with loneliness
Or am I crazy from too much light?

The digital bonds stretch into emptiness
More yawning than the desert twilight
Roads disappear into
Before time snaps me awake

I want a hotel
A place to sleep
Can we fuck now?
Hell no
No connection
All is unplugged
Too virtual
And dead
Minds zoned gray as grey
Hearts still as stones before the tide
But no water comes
Only sand.

Quickly I retrieve my fone amidst inky stillness
I text too much still
Without ever coming close to filling the Void
Facebook feeds us all into like blue and white Soylent Light

Out among destroyed celestial spheres and broken stars
Shiva battles pseudo-Shivas as real as every machine
To save darkness from white light blue.

 

William Dudley Bass
Sunday 13 March
&
Monday 21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

 

Too Far for Tears

She calls soon after dinner
Right in the middle of the presidential primary debate
I do not answer
I do not want to answer
Later I listen to her voice mail
She is distraught
Crying
Sobbing
One of her animals died in her arms
I can’t make out which one or what kind
Only this animal is dead
And it died in her arms
And she loved this animal
Now my friend felt buried alive
In her solitude
She needed someone to talk to
Someone to listen to her
I can’t deal with it just now
I’m listening at Bernie & Hillary
Getting into it over Trump
Three hours go by
And I call her back
I listen to her with my heart wide open
After we are complete
I put down my fone
And weep

 

 

William Dudley Bass
Wednesday 9 March,
Sunday 13 March, &
Monday 21 March 2016
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

 

Copyright © 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

 

 

The Moaning Pad

A Nutty Vignette

A group of us men and women worked steadily in the cavernous chill. We stood and shuffled around large, crated boxes of outdoor adventure travel products. These items were all returns, i.e. customers had purchased them from the retail company we worked with and for whatever reason returned them. We prepped them for a one-time clearance sale and marked down the prices with metallic silver ink pens. It was early in the morning close to the Winter Solstice. While it wasn’t freezing, we were in a large concrete cargo bay where it sure felt icy as Hell. Cold, dank, clammy, and gloomy, too. We kept ourselves warm by wearing layers of funky colorful clothes in all combinations borrowed from where they were heaped up in those crated boxes. I didn’t even check to see if I had on a woman’s or a man’s fleece jacket. One person pulled on a kooky mix of pants under two padded, insulated skirts and giggled. We quickly discovered a certain rhythm and worked hard. At the same time we entertained ourselves by reading the return tags to see what reasons people used to justify returning an item.

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Farting Uphill to Poo Poo Point

A Tiger Mountain Adventure,

Or, rather, a Meditation on Relationships

Mount Rainier aka The Mountain from along the Chirico Trail on West Tiger Mountain on Monday the 26th of January 2015. Furthermore, it’s time to restore The Mountain to her Native name: Ti’Swaq’ … the Sky Wiper!

Mount Rainier aka The Mountain from along the Chirico Trail on West Tiger Mountain on Monday the 26th of January 2015. Furthermore, it’s time to restore The Mountain to her chosen Native name: Ti’Swaq’ … the Sky Wiper!

Monday 26 January 2015

Our day hike had two purposes: to spend time together reconnecting as father and daughter, and for my daughter to train for her upcoming attempt to thruhike the Appalachian Trail. Morgan and I are both rather eccentric. We both know it, too, and value such in the other. We both appreciate being outdoors and nature is a spiritual connection. Otherwise it feels like night and day to me. This day, however, we were late getting ourselves together as we made the gravest error of making busy work a priority. Especially me.

“Hurry up, Dad!” Morgan shouted. “Jeezus, Dad! You’re always yelling at me to hurry up and let’s go and all, and here you are texting old girlfriends and stuff!”

Except I didn’t have any girlfriends at that point, old or otherwise, as I was divorced and still single.

At this point our hike had to meet several criteria so as to qualify both as quality bonding time and provide at least SOME training. First, both drive time and trail mileage had to be short. The trail also needed to be steep as all get out to make up for being so short. We also wanted a trail we haven’t done over and over again.

Ah! Poo Poo Point! Yes!

“What?” Morgan asked with a scowl. “Poo Poo Point? Ew, gross, Dad. Like what, horses and cow poop and stuff?”

“No, it’s a short, steep hike up the side of Tiger Mountain from the back side of Issaquah. You’ve done it once before with Kate and Talia and me and Kristina back when Kristina and I were married. We watched paragliders sail off the cliff top.”

“Oh. Yeah, I remember now. OK, let’s go.”

What many call the Poo Poo Point Trail is really the Chirico Trail. This locally notorious footpath drives straight up the slopes of West Tiger Mountain. It’s steep and sweaty sweet before unraveling into rambling twists and turns. Two open, grassy meadows high up near the summit provided launch jump-offs for hang gliders and paragliders. Well, one doesn’t see hang gliders much anymore as paragliding has won out as technology advanced. Hiking thru wintry trees, however, one can look south upon the mighty leviathan bulk of Mt. Rainier, or as the Native Americans prefer, Ti’Swaq’ the Sky Swiper!

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At the Bottom of The Mountain

A Winter Day Trip to Mt. Rainier in the Throes of Climate Change,

Monday 29 December 2014

Morgan (L) & Anne outside the Nisqually Entrance to Mount Rainier National Park.

Morgan (L) & Anne outside the Nisqually Entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. Normally the snow is deep and there isn’t much frozen snowmelt on the road. Not the case here this time nor up around the bend.

On the last Monday in the Year 2014 Common Era, I drove three of us to Mount Rainier National Park. The other two were my oldest daughter Morgan, a few months shy of turning 21, and her maternal cousin, Anne, of about the same age but a little older. Morgan had recently moved back to Seattle from Bellingham to prepare for her journey along the Appalachian Trail. Her mother Gwen Hughes, Anne’s auntie, and now my ex-wife tho still dear friend, and I had thruhiked the AT once upon a somewhat long time ago back in 1991. Gwen and I, originally from Virginia, still lived in Seattle, Washington. Anne was from Florida, and had not ever been to Seattle or Mt. Rainier before, and wanted to go. Woo Hoo, Mt. Rainier! Off we went. We didn’t make it past the bottom of The Mountain.

We determined to have fun anyway.

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All is One

All iOne 

by

 One of Many

 

*

 

7

Seven Practices, for now.

* We are One.

* Accept everything.

* Know our minds create all beliefs.

* Forgive everyone.

* Love everyone.

* Respect all things.

* Serve life.

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Lyman Glacier Melts Away: Global Climate Disruption in One Local Spot

Global Climate Disruption as exemplified in one solitary place in the Glacier Peak Wilderness of the Washington Cascades from a hiker’s perspective

Modified from Image of Mt. Chiwawa's Lyman Glacier melting away across 118 years between 1890 and 2008 per glaciology field research by Nichols College based in Dudley, Massachusetts.

Modified from Image of Mt. Chiwawa’s Lyman Glacier melting away across 118 years between 1890 and 2008 per glaciology field research in the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project by Nichols College based in Dudley, Massachusetts.

In August 2006 and nine years later in July 2015 I climbed up Spider Gap and looked down the flanks of Chiwawa Mountain upon the dirty ice of Lyman Glacier. I was shocked to behold how much snow and ice had vanished across such a relatively short span of time. This short article is my attempt to record this one example of Global Climate Disruption in one solitary spot thru my words and pictures. Far fewer pictures exist for 2006 as most of my then-extensive fotograf collections were destroyed when my house burned down back in March of 2010. For the record, the science is clear human pollution is destructive to our planetary biosphere and affects our global climate.

Lyman Glacier melting and dropping rockslide debris into Upper Lyman Lake, Glacier Peak Wilderness, Tuesday 28 July 2015.

Lyman Glacier melting and dropping rockslide debris into Upper Lyman Lake, Glacier Peak Wilderness, Tuesday 28 July 2015. This and all subsequent Fotos by William Dudley Bass & are copyrighted with all rights reserved, thank you.

Older controversies regarding global cooling have already been addressed, resolved, and discarded. Now, however, newer material emerges as we’ve become aware our solar system is undergoing numerous widespread changes as it speeds thru a section of the Milky Way Galaxy currently dense in cosmic radiation. It appears this galactic-solarial interaction may be having a much greater impact upon Earth’s climate than human pollution. This process is also not understood, and our pollution clearly makes our destabilized global climate worse. In addition, long-term planetary history demonstrates periods of global warming are followed by ice ages. Which means we really don’t know what the hell is gonna happen next. Right now, however, we in the American Pacific Northwest are entering into the third year of a drought. Although snow has recently fallen in our alpine elevations, an unusually powerful El Nino system in the wake of the Pacific Blob anomaly promises a wild, warm ride into the unknown. Continue reading

Old Man God with the Green Guitar

Discordian Harmony at the Pacific Northwest Folklife Festival

with

Zombie Jimi

Mystery Musician aka Zombie Jimi

Mystery Musician aka Zombie Jimi

 

Sunday 24 May 2015

My eyes heard him hunched over his old green guitar before my ears could see him stretching notes thru the air. Old Man God stood in the Center of Seattle crouched in the corner facing Jerusalem on the other side of the world before turning his back on Abraham’s minions to face Ancient Timbuktu instead, his skin all black as Mississippi Goddamn and his beard as snowy white as polar bear belly all while focused on changing what never changes as he grasped the old, banged-up, burring, purring, electric, green guitar in his hands the same way Neptune once burst open the sky with his trident held high all a buzzsaw humming like Betty Dodson’s Hitachi Magic Wand gripped in Goddess hands orgasming the Himalayas apart with the Love Song of a Cosmic Chainsaw. His hands trembled all steady with purpose as he caressed his green guitar with the adoration Zeus once had for electric thunderbolts and nymphs sweaty with humid rust. Old God Man shuddered back on his feet, unwound his pelvis as Mike Mulligan once cranked up trusty Mary Anne, lumbered forward at the wall as a Zen steam shovel on testosterone and played his green guitar with a certain must with a deliberate lust driven to play things as they are with a ferocious thrust not what others demanded oh yeah he played with raw beauty and ugly grace oh yeah he played with verve to shear men and women like sheep oh yeah played his old green guitar so damn hard I swear the sky blazed electric blue and in the midst of such Rapture heard a vast groaning zombie drone as reanimated angels buzzed straight up outa the ground like Jimi Hendrix lighting up Woodstock high up on stage high above the mud deep down in O Mississippi Goddamn mud it’s Nina Simone eating up the sky with her brow all furrowed like eight thirty o’clock way up upon a stage crowded with pianos on fire PIANOS ON FIRE! giving voice to the lynched the burned and to the drowned. Aye, my hearing aids filled with the android squeals of Betty Dodson Jimi Hendrix Nina Simone jackhammering open bones skin and soul to touch my love with feathers stuffed with steel.

See, I heard all these things in a voodoo of pain nothing could change not even Deuteronomous Dali Bosch. Continue reading

Dragonfly People: Coming together in Nature for Adventure and Community, 2002 – 2003

A real Dragonfly Community in Nature.

A real Dragonfly Community in Nature.*

Dragonflies are small animals and ferocious predators. They live all across the planet except Antarctica. Prehistoric ancestors of today’s dragonflies were huge insects with wingspans of almost 30 inches or 7.6 centimeters across. The Dragonfly is also a symbol of transformation, power, adaptability, and poise. A number of us communitarians came together from different urban cooperative households across Greater Seattle to explore new communal possibilities. Some of the early meetings held anywhere from 20 to nearly 50 people. A few individuals, including Syd Fredrickson, known as a major player within the intentional communities movement, helped facilitate many of our early sessions. Eventually some of us moved to form a new intentional community. Our new family came to be known as Dragonfly or the Yellow Dragonfly House. We chose this majestic, wild animal as our spirit totem with a focus on personal and group transformation.

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TRANSFORMATION: a 150 foot long dragonfly crop circle apparently created overnight in England, the U.K., in June of 2009.**

What came to be known as simply Dragonfly or the Yellow House was established in October 2003, but the process of community formation began much earlier. People from older groups such as Orca Landing and The Barn began coming together in 2001 to determine what was next for them as individuals, families, and communities. Some of them were monogamous families. Others were engaged as a polyamorous cluster. And a few were single. Several shared children between them. All were deeply spiritual and engaged in profound personal and professional growth, training, and development. Most were ethical stands for love, communication, and for community. Those who were not left Dragonfly of their own accord except for one person, initially intensely involved, who was asked to leave upon being a fraud and a manipulative con artist.

During the years of 2002 – 2003 the members of Dragonfly embarked on a series of trips to spend time together in nature and to strengthen the bonds of community. Not every member of Dragonfly Community went on every adventure. The following fotos are from six of our trips including our major outings. Some of the earlier members and candidates are not in any of these fotos. The core ones are celebrated within. These pictures survived the 2010 burning down of my and then-wife Kristina’s post-Dragonfly home. I took most of these fotos, and some were by Kristina, and others by friends who gave us copies after the fire. I edited most of those images. They captured moments in time and space representing the forging and celebration of relationships amid the great outdoors of America’s Pacific Northwest. These pictures represent a perspective of Dragonfly history as captured by cameras. This article is not about the record of meetings, finances, interrelationship dynamics, conflict resolution, coparenting children, politics, religions, and such. It does, however, illuminate such challenges and joys via the surviving pictures thru the lens of the cameras with my historical point of view as author and participant. Enjoy!

Dragonfly Backpacking & Camping Trip to Second Beach, Olympic National Park, Thursday 4 July – Sunday 7 July 2002:

L2R: Talia, William, Atreyu, Edan

L2R: Talia, William, Atreyu, & Edan.

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Solo into the Glacier Peak Wilderness, July 2015

Fotos & Reflections from my 65-mile Solo Backpacking Trip into
the Glacier Peak Wilderness,
Washington State/Cascadia, Monday – Friday 27 – 31 July 2015.

Trinity – Dusty Roads – Spider Meadows – Lyman Lakes – Cloudy & Suiattle Passes – Image Lake – Miners Ridge – PCT – Buck Creek Pass – Liberty Cap – High Pass & Triad Lake – North Fork Napeequa River – Upper Napeequa Valley – Little Giant Pass – Chiwawa River – and the Inner & Outer Worlds of Mind, Heart, and Guts

*Click on each foto to blow it up big. Enjoy!*

Views of Image Lake and of Glacier Peak and surrounding mountains from deep in the Wilderness on the morning of the Third Day, Wednesday 29 July 2015.

Views of Image Lake and of Dakobed (Glacier Peak) and surrounding mountains from deep in the Wilderness on the morning of the Third Day, Wednesday 29 July 2015.

“Off the Grid & gone. Solo. Well or unwell. Glacier Peak Wilderness will swallow me up. Reemergence in about a week. Been planning for a year. Going into the Deep High Lonesome. Adios.”

Those words were my Facebook post for Monday morning on the 27th of July before I left Seattle for the Glacier Peak Wilderness. Before my adventure was over, it had turned into a middle-aged man’s Hero’s Journey, a strange Quest of sorts, and on the last day there was a time I realized I might not make it out alive. I did, of course, despite developing what turned out to be rhabdomyolysis, as I share these words and pictures with all of you. My travels into the Deep High Lonesome proved transformative in slowly unfolding ways, ways I am aware of as I write these words well over a year afterwards.

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Chiwawa River.  Looking upstream from a roadside campsite in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest towards the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. Day 1 on Monday the 27th of July 2015.

Another roadside campsite beckons, but I stop only to stretch my legs, relieve myself, and smell the fresh forest air of mountains & rivers.

Looking across the Chiwawa River into the Glacier Peak Wilderness from the same campground. The river’s running low, and the temperature’s rising. I’m the only person here at the moment. 

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Dusty ass road walk with sand traps and dust devils. At least there wasn’t any mud! Parked my car at the Buck Creek Trailhead at Trinity (792.50 meters or 2,600 feet) and walked all the way back and then up the long Phelps Creek Road (USFSR#6211) towards the Phelps Creek Trailhead (1,066.80 m/3,500 ft) then on to Spider Meadows. I started walking from Trinity about 15:00 or 3:00 pm PDT in the afternoon of Day 1, Monday 27 July 2015.

Was reminded of the words of Doug Scott, the British mountaineer from Nottingham, England, who once pointed out when one goes into the mountains one must be prepared to die. Not wanting to die, of course, but mentally understanding and accepting the risk. Didn’t plan any alpine mountaineering, tho, as my intention is to trek and scramble cross-country in a physically demanding and remote part of this journey.

The section I planned to traverse off-trail from Buck Creek Pass up into the alpine zone towards and then down into the Upper Napeequa Valley was expected to be the most daunting. Scrambling thru High Pass on the way was one of the highlights I looked forward to experiencing. The Napeequa was notorious for being remote, difficult, fly-infested, and spectacular.

As I contemplate the possibility of dying amidst such magnificent beauty, however, I know I’ll be fine. Just what’s going thru my mind. In case this proved relevant for any search and rescue, which I hoped there wouldn’t be any need for. So, here I am, very much alive and ready for more. 

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Selfie shot standing in the hot, dusty ass Phelps Creek Road. Gusts of wind swirls dust devils and flying sheets of grit. Even so, it is a beautiful day in the backcountry. I’m grateful to be here in the Great Outdoors.

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“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

“If not drunk in love, then why be in love?”

You asked.

I shall whisper an answer into thy eyes here.

Love is the most powerful energy in the universe.
I dance intoxicated with glass after glass of such red, red love.
How miraculous is this power of the heart!

Only presence of mind is as powerful.
Silent, awake, aware, intentional, and conscious.
Such stillness of mind directs the flow and dance of love.

Indeed, such presence of mind sustains the heart’s love
long after the energy ebbs and flows.

Love is a choice.
As energy one can choose to turn it on.
Or off.
Choose love.
As you first chose your self.

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Hiking & Climbing up Mt. Rainier to Camp Muir

Foto Essay of a Day Hike & Climb

Up thru Global Climate Disruption & the Movement to Restore Native Names

to the Mountains

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Global Climate Disruption leaves Mount Rainier bare, baked, and dirty. Even so, it’s time to restore The Mountain to her Native name: Ti’Swaq’ … the Sky Wiper!

“Saw something beautiful Tuesday I’ve not ever seen before. During a dark, early morning drive to Mt. Rainier, the upper half of the massive volcano appeared to spout clear yellow flames without smoke. Weird. And pretty! The top half split into a dozen scimitar slices of bright golden pink. Ahhh, sunrise! The mountain’s glaciers, bereft of snow due to the drought, revealed giant crevasses open wide and staggered one above the other up the side of the volcano. These steep-sloped glacial crevasses of undirtied ice caught the dawn reflections. Traffic was too heavy to snap a pic, & I hate shitty pics. So I drove on. We ended up hiking up to Camp Muir at about 10,180 ft. Needed crampons. Hard blue ice. And dirt. No snow. True gold was the morning Light as it fell from the heavens into the open jaws of Earth.”

~ From my Facebook post of Thursday 8 October 2015 “at 5:20pm.”

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The One Place on Earth to Go

One of many travertine falls in Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia, European Union. Photo by Donar Reiskoffer in the Public Domain. 2013.

One of many travertine falls in Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia, European Union. Photo by Donar Reiskoffer in the Public Domain. 2013.

What is the one place down on the surface of Planet Earth’s crust should everyone go visit at least once in their life? As gorgeous as they are, it’s not those beautiful lakes that fall one into the other in the picture above.

So many people pass thru Seattle these days and night, coming and going and going and coming, from somewhere to nowhere to everywhere. It seems Seattle is now the one place to go, or it’s what I hear from so many tourists. Which surprises me. Seattle is booming, yes, one survey earlier this year counted 80 construction cranes dominating the Downtown and Belltown areas alone. Despite the magnificent scenery of the Salish Sea and the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, however, Seattle isn’t The One Place On Earth One Must Go. I love Seattle, tho.

During the Great Recession I worked in retail at the Downtown Seattle REI Store, its largest flagship, and met people from around the world. Still do. Love working here at REI. Many fellow human beings from all over Cascadia, too, came and went and come and go as they tell stories about past trips, excited or in some cases afraid of upcoming adventures. Many people come into REI to buy supplies on their way to help out others, whether it’s devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal, supertyphoons in the Philippines, giant mudslides in Latin America, or the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

At work I am usually in sustained motion. When it’s slow, I either stock products or stand briefly and people watch. Engage and talk. Ask questions and listen. Help them find appropriate products, or if we don’t have them, suggest other places. Once there was a man from Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha Republic in Russia’s Siberia. He was of Turkish-Mongol-Siberian ancestry, was unusually tall, and was in the United States for the first time. Dressed like a cross between a tweedy college professor, a backcountry woodsman, and a steampunk engineer, he was in quiet awe of the amount of merchandise in every store, including North American grocery stores. He was especially in awe of REI’s depth and breadth in outdoor adventure travel.

Claiming to be among the numerous proud descendants of Genghis Khan’s warriors, he said I should visit Siberia. I’d love to go, I replied. Siberia! One of the wildest, most extreme regions on Earth! The vast boreal forests of the Siberian Taiga, deep and mysterious Lake Baikal, hungry brown and black bears raiding villages, gigantic rivers pulsing towards the Arctic Ocean, bitter subfreezing temperatures, exploding scary ass methane craters in Yamal, the wild, remote, volcanic Kamchatka Peninsula, meteorite-hit cities, huge mountains and isolated deserts, southern steppes and northern tundra, Eurasian ethno-cultural blending amid ancient, little-known ruins, and the longest railroads in the world. O, Siberia!

But, no, not even majestic Siberia. There’s another place even more incredible everyone must try to get to. Yes, everyone.

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UFO Gone

Ships of Mind?

Sketches made by the author the evening of the same day he witnessed the UFO over Seattle.

Sketches made by the author the evening of the same day he witnessed the UFO over Seattle.

Close up of one of the author's sketches of the UFO he saw on 9 September 2015.

Close up of one of the author’s sketches of the UFO he saw on 9 September 2015.

I saw a UFO today. Quickly. Clearly. Briefly. Boom! It was over there. Now thatta way! It’s moving around across the sky. Oh! Now it’s spinning and performing loops and changing shape. Whoa! Now it’s… Boom! Gone. UFO = Unidentified Flying Object. No sign of it anywhere. And it’s not a drone. Drones do not wink out of existence, as orbs do, and it’s too big for a drone. Unless cloaking technology is developed enough to hide ships in flight. This silver triangle looked like a mechanical craft, performed normal actions such as flying in a straight line, and crazy actions such as spinning around in loops. Then this UFO did the unexpected as it changed shaped and winked out of the sky.

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American Mussolini: Trump arises from American Exceptionalism

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Useless Eaters, Serial Killers, & Tyrants

Does anyone reading this take Donald Trump seriously? Do you take Donald Trump seriously? It’s so easy to dismiss his pompous and bombastic rhetoric, shallow of substance, yet cleverly spun to hook into the emotions of frustrated and enraged people. Trump is a master showman. He’s as shameless and as tricksterish as P.T. Barnum and as bellicose and banal as Mike Tyson. He ripped off and trademarked Ronald Reagan’s slogan, “Let’s make America great again.” His followers don’t care, however, as it reminds them of a nostalgic past when White men thought they ruled the world.

For the rest of us, however, as dismayed as so many of us are with the Clinton Democrats as well as the fractious Republicans, Archcapitalist Trump and the Alt-Right presents us with an opportunity. It’s beyond time to rebuild the Left. We must find new ways to build a united front between labor and environmentalists, between indigenous tribal activists and social justice advocates, between scientists and the spiritual, between military veterans and peace advocates, for Black Lives Matter and predominantly White revolutionary Socialist groups. It’s an opportunity to build new mass movements of the Left for a major new political party to challenge the Dem-Rep Duopoly. This is an opportunity to raise working class consciousness and help organize working and middle class people for a new mass working class party of the 99% to spearhead the transition from Finance Capitalism to Democratic Socialism and away from Fascism.

Let us remember a famous book, well written yet choked with racist rants and fantastical declarations. Adolf Hitler wrote out exactly in Mein Kampf what motivated him and what he intended to do. Few took him seriously, and he was dismissed as a buffoon. Hitler went on to win democratic elections in the German Weimar Republic. He consolidated and expanded his power including leveraging false flag events such as the burning of the Reichstag. Having conquered Germany, he then moved forward in his attempt to conquer the world.

Trump is no Hitler. Not even close. Adolf Hitler was an anomaly, and Nazism is extreme tyranny. Trump much more resembles Fascist bully Benito Mussolini with their mutual love of show and pomp. Mussolini lusted for power, glory, and fame. He appreciated drama for its entertainment value as well as for its psycho-propaganda usefulness. So, too, does Trump. One who seeks power, glory, and fame can never have enough of them. As Hitler did, however, Trump wrote a modestly bestselling book in which he combined his belief systems and world view with personal memoir. The Art of the Deal, written with lots of help from Tony Schwartz, came out in 1987.

While his advice is focused on capitalist business and not politics, the book encapsulates Trump’s world view and how he approaches everything. Life is for action, and successful action is all about leveraging assets and liabilities to secure the best deal. Those with the best deals win the contest. Making winning deals and managing the results gave Trump his singular life purpose and he applies it to all areas of a life for action. Such an approach naturally fed into an addiction for more power, glory, and fame.

Mussolini, however, followed a clear ideology as a Fascist Party dictator, Il Duce, The Leader. Portraying himself as a fearless strongman and demagogue, Mussolini leveraged both the capitalist petty bourgeoisie and disaffected workers to establish a Far-Right wing Empire. Trump, by comparison, doesn’t adhere to any one ideology. He seems to view ideologies as tools in toolbox to pull any one out from as he saw fit to accomplish whatever he wanted to achieve. If anything was ideological, it was Trump’s belief making deals, especially business deals, gets stuff done. Thus deal making is both show and pomp as well as melodramatic artistry. Hence, The Art of the Deal.

The Donald is a uniquely American phenomenon. He represents the dark side of American Exceptionalism. He is the epitome of Ayn Rand’s Romantic Fascist supermen. Ayn Rand herself disdained the masses as “human parasites” and considered William Edward Hickman, a serial killer who dismembered girls and called himself The Fox, her hero.

Both Rand and Hickman are twisted products of American Exceptionalism, the kind the politicians and cheerleaders of empire refuse to even acknowledge. American Exceptionalism is the watered down U.S. version of White racism and European colonial imperialism with the latter’s emphasis upon the White Man’s burden, Protestant Christianity with its Calvinist work ethic, and fantasies of Manifest Destiny as some kind of Divine Right of Empire. It’s a belief America is inherently superior to all other nation-states, was and is chosen by God as the Chosen People for the New World.

Arising out of American Exceptionalist belief systems, Rand is the Immigrant, which is ironic as The Donald and his bellicose herd are militant anti-immigrants. Rand was born into a Russian Jewish family in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and during her early 20s immigrated to America. The Fox was as American as the Bush and Clintons. Hickman was born in Arkansas, grew up between Texas and Missouri, and spent the rest of his short life in California.

Both The Immigrant and The Fox were Exceptional Americans. From “the Dark Side,” yes, but as such they are not anomalies but as perversely normal as apple pie and guns. As such they fed the mad, crazy ugliness that captivates, hypnotizes, antagonizes, numbs, dumbs down, and distracts the mainstream public from any clear sense of unity and purpose. The lack of such vital clarity plays a significant factor in the low mass consciousness of the American working class.

Ayn Rand praises her psychopathic, slaughterhouse pedophile with language devoid of all empathy, of all sympathy, other than cold abstract admiration for her Satanic, rightwing godman:

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Grexit Crisis: Update and Reevaluation

Part 2 and follow-up to “Grexit Crisis: EU Disunion or Greater Unification?”

Sometimes the fate of the world hinges on how a seemingly local crisis is resolved or escalates. Nothing happens, however, life goes on regardless of changing circumstances, and the existence of fate itself is dismissed. So it is with Greece.

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The underlying and all consuming economic and political system itself must be not changed but transformed. Today that system is Finance Capitalism triumphant. It devours all political systems from liberal democracies to despotic tyrannies, in turn leaving Corporatocratic Fascism triumphant in politics and governments. People from before Aristotle to beyond Wallace Stevens have observed everything changes yet somehow remains the same anyway. The nature of slavery has changed, and yet, we still have slavery. And so it is with Greece.

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Open up the Debates! Letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, July 2015

Wednesday 8 July 2015

Today I received the email below from the Green Party of the United States, and I responded by writing the following letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates. I urge you as well to compose a similar letter in your own words, even if you disagree with my political views but stand for open, fair, and inclusive public debates.

In hindsight I wished I’d added a demand for rigorous and honest debate, not rehearsed campaign slogans and sidestepping speeches designed to distract voters and avoid the responsibilities of debate. Dr. Jill Stein is once again the presidential candidate for the Greens, and she is an articulate, knowledgeable, and formidable debater. Turn her and the others lose upon the public stages of America! Again, this is not about supporting Jill Stein or any one particular candidate or political party, but about opening up a closed system that in being so closed makes a mockery of the U.S.A. as a democratic republic.

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Grexit Crisis: EU Disunion or Greater Unification?

Sometimes the fate of the world hinges on how a seemingly local crisis is resolved or escalates. So it is with Greece.

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Greece and Europa, and yes, the world is at yet another unsteady crossroads. We look at the Grexit Crisis within the context of the Bigger Picture here in this article. The outcome of today’s Grexit Crisis may plunge us further into recession and depression, or begin to turn things around for the working class everywhere. The Grexit Crisis may trip us closer into a nuclear world war, which, seriously, already looms far closer than many realize or most want to think. Or in a much more preferable outcome so rearrange the balance of military and geopolitical power as to make such a conflagration unlikely. The European Union could fracture, as seems likely, as it is primarily a non-democratic financial treaty organization, or draw itself together into a truly democratic political federation where the working classes assert more socialist power.

The leaders of the European Union, under pressure from the Troika, today gave Greece and its Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras five more days to submit another set of proposals. The Troika demanded the new proposals be worded as if the Greek government is, ironically, responsible to save the Eurozone from financial catastrophe and possible economic collapse. It’s as if those political puppets of the capitalist plutocrats are crying, “Save us by further enriching the banksters who engineered this damn mess in the first place!”

The creditors of the Troika composed of the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund, and the European Commission (EC as the executive body of the EU), demand repayment and greater austerity from a nation unable to do either. The Troika has manipulated and exploited Greece and sucked it dry. If anything, the banksters, those pro-Troika gangsters in business suits, praised as educated standard bearers of capitalism, behave as financial vampires. Anchored in bastions of global financial power, they are determined to uphold the domination of finance capitalism as a form of neo-fascist tyranny over Europa. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the woman who stared down Vladimir Putin and made him squirm in his chair earlier this year, comes across more and more as another cold-hearted Margaret Thatcher. We are all in a global class war, and the Grexit Crisis is a major battle in our struggle.

Much fear and paranoia has been and continues to be projected out into the mainstream mass media as well as some of the alternative ones. The pro-Troika side fears whatever they do or don’t do with Greece will set a bad example for the rest of the Eurozone. If they bail out Greece, then other nations within the EU will expect something similar. If they kick out one nation, then the others would fear being kicked out in the future, too, including for any hidden purpose with debt burdens as an excuse to cover the real reasons. If Greece exits the Eurozone, thus the Grexit, Greece exits the European Union. How else can the Greeks stay in, as the EU is not a political union of equals but the result of an economic treaty between unequal members?

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Not Too Late to Rescue our Planet Earth: An Urgent Review

Vote Yes for Democratic World Government

“Extinction is not something to contemplate. It is something to rebel against.”

— Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of Jim’s heroines.

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This is a critically important book. Its message is urgent. Democratic world government is an idea whose time is now. Our species stands at the threshold of global upheaval and possible extinction. A convergence of challenges unique in human history threatens to overwhelm us, and a cooperative worldwide response via a constitutional planetary democracy with a socially responsible economy represents the most effective way to address these issues. First, however, we must choose to create these new human systems for our planet. Jim Stark of Canada has come up with a novel yet simple approach to help us get there.

This book is a rare integration of vision and pragmatism. Jim Stark advocates a grass roots, internet-based Global Referendum along with paper mail-in ballots. The ballot proposition is simple and direct. One votes “Yes” or “No” for “Do you support the creation of a directly-elected, representative, transparent, and democratic world parliament that is authorized to legislate on global issues?” Early polls indicate a majority of people around the world and across many different religions and ethnic groups would vote yes if they could. Nation-state regimes, including the non-democratic United Nations, will also have a choice. They can work together with this movement, or be by-passed. In regions of severe repression, warfare, and socio-political-economic upheaval voting may not be possible. And it is a start. It’s start toward achieving a dream many have had for centuries.

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Three Bands wrack Café Racer during one magnificent wet Saturday night in Seattle

“Yeah! I think this is like Your Band’s first review!” ~ Ben Callup of Your Band

Your Band distorts gravity down at Cafe Racer

Your Band distorts gravity down at Cafe Racer~

My Saturday was awesome. Awesome beyond cliches, Hell yeah it was! The 3rd of January! 2015! Busted my middle-age Happy New Year ass in the Gym. Hung out with a dear friend I haven’t seen in almost 2 years and dove down an esoteric rabbit hole with her between death & life, and spent the evening of a Full Moon Eve at Café Racer where I met up with friends from the Socialist Alternative and listened to a trio of bands jam. It was good to get my butt away from the house and out on the town a bit. Slowly enjoyed a pint of Scotch Style Pike Kilt Lifter Ruby Ale from a scruffy, jolly bartender. I’m a glass-draining, guzzling gulper by habit, so I disciplined myself to slow it waaay down to one, delicious slow-drinkin’ beer while eyeing all the qwerty-quirky colorful, kitschy, & strange ugly ass art all over dayglow walls. Outside on the sidewalks knots of people smoked cigarettes in the rain as if it was the most natural thing to do at night in the misty Seattle rain.

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Cold War Blues: A Review

Long overdue recognition for a nearly forgotten part of the Cold War

Image of the Amazon kindle edition cover of Jim Stark's book.

Image of the 2010 Amazon kindle edition cover of Jim Stark’s 1989 book.

Cold War Blues: The Operation Dismantle Story is unique. Jim Stark’s book is a rare and worthy addition to our history of this enigmatic and most dangerous war. First, this book is original history, i.e. a primary source, from the Cold War. It’s not a rehash of espionage dramas, combat ops, or Cuban Missile Crisis politics. It is a detailed account of this planet-wide conflict on a personal level from the anti-war camps. Specifically it addresses the rise and fall of the Operation Dismantle campaign of 1977 – 1985. What makes the book an especially novel read is it’s written in memoir fashion from the perspective of a Canadian pro-peace and anti-nuclear weapons activist, not those espousing American or Soviet viewpoints. One hears the desperation and hope of those within other nations compelled to choose sides in a glacial world war that more than once almost erupted into thermonuclear Armageddon.

Jim and his fellow Canadian activists carved or threatened to established a third front to challenge not just Soviet Communist totalitarianism but the hypocrisy and murderous arrogance of the Western Capitalist, anti-Communist regimes. “Yes, I managed to piss off both superpowers at times,” wrote Jim.[1] Operation Dismantle became a major force to be reckoned with not only in Canada but also with the Americans as it came close to stopping the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles including those quietly armed with atomic warheads into sovereign Canadian territory. Continue reading

The Already Thirty-Five Years’ War

1979-2014 and still counting!

Pope Francis denouncing global violence as "a piecemeal Third World War."

Pope Francis denouncing global violence as “a piecemeal Third World War” at Redipuglia Cemetery where 100,000 Italian soldiers killed in the First World War are buried in Italy near its border with Slovenia, 13 September 2014. Agence France Presse (AFP).

We have been engaged in a nearly continuous but rarely acknowledged war for thirty-five years. It began in 1979, twenty-two years before the terror attacks of 9/11. This war is fought around the globe as a patchwork of campaigns between various factions of multiple and shifting alliances. Even Pope Francis recognized this odd and gruesome conflict as a “piecemeal third world war.” Although the combat is small in scale, it has at least two characteristics of a world war: 1) the sheer number of nation-states, stateless-nations, and non-state groups engaged, and 2) fighting and bombing on every continent save Antarctica.

This war has also been called the Middle East’s version of Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) and the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) due to its widespread, confusing, and desultory patterns of overlapping conflicts and aims. Yet this war is barely recognizable as one long war. Even fewer see the direct relationships between the capitalist system and warfare. The more people see and openly acknowledge we have been in an ongoing war for at least 35 years, the greater we experience a long, overdue change of perspective. The sooner more and more people recognize this long war and numerous others are driven largely by capitalism with its systemic exploitation of ethnic and religious divisions to better access and control natural resources and transportation routes, the sooner we develop strategies to end war. A deep shift in perspective may shift how we approach and resolve this conflict. First we need to see what we are doing.

The morning after airstrikes and cruise missile attacks on homes and buildings destroyed by the United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates in Syria with France and the U.K. planning to join the campaign against the Islamic State, 24 September 2014.

Two days after the People’s Climate March in 2,200-2,500 cities across the planet and the morning after airstrikes and cruise missile attacks on homes and buildings destroyed by the United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates in Syria with France and the U.K., already in Iraq, planning to join Dutch forces in the Syrian campaign against the Islamic State, 24 September 2014.

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Global Climate Disruption, Capitalism, and the Opportunity for Democratic Socialism

HUMAN-CAUSED POLLUTION, DRAMATICALLY WORSENED BY CAPITALISM, CONSISTENTLY EXCEEDS POLLUTION FROM VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS TO CAUSE SEVERE CLIMATE CHANGE INCLUDING GLACIER MELT, GLOBAL WARMING, SUPERSTORMS WITH EXTREME WEATHER AND TEMPERATURE OSCILLATIONS, AND TUNDRA THAW WITH MASSIVE METHANE RELEASE AND REVIVAL OF LONG-FROZEN PREHISTORIC MICROORGANISMS

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West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier melts into Earth’s Southern Ocean.

 

 

Antarctica and Greenland

“Remember the front page of The Seattle Times one day last week, a week ago last Monday?” I asked the other participants in the room as I held up a copy from 12 May 2014. The lead article was adorned with a dramatic photograph of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier melting in slow yet accelerating collapse into the Southern Ocean. The image was beautiful. Huge. The photo made this crisis feel Leviathan. It felt personal. Still does. For me seeing this news report was my “Oh Shit!” moment, my big “Oh Shit!” moment.

This crisis, this moment also presents an opportunity for those of us on the Revolutionary Left. We’ve been engaged in struggles to unify the working classes and others among the 99% to build a Democratic Socialist civilization atop the wreckage of our Capitalist system for a long time. This is now our time, and it will stay our time but only if we make it so. Climate change will not wait. Capitalism will not wait as it continues to bind the world into an iron net of digital tyranny and financial despotism. The logical conclusion of Capitalism is globalized Fascism and self-destruction as what’s left of our biosphere is ruined in the desperate scramble for anything to eat, steal, sell, or blame. The twin disasters of Capitalism and climate change seem slow and twisting. Yet they accelerate toward one disaster after another. Neither crisis will wait for anyone or for anything.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, the UN IPCC, released a new and disturbing report earlier this Spring of 2014. It firmly established the primacy of anthropogenic or human-made causes of climate change over other factors. The scientists involved drove home climate change is a long-term problem with a severe impact upon our biosphere. Indeed, there will be multiple severe effects. This likely will produce unexpected surprises. Perhaps the surprises won’t be as dramatic as a world war or an extreme climate yo-yo but something more subtle such as the resurrection of dormant prehistoric bacteria and viruses released from thawing tundra.

Scientists earlier this year discovered giant viruses reanimating out in the Siberian tundra. The world is warming up. The Arctic tundra is thawing out. Methane gas is escaping from the permafrost. Frozen mammoth specimens are found in spectacular condition. And the largest known viruses, so far, are reviving. The most recent one is an enormous Siberian Pithovirus 30,000 years old. These giant viruses are still alive. They’re infecting and killing the local amoeba population. Scientists consider it easily probable other prehistoric pathogens, frozen alive for tens of thousands of years, may escape as temperatures rise to cause pandemics of deadly diseases among contemporary humans, livestock, and crops as well as wild plants and animals.

30,000 year old amoeba-killing Pithovirus from Siberia. Image by Julia Baroli & Chantal Abergel, IGS, CNRS/AMU, 05 March 2014.

Giant 30,000 year old amoeba-killing Pithovirus from Siberia. Image by Julia Baroli & Chantal Abergel, IGS, CNRS/AMU, 05 March 2014.

We are vulnerable as a species. Adaptation and preparation will prove crucial although exhausting. We’ll encounter limits as we run out of options. Most importantly, however, is we move forward with great speed and urgency to implement significant, indeed revolutionary changes. We do not have much time. We do, however, have choices and proven strategies.

A Democratic Socialist alternative, for example, will allow our species to establish a common front to address this Capitalist-induced destruction of our planet. We must first build such a unified front. Here in Seattle, those of us in the Socialist Alternative are positioned to provide leadership and inspiration to working people during this time of worldwide climate disruption. A majority of citizens recently elected Kshama Sawant, a teacher, economist, and activist in the Socialist Alternative, to the Seattle City Council in 2013 over a long-entrenched Democrat. Together with other labor activists we successfully spearheaded a rough and tumble drive to raise the minimum working wage to $15.00 an hour.

Numerous other groups are active as well in the struggle for our environment. Most of them are focused on singular issues such as stopping the coal and oil trains, tackling fracking, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, cleaning up polluted areas, and transitioning away from fossil fuels to green renewables. There has been a patchwork of local and regional successes, but many have been reduced under repeated onslaughts of Big Business as Capitalists seek to deepen their grip on our society. The Corporatocracy is relentless in its pursuit of resources to fuel its expansion of power. We’re focused, however, on local-global economic and labor issues. Yet climate change won’t wait for workers to wake up and take charge of our economy. Nor will the Capitalists in power wait for us workers to rise up. Earth’s environmental crises, however, won’t wait, not for anyone. Within the past year we Democratic Socialists achieved remarkable successes locally. We’ve been driving hard in a most difficult struggle to improve the lives of workers and their families. Economic and environmental issues are mutually intertwined. Will we take this opportunity?

Look at the picture of those melting glaciers in West Antarctica again.

James Yungel of the NASA team captured the photo. The “collapse of massive portions of the Antarctic ice sheet” appeared “inevitable.” Indeed, the speed of melting and collapse with rising seas is faster than initially feared. The epic disaster unfolding across our southernmost continent was deemed “unstoppable.” Mother Jones even shouted, “Holy Shit!”

This calamity is global. It was visible. You can see it all around without the immediate drama of human beings with their towns and cities ravaged by wars and earthquakes. Yet it could conceivably help bring an end to the current global civilization humans have built here on Earth. The melting West Antarctic ice sheets reinforce the idea global climate change, including global warming, is really global climate disruption.

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Response to a Concerned Small Business Owner over 15 NOW

Earlier this month I posted a link on one of my social media sites to an essay I wrote the night before, “Yes, $15 an hour minimum wage, NOW!” Among the people who responded along a spectrum between yes and no were two from my native state of Virginia. Let’s call one of them Brigid, which, of course, is not her real name. Brigid, a progressive liberal more radical than many and as mellow as a Summer pond at twilight, expressed concern about us activists moving too fast to raise the minimum wage. She thought proponents for $15 now would be wise to slow down and take more time. After all, why rush it and mess it up for all of us?

More captivating, however, was a wrenching inquiry from a friend of mine back East. He was a small business owner who ran a small but bustling bakery and café. My friend, let’s call him Isaac, declared raising the minimum wage up to $15 an hour “would put” him “out of business in one month.” Unless, he said, he jacked up his prices. I could hear him as he pounded his fist upon the countertop as he continued. “The socialist-workers rights-stick-it-to-the-man person in me loves it, but I am the man here. This seriously would break me,” he wrote. “Why do this if prices just rise in concert with pay?”

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Yes, $15 an hour minimum wage, NOW!

Fight for 15, Fight for the Working Class, Fight for Justice, Fight for Freedom. Solidarity!

Fight for 15, Fight for the Working Class, Fight for Justice, Fight for Freedom. Solidarity!

Those who argue against raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour do not get it. These naysayers spin broken webs of economic facts and figures rooted not in the reality of our natural environment but inside the charts and computer algorithms of a virtual world divorced from physical reality. It’s not about the money. I want to stand up and shout, “It’s not about the money; it’s about people! Real live human beings! It’s about relationships, our relationships! It’s about class war.”

Life is Struggle. The working classes get life is a struggle. So do artists and small business owners. So do the unemployed, the underemployed, the homeless, the foreclosed, the laid off, the poorly paid, the uneducated, the overeducated, students deep in debt, the hungry, the sick, the pissed off.

This is part of our struggle to build Democratic Socialism. As such we seek to remove banksters and Corporacrats from power. Get them out of out of politics and government. We work to reclaim democracy from the grip of the rich. We intend to go further and put democracy and justice into business, into the workplace, and into the marketplace.

This struggle is part of finishing what the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., started. He knew we couldn’t have political democracy until we also have economic democracy. This is not about the stupidity of self-righteous fools who ridicule the spelling and grammar of hardworking low-wage workers such as myself, but for democracy based upon human rights and social responsibilities instead of property rights and financial violence.

We understand this is an issue of ethics and even morals. We get in a way sheltered pundits do not the Great Global Recession did not end in 2009. Indeed, this worldwide almost-Second Great Depression continues to grind on and on without any clear end in sight. These are hard times for large numbers of people from the poor to the middle.

Remember bad times don’t last forever. We must remember our victories during times of discouragement. We must remind ourselves during those moments when we just wanna quit all this will pass. So, yes, stop and rest a bit. Then get back up and keep going. Because we’ve already come a helluva long way! We learn, adapt, and adjust. Together we recalibrate, grow, and evolve. Ours is the search for what works and best serves us thru inquiry, action, results, and analysis. It is the Dialectical process.

You keep going. We all keep going. We go. Action is better than indulging in cynicism, apathy, and do-nothingism. Struggle serves to move us hard working people from enduring ever more suffering-to-barely-survive to rise up to stand in our power and thrive.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us in the last speech he made before he was assassinated he’s “been to the mountaintop,” he stood up there and looked over and saw the Promised Land. He knew all of us would get there. We will get there, and we will get there together!

 

William Dudley Bass
8-9 April 2014
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

See:

Fight for a $15/hour Minimum Wage, <https://www.15now.org>.

Sign up here ASAP to register for the national conference scheduled for Saturday 26 April 2014 for raising the minimum wage: Onto the Ballot, Into the Streets, <https://www.15now.org/april-26>.

Let’s unite and give each other our support!

Also see William  Bass’s earlier article, “Raise the Minimum Wage,” with its extensive list of Sources, at <https://williamdudleybass.com/raise-the-minimum-wage>.

***

Copyright © 2014, 2015, 2016 by William Dudley Bass.

All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship

of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons.

Thank you.

 

Blundering into Armageddon

Are our leaders mad? Are they deliberately setting the stage for a series of interlocking wars and economic collapses? All to look like accidents? Our leaders’ heartless mistakes of opportunity may indeed wipe out millions, even billions. For what? Are they are prepared to absorb extreme costs as the price to pay for extreme victory? Or are our leaders clueless? Are they just fucking stupid? Reacting with military precision directed with sloppy, nationalistic stupidity to converging crises overwhelming common sense, good judgment, and cooperative intelligence? And what the hell are We the People gonna do? Are we going to just read about it in a tweet the next day after half the world blows up? “Good morning! 1/2 earth blown up…the end looks better n movies & cool, i can still tweet!”

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Violence and Nonviolence are Tools

Is Nonviolence a Tactic, Policy, or Principle?

Is Violence Pragmatic and Necessary?

Both can be ineffective. Both can be effective.

It’s not Violence vs. Nonviolence.

It’s Violence and Nonviolence, and

how they’re leveraged for success.

Violence, nonviolence, and civil disobedience are tools in the great struggle against tyranny and oppression. They have been used in the great class war against the Global Financial and Political Elites. They still are. These tools are strategies and tactics based upon values and principles. Violence and nonviolence are no more anything else than the term Global War on Terrorism is rife with misnomers. Terror is a feeling. It’s an immediate physiological response to a reactive emotion. Flight or fight or freeze and still piss your pants. Terrorism is a tactic in crime and war. It’s been pointed out repeatedly one cannot wage a military campaign against tactics. Instead, one does so with strategies and tactics against enemies using terror as a tactic.

Many of us confuse nonviolence with being a rigid “thing.” Growing numbers of people continue to feel inspired by the fierce stands Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., took for nonviolence. Ironically, both were murdered almost 20 years apart during periods of violent civil strife. Their deaths sparked even greater outbreaks of violence.

Even so, many people view nonviolence as an inviolate colonnade of pillars holding up temples of peace as if such abstractions of mind existed out in the physical world. Nonviolence, a tool, has come to be regarded as religious doctrine by many people. Instead of a tactic, however, it’s another invisible but real, to them, flying buttress supporting the invisible architecture of an abstract cathedral. By doing so, these believers in the holiness of this abstract tool risk bringing everything they stand for collapsing down upon them in bloody ruin.

The proponents of nonviolence, upholding Gandhi and King and even Buddha and Jesus, often dismiss or suppress any challenge to nonviolence. Who would dare question nonviolence? I imagine the Global Elites and the security and intelligence apparatus under their control appreciate being the only ones to dispense violence while not receiving any in turn. Nonviolence helps keeps them in power.

Don’t make any abstraction of mind so rigid an ideology it cripples effective action. It doesn’t matter if it’s politics, religion, economics, or tradition. Those nouns, those words stand for concepts with definitions held within the abstract mind. Which means we make it all up in our heads and call it “real.” If enough people agree yes, it’s real indeed, and then we label it “consensual reality.” And so we go, as brilliantly collapsed as ever. All abstractions are tools.

The most effective toolboxes have a modest variety of choices. It is the same during resistance against oppression and struggles for justice, equality, and liberty. We struggle against the class war of the financial elites, against institutionalized racism, corporatism, sexism, corruption, and fascism. We struggle for social, environmental, and economic justice. We struggle for power. Aye, we struggle for the power to determine our own lives together.

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Raise the Minimum Wage

It’s not about the Money

Up Close and Uncompromising! The front of one of the famous Red T-Shirts worn by volunteers for Kshama Sawant's Socialist Alternative Campaign for Seattle City Council, Position 2, the 5th of November 2013. Photo by William Dudley Bass.

Up Close and Uncompromising! The front of one of the famous Red T-Shirts worn by volunteers for Kshama Sawant’s Socialist Alternative Campaign for Seattle City Council, Position 2, the 5th of November 2013. Photo by William Dudley Bass.

Those who argue against raising the minimum wage do not get it. The naysayers spin broken webs of economic facts and figures rooted not in the reality of our natural environment but inside the charts and computer algorithms of a virtual world divorced from physical reality. It’s not about the money. I want to stand up and shout, “It’s not about the money; it’s about people! Real live human beings!”

I really want to jump up and yell, “It’s not about money, you insert language most foul!” Such verbal intensity, however deliciously vulgar, would just rile up the troll militias, so I won’t cuss here. It’s challenging enough to feel compassion and empathy for my fellow human beings, including those who exhibit cruelty and heartless stupidity. No matter. We all suffer. Everyone single one of us experiences suffering. Life is Struggle.

The working classes get life is a struggle. So do artists and small business owners. So do the unemployed, the underemployed, the homeless, the foreclosed, the laid off, the poorly paid, the uneducated, the overeducated, students deep in debt, the hungry, the sick, the pissed off. Reformers understand action is better than indulging in cynicism, apathy, and do-nothingism. Revolutionaries understand reform only goes so far before it dead ends in a mirage. Struggle serves to move the working classes from enduring ever more suffering to survive to rising up to stand in their power and thrive.

During these bleak but exciting times I volunteered for Kshama Sawant’s openly Socialist campaign for Seattle City Council. I joined with other veterans of the Occupy Uprisings from the Green Party of Seattle and the Seattle branches of the Socialist Alternatives to serve to get her elected. Other Socialist Alternatives ran strong campaigns elsewhere, especially Ty Moore in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It proved a tight race. Still counting ballots days after the Election. We rocked the city and made waves across the nation. Ripples were felt around the world. It was an astonishing experience. A small, highly disciplined organization raised well over $110,000 and marshaled over 300 volunteers, many of them part-time volunteers such as myself. What helped us stand out in addition to our red t-shirts was our uncompromising stand for a $15.00 an hour minimum wage.

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BANALITY, or: Abandoned by Angels

I lay my head down
in the boneyard of relatives
to feed Aunt Bea’s chickens.
Over in the corner
in the shade of Grandpa’s old pear tree
my mother lays among buzzing yellow jackets
feasting upon apples scattered in decay.

Momma pushes away all of her children,
those of us still alive;
screams for us to grow up;
demands we stop listening to the news;
shouts we better hunt us up
some animals for breakfast.

Desperately she lifts tattered, dirty burlap,
shoves small bones ragged with chunks of meat
into her vagina as she mourns and grieves
the deaths of three babies
from dirty, unwashed hands.

I glance up and see Aunt Bea peeking down
thru broken shutter slats guarding old attic windows.
She won’t come down;
expects us to visit her instead.
We do not dare, of course.

Aunt Bea is hungry beyond pain,
yet she avoids the bone yard where
her sister screeches
in the shade of serpent grief.

She pushes notes at us
from under her door,
notes so raw her letters leave us
wet with terror.

Aunt Bea’s eye sees me as it always does,
quivers with relief as it watches my head twitch.
Her one enormous eye, wild, heavy, swivels “Yes!”
I stand up headless and walk away
as chickens cluck and peck at my face.

My old twin head Wilson, severed across the throat,
rolls in staggered jerks beneath
swarming hens, roosters, and slaps of Momma’s shoe.
I’d once saved Wilson’s life from drowning.
My twin washed up on Absinthe Beach north of Yurka
five years after vanishing off Nikumaroro.

I return to the shed to cook down
p-ephedrine with hydroiodic acid,
red phosphorous, iodine, and lye.
Daddy slouches naked in the shadows
among broken antique furniture once
slathered in now faded yellow, green,
red, purple Dutch Boy lead paint.

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Death Ain’t Grim

Death is my Lover
Without gender or genitals
Neither soft nor hard
Death just cums
Into my Soul

 

 

Copyright © 2013, 2015, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you. Even if there are more words in this than in the poem up there. 🙂

 

Our Current Capitalist-ProtoFascist System as Faux Democracy vs. Neo-Communism and True Democracy

Our human reality as complex social mammals will always banish ideological rigidity to the shadows and destroy all efforts to build any and all Utopias.

Every time.

Perceptions

Perceptions Matter. What People think is true but isn’t vs. What’s so & thus is true vs. What’s possible, especially for us to create once we learn to work together.

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Coffee at the Bus Stop

Zoroaster or Zarathustra above the two fish-human hybrid gods called Dagon (or Dagan).

Zoroaster (Zarathustra) above the two fish-human hybrid gods called Dagon (Dagan).

Nommo the Fish God from the Sirius Solar System; sacred to the Dogon tribe of the Hothburi Mountains of Mali's Sahara Desert, near the Ancient city of Timbuktu.

Nommo the Fish God from the Sirius Solar System; sacred to the Dogon tribe of the Hothburi Mountains of Mali’s Sahara Desert, near the Ancient city of Timbuktu.

I love making coffee in the morning. Every morning. Every morning right here in Seattle! Oh, the gradual, sloppy slide of my naked skin over the edge of my bed after I axe my alarm, the
whump ass
WHUMP! WHUMP! WHUMP!
whump ass
pillow thumper dumper alarm
hearing folks sometimes think is a goddamn bomb.

Indeed! See, once a cloisterchuck of well-dressed, hotel staff came to make my bed after I left for breakfast with one of the humans I was mating with at the time. Oh, my, they saw this womp ass pillow whumper tucked under the pillow, saw the long electrical cord snaking out and down out of sight into an odd-shaped alarm clock. And don’t bombs having timing devices? And don’t terrorists like to attack hotels and swimming pools and tombstones and shit? They were so perturbed I thought the local police was going to cart my sweet ol’ scary alien monster ass away into a classified, black site laboratory so they could shackle me upside down and probe me with aromatherapy candles and colonoscopy scopes and whatnot. Or to the local human jail out behind the courthouse for hapless thugs and foolish, drug-addled tourists and hungover drunks with their britches all a slippy-slippity-twisty down around their ankles and hung up in yanked-up socks and shit. Took a deep breath, I did, took seven deep breaths in all. Explained the situation without rippling my man skin with ripples of sweat. The police rolled their eyes, looked studly for a bit, then turned and walked away. A bomb! Bombs, indeed! Well, Jeeezus Buddhie Socrateezie!

Yeah, pillow thumper alarm clock. My clock as a small, thick, flying saucer-shaped vibrator I slide inside my pillowcase. It bangs my brains awake. See, I’m beautifully deaf in both ears. I can’t hear, see. I can’t hear very well, not at all, so therefore I feel. Feel into the world. Feel into it all. Oh, yeah, where’s my Adderall? Where did I put my pill bottle? Oh, goodness, this crazy feeling! So much to know! So much to feel with this amazing body I wear! Just didn’t know I could do it, feeling these feelings, feeling this way and feeling that way, feeling at the unexpected moment I watched someone die. A human stranger jerked off this planet by The Powers That Do before she could even finish her coffee. She died horribly, too. Died right in front of me. Died drinking coffee. Or while I was drinking coffee. Bus stop coffee. It’s all a haze of red and brown mist now. As she passed on into the Afterlife, well, in the horrific screeching krunch of gravitational krush, I could feel it…I felt her life wrenched loose from her dying flesh. Scary at first. Almost…intoxicating. As intoxicating as the smell of fresh roasted coffee in the morning as I prepare the drink of Gods.

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Lessons from Class Warfare and the Death of Occupy

An Analysis of the Successes and Failures of the Occupy Uprising, Occupy’s Comparison with Previous Recent U.S. Revolts, and What’s Likely to Occur Next

Occupy Wall Street! Occupy Earth! Occupy Love! What is our one Demand? WHAT IS OUR ONE DEMAND?

Occupy Wall Street! Occupy Earth! Occupy Love! What is our one Demand? WHAT IS OUR ONE DEMAND? Image altered from the Commons.

Occupy, of course, is not dead. The residue of the movement continues to smolder among the ruins of the Great Global Recession. An occasional flare-up bursts forth in protest here and there. In the underground of cyberspace, however, there lives a vibrant hum of activity. Instead of dramatic visibility in parks and streets, many in the Occupy movement carried their ideals, values, and freshly exercised practices away to their homes, farms, businesses, and neighborhoods.

A new alternative civilization is emerging from the osmosis of Occupy into the greater culture at large. A good term to describe this organic yet deliberate dynamic planetary community is the Breakthru Civilization. We’re breaking thru old paradigms and ways of being that no longer serve humanity as these obsolete ways aid in the destruction of life on Earth. Breakthru from love and respect for life to love and respect our selves, one another, and our planet. It is a difficult challenge to move forward towards hate, fear, and violence with compassion, forgiveness, and love armed with nothing more than aware minds, open hearts, and firm backbones. Yet this Breakthru accelerates the expansion of individual awareness and mass consciousness to understand and embrace Socialism as perhaps the only immediate alternative to the current system dominated by Capitalism and corporatist fascism.

The number of activists has dwindled since those promising days from September 2011 to May 2012. They certainly no longer reflect the greater 99%. Instead, Americans woke up to the reality of economic inequality and class war. Occupy called attention to this invisibly visible ugliness so vividly the topic of class warfare was debated among Republicans and Democrats during the 2012 Presidential Elections. Yet Occupy itself subsided into the nooks and crannies of local neighborhoods.

What happened? Especially after so much occurred in the beginning to astonish and galvanize people around our planet?

Before I answer those questions, we must acknowledge and celebrate Occupy’s multiple successes. Occupy left enough of a significant impact, certainly in the short term as this story has yet to run its course, to perhaps catalyze a larger and more multifaceted transformation than is often realized. It’s still too new. So let’s celebrate a few successes:

"The Extreme Inequality is Killing us - our Commons, our Democracy." Syd Fredrickson in Occupy Seattle, October 8, 2011.

“The Extreme Inequality is Killing us – our Commons, our Democracy.” Syd Fredrickson of the Green Party in Occupy Seattle, 8 October 2011. Photo by William Bass.

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Headless Sally

Ghost Hunting amid the Echoes of Tragedy and Carnage at Saylor’s Creek

Midnight came and went across the woods and fields of a 118-year old Civil War battlefield. With a firm grip on powerful flashlights turned off, we crept along the edge of the bridge and peered downstream into the darkness for ghosts. Well, for a specific ghost in particular, a ghost named Headless Sally. The three of us stood there in the dark feeling stupid and scared all at once. It was cold, too, down there in the damp mini-valley of Saylor’s Creek. A full moon hung in the sky casting shadows through trees and thickets leafless in Winter.

Earlier during the day we had agreed to hunt for Headless Sally under a full moon in a relatively clear and calm night sky. Luna draws out the madness in people, draws out mindless ghosts questing about on soulless autopilot, the objects of long-faded desires lost to spiritual dementia. And here we were, three Witches of Silverwood, leaning over the bridge railing facing downstream looking for the ghost of a floating head or perhaps her headless torso. We were confident of our abilities to protect ourselves against harmful or mischievous spirit entities. Besides, we figured after midnight on a cold weeknight there would be far less traffic on a lonely country road to disturb our focus than earlier in the day or on a weekend.

We have visited with ghosts nearby at the Hillsman Farmhouse at the epicenter of the Battle of Saylor’s Creek. Fought on Thursday 6 April 1865, as heavy rains fell and the creek rose, the fields, woods, creeks, and farms were the scene of a ferocious and savage three-part battle between Confederates and Federals. American Civil War combat was often at close quarters with severe injuries from up-close discharges of firearms and artillery as well as hand-to-hand fighting.

The Hillsman home was occupied by the Federals and used as a battlefield hospital. The family and servants there were forced downstairs into the basement, but afterwards helped dig mass graves for the dead. I don’t know if the “servants” were Black slaves, lowly-paid Whites, or White indentured servants. Indentured servants as an institution, shockingly enough, endured in the U.S.A. until 1917, long after slavery itself was legally abolished. Few narratives from Civil War battles more than mentioned the presence of slaves as if they were a bothersome afterthought.

The medical staff operated on screaming Union and Confederate wounded without question. Stories were told of so many amputations deemed necessary as the gory battle unfolded, the pile of severed limbs and body parts tossed out the windows reached up to the windowsills. Soft lead Minié ball bullets tore large holes through soft tissue and shattered bones. Cannons firing loaded canisters bursting with lead and iron balls packed in sawdust mowed down troops on both sides.

Sanitation was unknown, and this lack of hygiene helped generate severe rates of infections such as gangrene. Doctors and nurses, including surgeons, may care for their patients and feel passionate for their professions, yes. Their knowledge and technologies, unfortunately, were surprisingly Medieval during what many historians consider the first Modern, Industrial Age war. No wonder so many ghosts haunted the area. Sally, however, didn’t die in the war.

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Sleeping with Ghosts on the Appalachian Trail

Ruminations, Romance, and the Lives of a Family Long Dead

Story and Photographs by William Dudley Bass

With extra stories & photos added later about recovering the original 2001 published article with related media controversies, found 1991 pictures once lost, new history of the old homestead with a “new” trail shelter, and of the Pregnant Rhinos’ eldest daughter’s 2015 attempt to thruhike the AT. There’s often more to a story than the tale itself.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

Ruins of the old Sarver Homestead along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, May 1991.

In late May 1991, almost three months into our odyssey along the Appalachian Trail, my wife and I planned to sleep among ghosts. Old-timey Virginia ghosts. It seemed like a fitting thing to do while walking across our home state, a journey as rich with rumination as it was with hardship and joy.

Gwen and I had embarked on the first day of spring from the top of Springer Mountain in northern Georgia to backpack the whole Appalachian Trail end to end. The AT, as we hikers called it, or simply “the Trail,” stretches more than 2,000 miles northwards across 14 states to the summit of mile-high Mt. Katahdin in north-central Maine. Almost a quarter of the Trail passes through the Old Dominion, making Virginia home to the longest section of the AT, more than any other state. Gwen and I took six-and-a-half months to backpack the whole Trail, climbing Katahdin in early October on the day after our third wedding anniversary.

Rich in both history and wildlife, the Appalachian Trail is an intersection of people and wilderness. Those who backpack end-to-end in one push are known as “thruhikers,” while those who attempt to complete the whole thing in stages are called “section hikers.” Most take on trail names. Gwen and I were thruhikers, as such a distinct minority among the day hikers, weekenders, and picnickers. We called ourselves the Pregnant Rhinos.

Our trail name arose from a backpacking trip out West the previous year, when we got teased about the huge new internal-frame expedition packs bulging from our backs. “Damn, y’all look like a coupla pregnant rhinoceroses,” exclaimed a teenage boy, his own rickety, external-frame pack jangling with pots and pans and sloppy blankets.

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Skipping Rocks at Carkeek Park

Blended Family Fun on the Beach just after Sunset

Morgan & Talia at Play

~ Summer of 2004 ~

All photographs by William Dudley Bass.

Click upon any photo to expand it. Click again to make it bigger! Click the return arrow to go back to the previous page to the photo’s original size.

Morgan showing Talia how to skip rocks into the Sound, Carkeek Park, Seattle, June 2004.

Morgan showing Talia how to skip rocks into the Sound, Carkeek Park, Seattle, Wednesday 16 June 2004.

Kristina, my partner at the time, and I discovered one of the best ways to blend our quirky families was to play together. Shared activities made any chore much more fun and the play a hooty wild blast. Sometimes we played rough, too. My kids and I called wrestling with Daddy “rumble tumble.” Kate was the roughest, although Talia enjoyed a good tumble, too, until she decided she didn’t appreciate a particular move. Morgan didn’t care for such forceful fun. She was a more gentle, restrained, and patient player who valued eccentric, witty goofiness over “play fightin’.”

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The Lost Creek Monster

Did a Sasquatch tear up the woods between two Virginia farms?

The mystery of this strange event has never been solved. Recent scientific discoveries and claims, however, may provide the inquisitive with clues.

It’s springtime in Virginia. The year is either 1967 or 1968, and possibly as late as 1972. My memory of time and dates from long-ago events are a little hazy these days. Not the incidents and sequences of events, however long ago they occurred. These events are crystal clear in the “documentary film” of my memories.

A giant and mysterious beast went berserk in the woods shared by two intermarried family farms. The destruction was extensive and required immediate repair. We farmers kept our herds of cows and heifers separate to prevent them from getting all mixed up. Both farms had planned to turn loose their herds into adjacent fields separated by the fences along Lost Creek. Compounding the mystery was odd feeling the destruction appeared to be far more playful than malicious. Or perhaps it was a warning?

Maybe there was more than one entity. Perhaps a small family of these unknown monsters was responsible for the bizarre rampage. At the time people, adults as well as us kids, thought a tornado was the most likely culprit even if a tornado made no sense at all as there were no storms. So we imagined a giant, troll-like creature and named it the Lost Creek Monster. We certainly hoped if there really was such a beast there was only one at most. Feeling a bit superstitious, we nonetheless prayed the monster would leave us alone. Especially if it was the Devil. But we were just as afraid of God.

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Out of My Body and Across the Sea

Once I had an OBE, an Out-of-Body-Experience, and flew across the sea. There were a few times I am certain I had other OBEs, one bordering on a NDE or Near-Death Experience. This particular OBE had one significant difference, though, that distinguished it from all the others. As of March 2013, this event remains the only time I managed to intentionally astral travel. All of my other OBEs were unintentional and spontaneous. This particular astral journey was startling in its clarity. I remember it vividly many years later as if it happened yesterday.

During my time as a Wiccan, I was exposed to a number of practices and paranormal phenomena at odds with mainstream orthodox science. Among these were strange “things” called astral projection, astral travel, or out-of-body experiences. They are different terms for the same phenomena. One could dismiss such things as magical thinking, a level of psycho-spiritual and socio-cultural evolutionary development considered inferior. Magical thinking is a cluster of different religious and psychological belief systems wrapped up in elements of what many deride as “superstition.”

The one primary distinction shared within this cluster is the idea thinking certain thoughts either intentionally or unintentionally generates actions and events in the outer or “real” world of matter and energy. Research into psychic phenomena and brain waves demonstrate the power of focused mental energy to affect change in the environment beyond the body. Meditation, prayer, casting spells, calling down old Deities, and focused ESP represent different examples of focused mental power.

There is still much to learn regarding the mysteries of consciousness. The experience of Afterlife beings raises questions about definitions of life, especially beyond biological death. None of this mattered to those who feared for my soul, however, as they were sure these “things” were real. My Fundamentalist Christian friends and a few family members swore I was deluded by the Devil and flying straight down into Hell.

One afternoon, however, regardless of Heaven or Hell or the Levels In Between, I faced my fears and deliberately left my body for what proved to be an exciting adventure.

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Doppelganger Among the Cows

Once I saw a doppelganger, although I wasn’t aware of it until the next day. This mysterious event still baffles my mind. Strange and still unresolved questions were raised for which “hoax” would be the easiest yet least likely answer. There are questions regarding the possibility for the bilocation of matter, especially biological organisms, at high levels of material cohesion. Can a person split themselves at will or unconsciously? Other questions provoke inquiries into the evidence consciousness extends beyond our living bodyminds as well as continues, at least for a while, after death. One may speculate as well upon the spiritual ramifications of doppelgangers.

I was not the only witness that warm, sunny afternoon. First, however, what is a doppelganger? Yeah, what the heck is that? And is it dangerous? There’s no way this was a hoax. Well, a hoax is highly unlikely. I’ll explain why further down in this article.

Doppelgangers have existed in myths and legends since Ancient Times. I’d never given the phenomena much attention or credibility prior to this event. Yet my wife and I and others witnessed a doppelganger. Later that afternoon, one man even worked unknowingly alongside this doppelganger. When the man discovered he had done so, he freaked out and prayed feverishly to God so he wouldn’t be snatched up by the Devil and flung down into the fires and stench of Hell.

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Summer Twilight of the Burning Sky

The following anomalous event occurred one summer in the early 1970s in rural Prince Edward County, south-central Virginia. It remains unexplained.

This weird incident happened about five or six years after my family and I experienced an unidentified flying ship over the fields and woods behind our farmhouse. Those two experiences may have nothing to do with each other except both were strange and were dismissed, ridiculed, or explained away by our American Government.

Our paranoid Cold War fears intensified after the anomaly occurred this particular hot and sweaty summer evening. I was a young teenager back then. A group of us kids played outside in a grassy cow pasture between my house and the neighbors’. Joe, my younger brother, was running around with us, too. Our parents were out and about in their respective yards. The fireflies were already out, winking on and off along the edge of the woods bordering the field even though there was still plenty of light left. We called ’em lightnin’ bugs. The sweet smell of wild honeysuckle drifted in from the bushes growing thick along the edges of the fields. We jerked alert as we found ourselves and everything around us bathed in glowing light. It happened fast. BOOM without sound.

“Whoa, look!” shouted one friend in awe. “Look at the sky!”

“Oh, wow!”

“What the hell is that?”

“I sure don’t think it’s Jesus comin’ back. Don’t hear no trumpets a blowin’.”

“Trumpets, shit. Maybe the Russians are bombin’ us.”

“Or aliens from Outer Space!”

“Whoa, look at that! Hey, over there, too. Oh man, the sky’s on fire!”

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Valentine’s Lupercalia and the Death of Love at the End of the World

LOVE

LOVE IS.

LOVE IS LIFE.

LOVE IS POWER.

LOVE IS DIVINE.

is god love ? is love god ? and goddess ?

or is love merely a human attribute projected upon an imagined image of deity ?

 If indeed God is Love and Love is God, can Love love?

We humans make messes of Love.

Such as celebrating our lust as things fall apart.

Ancient Pagan Festival of Lupercalia

Saint Valentine’s Day

Blood and Life

Birth and Death

One Love

Many People

Valentine’s Day

Armageddon of the Heart

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Bereft of a Lover, she reads alone in the chill of February. It is the only way she knows to escape from her pain without dulling her soul.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine's Day Night.

Ruins of Ancient, Postmodern Lupercalian Sex Machines too broken down to fuck this lovely Valentine’s Day Night.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn't known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

The air changes all who breathe. Breathing changes love. It all changes you. Air is life. Air is death. Breathing fuels every cell to live. Gaia yearns for Cernunnos to merge and spawn. Goddess gives birth to more Gods who work with Prometheus to mold our flesh deep in the ovens of the Holy Sun. Soul cleaves with Spirit to penetrate matter. Life blossoms from energy and emerges across the Universe. Enchanted with life, Sophia birthed forth Demiurge. Ignorant, isolated, and bereft of LOVE, he grew increasingly malevolent. Demiurge thundered forth to create his universe of worlds and battled the Higher God of Love and Creation for domination of the Earth. Humans were terrified, confused, and forced into believing Demiurge was the only God to worship. Sophia was forgotten along with Gaia and every other Goddess. The entire Universe screamed in protest, a scream we still hear as we listen to the electromagnetic shrieking of Matter across time and space. A most wicked and capricious Demiurge tormented all his creations as he raged and cried out for and against a Mother he hasn’t known since birth. Demiurge set himself up on a giant throne to toy with and destroy bit by bit his own creations and smeared all others Divine as of the Devil. As the true Shaitan, Demiurge hid the truth from men and from women of his hideous yet powerful Imposition. Only Love will transform this Devil God, and it must be Love wrapped in kindness and compassion backed by the strength of billions of strong, resilient spines.

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Call of the Divine down by the Clothesline

Our culture is riven with wounds. The linguistic tapestries woven from many of our stories arise from psychological, emotional, social, and physical trauma. Ken Woodley, a man who once attended the same small, all-male college as I did went on to advocate for deep racial and social healing between Blacks and Whites in Virginia and across America. From his position as Editor of The Farmville Herald, the local newspaper in Prince Edward County where he still works, he once stated, “We are not responsible for a lot of the wounds we find, but we can be responsible for the healing.”

Healing of such magnitude begins with awareness and presence. Healing of any kind demands such presence. Awareness begins with waking up. Dreams aren’t any good unless you wake up to take action to make your dreams come true.

I remember when I first woke up.

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Goat-Headed Devil in a Black Tuxedo

Ancient image of Cernunnos on the silver Gundestrop Cauldron created by Celtic craftsmen during the European Iron Age. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

Ancient image of Cernunnos on the silver Gundestrop Cauldron created by Celtic craftsmen during the European Iron Age. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

A Modern image of the Horned God of the Wiccans dispayed in the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, the UK. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

A Modern image of the Horned God of the Wiccans dispayed in the Museum of Witchcraft in Cornwall, the UK. Photo from Wikipedia Commons.

 

What transpired is true and cannot be proven.

Once upon a time in the deep dark of night my first wife Margaret and I walked in the door of our home and saw a goat-headed devil sitting in the chair watching us with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap. Scared the bejesus out of us, too. We didn’t know what in Hell this creature was other than it was male. He certainly challenged our religious, psycho-spiritual, and cultural upbringing.

Thick, smoky fog oozed through the woods and draped the open fields. Down the hill beyond the bluffs snaked Big and Little Sandy Rivers. It wasn’t too cold, but the damp chill made the fog drip with hypothermia. Margaret and I arrived home close to midnight. We’d been out at a gathering celebrating Goddess and God with the other Witches of Silverwood Circle. Our group was a Neo-Pagan Celtic Wiccan coven in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

My wife, well, she was my first wife, was the Inner Flamenca or High Priestess of Silverwood. Our close friend, Paul, was the Inner Flamen or High Priest. We preferred “Inner” instead of  “High” to promote ideas of going deep into the mysteries rather than someone being superior above others. The terms “flamen” and “flamenca” derived from Latin words for Roman priests and priestesses responsible for the sacred flames of Gods and Goddesses. They’re not as common in Wiccan usage these days, but some Celtic Wiccans preferred the Roman words to distinguish themselves from Neo-Celtic Druids.

The closer we approached our home the colder and clammier everything seemed. We felt open psychically, perhaps too much so, for we had relatively little training in the arts of psychic and spiritual self-defense. We were beginning to encounter spiritual entities for which we were unprepared to meet.

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Ghosts and Hauntings at the Old Bass Family Farmhouse

Old Bass Family Farmhouse on a visit to Virginia from Seattle, December 2005. Foto by William Bass.

Old Bass Family Farmhouse on a visit to Virginia from Seattle, December 2005. Foto by William Bass.

A ghost, yes, an invisible ghost, scared me nearly all to pieces once upon a time back when I was a little kid. I was young, so you can laugh if you wanna, but I was well read and smart, too for being such a squirt. The way that ol’ ghost stomped down the hallway of an old farmhouse in my direction freaked me out. Made my big Frankenstein hearing aid SCREAM. I could hear this ghost, too. I could feel it, feel both the vibrations of the stomps and the cold blob of air moving along with it.

I was a young boy back in the mid-to-late1960s sometime. I don’t remember how many years old I was or what grade I attended in school. What I do recall, however, was the weather. It was Summertime. Lush, green Summertime! It must’ve been between grades. I reckon I was in late elementary school or maybe even early middle. Not sure. But it was Summer that I know. And a ghost scared the bedoobus outa my insides. This true story began late one afternoon.

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Amend the Second Amendment: An Immodest Proposal

Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is the second of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, those collectively regarded as the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. That’s a little more than fifteen years after the American Declaration of Independence and eight years after the Peace Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolutionary War. It became known as the “Right to Bear Arms” amendment.

Note the Constitution lacks any direct reference to individual self-defense.  Instead we have a muddled Second Amendment that declares a stand for the right to bear Arms. Not swords, battle-axes, legs, or cannon, but arms as in firearms as in guns. It doesn’t proclaim a right to self-defense. Indeed, there is not any reference whatsoever to any right of self-defense. Which is interesting, isn’t it?

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All the Darkness in Space

Dedication

To all those dreamers who dare to write science fiction, fantasy, and horror and thumb their noses at the arty-farty literati. We can all have fun being serious.

All the Darkness in Space:

A Novella

1

Flames burned purple at the dawn of death. The skies droned with the color of moron flesh. Silent explosions flared upon the distant horizon beyond the lake. Gesele stood among the pines along the shore watching the dawn mists rise and float above still waters. She squatted, enjoyed the crunch of pine needles and pebbles under foot, ran her hand through the water feeling the almost creamy smoothness of calm water then jerked it away. The lake was ice cold. She watched droplets of water drip from her fingers. The skies grew lighter and lighter with a video dullness. A breeze began to stir through the trees and rippled the waters. Grey boulders jutted out of the metallic pond. A sun bleached log lay across the sand, its top half still in the water. Stark, skeletal branches cut through shadows of the dawn. The sun rose churning fire.

A whirlwind of sunlight crashed through the conifers, drove out all shadow and seared the forest floor. Gesele backed away, shielding her eyes with her hands, stumbling, tripping, falling down. She cursed the sun, her breasts heaving beneath her tight suit of flexible, breathable armor. The breeze whipped into a wind and gusted across the now choppy lake. The early morning fog blew alive and writhed with energy. The sun sucked mist into its maw. Straw-like reeds bent across the water toward the rising heat. It was her first morning in what used to be the old American state of Maine. Despite the terror of war she loved the Maine outdoors. Gesele relished the early-morning knife whip of sun-warmed wind.

Fighter planes pulsed overhead, screaming silently into the radio static. Gesele cussed again and ran deep into the woods, pushing through pines and firs to hide among giant red spruce. The earth was so soft yet cobbled with rock. More explosions. The sky flared with radiation. Gesele wiped sweat from her brow and stood there, ribs swelling and falling with each breath, her taut muscles flexing, curled fingers flicked open sharp as talons.

Goddammit where the Hell is Korbin?

She reached up behind her left ear and pushed. A microbutton, resting just under the skin, indented and clicked. She grumbled at the obsolescence of her augmentation for the newer ones didn’t need tiny buttons. All you need to do with the new ones was think the command. Her neurocomputer implant flashed behind her eyes as she mainlined into enhanced reality.

Gesele scanned the forests. Every object shimmered with auras of electromagnetic radiation yet registered with amplified digital clarity. She focused her electronically amped vision and expanded her own aura. Pseudo-psychic sparks erupted as tongues of bioplasmic energy rubbered out through the woods, searching. More planes zoomed across the face of the rising sun, blasting the rebel forces dug into the mountainside.

ZEEEMmnn . . . a sensation of iced razorblades slit her consciousness. She cried out, surprised by the intensity. There. A kaleidoscope of glitter pinwheeled her into a vortex, and she went with it. As the wind coursed over the lake she flowed through the morning quicksilver and then she was there. Gesele reached up behind her ear and dropped out into the real world.

Ahh, the real world, she thought as she took off her cap and ran a hand through black, spiky locks. One had to be careful not to wander too long among the planes of enhanced reality. It was the outer space of the mind fused with electronic synth tissue. It was nowhere yet everywhere far beyond the borders of the ancient Internet and things virtual. There were people who never came back, leaving their bodies catatonic while they wandered lost in an illusion. But the illusion could be so sensuous, the sheer erotic power of it, the showering sparks, the multilayered colors of a billion auras, the wild, still unexplained mystery of computer-enhanced extrasensory perception.

There were even some, it was whispered, who deliberately sought to lose themselves. Many among the super wealthy had the resources to keep their bodies plugged in and fed, some longer than others. Some claimed the world of illusion was just as real, if not more so, than the mundane. It was beyond dreams and out of the mind. They were out there searching for the perfect astral orgasm, the melding with nirvana, to electronically escape from the mundane world into the seduction of the unknown. Cyberghosts, they called themselves, and in some weird way their sacred scripture were yellowed paper copies of Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric.” Most failed to break out, many went insane, but a fabled few never returned. Where they went no one knows.

Ahh, it was so beautiful here amid the pine and maple trees clustered around old ice age boulders and primeval lakes of cold, cold water. Combat ships howled across pale blue skies and worn-down mountains as a cool morning breeze caressed her unwashed face. She could settle down and live here…almost…maybe…just maybe…

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Big Belly Cigarette Smoking Man Swimming in Winter

The Author staring across Puget Sound towards the Olympics from the beaches of Carkeek Park, Seattle. This foto is not from the same time as the essay, it was taken years later on 6 November 2011 by Kate Bass, but it captures the chill of the story as the slide fotos of the actual event were lost in the 2010 house fire.

The Author staring across Puget Sound towards the Olympics from the beaches of Carkeek Park, Seattle. This foto is not from the same time as the essay as those pictures, original slide transparencies, were lost in the 2010 house fire. This foto was taken years later on 6 November 2011 by my middle daughter Kate Bass. Even so, Kate’s picture captures the chill of the story.

One bitter cold sunny day I came upon a tall, balding man standing on the beach wearing nothing but a skimpy Speedo swimsuit and smoking cigarettes. He had an enormous belly, a tremendous leviathan of a belly; the kind of tight power belly a big man could even feel proud of. Yet he moved like James Bond in the movies. He smoked like Humphrey Bogart used to in the movies, too. Him and Katherine Hepburn, remember? This man stood barefoot before me in sand, pebbles, and broken seashells as he gazed across the Salish Sea from the shores of Carkeek Park. I estimated he was a youngish sixty. An icy breeze sliced through my coat and stung my cheeks.

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Guns, Madness, and Mass Shootings as the Perfect Storm of Blowback hits Mount Rainier


U.S. veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes, proud of his guns, in
a photo from Pierce County Sheriff Department archives. Note
the high-capacity magazine clips on both firearms.

This undated photo provided by Mount Rainier National Park shows park Ranger Margaret Anderson. Anderson, 34, was fatally shot Sunday, Jan. 1, 2012, at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state, according to the National Park Service.
Ranger Margaret Anderson, Mount Rainier
National Park, Washington State. Photo
from MRNP archives.

New Year’s Day 2012 began as if Doomsday had arrived way too early from out of the prophesized Mayan Apocalypse. By the time the one-man war of Army veteran Benjamin Colton Barnes ended, two people are dead with four more injured, two of them critically wounded, three children left without parents, and communities across the United States, including Mount Rainier National Park were devastated. It’s almost a year, too, after Rep. Gabby Giffords and a number of others were shot with many killed in Tucson, Arizona. Excuse my lack of professionalism, but WTF?

In grotesque mockery of its own Constitution, the United States Government continues its overreaching neo-imperial agenda. We invade Iraq for the oil, for revenge against Saddam, and to outflank Iran and thumb our noses at Russia and China. We spend more money on our military than the next 17 countries combined. Yet we don’t help our veterans. And anytime you send people into combat, battles, and wars, guess what? Real, live human beings – men, women, and children are killed and maimed, often in horrific manner. Many in our Armed Forces return with damaged minds. Not everyone, but many more than most admit.

Since our government is so deep in debt and has been played by the banksters, it implements austerity measures and cuts services. National Park services get cut. Rangers get less support.

Bankster and corporatocratic manipulation of finances, markets, political elections, and government leads to illegal wars and economic disruption.

Illegal wars are still real wars. Our young men and women kill and injure other human beings. Many of our men and women are themselves killed and injured. All survivors witness great destruction. The Americans return home, and some of them break down, fall apart, and go crazy. And usually not in ways that engender sympathy.

A government short on money begins by cutting then chopping services. “Our” Federal Government begins by eviscerating federal institutions. Not nearly enough health care is provided for our veterans and their families, especially psychotherapy and counseling. It’s easier, faster, and cheaper to build flashy new weapons and weapons systems. Other federal services get cut, including the national park service.

Benjamin Colton Barnes was a former soldier in the United States Army. He served in the Iraq campaigns of 2007-2008 during the Global Long War on Terror. A private first class, he served in communications while deployed into Iraq. Barnes was also released from the military with a misconduct discharge for a string of offenses.

At a New Year’s Eve 2011 party in Skyway, a satellite town on the edge of the Greater Seattle Pugetopolis, Washington State, a number people brought guns including military weaponry to show off, brag, and posture. The rest of us would likely call them “gun nuts,” a term I reserve NOT for those who respect the firearms they collect and the responsibilities the right to possess a firearm demands, but for those who are immature, violent, and spoiling for a fight. The latter are consumed with egoitis. Barnes was at the party with several hot dates, all of them guns.

Posturing and bragging led to bruised egos. The ego is easily wounded when one’s skin is so thin. Arguments escalated into threats escalated into a gun battle. The details remain murky, but so far it appears Barnes took on the others, big bad soldier from Iraq he is, or was. In the ensuing firefight Barnes shot four people. Two of them were grievously injured and remain in critical care.

Barnes fled the party early in the morning of 1 January 2012. He drove off in a car with guns, knives, ammo, and survival gear. He raced into Mount Rainier National Park to hide out in the middle of the Cascade Mountains. Mt. Rainier remains one of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes, is more massive of a mountain than any of those in the Himalayans, and soars skyward to 4,392 meters or 14,411 feet above sea level. The Mountain dominates the Pacific Northwest and is the black hole of severe winter storms. It receives astounding amounts of precipitation. Its vast slopes are blanked with heavy, deep snow, thick forests, and icy glaciers.

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Blood is Messy

Some kids dress up as superheroes and monsters from Outer Space. I dreamed of being a serial killer. And as Richmond sat surrounded by Civil War battlefields, there were many grownups that dressed up in butternut and gray to play war among trashy shopping malls and picnic tables. Ever notice they’d rather shoulder rifle-muskets and fire cannons than play at being saw-wielding surgeons surrounded by piles of amputated mannequin limbs?

Me? Well, I was different. I am a serial killer. But, I ask, who killed and maimed more people? Soldiers, of course. I was far more selective. Yes, indeed, I am a serial killer. Yea, I imagined I lived in a comic book and was born for death.

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Fear and Paranoia: Down Out of the UFO Attic

UFOs are taboo.

To be more precise, as Unidentified Flying Objects seem to come and go as they please and not when and where as we would expect or even like, it is the topic of UFOs which is taboo. This includes many squirmy topics, which may or may not be completely true nor completely false, such as allegations of: shape-shifting and transforming objects, alien abductions with grotesque medical, genetic, and sexual experiments, mutilations of animals including cattle, horses, and humans, USOs or UUOs (Unidentified Submersible Objects or Unidentified Underwater Objects), secret underground and underwater bases, soul harvesting, anomalies on the Moon and on Mars and elsewhere which appear to be the ruins of vastly ancient civilizations, mysterious orbs, biomechanical or cyborg ships, Cold War conspiracies, ridicule by the authorities, stupidity in the media, cover-ups by hypercompartmentalized entities within or outside the military/security-industrial/corporate-education/prison-intelligence/surveillance complex, extraterrestrial and/or interdimensional species and technologies, free energy, mind control, missing Nazi gold, trillions of U.S. dollars vanished, and, of course, secret weapons.

There are allegations by whistleblowers and others in or who used to be in the militaries, intelligence agencies, scientific institutions, and other reputable organizations around the planet about and for these things. There are the so-called “black projects” within Unacknowledged Special Access Programs (USAPs). A deluge of documents has been declassified by a number of governments that demonstrate a significant and prolonged interest in a mystery otherwise dismissed and debunked in public.

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Willy Ain’t Got No Brains

Lookit that damn fool Willy standin’ there under the giant ass end of General Robert E. Lee’s monstrous horse waving the axed-off head of a rooster up in the air for all the world to see. Scaring all of Richmond, Virginia down into the James River and out to sea. Folks driving down Monument Avenue jump up outa their seats, point like little kids, and almost wreck their cars going the wrong way down North Allen. By the time they popped outa their trance they laid on the horn and shout everything but hymns. Willy didn’t care one wit. He’d already seen the beginning of civilization and the end of the world. And so he scattered droplets of blood everywhere while dancing 65-70 some feet below the end of a bronze horse.

Red against the pale granite of the monument base was a large, square cloth. It was half as big as a picnic table and more crimson than a pool of fresh slaughterhouse blood in sunlight. Rocks held down the corners and the sides, rough chunks of granite and quartz dug out of red Virginia clay. Crushed slices of silvery-glass mica and yellow fool’s gold lay scattered across the square of the cloth. In the center, bound up in orange red twine, was a headless rooster with his chest cut open. Off to the side was a fifth of whiskey. Good whiskey, too. Not great liquor, but souvenir spirits. A black and tan bottle of 1964 George Dickle Tennessee Whisky strapped with a worn leather choker. With a file-sharpened felling axe layin’ right up next to it. There was, however, not a candle in sight.

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Violence: After Newtown

There are days and there are nights when the best way to face horror and tragedy is to go right into it, into the pain, and not turn away.

The recent gun massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, touches us all on some level as our lives are so intertwined. A young man, Adam Lanza, sick with perhaps more than one illness, shot dead 20 young boys and girls, seven adults, and then took his own life. His illnesses are termed “psychological” or “mental” even though all such disorders stem from the body as mind arises from brain activity. Reports claim he shot many of these people numerous times. He was so accurate with his gun that there were no survivors among those he shot.

Police reports claim he used a Bushmaster .223 caliber Remington AR-15, a semiautomatic rifle. It’s a demilitarized version of the Army’s Vietnam-era M16 and is categorized as an assault rifle. Our national ban on assault rifles expired in 2004. Adam Lanza also allegedly carried two handguns and several hundred rounds of ammunition including high-capacity magazines for the Bushmaster. He stole these weapons from his mother, a registered gun owner, whom he killed first.

Regardless of deep emotions and strong beliefs inflamed by such murders, this massacre of schoolchildren as young as six and seven years old aroused a nation. Indeed, it aroused the world. We are once again reminded that even though we divide ourselves over politics, religion, and ethnicity, we are still one species sharing one planet.

Many issues are at stake here. What is most striking is even though so many people have staked out rigid positions on the various issues; many more are willing to engage in dialogue about them for solutions. That is good news and feels long overdue.

Let me name the dragons we finally have the courage to face as a nation. Keep in mind that to name something is to identify it and to some degree rob it of its power. To name something is to respond without reacting and thus we take on being responsible. By taking on responsibility, especially after first accepting what has happened even if we don’t like it, we become cause in the matter, not victims of circumstance.

Below I name our dragons:

This is an issue of emotionally laden language between groups of people who label each other “gun nuts” versus “gun grabbers.” The issue is the capacity and the willingness to set such divisive blame and shame language aside, or the incapacity and unwillingness for people to do so. Can we stop calling each other names?

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A Wild Kayak Adventure Down Slickrock Creek

Wanna hammer down a creek few have ever paddled? Flush through crooked, boulder-strewn chutes and delicately pick your route down Class 5 Wildcat Falls as you drop off the edge of the world into forever? Then throw away your guidebooks and come south prepared to hike in with your boat. You won’t forget this big, open secret as you rassle with the River Gods to turn it loose. This little bugger roars.

April 4,1989. We were deep in the lush, virgin forests of the Joyce Kilmer – Slickrock Wilderness putting onto a stream we knew very little about. None of us had hiked it, and we only knew a handful of other NOC boaters who had paddled it. Rain had been falling steadily, and we were looking for something different. Steepcreekin’ in Appalachia is Southeastern tradition, and part of the fun is seeking out and paddling remote and seldom run descents. As thunderstorms rolled over the mountains and feeling as if we were in a jungle, we knew we were in for dangerous adventures in a mysterious whitewater gorge.

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Overflow! Reflections on Kayaking Class 5 Overflow Creek

Jeff going "singless" running Singley's Falls.

Jeff going “singless” running Singley’s Falls.

We expected extreme whitewater. We knew we were all skilled paddlers, climbers, and hikers and could handle ourselves in the wilderness. We were trained in river rescue. We just had no idea our party of four kayakers would get stuck in a confrontation with the Grim Reaper deep in a remote Appalachian gorge as the Sun slid down behind the tallest trees.

In the pages of North Carolina Canoeing, Bob Sehlinger and Don Otey write of the notoriously wild Chattooga River, “If Section IV bores you, try Overflow Creek.” They declared it was for  “boaters with…a little insanity.”

Such crazy madness was the predicament the four of us found ourselves in one sunny, warm afternoon: were we really all that bored with Section IV? Heck, after all, the Chattooga was at a romping 2.8 feet on the gauge. In the end we figured we were indeed bored with Section IV and probably not quite all there in the head, either. Though we were much more of a humble and calm team. We were just more on the spiritually cool side of gonzo.

Truth be told, we mainly wanted relief from rowdy crowds congregating along Section III that day for the recent International Peace Rally hosted by the Nantahala Outdoor Center. As much as we enjoyed partying with the Soviets and Costa Ricans, when it came down to the water, we were seekers of solitude. So off into the wilderness of North Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest we went.

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A Man Left All Alone in Love

Grief swells fierce
From deep inside
Chambers of my Heart,
Chambers pulsing with magma.
No, I realize, feeling it now,
Feeling hot sad heat rise
From deep down inside my guts.

Alone at work,
Sitting at my desk and staring at reflections,
I see only memories
Of Love forever gone.

Storms pour in from the ocean.
As I look outside the window,
A wall of tall cedars and firs
Braces against the wind,
Then surrenders in a wild sea of heaving green.

And the rain pours.
The rain pours.
And the rain pours.
And what was once deep, shared love
Rushes into the sewers of the city to
Live forever lost at sea.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 20 & 28 November 2012
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Running Towards the Quiet Roar of the Dharma

I felt swallowed by suffering into the giant maw of a monstrous lion. Over the past few years I’ve lost almost everything but life, and even that was in question at times. In the midst of such suffering I learned to run towards the roar, the roaring of lions mute with fear and rage and cravings. I had to learn to do so or else the Grim Reaper would hug me with his scythe. I learned to run towards the quiet roar, the quiet ROAR of the Dharma, to stay present to the miracle of my life.

An unusual compression of numerous losses traumatized me more than I would like to admit. I even ended up semi-homeless for two months and staying with friends for a few more. I say “semi-homeless” because I lived out of a tent pitched back in the bushes behind three enormous woodpiles and a Native American sweat lodge with access to the facilities of a nearby house. All in the middle of urban North Seattle. In each moment I was awake I ran and sometimes stumbled towards that quiet roar, that quiet ROAR of the Dharma.

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Inner Shifts of Being

Sunset from the bluffs while gazing across the Sound toward the Olympics. Richmond Beach Park, Shoreline, Washington, Sunday 23 September 2012. Foto by William Dudley Bass.

Sunset from the bluffs while gazing across the Sound toward the Olympics. Richmond Beach Park, Shoreline, Washington, Sunday 23 September 2012. Foto by William Dudley Bass.

Something has shifted in me recently. What has shifted is I’ve lost my taste to speak harshly of others.

During the unexpected challenges of recent years I almost crumbled. The past few months were particularly difficult emotionally and financially. I could’ve sunk deeper into cynicism and bitterness and wallowed in apathy and self-pity. Instead I found the strength and the courage to pivot into a field where there are no paths. My life was my own to choose. My life was mine to live.

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It’s Time to Rethink Swimming

With more and more people becoming involved in whitewater, it’s time to rethink swimming. Many steepcreekers have been swimming differently for years, and their experiences can improve the swimming techniques for both those who take a once-a-year commercial raft trip and the average weekend paddler of Class II, III, and IV rivers.

During recent years there has been an increase in drownings and injuries among even experienced boaters as well as casual rafters, which could have been avoided, had they swum differently. Of course we all go out there thinking and hoping we’re not going to fall out of our rafts or come out of our boats. But let’s face it: sooner or later we will all swim, and swim again. Swimming is an integral part of whitewater, and just like combat rolls and eddy turns, it should be done properly and safely. It should even be practiced.

Swimming aggressively instead of floating passively is the key. A number of paddlers have been killed or injured in a variety of river conditions from long, continuous rapids to fairly small rapids. There are numerous cases of flush-through drownings where boaters were swept for extended periods while maintaining the old float-with-toes up position.

Earlier this year in a different type of incident a tandem open boater drowned in Nantahala Falls, a Class III rapid in North Carolina. He and his partner had quickly gotten into the traditional swimming position: toes up, head upstream, floating on one’s back with the arms out to slow one down. His partner shot along the tongue of the falls to safety, but he dropped over a ledge in the steeper section and pinned. His feet and lower legs became entrapped in a crevice, and he drowned. In the same incident, a would-be rescuer also trapped his foot in the same spot and nearly drowned as well. It is likely the victim would be alive today if he had swum aggressively.

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The Other Nantahala

Big Kahuna - Nantahala Cascades - est flow 950 cfsLooking at the Great Kahuna, crux of the Nantahala Cascades, from a photo dated November 14, 2009 when the Upper Nantahala Gorge was running about 950 cfs.
NOTE: This foto has since been removed and the server is often unaccessible.

 

The Nantahala River is one the most famous whitewater runs in North America. Most people, however, know it merely as a scenic but beginner-level run. Only recently has word been getting out about “the Other Nantahala,” the river of the Class V-VI Cascades, frequent floodstage big water, of shooting the Horns of the Ram into the maw of Big Wesser Falls. Carving a deep gorge across an earthquake fault through some of the steepest mountains in the Southeast – mountains so rough they have earned the dread of many Appalachian Trail thruhikers – it is home to the paddleheads of the Nantahala Outdoor Center.

Located deep in the boonies of Southwestern North Carolina, down there where Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina all butt up against the Tarheel State, the “Nanty” runs year round. Most of the recent International Peace Rally-Nantahala ’90, featuring competitors from around the world including the Soviet Union – were held in the Nantahala’s narrow, heavily-forested gorge. Right before the rally, the Nantahala raged up to a near-record 9.5 ft.

After several years of unrelenting drought, the Southeast has been in the whitewater limelight since heavy rains and frequent flooding returned in January 1989. While disastrous in the eyes of many, the high water has been a boon to paddlers. It has been a special boon to water-starved boaters of the Nantahala area.

Rising high in the Nantahala Mountains, the small river and its headwaters drop into an artificial impoundment, Nantahala Lake. Here Nantahala Power and Light Company (NLP) pumps water through 5.6 miles of pipe and releases at the generating plant about 13 miles downstream.

Most boaters put in below the powerhouse for an exciting dash through continuous Class II-III rapids as the river drops a mellow 33 feet per mile. The icy waters clash with the warm air to create thick ribbons of fog through which one spies bobbing multicolored helmets. In fact, the word Nantahala is Cherokee for “Valley of the Noonday Sun.” The river crashes on until the run culminates in Class III Nantahala Falls, 400 feet above the takeout.

This is the normal run, great for beginners to learn and for intermediates to hone their moves without fear. In the summer the river is often crowded with rafters.

But for others there is the Other Nantahala, the Nantahala of frequent high water. For a time in 1989, NPL was releasing from the lake itself. Water continues to pour down the spillway even now. In both 1989 and 1990 there were numerous extended releases on White Oak Creek, a major tributary of the Nantahala. The character of the river changed as boaters came from all over to experience the Upper Nanty, the Cascades, and Big Wesser. Or even the regular run during high water.

For many miles below the dam, the Nantahala runs through dense willow thickets, gradually widening and descending. The rapids begin to build up to Class II, sometimes III, becoming more continuous and technical. The river plunges over three jumbled waterfalls known as the Upper Cascades and finally merges with White Oak Creek to form the famous Upper Nantahala run. The stretch above the confluence is only rarely run due to the congestion of brush and the fact that the Class IV-V+ Upper Cascades are runnable only when the rest of the Upper Nantahala below is just too high, thus prematurely ending the trip.

White Oak Creek deserves mention. It is one of the hardest hair runs in the Southeast. White Oak flows through continuous Class II rapids through a gentle valley into a small NPL lake. Below the dam the bottom drops out as it plunges for several miles through a tiny gorge with continuous Class II-V rapids. Halfway down is Triple Drop (or Becky’s Catapult), a nasty Class VI three-tier waterfall choked with jagged rocks, vertical pins, and shallow pools. It has been run only once to my knowledge. Becky Weiss, one of NOC’s best hair boaters, catapulted end over end, miraculously without injury.

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We’re at the Brink of War

We are at the brink of war. You won’t find this being addressed in our current run of debates between Republicans and Democrats here in America. When I say “war,” I refer to major regional or world war, not the Global Long War on Terror. The black hole of world war is opening right now in the Middle East.

Allied countries, despite their angry rhetoric with each other, are lining up against other allied countries that also squabble among themselves. Common self-interests in the midst of extreme crises have a way of polarizing nations into opposing armed camps. This whirlpool of destruction will quickly pull in a succession of nations from all over Earth. Ongoing smaller wars around the world will likely merge into a planetwide conflagration as fast as news zips through cell phones and the Internet.

You will find little news of these urgent matters in the majority of the mainstream mass media, although tidbits surface now and then. I search through military and intelligence sources, scan news from both the far right and the far left, and sift through educated opinions from ivory tower pundits to conspiracy theory gurus. There is a lot out of detailed information out there, but so little for the public to readily see.

Why is something so vitally important kept out of the public discourse?

Several reasons exist. Primarily no one in power really wants all-out war and thus they seek to ignore or deflect attention away from its buildup. Why not inform the public? We can handle the news.

Many in the know understand such a war will crash the world economy during this Great Global Recession. An economic collapse will lead to greater environmental destruction and possibly famine. Survivors will ravage our environment even further for energy and resources in order to rebuild. We’ve not as a species experienced the collapse of a complex global economy on such a scale before. No one in their heart wants this in their legacy.

Because such a war will upend significant elections such as the American electorate voting for Obama or for Romney or other candidates. No candidate wants a war on their hands in a war-weary nation. Right? After all, we’re inundated with doom and gloom and jokes about the end of the world because it’s the year 2012.

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Public Control of the Money Power similar to Civilian Control of the Military

We need to establish public control of the money power. We must transition away from central bank currency such as Federal Reserve Notes to printing our own currency. Money is currently dominated and controlled by the international central banking system and national tax regimes. In the United States that means the Federal Reserve System, the Big Banks, and even the IRS. Our money is controlled, dominated, and even owned by private interests among the Global Financial Elite and their Allies behind the facade of the Fed and our banking system. Even our Department of Treasury and many government regulators are beholden to the central banks and transnational financial institutions that dominate Wall Street and thus Main Street.

Our money is not truly “our” money. Not yet. The principle of civilian control of the military power serves as a model to apply.

On June 23, 2010, American President Barack Obama relieved General Stanley McChrystal of command of global Allied forces in Afghanistan. It was a quick and decisive stroke by a President often criticized for prolonged deliberation or by war hawks as “not man enough.” The sacking of McChrystal has been compared to President Abraham Lincoln’s firing of General George B. McClellan in the U.S. Civil War and of President Harry Truman firing General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War.

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Running from Mad Yellow Jackets

Two Days Later... (Click on all images to enlarge.)

Two Days Later… (Click on all images to ENLARGE.)

There it is ... Pandora's Garbage Can.

There it is … Pandora’s Garbage Can.

I pissed off a blizzard of yellow jackets the other day. They were the Mask of Death rising up without any forewarning or expectation. The Grim Reaper swung out his scythe in warning as I jumped high, and we both whirled away in opposite directions. Death by surprise with the horror of a thousand toxic stings. Except it wasn’t my time to pass on through to the other side…yet.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in early October 2012, on the 2nd of October to be exact. I stepped outside into the backyard to help clean up some trash and debris. I’ve been staying with my friends Gabriel and Joy in Shoreline, just north of Seattle, as they settle into their “new” home. The backyard was a glorious overgrown wood with tall, beautiful trees and thick bushes bunched around an urban meadow of shaggy grass and dandelions gone to see. In the corner set an old, abandoned metal garbage can. The lid sat somewhat ajar. Bits of trash hung out over the rim. One long, blue length of twine spooled down and out and lay snarled in weeds and sticks.

Behind me on the upstairs balcony Gabriel and his little boy, the one I call “Young Master,” were cleaning up, too. They watched from above. And they just as easily could’ve been out in the yard, too. Young Master could’ve been walking right there with me to peek inside the old garbage can with the same curiosity that possessed me. After all, he was out there messin’ around a couple days earlier over the weekend.

I carried two bags of trash and one of compost. Without much thought I strode up to the ugly old can squatting among the bushes on the edge of the woods. My hand reached out, grabbed the lid, and lifted.

My eyes caught a quick view of what looked like gray paper. Immediately, a monster swarm of bigass yellow jackets rolled out in a thick curling cloud. These were plump, end-of-summer demons all fattened up to die in another month or so. They came together in the air like a biological chainsaw, like a living robot from the Transformer movies, and they were enraged. When I lifted up the lid, apparently I’d ripped their nest apart.

For a moment so brief yet so long I stood there on hyperalert seeing the massed swarm of buzzing yellow jackets pouring out of the can into the air around me. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, way slooooww mooooshunnn. I felt as if I was inside The Matrix movie.

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Don’t Waste Your Vote on Obama or Romney

Don’t waste your vote on two-headed snakes. Do not vote for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney. Vote independent.

Please don’t get me wrong, as both President Obama and former Governor Romney are fundamentally good men. They do, however, represent the lock on power the two major parties have on behalf of the Financial – Power Elite and their Allies. They already dominate our political landscape from Washington, D.C. to the most remote county. Any major party candidate, left and right, it doesn’t matter one whit, is constrained by dependence on sponsors and handlers. As such they will continue to undermine your Constitution. Their actions increase or allow for others to increase the power of the 1%ers over the rest of us 99%.

Republicans and Democrats rile us up and tear us apart over social issues and yet they differ little on true and significant reforms. There is little or no real movement to address the truly serious and potentially catastrophic issues we face today as not just Americans but as a species sharing this planet.

Instead our major politicians debate like entertainment celebrities and offer bland, band-aid solutions as they stay the course straight toward the edge of the cliff. For example, none of their ballyhooed economic and financial reforms will make a lick of difference until drastic reforms of the Fed, the international central banking system, fiat currency, the tax regime, and the ruptures between our economy, energy, and the environment are resolved.

Over the years you’ve likely heard the mantra warning citizens not to waste their votes on third party, alternative, or independent candidates. We the People are encouraged to give up and surrender to the reality that politics are a corrupt circus dominated by Big Everything – corporations, banks, political parties, special interests, and the military-industrial-surveillance complex. So we are told don’t waste our votes on any candidate who is not a Democrat or a Republican.

I say don’t waste your vote voting for the major party candidates. Save yourselves. Save your counties, towns, parishes, cities, states, territories, wards, and districts. Save your country. Save America. Save Planet Earth. Vote independent. Vote third party. Vote for liberty and the constitution. Vote against the tyranny of a gridlocked, two-party system that divides people emotionally over hot button social issues like abortion but otherwise are the same.

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Lipwood and the End of America

imagesdrone_1_thumbUnknown Free Clip Art

A Next Generation Drone Just For You & Yours

Once upon a time not all that long ago somewhere over there in the Land of Barely There and Right Here Now, a group of men and women from across different religions and races gathered together in the city. They were fed up. They were fed up with frakkin’ ass local politicians, bureaucrats, and bankers hobfoggin’ all together to hire those guys from Way Over There to come way over here to install those robotic spy cameras all over town.

So these men and women from a number of ethnic groups and of varying religious convictions took up arms, as was their right, and blew the FRAK out of all those damn traffic surveillance cameras in Lipwood, George, the once-new state named after the first American president’s first name. Yes, George was a composite of counties that once bordered two states. Could be what used to be the Washington – Idaho border. With a corner of Oregon? Or Colorado-Nebraska with a corner of Kansas? I suppose it doesn’t matter because the once-famous State of George doesn’t exist anymore. In the beginning, however, their clamors for secession were so loud and cantankerous the rest of the states hollered, “Truck ’em away, goddammit! To Hell with ‘em then!”

Oh, it was a wild, righteous joy to pump slugs from a shotgun into those damn spy cameras. Never mind one or two shooters themselves had a couple of tiny little surveillance devices discreetly tucked away on their persons to record such destructive indignation. In the shouts of revolt all justifications arose and no one would remember the lessons of violence throughout time. Something just had to be done…NOW! People were beyond feeling FED up! Aye, We the People felt frakkin’ FED up with the flipass FEDS!!!

Oh, it felt good. Real good. They weren’t terrorists. Who the hell were they terrorizing? Even the cops felt waves of relief. Yes, these good men and women considered themselves patriots and reclaimed their privacy from corporate-dominated government gone amok with schemes to get rich by privatizing domestic spying. F*ck*rs.

Yes, these rowdy citizens considered it their solemn duty to get out yonder and blow shit up. Especially when they found out their own shit was looking back spying on them. So out came bags of nitrogen fertilizer and cans of diesel fuel, yeah man. Freedom loving democratic socialist vanguard redneck libertarian green goo anarchists coffee tea whiskey mixing neo-communist muhfukkahs LOVE to … blow shit up.

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BizDeb Haiku Pun Fun Snowfodils

Biznik Haiku for
Tuesdays with Deborah D
Snow dusts daffodils

Tuesdays with Deb’rah
Friends, Philosophy, and Tea
One drops his coffee

Winter died last night
amid thunder snow and
sparks flowers froze crystal

Meh brains devoured
amid this Vernal Din by
yonder Flying Spaghetti Monster…but the rest of me’ll show up.

Monday 19 March 2012 as part of a light-hearted exchange between fellow bloggers being seriously silly online as spring snow fell outside. Biznik is a widespread network of entrepreneurs and businesspeople with local ones in the Greater Seattle-Bellevue area. Tuesdays with Deborah is a circle of bloggers, writers, and marketers who gather around to move each other forward and is facilitated by Deborah Drake. See more TWD @ http://www.authenticwritingprovokes.com/inspiredwriting/. Thank you.

 

William Dudley Bass
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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When Machines marry Humans for Love

If some folks can’t handle the vast variety of marriages expressed around the world, wait till humans start marrying sentient machines.

(Saturday 12 May 2012 via Twitter to Facebook)

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Response to Facebook Friend Liz T.: Liz, I’m honored. My comments were inspired by a convergence of 4 thoughts: Romney’s recent address at Liberty University where he collapsed his opinion & wants with a definition of marriage, and I sought to respond by not being one of many autokneejerk reactions, and of studies of marriages taking many forms including but not limited to polyandry, polygamy, polyamory, group marriage, open marriage, gay marriage, intersexed, etc., without extolling nor condemning any one choice. Ethics, not morals.

(13 May at 8:46am via mobile to Facebook)
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Yellow jacket punches thru a spider web as a humming bird dips into petite, purple flowers. Green stalks quiver above the grass as I brush my teeth this side of windows.

(Mother’s Day Sunday Morning 13 May)
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Sol slips behind the Olympics across the Salish. Sometimes those mountains rise above the water. Tonight they cut open the sky as it bleeds down into the sea.

(Monday night 14 May just after sunset.)
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Once upon a time a long, long time ago in some faraway place much like home, an epidemic of broken hearts raged thru a land afflicted with romance and delusion. The realm’s healers were quite perplexed to discover a broken heart does not bleed but turns to stone. And when they chipped away and cracked these broken hearts open out spilled the most sparkling diamonds. From every one.

(Tuesday 15 May 2012)
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Overcome with emotion, the first healer scooped up handfuls of diamonds from the cavity of a broken heart turned to stone, the one he cracked open eight minutes ago, to discern any clues to the current epidemic. For a moment, for one, infinite moment they sparkled with the Eye of God. Blinded into madness by such health, he danced with the Joy of Oneness as he knew nothing else no longer mattered.

Jealous and dismayed, his associate broke open another broken heart turned to stone, snatched up 6 diamonds only to feel them dissolve into liquid and penetrate his skin. His glee turned to surprise then fear then horror.

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Seeing Chris Guillebeau in Seattle for his new $100 Startup Book

Yesterday morning I sat down with a cup of strong Irish tea to catch up on a ton of email. I didn’t get very far before I discovered Chris Guillebeau was scheduled to speak that night at Town Hall Seattle. I’ve never met the guy, and his writings expressing his unique way of thinking about our world provoke and inspire me. I love his blog The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel. He has a book out with the same title that also stirs the pot, your pot, with relish. It stirred my pot for sure.

Fueled up with a late afternoon cup of coffee, I hustled downtown and promptly got lost. I make the same stupid mistake every time by parking in the wrong underworld garage then meandering around in the labyrinthine maze atop the Convention Center lid over the freeways. I caught myself ranting on the phone to my wife as I tried to get her to come meet me, but she was too far away to arrive anywhere close in time.

She listened with more patience than me as I caught myself getting angry. Feeling silly, I burst out laughing at what a fool I was. I cooled off quick and chilled out. There were more important things to do than get wiggy over buses and cars, and, boom, Town Hall. Wow, I’ve never happened upon it so quickly. I could hear the Universe poking me and saying, “So, there!”

It was only $5.00 to get in to Chris Guillebeau’s presentation Downstairs at Town Hall. Wow. And between the time I paid $5.00 and scurried back from the bathroom the numbers of people in the room had swelled from about a dozen to well over a hundred folks. As more poured in the staff flung open the partition curtains and arranged more rows of chairs. And still more people arrived.

Chris Guillebeau is a tall, lean, young man who lives with his wife Jolie in Portland, Oregon. Apparently she lets him travel as long as he promises to keep coming back home to her. He’s never worked a real job and has been self-employed most of his life. Chris is a world traveler and adventurer who’s been to, as of last count, 183 nations. He’s a salesman, volunteer activist, writer, entrepreneur, networker, published author, and a blogger with a global following.

I think of Chris Guillebeau as a type of guerrilla Seth Godin as he operates on a much smaller budget than that genius on the Hudson. Chris has demonstrated he’s a man of action and vision, probably in that order, and is both proud and humble.

In person he’s courteous, friendly, easy-going, and piercing. Up on stage he is an acute, attentive listener with a quick mind. Chris bows before his mentors and his followers and acknowledges he wouldn’t be anywhere without both. He demonstrates a gift for speaking with a certain cadence right into the ears and minds of another’s listening. And his stories are … amazing. What people do to move forward when they choose to move is awe inspiring. His unique perspective on the Great Global Recession with his mix of gloomy realism and optimistic opportunism inspires. I could feel the whole room bend forward in … wow, in gladness, in hope. But don’t get your hopes up too high. Chris Guillebeau is much too pragmatic and down-to-earth to be anyone’s messiah.

Chris is on a whirlwind tour across North America to market his new book, The $100 Startup: Reinvent The Way You Make A Living, Do What You Love, And Create A New Future. He presents his two primary themes: “freedom” and “value.” He is all about freedom. He is for each person establishing their freedom – if they choose to do so. It is a choice, and he points out too many people give up before they even get going as they believe being free is just too hard, too much work, too expensive, etc. And he is aware to be truly free and independent is only true within the context of our interdependent networks. Chris is also a big stand for value and redefines value as something a person creates to share with others. It doesn’t do any good to invent or create the most astounding thing only to hide it or use it for extorting extreme prices.

There are other themes, too. Our current economic hard times are truly HARD TIMES. Everywhere he goes Chris encounters many, many, way too many highly qualified, educated, and skilled human beings out of work or underemployed. Either they lost their jobs or their businesses failed. When Chris saw over 300 supereducated people apply for a low-level clerical position for $14 an hour with 0 benefits, he knew the system is broken.

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Tears for Me

Tears welled up from my eyes – for my self – for the first time in many moons – and I felt them wet upon my face. Ever since my heart got turned to stone 27 years ago, even after that story was dissolved & discarded 3 years ago as all made up in my mind, I find it hard to cry for myself, easy to cry for others. A moving incident from a book, movie, or article – both fiction & nonfiction – can move me to generate a flood of tears. But, oh no, only a drought to dry up my soul. I felt the depth of my own sorrow at the pain I’ve caused those I adore so deeply. Sorrow that turned to grief and eventually via the alchemical transmutation of forgiveness & compassion up into joy.

 

(First shared on Facebook in Prezz Pressley’s group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.”)

William Dudley Bass
On Facebook on 27 June 2011,
Here on 8 July 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem originally appeared on FB then on my older blog on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/tears-for-me-tears-welled-up-from-my.html. Eventually I revised and reposted it here this March 2012 on my new website. Thank you.

 

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Aye, Dirt is Divine!

Aye, I like that dirty ruttin’! where all things Primal are revealed to be Divine, where all things wet & messy are but the rapture of a mango opening into your mouth, where intimacy is the portal for spirit to merge with soul, for flesh with flesh, for star dust with stardust, the many becoming one.

 

(Inspired posting to Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY“.)

William Dudley Bass
Posted to FB on 26 May 2011,
Here on 8 July 2011
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem first appeared as one of my posts to Facebook on 26 May 2011, and then onto my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/aye-dirt-is-divine-aye-i-like-that.html. Eventually I revised it and re-published it here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Gabriel Requests Your Surrender to The One

Magnificent Gabriel came down upon the earth, folded back his wings, & clambered up into the cave above Mecca to recite the words of Allah to an illiterate merchant. Muhammad, PBUH, chose to listen in spite of his fear…to listen as if he had elephant ears…cuz he knew to be The Last Prophet of the Axial Age he had to do more than just hear so never mind the wind and rain the heat and cold the searing pain…till finally Gabriel relaxed his grasp and Muhammad, PBUP, as the great angel exhaled he the prophet inhaled, inhaled the sacred exhale of Gabriel, inhaled the Recitation, breathed to life the Qur’an, and then out across the deserts he walked and he rode, laying the foundations of the worldwide Umma, and history was never the same again. Surrender to God as freedom, not enslavement, was the greatest gift of submission. Oft misunderstood as enslavement, and still misunderstood as submitting to something way out there, while within, The Lord of all the Worlds, The ONE beyond all Gender even beyond all Attributes awaits thy ultimate surrender, inshallah. Amen.

 

(Prose Poem inspired by “Gabriel Secret,” prose poetry by Prezz Pressley posted on 6 July 2011 in the Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY,” and inspired by my own studies of Islam and a late-night-just-before-dawn mystical experience of Allah.)

William Dudley Bass
7 July 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem originally appeared on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/gabriel-requests-your-surrender-to-one.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this late March of 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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The Eye of Everything

As the we ride the Earth thru endless cycles of rotations upon its revolutions around Sol, cycles that may someday stop perhaps even before Sol drags all its planets around the center of the Milky Way, light shifts, darkness expands, love heals, and across a Kosmos jammin’ with spinning masses a voice shouts suddenly from the shadows before a fire blazing in the hearthmaw…jerks us awake as copies of The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart slips from our grips…and with scolding index finger jammed up the Sacred Ass of God with 3 more dirty fingers pointing back down into Blessed Inferno…the reincarnation of Krishna Allah shakes His many eyes open & peers around the circle at us & shouts again, “Each one of us has a point of view. Each culture and religion has a nest of views like a den of snakes. Above, however, above Us only God has View.” Another shout breaks open the smoke…”Assalamu alaikum…for the 10th Avatar is here in our midst as the mystic Christ revealed not as another Prophet, but as…us! You! Me! Yes, us, all of humanity.” And the Kundalini rises blind up the spine singing “Everything is Sacred even if you hate it.” Cerridwen Shiva Mary Vesta Isis Gaia boils hot love deep inside every nuclei of every cell as She weaves One Giant Eye in Divine Dance to crown Her spiraled, flaming root.

 

(Inspired by Prezz Pressley’s poem “EYE” of 6/20/2011 warning one to consider the angle of one’s sight amid the Sun and the Night when one is Wrong and one is Right.)

William Dudley Bass
22 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening Period.

NOTE: This was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Friday 8 July 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/eye-of-everything.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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On the Altar

Toppled from the throne of a once-vast and mighty empire whose fearsome name no one remembers except broken stones, King Ozymandias bled his tears into the sand, sand that sucked him deeper as a mad old lover whose yoni won’t let ’em go. The more he cried the deeper he sunk & drenched the sand with three million tears, fifteen hundred thousand tears from each eye, the tears of all he killed raped maimed and tortured upwelling thru his body like water pushing up thru a tree to breathe & become one with air. Tears dried & sand turned hard as cement became rock as Ozy all petrified his core solid rock choking his soul so tight his head splintered off his neck into scattered shards of light……with a whistling sigh only the wind heard the lost souls of thousands soared high & free riding upon the wings of they own sorrow grieving nothing save the ecstasy of union with Earth. Eons later as humans walk the Earth in blind oblivion of their own impending tipping point so many so many can’t even see the very Altar they stride upon everywhere they turn, an Altar hungrily awaiting for its sacrifice, waiting for its flood of tears. Yea, O Hungry Ground.

 

(Inspired response to Prezz Pressley’s poem “The Altar” in June 2011 in the Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.”)

William Dudley Bass
23 June 2011
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This prose poem found was first published on my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on 23 June 2011, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-altar.html, then revised, edited, and re-published here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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A Window Only You Can Shut

Oh a window opens in the sky
And I see myself
Far away among stars
Looking back
I behold the most precious Earth,
Love Itself
On fire
Beating back the darkness of death
Civilizations upended
Men and women and children running about
Screaming and shouting
In the center of it all
God dances with no arms

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 – after a week of pondering
Edmonds, Washington
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published on 21 January 2010, on my first blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/window-only-you-can-shut.html, then revised and reposted here on my new website this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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What happens when a Man stands Tall

When a Man stands tall
And his head is on top,
People forget how holy
Everything else is.
People tend to forget
All that is below.
Everything as an expression of the Divine
Can be viewed as sacred, right?
But how many people know that?

So when that mountain loomed high above
And I felt scared and alone
I prayed,
Prayed hard.
I stood up,
Stood up tall,
Then fell prostrate upon stones and dirt.

God heard me.
He lifted up my balls,
Put his finger up my ass,
And reminded me of his Holiness
Thus I climbed the highest mountain,
Quickly.

Are you ready for God’s finger?

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 – after a week of pondering & a little work in the Men’s Group
Edmonds, Washington
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE:  This was first published on January 21, 2010 in one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-happens-when-man-stands-tall.html, then revised and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Wandering Star

Without knowing why or understanding any reason
Once a sun came alive.
A star awoke into consciousness,
Self-awareness blessed with intelligence.

Restless, the star sought to break free of its orbit
Around the galaxy
And wander throughout the vastness of space.
After much deliberation,
This star determined it could channel its fiery energies
Into massive jets of blazing plasma and scorching radiation
And compel its body to travel across the Cosmos.

God appeared, amused, compassionate, firm,
And said,
“Sun, you are now alive.
Thus you now have a choice.
You can choose to spend your life going around the galaxy
With planets and their moons going around you,
Blessing many with your wondrous light,
And live for a very long time
Allowing living beings to flourish in your light.”

“Or,” God continued,
“You embark upon a journey to discover all that you can
Knowing you will never see everything or go everywhere,
Expending all your energy on moving yourself, a star,
Across space, constantly breaking free of gravity,
Experiencing all the wonders that you can,
And die after a short life.
And your life will be short.
And you will destroy much along your way.
Imagine a solar system teeming with life
All its worlds in harmony with one another,
And a new sun comes wandering in all curious?”

God paused and waited.
The star churned as it deliberated.
“Freedom,” replied the star, finally.

“So be it,” God responded and vanished
Leaving this Sun alone with its freedom.

Many ages went by as this star roamed the Universe
Destroying all in its approach as well as in its wake.
It was more alone than ever
As it attempted to explore star system after star system
Teeming with life and even civilizations.
Some of these even tried to attack the star
But to no avail.
Others prayed for the star to go away,
Again to no avail.

And the wandering star grew lonelier still,
Becoming envious of solar systems
Where celestial harmony reigned,
Where suns were even worshipped,
Where life grew verdant,
And in some rare cases entire solar systems
Reached a level of self-aware interdependence.
And the wandering star felt even more alone.

A moment arrived when the star’s energy waned.
This sun churned as if turning inside out, then
Blossomed into an almost-empty red giant
Of a monster, a planet-devouring colossus.
Feeble attempts to move spun into nothingness.
The star felt itself losing consciousness.
Whirled apart in last burst of struggle
The star blew apart in one final explosion of light
Seen many billions of light years away.
Lifeless the remnants collapsed
Deep into the center of the void,
A black hole sucking in all existence,
Crushing everything into nothingness,
The mystery of obliteration
All that remains.

Light arose from the depths of Darkness
And eventually
Light falls back into Darkness.
Both are richer than before.
As it is with life and death
If only all could see.

Without knowing why or understanding any reason
God chuckles.

 

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 after a week of pondering
Edmonds, Washington
Edited and reposted
30 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published in late January 2010 on one of my older blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/wandering-star.html. Then revised and reposted here toward the end of March 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Oh, the Freedom!

Oh, the Freedom
Of being down on my knees
In the gutter
Reeking of waste.

Dripping with Earth
I feel the stillness of God expanding
Embraced by Goddess enveloping.
Oh, I swim amid their pressed loins
As a dolphin leaps into air
From warm waters dripping silk.

It doesn’t matter where I am
Or what filth covers me
For I am in Love
And
All is sacred
All is divine
All is holy
Even excrement.

Adult admonishing reviles juvenile curiosity
Forgetting to hear among the scattering of scat
Giggles of the Divine.

 

William Dudley Bass
Thursday 21 January 2010 after a week of pondering.
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This was first published in early 2010 on my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/oh-freedom.html, then revised and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Holy Sea of Mind

As refreshing as a cup of cool water
Pulled up deep from the well
In the afternoon of a hot, sleepy day
God lives inside my Mind
Or so my Mind likes to think.
In truth
God lives deep inside my Heart
And sails the mind everywhere
As a ship sails the ocean
For Mind is everywhere an ocean unto itself.
With Mind anything is possible
If so believed.
The Body may turn Mind aside
Even as Body stays rooted in
The Earth of a Planet turning around the Sun.
When my ego turns inward
And I lift my eyes to
See the sun rise upon the cusp of dawn
I look inward across the infinite seas of Mind
And feel God pounding in my heart
Pounding as the greatest most fierce
Most kind lover
I have ever known.

 

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday 22 December 2009
&
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Edmonds, Washington
29 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This poem was first published in one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 21 January 2010, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2010/01/holy-sea-of-mind.html. Eventually I revised this poem and reposted it here on my new website this late March of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2009, 2010, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Spirit & Soul as Apocalypse Approaches

Inspired Notes from Working with Michael Meade

“Forget the Enlightenment,” Michael Meade said as he came out swinging. “We’ve now entered into an Age of Endarkenment.”

In early November of 2009 I visited Port Townsend with my friend Michael Scott Brooks, called Scott by those who know him, to hear Michael Meade. Port Townsend is a beautiful place, a progressive town where liberals thrive amid isolation. It’s at the tip of a peninsula on a peninsula and a ferry ride followed by a long drive from Seattle even though as the crow flies it’s fairly close by. The waters of the Salish Sea surround it with views to mountains all around. Olympic National Park squats in massive diversity behind a veil of hills. The workshops were held in the local Unitarian Universalist church, itself a bastion of self-proclaimed “liberal religion.”

Scott’s a friend of mine who facilitates Men’s Work in the mythopoetic vein of Robert Bly and Michael Meade. Although not as well known as they are, he’s an amazing man in his own right, a survivor who transcended deep trauma, and is still in training. Scott’s a master of ritual and an intuitive healer who brooks no nonsense. He cuts through bullshit with rigorous lovingkindness in a way I’ve seen very few people do. As I’ve written before, Scott transcends the boxes many contemporary Men’s groups try to put us into. Instead, he grounds himself in the timeless wisdom of indigenous human beings.

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Dreaming in the Quiet of the Storm as God Burned Holy

In the eye of a fierce storm I came face to face with God on fire. Well, almost face to face. God burned Holy, and I didn’t even realize it at the time. Michael Meade and his mythopoetic work have weighed on my mind since I first encountered him over two weeks ago here in Washington State. I signed up for his intensive workshop on Saturday, December 5, 2009 over on Vashon Island, “The Holy Thread of Dreams: Mythic Imagination and the Dreaming Mind.”

My friend Michael Scott Brooks turned me on to him earlier this month, and it’s been a ride ever since as I’ve discovered this extraordinary mythopoetic teacher and storyteller literally right next door. Soul and Spirit danced and battled with each other beneath the sweeping glare of Science and Reason.

I awoke from a dream this morning, this dream:

“It felt long ago into the future, and it was past midnight on a cold autumn night. The Salish Sea was dark and stormy with chop. Our boat carried us through the waves across the waters. I sat in the boat with other people, others who felt familiar but whose faces I could not see in the darkness. Our boat was an old-fashioned rowboat, a dory, with an oil lantern fixed high upon the bow.

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Scream

Silence I hear nothing
I grip the bars of my playpen
Wooden slats to my mother
But to me I’m in jail
No such words arose in me
All I knew the one I loved
Put me inside this prison
From which I could not escape
I cried
I sobbed
I wailed
I screamed
My mother bustles in the kitchen
Surprise turned to hurt
Hurt turned to anger
Anger turned to rage
I shake the bars and howl
If she said anything to soothe or calm me
I could not hear
I was deaf
And she didn’t even know
I was deaf
And she wouldn’t know for a few more years
And while still in diapers still
I didn’t even know there were any Higher Powers to call upon
I didn’t even know about God yet
For all the good such superstition ever proved to be
I wanna break outa my cage
I wanna tear everything up
Destroy, kill, maim, burn
I’m always in trouble
And not even aware of it until angry hands descend from above
To snatch me up
And put me in Hell
No prayers saved me
No God or Goddess or Great Spirit existed to hear in the first place
Now many years later
I react react react react react
Fight or flight or freeze
Fight or flight or freeze
Fight or flight or freeze
Exhausted I collapse
In my own waste
And as I lift up my head
I see I can walk away
From my own prison
The one I began building decades ago
While deaf in diapers
As an elephant tethered to a string that used to be a rope
Stands still inside a burning barn
And burns to death instead of running free
I too stand burning inside my own barn
And now I walk out breathing
And I walk on breathing
I walk on
The flames vanish
I am free
Free from all the stories in my mind
Free from rage
Free from regression
Free to rediscover The One God Beyond All Others
With freedom comes responsibility
I must remember all those left behind
Still trapped in prisons of the mind
I open wide my angel wings
Black as mountain shadows
Light burns white from my heart
Scorching all our truths with the one truth there is,
Love.

 

William Dudley Bass
13 October 2009
28 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

From my Mythic Awakening period.

NOTE: This Prose Poem Rap from one of my earliest childhood memories was inspired by Mythopoetic Men’s Work with Michael Scott Brooks. It was first published on my earlier blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Monday 9 November 2009, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2009/11/scream.html. Later it was revised and re-published here this March 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2009, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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I Smashed My Brains and Saw the Stars of Heaven

Concussions, Sports, Psychology of Sports Injuries, and Brain Trauma

Yes, on one sunny afternoon during high school football practice I smashed into Doug helmet to helmet. We crashed to earth, I blacked out for a moment, and then I awoke and saw the stars of Heaven. Damn, I felt drunk and drunk enough to play again. Our coach pulled us aside.

Doug kept his mouth shut as he walked as normally as he could without wobbling. He was smart and played cool. Me, I played doofus dork and insisted I saw stars. They whirled around my head. With eyes open, too.

“What happened?” asked Coach Fore. Coach Skeeter Fore, as he was called. He was locally famous for being a ferocious winner and a gracious loser. Coach was a caring, generous, funny man and the opposite in body type from a li’l bitty mosquito. He simply didn’t know much about brain injuries back in those days either.

It was the mid to late 1970s in Farmville, Virginia. Late Summer-early Autumn of 1976 to be exact. I was a senior in high school, Class of 1977. I played varsity football for the Prince Edward Academy Wolverines, and I was the smallest person on the team. I played primarily defense, often as a nose guard, and ran on kick-off. I rarely played offense, but I was a rascal of a nose guard. I’d throw my little ass across the legs of those big brutes hulking over me and logroll ‘em good. I’d dart between giant cavemen-like high school students who look like they should’ve graduated three years ago and try to tackle somebody before I got stomped. I loved wearing my orange-and-black Wolverine jersey with the black and white lettering. Even if I got stomped by trolls.

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The Devil in Uncle Watt

Family Stories & Genealogical Exorcisms

Uncle Watt bit off the head of a big, fat, juicy green tobacco worm, peed on his deaf cousin Aumon, and poked mules in the ass with a sharp stick just to see ‘em kick. Oh, yes, he was full of the Devil. Yes, he was! So people said as they laughed remembering the men, and thus my efforts to untangle dead ancestors one from the other to find the truth lured me down into a genealogical exorcism stained with the racism, class struggles, and violence of our common history.

“Oh my Lord, he done got the Devil in ‘im BAD,” Raffie, an ancient-oaken-looking man who said he used to work beside Uncle Watt on the farm once told me back when I was a young laddie lad. “Yeah, Lord, I’m tellin’ ya, it was BAD! Yessir! Twas BAD havin’ the Devil take a hold of him like it did.” As late as July 2009, Helen, one of my beloved aunts and a Beatnik artist then in her 80s, when asked about Uncle Watt called him “quite a character.” And so I tumbled down the dumbwaiter chute of a family mystery. Who was this “Devil?”

My Dad told me stories. Raffie told me stories. Uncle Willy told me stories. Even Uncle Aumon who got peed on told me stories. Willy and Aumon were brothers, and as they were also my Dad’s uncles they were really my paternal great-uncles. All of them would shake their heads with bemused dismay and chuckle. They could laugh simply because Uncle Watt was dead. He died young and wasn’t around anymore to torment anyone with all his foolishness. I never got to meet him. Dad said, “Uncle Watt died before you were born, Son, long before you were born.” He didn’t remember what of, tho.

“You don’t remember what he died of?” I asked all eaten up with a bug-eyed churn of impatient dismay.

“No, I don’t recall anything,” Dad replied. “Wait. Something about his toe. His big toe, maybe? Hell, I don’t know. Can’t help ya there. Got work to do now. Don’t you?”

Turns out Uncle Watt died long before my Daddy was born, too, as in a little over two decades before Dad’s birth. The strangeness about Watt Bass includes those who told all those crazy wild tales about him spoke as if they were there running alongside him in the same window of time. Whenever I asked way back then how long ago did those events happen not one person seemed to know. Asking a few questions turned into an unexpected adventure in genealogy as I dove into the rabbit hole of fading memories, cryptic notes on faded paper, and incomplete information online.

Watson Bass was a fun-loving guy who apparently was constantly pushing people’s buttons, telling jokes, and playing pranks like biting off the head of a giant caterpillar to pee all over Uncle Aumon, who was but a laddie-lad, then, too. He lived life on the wild side. Chased pretty girls but never married. Or so I was told. Which I found out was wrong, wrong, wrong as he certainly did marry. Unless I stumbled upon the tombstone of the wrong Uncle Watt. Turns out I didn’t as the correct tombstone was also the same shared with his now-deceased wife.

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The Horror of a Tortured Barbie Doll: Moral Dilemmas in Everyday Life

A blonde Barbie doll sticking halfway out through the roof of a car shuddered as the edge of a sliding glass window trapped her against the edge of the sunroof portal. A grinning man kept jamming the edge against the trembling doll as his kids watched in horror. Buckled up below in the back seat, his little girl screamed. For a moment I felt I actually heard the Barbie doll scream. Maybe, in a way, it did.

Moral dilemmas pop up, of course, when you don’t want them to. I mean fast moving ones such as right now something terrible is happening, events are unfolding, life is happening and maybe dying. Moral dilemmas force us to make decisions when we’re caught off guard. As we are always at choice in life, choosing to react blindly or to respond with intention, too often moral dilemmas trigger fight or flight or freeze.

Since this seems to happen to me more than I like, I hate moral dilemmas. And at the same time, oh, what a gift. Yes, these are gifts, each one a lesson in failure to feel into, to study, and to learn from. Part of the practice is for me to let go of remorse and stop beating myself up. In a perceived reality of cause and effect, where our thoughts and emotions lead to action, we are always at choice. Yes, in spite of circumstances, history, ethnicity, gender, religion, abilities, genetics, geography, culture, education, socio-economic class, and the illusion of true free will, you and I are always at choice.

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Last Night I Dreamed of a Dead Woman from Long Ago

Six nights ago I dreamed about a long-dead friend and have felt obsessed about it ever since. Just finished looking at old pictures of her I found in dusty high school yearbooks. She graduated in June of 1976 a year ahead of me. Her name was Jo Anne.

We didn’t hang out much at all in high school. We became friends many years later after she tracked me down to Richmond, the capital city of Virginia, where I lived and attended grad school in the mid-1980s. She wasn’t my girlfriend. We were never lovers. More like I was her confidante – we were buddies and pen pals there for a while. Before she died.

We were both rural kids bussed from the far corners of Prince Edward County into the town of Farmville, where we attended high school in the south-central part of Virginia. She was a wild beauty who once stood up and shouted out in the one class we ever shared, “If it feels good, do it!” Followed by a big, goofy laugh.

The rest of us fool kids giggled and either nodded our heads in agreement or shook it like “She’s crazy, crazier than us, like rilly crazy.” I did all three. Jo Anne was tall and slender with long, black hair. She carried herself with an air of crazy confidence, reminding me sometimes of that zany Swedish character Pippi Longstocking. Art was among her favorite subjects, and she was known to be quite imaginative with both pen and brush. Back then I was way too shy to do anything but laugh with her and admire her daredevilry.

Ten or twelve years later, after I had already graduated from high school then college, been married and divorced, moved to the city, and was buried into my first intense year of graduate school, Jo Anne looked me up and found me. She got my contact info from my parents back on the farm in Prince Edward. She knocked on my apartment door where I lived down in The Fan, the Bohemian part of Olde Richmond Town. I opened my door, and she came on in and sat down. Just like that. Out of the blue.

I had to hold my breath and pretend nothing was the matter. She had warned me, but it was still a shock. She was all broken up from a terrible automobile accident. Or maybe it was a motorcycle wreck? I just don’t remember now. But she had a severe limp, was kind of hunched over, and had lost an eye and part of her face. Her voice was husky and whispery, as the accident had damaged her neck and throat. She was still beautiful in a ghostly way, and it was clear she was struggling with it all even as she tried to dismiss it all as another “just what happened, life goes on” kind of thing.

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My Third Wife Changes Her Name: Gender Issues, Ex-Wives, and Surname Conflicts

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The Blended Family Wedding of Kristina Katayama (L) and William Bass (R) with vows to their children (Morgan, Kate, & Talia) and with their Community.

I married Kristina this past Saturday the 11th of July 2009. She was the great love of my life at that time. We have been together over 7 years, ever since late 2001, as I write this essay. Kristina is a vibrant and dynamic woman, bold, sexy, intelligent, professional, and passionate. She lives full out as a Postmodern Age human being. We married ourselves privately in bed back in May 2005 and became officially engaged in November 2005. We intended to celebrate with a public, legal wedding in the summer of 2006. Didn’t happen. We felt too busy with careers and children, however, and lived as if already married. In a way we already were. And in 2009 we finally did it. Up to our Wedding Day, Kristina used her father’s family name, “Katayama,” as her own. And after our wedding she insisted on changing her name. Or, to be more accurate, adding my surname to hers.

“What?” I asked incredulously. “That’s old-fashioned culturally-ingrained male domination of females. I don’t own you. I’ve fought against this kind of bigotry my whole life.”

I had more to say, too. “I LIKE the Japanese sound of ‘Katayama.’ Mine is an “Olde English” name. I like the global feel of Bass and Katayama being together as a couple. It supports Euro-Asian-American planetary integration! My name is short and monosyllabic. Yours is long and lovely with four syllables emphasizing the same vowel. And don’t you dare hyphenate! That’s a monstrosity!” Blah blah blah.

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Crazy Fun Family Bike Trip on the Iron Horse Trail

Our Blended Family Bike Excursion on the “Iron Horsie Trail,” Washington State, during the Summer of 2006

Biking down into the Center of the Earth, or so it seemed at the time... Katayama-Bass Family Self Portrait, Sunday 20 August 2006

Biking down into the Center of the Earth, or so it seemed at the time… Katayama-Bass Family Self Portrait, Sunday 20 August 2006.

Woo Hoo!!! A Wild Family Trip with William & Kristina and the Kids! Yeah!

We pulled it off! Our wild and crazy family mountain bike ride across the Washington Cascades! Well, sort of. At times we felt we descended beyond the Gates of Hades on our own nutty journey into the center of Planet Earth. But a fun journey. It was a logistical workout, and blessed with a treasure of memories. Originally Kristina and I planned a 3-day family bike ride with all 3 kids along 40+ miles of the John Wayne Pioneer Trail thru Iron Horse State Park in the Cascade Mountains. We’d planned to carry all of our gear and camp along the way. We were unable to work out the logistics to our satisfaction, however, as we didn’t want to take two cars.

So we turned it into a different sort of trip and just took off on Friday 18 August 2006. By then all the campgrounds were full. We whimsically drove up winding National Forest Service roads and stared over cliffs toward dramatic mountain scenery. In grim, puzzled silence, we rumbled past a weird, old man living out of a rusty, red car who tied plastic bags up in the bushes alongside the road. He turned and stared at us as if he could eat us all up for supper. Imagining great and terrible things then giggling like embarrassed maniacs, we drove on around the rocky corner.

Many a dusty mile later, we found a lovely, open spot among the woods, rocks, and overgrown logging slash. There we wild-camped near the top of Amabilis Mountain. Arid conditions and clear skies greeted us. Big, wide-open skies. The Milky Way seemed to cleave the heavens in half like some incandescent sword. A meteor shower was in progress, too. Beginning every late July and stretching into the middle of August, the Perseid Meteor Shower is a treat out here in the clear, arid skies typical of our Northwest summers. Several spectacular shooting stars and flurries of little ones blazed across dark skies every night. Friday night there we slept.

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Poem to My Lover upon Her 41st Birthday

Deep into Abyss
We plunge
Beneath shadows of angel wings
Dark as midnight mountains.

In the Darkness
I feel you,
I feel the hot white light
Of your Heart.

 

William Dudley Bass
8 November 2009
17 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

From my Mythic Awakening period

NOTE: This poem to Kristina, my fiancé at the time, was inspired by my work with Michael Meade, mythologist and poet. I originally posted it on her birthday in 2009 on my older blog, Cultivate and Harvest, at: http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2009/11/poem-to-my-lover-upon-her-41st-birthday.html, then I edited and reposted here this March of 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2009, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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My Beloved & I (2001-2013)

I love this amazing woman, Kristina Katayama.

Then 12 and a half years later we divorced, darn it, but not before we dove thru our Hearts deep into the Center of the Sun.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina, April 23, 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass, March 17, 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Kristina Katayama: Businesswoman, World Traveler, Adventurer, Mom, Stepmom, my Fiance, & then my Wife. Professional Photo by Cass Redstone for Kristina in Seattle on 23 April 2008, & adapted on iPhoto by William Bass for this essay on 17 March 2012. Seattle, Washington, Cascadia.

Note: Click on any photo to expand it, and click again to make it even larger. Click the back arrow to return to the essay. All photographs protected by Copyright with All Rights Reserved. Thank you, and enjoy!

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Morgan Bass Dives Into Life

A brief photo-essay of memorable times when my oldest daughter Morgan Hannah blossomed from pre-teen into full adolescence as she navigates to womanhood. She was 14 years old and a 9th Grader at Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Washington, when these photos were taken. They were shot by a classmate in black & white for a photography class Morgan and her friend participated in. In just two more days, Morgan turns 18 years old as she enters adulthood as a young woman. I am thrilled and feel deeply blessed. Here is a snapshot in time altered for fun as we explore life from sometimes unusual angles.

Morgan Hannah Hughes Bass, age 14, Seattle, WA, Autumn of 2008. Photo by Classmate.

Morgan Hannah Hughes Bass, age 14, Seattle, WA, Autumn of 2008. Photo by Classmate.

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My Girls’ School Pictures 2007-2008

Youngest first! These school portraits provide snapshots in time when my three daughters dove into life. The originals were destroyed when our home burned down in 2010, so these are digitalized copies from those halcyon days before the fire.

All photos are from the Seattle Public Schools in the northern half of Seattle, Washington. Enjoy!

Talia Katayama (now Bass), my beautiful, talented, and sensitive stepdaughter since before her birth. I helped deliver her at home on the floor and helped raised her up, too. Continue reading

Broken Glass

My Momma always used t’say I was rough on things. And after awhile, my Daddy started saying the same thing. They called me by my middle name, and said, “Dudley, you’re rough on things!” Well, I was a very energetic little boy. Things had a tendency to break around me.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Prince Edward County in South-Central Virginia during the 1960s. I lived in a house built in the middle of what used to be a big pigpen. “Hogs,” they called ’em back then. When pigs got big they called ’em hogs. “Hawgs.” As in “Hawgs!” You could even see the straight line of trees where the old woven wire fence used to run to keep the hogs in the pen. Otherwise it was all green grass, daffodils, shade trees, pansies, irises, and vegetable gardens.

It grossed me out a few years later, though, when I got my hands on a couple of Daddy’s college textbooks on parasitic worms and other nauseating diseases associated with domestic livestock. The books showed the most graphic and horrible pictures, and I found them quite fascinating – until I realized I lived inside of an old pigpen.

My house back then was small. I could run from one end to the other, and often did. The front door opened from a small, cozy front porch into the living room on the almost-east side of the house. That flowed through a big wide walk-through into a dining room, which opened into the kitchen, which opened onto an enclosed back porch where the washing machine was. All the bedrooms, closets, bathroom, and the den were on the sorta-west side of the house. I could run all the way from the front door to the back door and back again. The full length of the house. As hard as I could. Fast!

Drove my Momma crazy. “Dudley,” she would yell, “Stop slamming the front door! Either go out and play or stay inside and be quiet.”

“Yes Ma’am!” I shouted and deciding to stay inside, charged through the house as fast as I could, my little feet drumming across the floors. That drove my Momma crazy, too.

“Dudley!” she scolded again. “Stop running in the house! Go outside and run.”

Oh, boy, but I was having too much fun.

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“Dat Kate!” One Morning of School Bus Madness

Kate the Great was in good spirits this one, crazy Seattle morning in early Autumn of 2007. And after being so TESTY last night, too. Play play play every day day day. Even raided Gwen’s kitchen, the private abode of her mom who lived downstairs.  Raided the kitchen like a hyena turned all a loose up inside cupboards, refrigerators, garbage cans, and every darn thang. Tho she did gwarbbled up the eggs I scaramboolled up with sharp Irish cheddar. Yea, play play play all day day day. After just one visit back to Virginia, Kathryn’s grandparents on both sides of her family nicknamed her “Hurricane Kate.”

She’s such a BELOVED third grader, beloved because everyone who doesn’t live with her just ADORES her, and only 8 years old, too. Soon to be 9 years old, she’ll let you know. Kate is my wild, wild, crazy ass daughter. And I love her madly cuz she is so daggone crazy and she is clear her name is KATE and she is the only real KATIE KATE KATE this side of the Moon but she ain’t no loon!

And I’m in good spirits myself this morning, having drunk too much coffee, and being a beehive talkin’ country boy from the South who done relocated to the Northwest and tucked away my pitchfork, so started talkin’ like one to remind my lovely Emerald City lasses of their dangerous heritage. All of which drives my kids crazy cuz they HATE it and laugh and shout at me to “Stop talking like that, Dad. DAD!!!”

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On Living, Dying, Death, Loss, Grief, Ghosts, and Moving On

The events of my father’s death followed by my mother’s and all that arose afterwards were pivotal events in my life. They are, I would imagine, for the majority of human beings around the world. My writings on these topics took place over time and have evolved into the narrative contained within the following series of essays, ruminations, photographs, and poems.

Death is an everyday aspect of life, and yet in our culture perhaps the least visited, the least discussed, the most disturbing, the most feared, and the most liberating. Bereft of a cultural web of community grief and loss, we nowadays hurry the dying out of view and the dead into the ground or into an urn or whatever just so we can get back to what we really have reduced our lives to: being too busy. In the process of freeing ourselves up to be so busy we have unwittingly robbed ourselves of something intimate, indeed of something which can be a rich affirmation of life and purpose.

Loosely I lump the following as my “Death of my Parents” canon, and it’s much more than the deaths of Mom and Dad. Each is fully self-contained, although they do flow one to the other. Some are long, while others are short. Most have photographs, some don’t, and a few have lots and lots of pictures. I list them below in the chronology of which I published them on my website, William Dudley Bass on Earth at the Brink, although as with blogs they show up in reverse order with the last one posted at the top.

I invite you to dive on in and join me on a certain timed yet timeless odyssey.

1. “Death with Father,” https://williamdudleybass.com/death-father.

2. “My Mom & Death,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mom-death.

3. “During My Mother’s Dying,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mothers-dying.

4. “Mom Passes On: Ruminations,” https://williamdudleybass.com/mom-passes-on-ruminations.

5. “The Morning After We Buried Mom,” https://williamdudleybass.com/morning-buried-mom.

6. “Daddy’s Ghost,” https://williamdudleybass.com/daddys-ghost.

7. “Barreling Across America with my Daughter Morgan,” https://williamdudleybass.com/barreling-america.

8. “Dad’s Old Chair,” https://williamdudleybass.com/dads-old-chair.

Thank you, dear Readers.

 

William Dudley Bass
5 March 2012
Seattle, Washington
https://williamdudleybass.com

 

Copyright © 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Naked Barbies at the Bus Stop

Tuesday Morning of 6 May 2002

Kate, my 4 year old, crawled around the corner into the room pushing a big, grey, toy horse with a shaggy, black mane. A naked, plastic woman was bent backwards across the saddle of the horse with her large, plastic breasts pointing up and out into the parlor. Unlike her limbs, her breasts were immovable. I was amused by the way Kate had the doll face-up over the horse instead of draped face-down as “in reality.”

Morgan, my 9 year old, stares.

“Oh, my God,” she blurts out. “A naked Barbie!”

Hmmnn, not only is my third grader a self-professed Atheist, who like many Atheists continue to use the Lord’s name, but she has become increasingly self-conscious about her pre-budding figure.

“Kate, are you ready to go to the bus stop with me and Morgan?” I asked.

“You are NOT taking a naked Barbie to the bus stop!” Morgan declared.

Continue reading

Snow Haiku Flurries

Snow Haiku Flurries,
Sort of,
By the Wenatchee River
Near Plain, Washington
Winter of 2007-2008

I shovel snow beneath cold stars
Moon shadows fall between tall trees
I dig my path to the tallest tree

I woke to white sunshine
And zero degrees outside
The river slowed with ice

I stood at river’s edge
Watching ice float downstream
Silver in white sunshine

Snow spins from frozen branches
Glitters as fractured glass
Ice sparkles in sunshine

Snow spins frozen
Glitters like glass
Sparkles in sunshine

Children laugh in snow
Cold crackles white
Bright is my deafness

Breath hangs frozen in air
Amid clusters of evergreen branches
Where I walk past cold trees

Western red squirrel poises
Halfway up a ponderosa pine
And barks as I carry firewood

Yesterday two pickup trucks filled with snow
Race ahead thru lowland rain
Bemused I watch them go

Sun burns cold across winter skies
Settles down behind yonder ridge
As I gather up another armload of firewood

Deep in dark woods
Next to one silent cabin
A giant crucifix twinkles red with Holiday lights

Gorgeous woman one year away from forty
Sinks silently into our hot tub
Naked her eyes behold me

Clouds blow in across the Moon
Snow falls from darkness
Trees whisper in the wind

She emerges from the hot tub
Slips on her bathrobe backwards as snowflakes fall
Tiptoes to the railing, bends over and wiggles

Together we join with the darkness
The lights within become one
We slip in the snow and laugh

Our bed is warm before the fire
We slide under heavy covers
And snuggle with pillows

Sleep is most divine
Though often dismissed
I close my eyes as breaths flow free

 

William Dudley Bass
January 2008
March 2012
Plain/Leavenworth, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

NOTE: First crafted between late November 2007 and early March 2008, they were originally published on my earlier website, Cultivate and Harvest, on November 19, 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/snow-haiku-flurries.html. Then I revised and republished them here this March 2012.

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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When Kurt says, “May you be fully disillusioned…”

Rain drops
crater
my mind.
Free of clay
and gravity
I see the Moon
from Space
and realize
I am already
dead.
On the mirror side of Life
my memories
live
until forgotten.
Surrender to the flow of all that is
tender…and sweet.

Time for a drink
With my friend Kurt
Who once enlightened
Said, “May you be fully disillusioned.”
OK, I said
Make mine whiskey.

 

William Dudley Bass
2008, 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Also inspired by my experiences in Robert Masters’ Psycho-Spiritual Training Practicum and inquiries with my buddy Kurt Treftz, this was first published on my earliest website, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 19 November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-kurt-says-may-you-be-fully.html, then revised and republished here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Deatharoni & Cheese

Five seconds before my conception
Death rides me
With a wild laugh.
I awake raw and open
From cannibal dreams.
I feel my heart beat…
…still inside my chest.
My heart opens behind closed ribs
A searing bright chakra sun
Opens as a giant hand
And grabs me from the inside out.
Shakes me apart,
My beating blood hot heart.
I want more
I want me, all of me.
I am I
My self.
Self.
Ego dies in life
Self dissolves with Death
Nothing left
Not even deatharoni and cheese.

 

William Dudley Bass
2007 in British Columbia
2008
2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: I composed and shared this wicked little poem in my Psycho-Spiritual Training Practicum on in 2007 up in Surry/White Rock, BC. It was first published on my earliest website, the one created for homework for that Practicum, my blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/deatharoni-cheese.html. Eventually I chose to revise and republish it here on my new website this January of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Titanomachius

Blindfolded,
Justice springs unbalanced
From swinging scales
Of Judgment.

Revealed,
Our Totem Animals
Emerge from Id
As jackals and hyenas
Eating puppies.

Twelve Titans all,
We devour ourselves
In cannibalistic incest.

Amok beyond Tartarus,
Sired by excess of heart
Our skeletal hands
Rise with Chthonic howls
To clasp your lips
And with Cultish frenzy
Pull YOU back
Into Abyss.

 

William Dudley Bass
2007, 2008, 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was originally handwritten for the Counseling Practicum as we wrestled with the moral dilemma of how to respond to someone who refused to participate in violation of his or her commitment to participate. It was first published on my earlier website created as homework for that same Practicum, my blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, November 19, 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/titanomachius.html. Eventually I revised and reposted it here on my new website/blog this January 2012 as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Crazy Making: A Bad, Bad RapSongPoem with a Nod to the Beatles

Hey Gwen,
Hey Hey, Crazy Gweeyin,
In the news today,
O boy,
I heard Big Government say,
Ahoy,
All the airlines have to play
The way we say
And all passenger information
On all international flights
Has to be reported directly
To Homeland Security…
Sex…cure…me…pleeeeeze…

Security Security Security
For:
Terror
Drugs
Guns
International Pornography…

O boy,
Oh no,
Uh oh,
So I ran a comb thru the air
And disappeared into thin hair
Locked in a black jail
By the CIA
And the NSA
With only a pail
And a bed of hay
Where you can’t call Triple A.

We’re worse off
Than in George Orwell’s 1984
Where peace is war
And Security is now our Haven
Where for “Safety Reasons”
We’ve become craven
Slaves driven Insane
By Psychotic Corporations
Living in Freedom
By Purchased Declarations
Spawned in greed
Among bloody, dark Corruptions.

Oh yeah,
O Boy,
Now what the …   FUCK!!!!!!!!!
George W. Bush,
American President by a Bloodless Coup,
Says our “Constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper.”

“The most successful dictatorship is one that presents itself as a democracy and enrolls the majority of the public into that belief.” Yep.

And on top of that I-5 & I-90 from central Seattle to SeaTac to Bellevue will be shut down to 1 lane of traffic each way for 19 days of mass construction beginning tonight…yes, beginning tonight.

BOOM!!!

I shave my head in shame
And remove my Name.

I stand in line
To pull myself
Out of Time.

BOOM!!! FUCKA FUCKA FUCKA BOOM FUCK!

“WTF?” ain’t no Government Agency.
WTF!
WTF?

It’s the Question all the Talking Heads in the Mainstream Mass Media Need to start asking LIVE on prime time yea peel the duct tape off your mouths cuz its time its time and its long over due this time to say it shout it whisper it slam it down all along the grapevine lines and all across the dinner table to make the microwave oven jump and make folks turn their round WALL-E faces away from screentime mating:

WTF!?!?

In the news today, THIS really happened, folks!
Ain’t no lie
Ain’t no air left for hair
Ain’t no comb big enough to shove down
Into the deep, deep Big Government Pies
And rake out Big Bankster
Corporate Nits and Lice and Happy Lies
As THEY plug your brains into the nice, warm Matrix
As Orange as Clockwork on Mars
And Green as Soy on Lent,
Only two questions left to ask
All you happy little Bell Jars:

WTF?!!!?
&
Who’s driving those UFOs?

 

William Dudley Bass
10 August 2007
Edited and reposted February-March 2012.
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was first published on my earlier website, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 19 November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/crazy-making-bad-poem-with-nod-to.html, then revised and republished here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Jihad & Crusade

Jihad & Crusade:

A rough, found poem, sort of…

Holy war holy war

War most unholy

So much superstition

Too much bloodshed

You gotta go

You gotta go

You gotta go away from me

So get away from me

Self-Righteous Followers

Of

Moses and Jesus,

Buddha and Mohammed,

Even you Confucius

And Zoroaster, too,

And all you Pagan Deities

Glorifying human sacrifice

And to tell the Truth

It’s really all you Believers and Gospel interpreters

Who blame all the rest of us for your own blasphemies,

Not our avatars and sages.

The rest of y’all back away from us.

Y’all gotta go

Gotta go

Go go go

And leave my kids alone,

Leave my kids alone!

So begone

Begone

Not to the stars beyond

But back to the past.

Forever.

The Fundamentalists of every religion are the most Satanic.

So drenched in their own Hate they’re convinced

The Devils they see among all the rest of us are Real.

They fail to see their projections as their own reflections.

Peace and Blessings upon all Holy and Sacred.

No more war

No more violence

No more dogma

Peace, Mercy, Love, Forgiveness, Compassion, Firmness, Kindness, Liberty, Discipline, Purpose, Integration, Unity, Co-Creation, Cooperation, Power,

And more Love

Is what we need now.

William Dudley Bass

2007, 2008, 2012

Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was first published in my earlier blog Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday 18 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/jihad-crusade.html, then reprinted here this 4 March 2012, with my permission as the author. Thank you.

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Trench Warfare Today and Now

A poem found amid ruins of faces which once knew love

Over hot coffee
I study faces
From almost a hundred years ago
Torn apart in the First World War
Which was neither the first nor the last
But one of the most horrific.

Mud without romance
Trench warfare
Massive artillery bombardments
Machine guns pouring lines of fire
Flame throwers
Poison gas
Rotten corpses unburied by shells
Poison air
Tanks
Barbed wire
Mud
Splintered forests
Rats
Lice
Typhoid
Dysentery
Men lived in trenches
You stand up
Bullets punch your skull
Shell fragments rip your face
Mud sweat blood & rat feces
Bacteria
Viruses
Fungi
Protozoans

Mud
Unseen things breeding
Everywhere on everything
Septic
Eating
You alive
While
Naked
Inside filthy, uniformed
Ragged Love
Zero privacy
Ahhh…my gut screams!
Red mud pours out my ass
And cements me to Earth.

Oh, my Mother would’ve loved it,
Not the killing or the pain or the horror,
But the truth of horror
Uncovered
Right here on my kitchen table
As I drink hot, black coffee
And turned the page.

Extreme high number of injuries above the chest in the trenches marked the
Great War of 1914-1918.
Art blossomed by men deranged
And rearranged
Driven
Striven to
Paint and write madness to liberate them selves from horror.
Masks by a corps of artists covered mangled faces
Rescued from battlefield carnage.
My mind makes a collage of masks and faceless faces
From this Smithsonian magazine article.
My Mother would have loved it,
So curious was she for all things true and weird.
Over an image of my own face
Black coffee splashes
The color of war.

Source of Inspiration:
Alexander, Caroline. “Faces of War: Amid the horrors of World War I, a corps of artists brought hope to soldiers disfigured in the trenches.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2007. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/mask.html.

 

William Dudley Bass
February 2007 &
18 November 2008
4 March 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Written in 2007, edited and first published in my earlier blog Cultivate and Harvest on 18 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/trench-warfare-today-and-now.html. Then edited and re-published here this 4 March 2012. Thank you.

Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Dad’s Old Chair

Poetic Ruminations from sitting in my dead Daddy’s favorite chair:

One morning in March
I go and find my father’s
Old green recliner and sit in it.
My dog sits at my feet
As my beloved sleeps
down the hall in the bed.
The old chair is cozy and warm.
No wonder my dad used to sleep in it.

I sit and stare out the window
At spring snow melting away,
At ponderosa pines, white birches,
Cottonwoods and old stumps.
Blue emptiness fills mountain skies
Out here in the Washington Cascades.

It would be an alien landscape to my father,
Who died three years and over three months ago.
My brother was spooked by the chair;
Thought it haunted, kind of, and asked me to take it.
Said it smelled too much of Dad.
That chair traveled over three thousand miles
From an old farmhouse in Virginia
To a new western lodge in Washington,
From the Sandy River to the Wenatchee.

Once or twice I thought I sensed my dad back in his chair,
Just left-over energy, an echo of a cherished memory.
Mom’s nurses swore they saw his ghost at least twice;
I wanted to see his ghost, too,
But never did.
My father moved on after Mom joined him beyond Death.

As I sit in my Dad’s old chair
With a dog insisting on being petted,
Pushing its head and lifted paw into my lap,
I surrender to God.
My ego battles with the Divine
Not owning its divinity.
I pray, meditate, contemplate the future.
And as I gaze out the window
I miss my Dad.

 

William Dudley Bass
March 2008
March 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on my old website Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 13 November 2008 at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/dads-old-chair.html, then re-published here this 4 March 2012 with my permission as the Author. Thank you.

Copyright © 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Barreling Across America with my Daughter Morgan

Morgan gears up for The Long Ride, April 2007.

Morgan gears up for The Long Ride, April 2007.

Diary of a 7-Day Journey with my Daughter Morgan:

Morgan jounced along with me as I drove across the Continent from Virginia to Washington State in a moving truck crammed like an old-fashioned peddler’s wagon. My parents had died fairly recently, Daddy in late Autumn of 2004 and Momma about two years later in 2006. As a result of their passing, I inherited many of their possessions. The last time I’d driven a moving truck packed with so much heavy furniture and jangly stuff cross-country was back in 1993. This road trip also signaled a completion of a cycle of death-journeys back and forth from Seattle to rural Virginia around the deaths of both parents.

Catching Daddy droolin' one night sleeping in the Truck, April 2007. Photo by Morgan Bass.

Catching Daddy droolin’ one night sleeping in the Truck, April 2007. Foto by Morgan Bass.

Morgan and I arrived with all belongings in the wee hours of Saturday morning, about 2:30 AM, on 14 April 2007. It was quite a trip. And it was a special trip, a long overdue opportunity for some father – daughter bonding. Morgan is my oldest daughter of three and my only biological offspring. She had turned 13 a month earlier. I love her dearly, and it was painful to stand aside and watch her grow up and apart. I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, but at 12 she started taking off.

As my eldest daughter, she was but a sprout compared to her grandparents who recently died in their mid-70s. Dad passed first, dying on the 1st of December 2004, the third anniversary of my partnership with Kristina. After a few false starts, Mom finally followed on my brother’s birthday, 15 November 2006. My sister Beth had successfully navigated between doctors, lawyers, accountants, funeral home directors, tax preparers, insurance agents, courts, gravediggers, bankers, and stressed out relatives. Beth performed difficult job with perseverance and excellence, all while working full-time, raising a daughter, and settling in from Arizona back into Virginia.

The closure of this entire mess o’ dying proved to be an adventure yet.

Through the Windows over the Mountains

Through the Windows over the Mountains

Saturday 7 April – First, flying from Seattle, WA to Richmond, VA via Chicago was uneventful and smooth, albeit we landed at 11:30 PM that night. Ray Hinde, my sister’s second husband, was generous to pick us up at the airport as our rental car plan fell through. He had just driven to the airport the night before to pick up his son and daughter by his first wife. They had buzzed in from Arizona.

2x.2007_0414morganisoamazing0002

Morgan goofin’ up de plane.

On the plane I read David McCullough’s history book 1776 and was struck by the irony of me, a Virginian living in Washington, reading about George Washington, himself a native of Virginia and in whose honor my adopted state was named after. And Morgan is a native of Washington and is visiting Virginia. The events of that gripping narrative, however, describe a situation that changed history. If the American Revolution had failed there would be no “Virginians” living in Washington.”

Even so, we paid my Aunt Helen a midnight visit down in the Fan, the Bohemian area of Richmond. Helen, my daddy’s Big Sister, had a box of gold-rimmed china from her mother to give Morgan, who is Mary Yeatts Bass’s great-granddaughter. Helen, a morning lark, was kind enough to stay up late for us to visit. It was stunning to walk into her home in the Fan. On every wall was beautiful and vibrant art. On the table was another project in process.

Helen excitedly led us into her basement art studio to show us a number of fun and expressive pieces she was crafting from a mélange of seashells, driftwood, stones, beads, and paints. And also where she tripped over a cord and smashed to the floor. Morgan was thrilled to see Helen again and it was her first visit to Helen’s organic and living in-home museum and studio. I wished we could all visit more often; tough to do when we lived 3000 miles away. Helen, thank you for being such a gracious host beyond the Witching Hour. And Morgan feels awe to receive her great-grandmother’s china.

Ray drove us on back to the old Bass farm outside Rice. He and Beth have a new home on a hill overlooking the lake formed by the Sandy River Reservoir. He took us to my deceased parents’ empty house. Morgan and I spent the remainder of the night there, wondering if we would see ghosts. I slept very poorly.

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Daddy’s Ghost

As Momma lay dying of cancer, my father’s ghost was sighted at least twice. The home care ladies and nurses who saw him, however, begged me not to have that advertised back then as they didn’t want to be regarded as nuts or superstitious. Or maybe even lose their jobs. Who the hell would want to hire crazy people who see ghosts to take care of the dying?

Once a woman who worked in my parents’ home as a home care nurse was bent over cleaning the floor where my mother had just thrown up on the carpet. She glanced up and there he was. Bill Bass himself. His ghost, anyway. He stood there in the corner with his hands clasped in front of his privates like he used to do back in real life, looking down at her scrubbing the rug. It was clear as daylight that ghost was Bill Bass, and you could see right through him, too. The moment he realized she saw him, my father’s ghost moved quickly and disappeared in a flash of nothingness. Spooked the shit out of the lady on the floor. She wanted to go home!

A second time he was sighted by a different person standing next or behind my mother in their master bedroom where my Mom laid in a hospital bed. The woman who saw Daddy’s ghost declared it felt he was waiting for Momma to die and being a little bit impatient about it, too. She said it had a distinct feeling to it. It felt as if he was thinking “Dot, what’s taking you so long?” At my mom’s funeral the minister alluded to this incident somewhat obliquely. But my Dad is a warrior, apparently in death as well as in life, and while so impatient when things got serious proved to be the most patient one of all. Again, the moment that ol’ ghost realized he had dropped his invisibility cloak or whatever it was, he disappeared from biological view in a heartbeat. Snap! Gone, just like that.

My mother never commented on ever seeing a ghost. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to,” she once said with a shudder. “It would scare me to death.”

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The Morning After We Buried Mom

Breathing in Ghosts

Breathing in Ghosts

Sunday 19 November 2006

The morning after we buried my Mother
Dawn opened up the day with mist and gray
I stood on the porch of my sister’s new house
Cold upon the lake
Remembering the chill of touching
Momma’s lifeless hands and face
As a wall of fog gray as corpses
Shields trees and water from view
Birdcalls sparkle in the void
Bordered by clay red and torn
Edged with grass brown and wet
Fog glued together heaven and earth,
Sky and lake, and turned bone-white
And as the sun rose above skeletal trees
The fog began to move and churn
Across waters stilled before the sun’s return
Unstaked wild life’s hunger for warm bright light
November brings paleness to shortened days
And time ebbs and flows
The moment recedes into the past
Memories become as fog
And all things die
As it’s just another day
As it’s just another day
And it’s just another day
Just
Another
Day
Before darkness returns to take us Home.

 

A Prose Poem

William Dudley Bass
19 November 2006
16 January 2007
Revised 29 February 2012
Rice, Virginia &
Seattle, Washington

Two Comments from the Original Posting from the older website:

True North said…Ahhh William, thank you…I have just come home from working downtown today, hung up my suit, brewed a coffee and opened your blog…my heart shrugs off the dense energy of cement and iron, unmanacles and expands into the depth and vision of your words…ahh, now I will read on…Cindy

A Flower For All Seasons said…So wonderful to hear your poet’s voice William. To touch the timeless through your eyes and breath. And a lovely feeling of anticipation as I choose to read only one entry on any given day, knowing that each time I visit here your voice will awaken something in me that will take me who knows where… Wendy

NOTE: This was originally published in my oldest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Tuesday 16 January 2007, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2007/01/morning-after-we-buried-mom.html, and reprinted here this January 2012 with my permission as the Author. I also copied comments from two of my colleagues from the Robert Augustus Masters’ Psycho-Spiritual Counseling Practicum we were in at the time. Thank you.

Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Mom Passes On: Ruminations

Mom Passes On...

Mom Passes On…

Death is chaotic. So are funerals.

It was indeed a dark and stormy night when the phone buzzed with news from over 3,000 miles away. It was Wednesday the 15th of November 2006, my brother’s birthday. That wasn’t what the news was about, though. Waves of cold chills dashed across my body. I steeled myself to see my Mother’s ghost.

There wasn’t, however, anything remotely ghostly amid the crashing storm. And yet I was certain, grimly certain…there was something, faint and fluttery like a quick-darting butterfly, that was there, right there, and gone, nothing more, as if there never was any such beating of ghostly wings. In the darkness of pounding rain and gusty gales I wasn’t quite prepared to be scared out of my wits. After all, I wasn’t even properly dressed to greet Momma’s Ghost unless you considered a 47-year old birthday suit appropriate for such a passage.

Mom had been battling cancer since 2003. “Battling cancer” doesn’t even begin to describe the war itself. It is far more than the appearance of cancer cells and invasive tumors that seek to hijack and consume the body. The immune system degrades. Diet and nutrition suffers. Repeat secondary infections by bacteria, fungi, and viruses do tremendous damage and like squads of vicious hit men end up doing the killing. There’s the emotional, neurological, and psychological toll. There’s an enormous social toll and the rippling impact on family, friends, neighbors, and businesses, essentially all of one’s relations.

Cancer itself is an umbrella term for a messy web of mysterious diseases with multiple causes that mutate into one monster after another. And though a lot of folks are not always comfortable with the curious topic of money, cancer extorts a staggering financial cost. Is it any wonder we apply military terms to “dis-ease?” And perhaps, as humanity comes through millennia of slaughter to finally confront the useless futility of war, it is time we too consider embracing cancer and its runaway cells with something other than mortal combat. But war is the approach my feisty old mother chose.

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During My Mother’s Dying

Little Dottie Wottie Totsie, age 2 or 3, Virginia, 1933.

Little Dottie Wottie Totsie, age 2 or 3, Virginia, 1933.

Dot Ussery, age 16 or 17, Blacksburg, VA. 1948.

Dot Ussery, age 16 or 17, Blacksburg, Virginia, 1948.

The Marriage of Dot & Bill, Blacksburg, VA. 22 August 1953.

The Marriage of Dot & Bill, Blacksburg, VA. 22 August 1953.

Golfing away the Summer of 1958...L2R: Ussery cousin & 3 Ussery sisters Dot, Marianna, & Nancy, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Golfing away the Summer of 1958…L2R: Ussery cousin & 3 Ussery sisters Dot, Marianna, & Nancy, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Proud Momma Dot & her children. L2R: William Dudley (me), Joe David, & Beth Bass, Rice, Virginia. 1970. Foto by my Dad (William M. Bass).

Proud Momma Dot & her children. L2R: William Dudley (me), Joe David, & Beth Bass, Rice, Virginia. 1970. Foto by my Dad (William M. Bass). I have a vague memory of not being exactly thrilled as I was told to do something and didn’t hear it or understand or didn’t want to in reaction. Joe’s mind is churning with observations, and my sister’s happy smile looks amazingly similar to that of my oldest daughter at times. Momma had her hands, full, too. So did Daddy.

Mom at 53 in Happier Days, Riverview Farm, Rice, VA. She's leaning over the bed of our old red Ford pickup truck with the unoccupied original Bass Family Farmhouse still standing behind her. October 1984. Foto by William D. Bass.

Mom at 53 in Happier Days, Riverview Farm, Rice, VA. She’s leaning over the bed of our old red Ford pickup truck with the unoccupied original Bass Family Farmhouse still standing behind her. October 1984. Foto by William D. Bass.

Blurry with Drink! Dot at the Pub, Bristol, England, UK. Summer of 1997.

Blurry with Drink! Dot at the Pub, Bristol, England, UK. Summer of 1997.

Near the End. Mom with Daughter Beth Bass Hinde and Granddaughter Allison. Late Summer 2006.

Near the End. Mom with Daughter Beth Bass Hinde and Granddaughter Allison. Late Summer 2006.

During My Mother’s Dying

Early July 2006. My Mother lays ill in the last cycle of her life after battling metastatic ovarian cancer for three years. Her name is Dorothy Elizabeth Ussery Bass. Most folks call her “Dot.” Although my home has been Seattle, Washington for quite some time, I am again in Virginia, the land where she gave birth to me, and feel compelled to write down the following impressions and chronicles:

Last night I slept ten and a half hours, awaking from a heavy dream combining aspects of Mt. Rainier, the Appalachian Trail, and my friends David and Tina from Richmond. The night before I slept only 3-4 hours. I got out of bed early and went for a walk, rambling around the farm and across the land. Did push-ups on the concrete apron of the old cow lane, my hands pushed down where cow shit used to pile up in boot-sucking quantities. Now the concrete runway’s been washed clean by the rains and bleached by the sun.

The most beautiful songs burst forth from songbirds perched up in treetops and on the barn roof cupolas. We don’t have songbirds much out West, they tend to thrive East of the Great Plains – they need deciduous forests. Astounding arrays of bird songs fill the morning air. The Virginia country air feels so cool in the morning, so cool but only because warm air is cooler than hot air. The temperature later shot up to a sweltering, humid 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Damn. People slow down. Dayum. Day-yumm. You walk with deliberation and a sense of conservation. People say it is unusual for such temperatures so soon. That’s August weather. Global Warning (sic, yes). Amid the dying of a matriarch I hear the songbird singing trail off into the blazing, hot Void.

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My Mom & Death

Mom between Dyings; Her Last Christmas, Virginia 2005.

Mom between Dyings; Her Last Christmas, Virginia 2005.

A Letter to the Living…

Brothers,

Recently read Robert Masters’ book Darkness Shining Wild. One of his themes is bringing Death out of the closet. Into our everyday lives. Being present to Death. As some of you “older veterans” may recall I was with my Dad during his dying from cancer. That was a cathartic event that catapulted me into the workshop I jokingly refer to as “Nightmare in the City.”

Now my Mom is going down. After 3 years of battling cancer, almost dying the same year my Dad died, after going into remission and getting better, the tumors have returned and spread with a vengeance. She’s terminal, tho aren’t we all. Supposedly she has less than 5-6 months left. Who knows?

She is in so much pain now. The fury of the pain blinds her at times and robs her of her dignity. We think we’re going to die a certain way, looking good as we go, but often we don’t. My dad’s death taught me we leave this world as messy as we enter it. Covered in blood and shit. I will be at the Men’s Group this Monday, and then fly out to Virginia for a while, and then again this fall.

My Mother’s looming death feels like some kind of initiatory bookend. At times this woman was a horror and yet she gave me everything. Life. Love. I don’t quite know what to do except to go into it. And unlike some terminally ill folks she does not want to die. She wants to hang on to every breath she takes.

From an Email to Passion Warriors WarriorSage Seattle Men’s Group, Wednesday 21 June 2006.

P.S. I am no longer affiliated with this men’s group or with WarriorSage. Both served their purpose during a crucial time in my life. I have since moved on.

 

William Dudley Bass
21 June 2006
13 November 2008
Revised 26 February 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: This was originally published in my earliest blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on Thursday 13 November 2008, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-mom-death.html, and revised and re-published here this February of 2012. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2006, 2008, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Death with Father

 

William M. "Bill" Bass, U.S. Navy, 1949-1952; Norfolk, VA. (Photo damaged in 2010 house fire.)

William M. “Bill” Bass, U.S. Navy, 1949-1952; Norfolk, VA. (Photo damaged in 2010 house fire.)

Dot & Bill, Playful Lovers, Blacksburg, Virginia. Summer of 1953.

Dot & Bill, Playful Lovers, Blacksburg, Virginia. Summer of 1953.

Dashing thru the Rice: Dot & Bill Bass leaving their Wedding for their Honeymoon, Saturday, August 22, 1953. Blacksburg, Virginia.

Dashing thru the Rice: Dot & Bill Bass leaving their Wedding for their Honeymoon, Saturday, August 22, 1953. Blacksburg, Virginia.

My Dad & I home on Riverview Dairy Farm, Rice, Virginia, March 1960. He's 30 years young, & I'm 11 months old. We had 44 more years together.

My Dad & I home on Riverview Dairy Farm, Rice, Virginia, March 1960. He’s 30 years young, & I’m 11 months old. We had 44 more years together.

Bill & Dot Bass, Rice, VA. Early 1980s.

Bill & Dot Bass at home in Rice, VA. Early 1980s.

Brothers Dudley & Joe Bass, Rice, VA. Joe's 18th Birthday Party, 15 November 1982. Photo damaged in March 2010 House Fire in Edmonds, WA.

Brothers Dudley & Joe Bass, Rice, VA. Joe’s 18th Birthday Party, 15 November 1982. Photo damaged in March 2010 House Fire in Edmonds, WA.

Brothers Joe & William Bass, Rice, VA. Christmas 2005, about a year after Dad's death, and our last together with Mom.

Brothers Joe & William Bass, Rice, VA. Christmas 2005, about a year after Dad’s death, and our last together with Mom.

Intro from July 2006: As a Prelude of sorts I first include sections from an email I wrote a few days after my father died early in the morning on Wednesday on the 1st of December 2004. At the time my life had fallen apart about a year earlier and I was bankrupt, divorced, unemployed, and half-mad. I was struggling in my relationship with Kristina and desperately trying to get my feet back on the ground. It was one of the worse times in my life, and a cauldron for eventual success. I was also deep in the Warrior Sage work and had not yet been disenchanted with the philosophies and practices of David Deida and his followers on the West Coast. July 2006.

Death with Father, November – December 2004

I am a rich man. I am blessed with an abundance of pain and growth and waking up and amazing things happening, a wealth of life experiences. It’s been rough. I sail my ship thru one storm after another, and it’s been rough. My stomach heaves as each swell rolls underfoot and each rogue wave washes the decks clean for each new beginning every moment.

Dad died early Wednesday morning in the ER. It was bitter cold and the third anniversary of my partnership with my fiancé Kristina Katayama. My brother Joe and I were up all fucking night. Death was messy and brutal. As Gary, the founder of the men’s group I was in then told me afterwards, “We come into the world messy, and we leave messy.” At least it was quick. So quick I wasn’t even aware he was dead at first, just sleeping.

About three days ago I got my father alone and said, “Dad, listen up. I want you to know I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

“I flew here because this might be the last time we see each other alive.”

“I know it.”

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Birth at the End of the World

Click on any photo to birth it BIG

Birth at the End of the World

Birth at the End of the World

She was my Lover;
Only last week we rode each other hard like wolves.
Now we hide then run,
And stumble pass corpses roasted
Still holding guns.
She pushed apart thorns
As I battle briars;
We bend between old, rusty, barbed wire
Into a forest clearing edged with boxwoods
Overgrown, shabby, and still magnificent.

To our surprise tombstones totter among moss and ivy
With names and dates worn down from the 1850s:
Shelley Marie Gilead, Beloved of Samuel Ross Gilead,
b. April 13, 1835, d. February 15, 1857 of Childbirth Fever.”
Carved across a grayish-green short stone was levered
A broken name lost to time and the dates, “February 14 – 18, 1857.”

Suns flash in the nearby distance,
Heat and flames pulse over us and roll the dead
Into the waters of a beaver pond swamp
Edged by drowned forest, lifeless birds, and waters rising
With dead, blistered fish.
Inside me I question Divine Love, Divine Mercy, Divine Compassion…
Where on Earth are they?
Or are we already in Hell?

3x.Birth at the End of the World

Genesis Extinguished beneath Saturn's Return

Genesis Extinguished beneath Saturn’s Return

"Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son," Francisco de Goya (1819-1823)

“Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son,” Francisco de Goya (1819-1823)

“Saturno devorando a su hijo/Saturn devours His Son”

5x.Birth at the End of the World

Apocalypse in February on the Edge of Swamps

Genesis plays out over and over again
As Earth reforms every few millennia or so.
From PreAncient Antarctica to Atlantis to Noah and Gilgamesh,
From Gobekli Tepe to Catal Hoyuk to Harrapa and Uruk…
Long Time marches forward,
Clocked against the sky and
Measured in Long Counts by the Mayans
Beneath the long gaze of the Annunaki,
We destroy ourselves in the childbirth of civilizations
Long before any Prehistoric Gods return to eat us.

But not fast enough to learn We are the Ones
Who must first master the Power of loving and forgiving Ourselves
And share compassion and wise stewardship of Home.
We stagger to water’s edge where trees crumble and rot
As boils rise from our flesh amid a rain of blood.
The Sun burns away Sol
And Darkness reigns beyond Night.
Thirsty, we stoop to drink.

Sun burns away Sol

Sun burns away Sol

Saturn returns with famished Hunger
Amid the Chaos of Titans and Annunaki
Between Terra and Caelus.
We lift up our arms
And before they fall off
We shout a final cry toward Wormwood skies,
“MOMMA!”

2x.DSC_0053

 

Momma Pregnant at the End of the World becomes The Ark.

 

A Photo-Poem
by
William Dudley Bass
February 1982? 1983? 1984?
6 January 2007
20 February 2012
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: The image of the painting is from one of The Black Paintings by the Old Master Francisco de Goya y Luceintes of Spain between 1819 -1823. It is now Public Domain. All of the other pictures are photographs by me and as such remain Copyrighted by me as the Author. The first three are versions from a dayhike into the beaver pond swamps of Sandy River, Virginia in the early 1980s. The latter two are from around Seattle, Washington in early 2012.

“Birth at the End of the World” was originally published as a photo essay of sorts on 6 January 2007 in my older blog Cultivate and Harvest, at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2007/01/birth-at-end-of-world.html. Then it was edited, expanded into a photo-poem, and re-published here. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2007, 2012, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Swimming in Avalanches

Click on any photo to ENLARGE it.

Lightning Storms are common in the Mountains. Photo from a free wallpaper/stock photo set.

Lightning Storms are common in the mountains. Foto of multiple plasma strikes in the Rockies from a free wallpaper/stock photo set.

Lightning struck the mountain as the heavens cracked with thunder. Snow and ice burst loose like boiling water and swept me down the couloir, a steep gulley plunging down the north flank of the mountain. Runaway snow felt like galloping wet sand and hissed like snakes. Shit! What a hell of a way to spend a summer vacation. Aye, one of the best ever!

Mid-July 1986 in these big, Western mountains was colder than Winter in the South. There I was in the Wyoming Wind River Range toward the end of a 30-day Mountaineering Course with NOLS, the world-famous National Outdoor Leadership School. Headquartered on the edge of the range in the cowboy town of Lander, Wyoming, NOLS was the premier outdoor adventure school of my time. Once I was on purpose to become a NOLS Instructor. At least I was until love, romance, and a broken-down car got in the way. Nevertheless, this NOLS mountaineering expedition proved to be one of the most pivotal points in my life.

Back then I planned a career in outdoor adventure and sought concentrated training in hard skills such as alpine rock climbing and glacier travel and in soft skills such as teamwork and leadership under pressure. Along with those skills NOLS also taught natural history, science in the field, environmental responsibility, wilderness navigation, and backcountry first aid, all knowledge I desired. I had one semester left in grad school, too, back east in Richmond, Virginia. And, to be sure, what I most wanted as an ol’ farmboy from Virginia was an immersion adventure in the Wild American West. And I got it.

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Derailed (The Fire, Part 3)

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Blended Family Wedding: The Marriage of William & Kristina, Seattle, WA, Saturday 11 July 2009. Photo by Carol Ernst. Soon to be "derailed."

Blended Family Wedding: The Marriage of William & Kristina, Seattle, WA, Saturday 11 July 2009. Photo by Carol Ernst. Soon to be “derailed.”

My Camera Post-Fire (the memory card with ~ 800 pics survived) at the Burn House. Photo by William Bass.

My Camera Post-Fire (the memory card with ~ 800 pics survived) at the Burn House. Photo by William Bass.

Searching for Evidence in Kate's Room (below the Kitchen) at the Edmonds Burn House. Photo by John Westfall, March 2010.

Searching for Evidence in Kate’s Room (below the Kitchen) at the Edmonds Burn House. Photo by John Westfall, March 2010.

 at the Edmonds Burn House. Photo by John Westfall, March 2010.

Morgan’s Room…& Insurance Investigator outside. Photo by John Westfall, March 2010.

Sweet 16: Morgan's Harry Potter Birthday Party night before the Fire. Morgan is far left & front. Kristina's family Butsudan Shrine in the background. Edmonds, WA, Friday 19 March 2010.

Sweet 16: Morgan’s Harry Potter Birthday Party night before the Fire. Morgan is far left & front. Kristina’s family Butsudan Shrine in the background. Edmonds, WA, Friday 19 March 2010.

Morgan's Birthday Party w/ Peter Lik's "Tranquility" on wall behind the kids, Edmonds, WA, Friday 19 March 2010.

Morgan’s Birthday Party w/ Peter Lik’s “Tranquility” on wall behind the kids, Edmonds, WA, Friday 19 March 2010.

The Last Chess Game, Morgan's 16th Birthday Party, Edmonds, WA.

The Last Chess Game, Morgan’s 16th Birthday Party, Edmonds, WA.

 

Derailed

Fire changes things. Destroys. Creates. Transforms.

Think of metamorphic rocks, rocks such as gneiss, slate, quartzite, and marble. Think of transmutation of elements. Transmutation as illustrated by the old alchemical striving to turn lead, the base metal of Satan the Devil, into gold, the metal of Gods and kings, or modern nuclear reactions, explosions, and radioactive decay. One forgets among the unleashing of atomic demons the alchemists were more esoteric than literal as they sought to transform their very souls.

Sometimes those who spend lifetimes in search of such divine gifts never obtain their goals.

Sometimes those who don’t seek these Gifts of Fire end up in flames anyway.

Sometimes life spins out of control.

It feels that way at times. Certainly within our minds. Even if Life goes on until Dead.

Jeff Shushan, a brilliant and insightful psychotherapist Kristina and I worked with off and on through the latter part of 2010 into 2011, used the term “derailed.” An unexpected and traumatic event occurs. It is a life-changing event. Circumstances feel overwhelming and throw people off course. Yes, you can be alert, awake, aware, present, mindful, and choose to respond rather than react. Still, to full heal one must take time to grieve, to reassess, to determine what steps to take next and in what direction, with whom, and how.

My house burned down on the morning of Saturday, March 20, 2010. We lost almost everything, “we” being a post-double divorce blended family with my wife Kristina and our three daughters from prior marriages. Fortunately no one was burned or injured in anyway. Thankfully no one was killed in what the fire fighters called “a killer fire.”

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After the Fire (Part 2 of 3)

This essay follows, “The Fire, Part 1 of 3.”

Click on any photo to ENLARGE it.

Keeping the Fire Down. Edmonds, Washington. Saturday 20 March 2010. Photo by William Bass.

Keeping the Fire Down. Edmonds, Washington. Saturday 20 March 2010. Photo by William Bass.

Thru the Front Door to the Sea. Photo by William Bass.

Thru the Front Door to the Sea. Photo by William Bass.

Entering ... Nothing. Photo by William Bass.

Entering … Nothing. Photo by William Bass.

Doorway to ... ? Photo by William Bass.

Doorway to … ? Photo by William Bass.

Kitchen floor collapsed into double bunk beds in Kate's Room on other side of wall from Morgan's Room & the Family Room/Library. Photo by William Bass.

Kitchen floor collapsed into double bunk beds in Kate’s Room on other side of wall from Morgan’s Room & the Family Room/Library. Photo by William Bass.

The remains of Morgan's Room. Photo by William Bass.

The remains of Morgan’s Room. Photo by William Bass.

Kristina & Kristen contemplating the Loss & the Miracle. Photo by William Bass.

Kristina & Kristen contemplating the Loss & the Miracle. Photo by William Bass.

William & Kate goofin' around 7 days after the Fire; Woodinville, WA. Photo by Morgan Bass.

William & Kate goofin’ around 7 days after the Fire; Woodinville, WA. Photo by Morgan Bass.

Morgan Bass below Whitehorse Mountain, near Darrington, WA. 12 June 2010. Photo by William Bass.

Morgan Bass below Whitehorse Mountain, near Darrington, WA. 12 June 2010. Photo by William Bass.

Talia cleaning Lindsay's Bathroom in Woodinville, WA. April 4, 2010. Photo by William Bass.

Talia cleaning Lindsay’s Bathroom in Woodinville, WA. Sunday 4 April 2010. Photo by William Bass.

William & Kristina Bass, New Year's Eve, Seattle, WA. December 31, 2010. Photo by Jean Katayama.

William & Kristina Bass, New Year’s Eve, Seattle, WA. Friday 31 December 2010. Photo by Jean Katayama.

Kate, Talia, & Morgan Bass (L to R) Celebrating DaDa William's Big Climb race to the top of the Columbia Tower, Seattle, on Sunday 20 March 2011 - Exactly 1 year after the Fire. Photo by Stranger for William Bass.

Kate, Talia, & Morgan Bass (L to R) Celebrating DaDa William’s Big Climb race to the top of the Columbia Tower, Seattle, on Sunday 20 March 2011 – Exactly 1 year after the Fire. Photo by a stranger for William Bass.

After the Fire

“Sometimes I can’t even feel the ground under my feet anymore,” my wife Kristina cries. “I can’t feel ANYTHING!!!”

Days and weeks wheel by in a blur after our house burned down in the Fire. Frenzied action is broken by spells of dazed inaction. There is too much to do so soon. We move through it all anyway. Sometimes we even laugh. Sometimes the Fire seems years ago, or feels it never happened at all, or worse, just yesterday. Saturday 20 March 2010, however, was only 30 days ago as I first write this blogpost for the bassfamilysupport.ning.com website friends set up to organize help.

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The Fire (Part 1 of 3)

 Click on any photo to blow it up big.

Fire! Our house in flames, Edmonds, WA. Saturday 20 March 2010. Photo by Unknown.

Fire! Our house in flames, Edmonds, Washington State. Saturday 20 March 2010. Foto by Unknown.

Inferno of 1,200 Degree Flames & Toxic Smoke.

Inferno of 1,200 Degree Flames & Toxic Smoke.

Lingering Fire amid the Ruins, Edmonds, 3-20-2010. Foto by Youngman.

Lingering Fire amid the Ruins, Edmonds, 20 March 2010. Foto by Youngman.

Back of our Home, 20 March 2010. Foto by Westfall.

Back of our Home, 20 March 2010. Foto by Westfall.

View thru the Front Door out the back across the Salish Sea to the Olympic Mountains. 20 March 2010. Photo by Youngman.

View thru the Front Door out the back across the Salish Sea to the Olympic Mountains. 20 March 2010. Foto by Youngman.

Kristina Bass (left, in black) with friend Kristen S. a day or two after the Edmonds Fire. Foto by William Bass.

Kristina Bass (left, in black) with friend Kristen S. a day or two after the Edmonds Fire. Foto by William Bass.

The Fire: Part 1 of 3
Saturday 20 March 2010

One week ago our house burned down. It was traumatic. Thank goodness everyone is alive. No one got hurt. Not even the firefighters. But we lost just about everything else. And the response of our communities of family and friends from all around the world was and is deeply generous, much appreciated, and unexpectedly overwhelming.

We got uplifting responses not only from all over the Northwest but from folks from Japan to Norway, Virginia to California, New York to South Carolina, Alaska to Vermont, Mexico to Canada, Jordan, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, North Carolina. Texas. Tennessee. Illinois. The list goes on. From Christians to Muslims to Atheists to Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Pagans. Amazing. We were reminded not only how lucky to be alive but we’re all part of one giant family of humanity sharing one small, beautiful planet. And, yes, the Internet was the primary tool facilitating such communications, especially Facebook.

Saturday 20 March 2010. It was 11:00 in the morning in Edmonds, Washington, a waterfront city north of Seattle noted for its small-town feel with lots of trees. It was an unusually warm and sunny day. Morgan, my oldest daughter, had recently turned 16, and we were hosting a post-birthday slumber party for about 12 of her friends. The celebrations began Friday evening after school and work. Her younger sisters, Kate, 11, and Talia, 7, were at their own sleepovers back in North Seattle. I left to drive down into Seattle to pick up Kate and Talia and bring them home while Kristina left to take our dog Jo to the vet. There were 8 teenage girls left in our home by then.

They’re great kids, these girls. We’re delighted Morgan had a great circle of fun, funny, artistic, and responsible friends. They were hanging out upstairs playing chess and preparing to cook breakfast. First they noticed a thin smoky haze and remarked how pretty the sunshine was. Then they realized it was smoke. Were pancakes burning on the stove? No, no fire from the stove. No one was even cooking. There were no candles, no incense, no smoking, none of that. Thick, toxic smoke rolled out of the heating vents and roiled up the stairs from the basement, our first floor. The smoke was so thick they couldn’t even get out the door.

A few kids wanted to run down and rescue items: shoes/boots/clothes/cell phones/iPods/sleeping bags/coats/birthday presents. It easily ran to about $1,000 a teenager, mindboggling for even us parents when we tallied it all up, and among our guests were twin sisters, so, yes, many wanted to race downstairs, just once, running just really, really fast, y’know…and Morgan took a stand.

“No!” she shouted. “We need to get out of here NOW! This way!”

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Faith vs. Data vs. What’s Really Important

Seth Godin, a master blogger and bestselling author over in New York highlighted, once posted on the tension between faith and data. First, allow me to distinguish between those two words.

I define “faith” as a belief in something without any evidence and often in the face of evidence to the contrary. Boiled down having faith is the desire to believe. And humans want to believe what they wish to be true.

Sometimes faith is a negative. Witness, for example, all the bloodshed committed and endured in the name of religions, notorious for demanding faith in many things for which there is no empirical evidence and with each religion claiming competing and opposing “truths” for faiths at odds with each other. Religious institutions demand faith from their followers.

And yet faith is what drives people to push on through great hardship and challenge to ultimately succeed. Faith inspires people to attempt and actually achieve amazing things often in the face of ridicule, harassment, even “proof” held up and waved in their faces to demonstrate their foolhardiness. Faith triumphs. But is it really important?

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Grassroots Global Democracy Online: Vote Now

Almost a year after I first urged people to vote and to vote “YES!” in the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government, humanity continues to blunder toward global collapse where worse case scenarios are fast becoming the most likely scenarios. Those who sound the warnings may as well be shouting into the hurricane for even more seem eager to ignore and deny the mountainside of complex troubles avalanching down upon us.

Those who are aware wonder what more can they do if anything. Many struggle alone or in small groups in the cause of their choices, large organizations have gone deep to stay alive but focus upon only one cause, with much of their energy diverted to fundraising, while the rest of us feel resigned, cynical perhaps, apathetic, demoralized, even depressed. I call this the “whatever syndrome,” as in when you tell someone that this time the sky really is falling or the wolves are actually killing and eating the sheep they just shrug their shoulders, mumble “Whatever,” and go back to doing whatever they happen to be doing. “Whatever,” right?

Folks, there IS something positive each one of us can do.

Vote “Yes!” for a Democratic World Parliament. And do it now. I voted “Yes.” Tell others to do it, too. Go to the website, http://www.voteworldparliament.org and vote.

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Citizens United vs. FEC: Corporate Power Corrupts Planetary Democracy

Democracy lost on January 21, 2010. It is a significant loss in the on-going war (let’s cut to the chase here folks, this ain’t “tension” between factions within a national democracy; it’s a war for global domination between those favoring American democracy versus the transnational corporate elite).

The case in question is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The United States Supreme Court rule 5-4 in favor of Big Business and the financial elite and their power to corrupt our political elections and thus buy out our governments at all levels. The Corporatocracy won another round in its efforts to not just influence but also dominate the government of the most powerful nation-state on the planet. Little noticed in the outcry is that labor unions also achieved a victory, although unions have been in decline for decades now and are dwarfed by the financial elite.

This ruling gives more power to the principle known as “corporate personhood.” Human beings create corporations. They outlive people, often influence and dominate society at all levels from local neighborhoods to international, and are composed of people from numerous nation-states who are often not citizens of the countries in which corporate power is wielded.

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Global Disaster Response in Haiti a Prelude to Unification?

The giant Indian Ocean and Asian earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, which claimed about 230,000 lives and probably more from the East African coast to the Indian subcontinent to Indonesia and Thailand, caused the entire planet to vibrate. It also elicited the first truly global response to a humanitarian disaster. We even saw two former American presidents of opposing political parties, George H. W. Bush the Republican and Bill Clinton the Democrat, working together and working together as friends to help lead the relief and reconstruction efforts.

The May 2008 Typhoon Nargis disaster in Myanmar/Burma was a potential international aid response but was thwarted by the military junta in power. There were and have been other significant disasters, many that did elicit aid from different countries responding to a crisis in another, including famines, but nothing of the scale of the global response to the 2004 tsunami.

In Haiti in the wake of the devastating January 2010 earthquake we see it again and in a more evolved fashion. The response to the quake was immediate, far more immediate by the United States, for example, than it’s response to its own 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. In fact strong aftershocks continue as I write.

Our response to Haiti’s crisis is beyond international; it is global. Fellow human beings from around the planet have rallied to support their own in a small nation-state ravaged even before the giant quake by decades of poverty, dictatorship, coups and low-level civil wars, military occupation, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction.

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Farewell, Atlantis: Goodbye to a Beacon for a United Earth

Atlantis the lost continent may lay buried under the mud at the bottom of the sea, but Atlantis the space shuttle soared high into Space. Captain Christopher Ferguson, United States Navy and a NASA astronaut, is the Commander of the last space shuttle. Not only is the last shuttle for America but also for the world.

The only other one was the Soviet Buran that flew once, unmanned, and then was shut down. In some ways the Buran was a superior vehicle and in other ways not. In any case, no other nation-states are positioned to launch such massive ships. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the United States has become an overextended and nearly bankrupted empire. It now depends upon the Russian Soyuz to transport humans and supplies to the International Space Station. Unless something goes awry, Atlantis has 12 days to complete its mission.

Atlantis blasted off to cheers and tears this morning of 8 July 2011. This mission is the 33rd for Atlantis and the 135th for NASA’s shuttle program. Almost a million people came to watch the Cape Canaveral, Florida and the NASA Kennedy Space Center may well turn into Postmodern ghost towns. Thirty years of glory with its share of tragedies stirs powerful emotions. Many people remain passionate about the exploration and colonization of Outer Space. Not just Americans, but people from all around the world. Russia, China, India, Brazil, the European Union, even Iran.

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Space Exploration: Will it Help Unify Earth?

The less than two hundred human nation-states of Planet Earth appear doomed to endless squabbling and bloodshed despite grand proclamations of international cooperation. And who can blame them? Our problems feel too vast and overwhelming for the average person including our politicians to understand.

It is easier to go to war and kill each other. It is easier to pollute our environment. It is easier to bail out our faux economy with made-up money. It is easier to go shopping, buy shoes for the kids, and get drunk while watching the latest celebrity scandals on television. Nuclear disarmament in an age of terrorism? Biological warfare? Global warming and climate change? Global climate disruption? Global warming leading to ice ages? Fundamentalism and extremism on the rise in most religions? Poverty? Disease pandemics, hunger, bigotry and discrimination, pollution, deforestation, desertification, overpopulation and mass extinction of species along with weapons of mass destruction freak us out. What are we to do?

Go to Mars.

Explore the Solar System.

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Global Demilitarization: Forgotten Challenges for Today and Tomorrow

Revision of a 2009 Article for Today:

In an October 2009 interview in Time Magazine, Kofi Anan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, was asked whether or not “the U.N. should be given the authority to intervene militarily in situations like Darfur.”

“I’m not sure the member states are ready to give the U.N. a standing army….It’s a question of will. And I don’t think you will see a U.N. army,” Mr. Anan replied.

As local crises converge into global crises and threaten to overwhelm us, as the movement to create a democratic world government continues to move forward, national and ethnic military forces will remain perhaps the greatest obstacle to such a government. There exist today a number of different global citizens and democratic world government parties, alliances, coalitions, and institutes.

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Does the U.N. want Global Unity? Will Global Unity be Democratic?

Revision of 2009 Article for 2012:

The majority of New York’s citizens are frazzled this September 2009 by the traffic jams caused by the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly. People wished the whole crowd of dignitaries including undignified celebrity politicians and petty tyrants as well as Neocon-Neolib architects of what seemed to many as the New World Disorder would all go away to another country.

People in other cities and other countries are probably glad the U.N. is not in their town. We all need to remember, however, we may be many countries but one world, many ethnicities but one species. Our finite resources are being consumed by wars and competition between peoples rather than cooperation to address the global crises of our time.

American President Barack Obama, during his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, on 23 September 2009, noted the serious challenges confronting us all these days. He listed some of them, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, poverty, protracted wars, pandemic disease, the pursuit of peace, and the global economic recession.

Echoing similar themes of global cooperation from his Berlin Speech in May of 2008 and his Inauguration Speech in January 2009, he declared “Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone. We have sought – in world and deed – a new era of engagement with the world. Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

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UFO over Seattle on 21 January 2012

Down at the Seattle Center, I climbed a grassy knoll waving my smart phone around in the sunshine for better reception. Below me in the Fisher Pavilion hundreds of people including many of Vietnamese descent celebrated Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. Kristina, my wife at the time, remained down there with our foreign exchange student from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. I turned around, heard a helicopter overhead, looked up into blue skies, and saw the helicopter circling toward Downtown where Occupy protests were occurring. Then I spied the UFO.

What appeared to be a silver sphere moved in a straight, horizontal line from the southeast, or the direction of Downtown Seattle, northwest over Queen Anne Hill toward the Salish Sea. The object flew swiftly and steadily, perfectly straight. It was shiny silver and reflected the sunlight. The sun was low in the sky more toward the southwest. The time, date, and date was 3:00pm on Saturday 21 January 2012.

For a second I shrugged it off as an airplane or helicopter, then I realized, wait, hey, it’s far more silvery-metallic than any of those would be. More importantly, there were no visible wings, fins, rows of blinking lights, jets, or visible thrusts, rocket engines, or propellers. It was silent, and flew so straight as to be smooth, as in none of the buffeting and wing-dipping I normally see even on straight-flying aircraft. At one point the object appeared to pivot or partially rotate while continuing to “fly” in a straight line at a steady pace. When it pivoted, it appeared as more of a silvery rod, a short, stumpy rod, and reminded me of a fat airplane fuselage.

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Only Human Beings Have Rights, Not Human Organizations

Courageous people are demonstrating against corporate and bank domination of the American political process and protesting against the abomination of corporate personhood. It is an inspiring call to freedom, a nonviolent call to wake up and occupy, a call based upon a fundamental understanding corporations are not people. We the People of this country…and I would add of everywhere else on our Planet Earth, need to remember some crucial points.

Yes, corporations are not human beings. Corporations, as are any other organizations, are formed by and are composed by individual human beings working in concert and by agreement. Only individual human beings have rights. Human organizations do not have rights. Human beings have rights as individuals because they are human beings, not because individual people are a member of some organization. Human beings as social animals are people, and the people are composed of individual persons.

Corporations are not people. A corporation or any other organization, formal or otherwise, is not a person. Any law stating otherwise exercises fraudulent representations of what a person is and must be repealed. I am reminded of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s distinctions between just and unjust laws, his spotlight on the criminal abuse by authorities of just laws, and his reminder “everything Hitler did was legal.”

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We’re Building a BREAKTHRU Civilization for Love! Occupy Civilization with Love!

Massed demonstrations for Occupy Seattle/Occupy Earth/Occupy Everywhere/Occupy Love. Downtown Seattle, WA, Cascadia, Saturday 15 October 2016.

Massed demonstrations for Occupy Seattle/Occupy Earth/Occupy Everywhere/Occupy Love. Downtown Seattle, WA, Cascadia, Saturday 15 October 2011.

Kristina Katayama Bass going deep at Occupy Seattle/Occupy Earth, Saturday 15 October 2016.

Kristina Katayama Bass going deep at Occupy Seattle/Occupy Earth, Saturday 15 October 2011.

Things are coming together even as things appear to break apart. We are blessed, as I choose to feel blessed even during these hard times, to live during a time of great ferment, upheaval, transition, and possibilities. “Yes!” is the Answer before the Question is asked. More and more of us are standing up for love, for LOVE, as we reclaim our civilization from the brink of Collapse. We can choose to THRIVE!

No to the 1%’s Breakaway Civilization! We’re building a Breakthru Civilization! For Love. Occupy your civilization. With Love. Yes!

Our human civilizations have merged to become one planetary superculture; or rather ours are in a transition of integration. We are already one species descended from many sharing one planet. We are waking up into and claiming the reality of our own interdependence, rather than the illusions of separation and independence or the tyranny of dependence. Our choices are many.

Among them are we must choose between liberty, interdependence, community, democracy, love, compassion, power, peace, sustainability, and unification worldwide. Or give in to the juggernaut of Empire and fear, of dependence and slavery, of shame and separation, of force and fundamentalism, of war and perpetual violence, of exhaustion and collapse. Which do you choose?

We can break our global civilization down into three parts. They are Mainstream Civilization, which is the host for the parasitic Breakaway Civilization, and the co-existing and emergent alternative, what I’ll call the Breakthru Civilization.

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Democratic World Government as Global Networks of Local Communities

Imagine local communities in our towns and cities, in our counties and parishes, in our states and provinces, in our countries around the world voluntarily networking together in some new form of confederation, a worldwide planetary confederation. Imagine establishing new communities or transforming currently existing local communities into autonomous or semi-autonomous geo-political bioregions. Now imagine all of these same local communities and their regions networked together around the world into a global cooperative as postmodern democratic world government. Imagine what’s possible here, as in what’s really possible. Because it is.

Yes, it’s time to stop thinking in terms of the past. It’s not even yesterday anymore. We’re here now, and the future is the future. We need to reclaim our future as a blank slate, as not having occurred yet, not the projection of our past way of thinking beyond now.

Democratic World Government is a loaded term, isn’t it? Many call it DWG to distinguish it from the NWO, or New World Order. And what is government anyway? What does the word “government” mean? It’s just a word, these are all words, and we use language to influence and even create our reality. We shape and mold our individual perception of what’s real as well as agree with others as to what constitutes our consensual reality. Well, language evolves. It evolves in conversation, in writing, in speech, in dialogue, and among communities. If we learn to be mindful and present, if we practice conscious awareness, what realities can you and I create together with others?

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WATUN: Establishing the World Alliance to Transform the UN for Earth Democracy

Foreword: This essay was revised from one first written in September 2009. As such it maintains the perspective of that year.

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Momentum is beginning to develop for the DWG (Democratic World Government) movements. Some individuals and organizations desire to bypass or even abolish the current United Nations. This is understandable as one considers the undemocratic structure of a large bureaucracy that continues to prop up legions of squabbling nation-state regimes.

Others, however, seek a more pragmatic approach that involves working with what already exists and reform the UN. Another group combines vision and pragmatism to go even further: 1) to not just reform the UN but transform the United Nations, and 2) couple this with the Global Referendum on Democratic World Government, a grass roots effort poised to go “viral” planet-wide.

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YES! Vote “Yes” for YOUR Democratic World Government

Foreword: Written a little more than three years ago, the premise advocated for remains the same. Many twists and turns have occurred since 2009, and the world is closer than ever to the possibility of a significant regional, even “true” world war, economic demise, and socio-political turmoil. The nonprofit NGO Vote World Government has since renamed itself Vote World Parliament (VWP) and invited me to serve on its Board. I accepted the honor with gratitude. VWP’s website is now found at:

https://voteworldparliament.org/.

Please go there and vote. Thank you.

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YES! Vote “Yes!” for YOUR Democratic World Government

As humanity continues to blunder toward global collapse where worse case scenarios are fast becoming the most likely scenarios, good people around the world wonder what they can do if anything. Many struggle alone or in small groups in the cause of their choices, large organizations have gone deep to stay alive but focus upon only one cause, while the rest of us feel resigned, cynical perhaps, apathetic, demoralized, even depressed. I call this the “whatever syndrome,” as in when you tell someone that this time the sky really is falling or the wolves are actually killing and eating the sheep they just shrug their shoulders, mumble “Whatever,” and go back to doing whatever they happen to be doing.

Folks, there IS something positive each one of us can do.

Vote “Yes!” for Democratic World Government. And do it now. I voted “Yes.” Tell others to do it, too. Go to the website at:

https://voteworldparliament.org/,

(formerly http://www.voteworldgovernment.org/ and vote.

This is a worldwide internet-based voting via global referendum. You can find out more about it at its companion website:

http://www.rescueplanforplanetearth.com/.

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Restructuring Our Human Economy

We must restructure our economy. Our human economy is out of balance with our planetary biosphere and throws our world civilization into turmoil and upheaval. There are steps we can take to make effective changes.

Temporary solutions such as so-called bailouts and stimulus plans are short-term fixes that, while they may appear necessary, may do little to stop economic collapse. They may in fact increase its severity. Especially since the short-term advantages of bailouts is wasted. Greedy banksters who chose to pack their pockets with bailout money, for example, squander the time gained to institute the necessary radical reforms.

Those who wield real power such as the superwealthy families who own or if they don’t actually “own” certainly control and influence the international bank cartel, the Corporatocracy, and the levers of government and business will find themselves atop a vast, crumbling pyramid. The ultrarich have accumulated vast power and many of them live in splendid isolation.

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Rushing into the Second Great Depression

Foreword: First written in late 2008, this is prescient four years and a month later as 2012 is now rolling. Since then there have been more Fed-engineered bailouts of American financial institutions and corporations as well as of European Union ones. Wars continue their relentless spread around the world, and the Euro appears to be in collapse unless the EU becomes a political union by coercion, i.e. nondemocratic. Iran was rocked by revolts and the Arab Spring swept through North Africa and the Middle East. Europe erupted into anti-austerity revolts including a violent insurrection across the UK, Occupy Wall Street protests have spread across the U.S. and then the world with mass demonstrations in places as far away as Russia, China, and Nigeria.

Yet the suave talking heads of the mainstream mass media continue to reassure us things are getting better, look on the bright side, ignore the dark, ignore those stinky hippies protesting in the street (never mind many of them are unemployed and foreclosed-upon middle and upper class people), but go stand in long lines to go shopping to buy overpriced junk with credit cards instead. Things are indeed getting better. Forgive my cynicism, as I detest cynicism, but this time, I say “Yeah, right.”

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Rushing into the Second Great Depression

No beast slouching to Bethlehem here, folks. We’re tearing into the Second Great Depression. We’re accelerating as we go, too. The nations of the world are racing to get through it as fast as possible. And yes, although some are using the term “Great Recession,” this event is far more complex and destructive than a mere economic downturn that drags on for a couple of quarters. We’re upon the cusp of a depression, the Second Great Depression. It will be as different from the first as the Second World War was from the First World War.

One of the most bizarre aspects of this approaching perfect storm, excuse me, we are already in it, is the number of talking heads in the mainstream mass media telling us it’s not so bad and don’t worry, as things will get better simply because we’re “resilient.” Many factors converged to trigger this economic and financial catastrophe. Pragmatic steps need to be taken fast. If not, then this growing calamity will demand a drastic and radical response.

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Let’s Work Together We People of Earth

World government is coming, one our children and grandchildren may well live in. The beginnings of it are already here. While a number of good citizens have created the blueprints and models for a variety of democratic governments for a united Planet Earth, unfortunately the dominant paradigm is the specter of Global Empire. Wake up, wake up, people! Let’s work together We People of Earth. It’s time for us to build our Democratic World Government for our Spaceship Earth.

Our choices are not between whether or not we reclaim our various national sovereignties versus establishing a world government. Our choice is what kind of world government do we allow? What manner of planetary regime do you help establish? Will it be world government by the people, of the people, for all people, or by self-selected masters over the rest of humanity? We the People of Earth, including you, have choices. We choose which way we turn.

Will our world government be one of freedom and democracy, or tyranny and dictatorship? Will it be one of openness and transparency, or one of secrecy and elitism? Will there be ongoing and increasing poverty and financial distress, or abundance of prosperity with equality of access to opportunity for all? Will it be a regime that focuses on the hard work of liberty or the illusion of security? Will this coming world government be one that plunders our common resources, accelerates climate change, and allows our environment to be destroyed or will it establish responsible stewardship for our planet?

I choose freedom and democracy. I choose liberty for all people and myself. I choose wealth over poverty. I stand for our economy to be rooted in environmental reality with ourselves in control of our own money. And I stand vehemently for an economic system that puts human beings before corporate profits. Put people before profits, and all of us profit as a rising tide lifts all boats and civilization advances. Put profits before people, however, and the corporations increase their power, the middle class is driven into poverty, capital flows into the hands of the relatively few families that compose the global financial elite, and social breakdown accelerates.

How about you? What do you choose? What do you stand for?

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Frankenstein Monsters and Blowback in the Middle East, Central and South Asia

Frankenstein monsters of humanity’s own creation stalk the blood-soaked Middle East. In the midst of heated emotions and bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, we often loose sight of the origins of such conflicts and end up taking sides. Instead of taking sides the world should unite and go in as a massive planetary police action to stamp out wars, arrest the perpetrators on both sides, and try them in a world court of law that recognizes war itself as a crime. We don’t have such firm institutions yet, unfortunately, and the ones we do have are not necessarily democratic or transparent.

The bloodshed in Gaza, Congo, Iraq, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Somalia and elsewhere drives urgency for us to create a democratic planetary republic. We witnessed political fragmentation, ethnic strife, and economic manipulation in the name of “democracy” and “independence” during the breakup of the Soviet Empire and the shattering of Yugoslavia. We see it again in the bloody turmoil all across Africa and many other places as well from Nepal to Indonesia to the Amazon. But let us regress to the horrors nationalism and superpower plays have created in the cauldrons of the Middle East.

This is the most complex superpower mess. We will consider the hypocrisy and consequences of the Global War on Terror and how it grew out of the Byzantine power plays and insidious manipulations of the Cold War. The most damaging, complex, confusing, and dangerous area for which the whole world continues to pay a bloody price is the Middle East, that historic crossroads of humanity that stretches from North and East Africa into South and Central Asia and intrudes into the European Balkans and Caucasus. The greatest concentration of the world’s oldest civilizations lay in this region as well as the origins of many of the planet’s dominant religions. So let us look at the labyrinthine Middle East from the perspective of the Soviet-American Cold War and its consequences.

As a reminder, it must be noted that during the following series of local and global conflicts spinning out of the Middle East, at the same time the Rockefeller family and others of the financial elite were strangling the U.S. and global economies. Their primary intent was two-fold. First, to keep the U.S. dollar solvent and thus the dominant currency worldwide at great cost to Americans. Secondly, to dismantle under both Democrat and Republican presidents (Carter and Reagan followed by the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations) the earlier anti-monopoly trust-busting reforms of Republican Teddy Roosevelt and the New Deal revolution of his cousin Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Blogging the Bloggy Woggy

Blogging the Bloggy Woggy is the history of how the woggies became my two bloggies in a single poddy but not a potty. Goodness, I’ve gotten my Dr. Seuss and Clockwork Orange stuff all mixed up. It’s the story, actually, of how my first two websites, both blogs, came into existence and what I first wrote upon them. They were Blogger blogs, and they were kinda like my babies. But not quite…they felt like brand new babies I was so proud of mixed up with feeling strangely similar to those personal items one might shyly hide in an old steamer trunk in the attic. Items, I said items in the attic, not babies, now. Cultivate and Harvest right At the Brink I was. So let’s open the old, leather-strapped trunk before our digital freedom is taken away.

November 2006…my mother had just died while I was caught in a terrible storm with branches crashing down around my cabin and the power went out. My father had passed two years earlier on the First of December. Both perished from cancer, and they were wrenching and disorienting experiences. So I groaned when Robert Masters, our Canadian teacher and trainer, announced part of our homework required for us to graduate from his practicum was to create a blog and write about those experiences.

“Oh no,” I said out loud as I contemplated yet another technical whamdoodle-diddle mickle-jiggle I now had to figure out. Can’t we just share our tales of woe and enlightenment with each other via an old-fashioned email listserve? Years later, however, I love to blog. OK. I have a lot to say. I channel the chaos of the Cosmos and can’t stop. Much of it feels as if mysterious Dark Matter Dark Energy stuff is flowing through my body-mind-spirit with spooky action from a distance at.

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Six Words Make A Story Short

Here Are Six Very Short Stories:

It’s all true, and a lie.

Got fat. Lost weight. Drank beer.

Climbed mountain, lost pants, took nap.

Clouds ripple in moonlight. She screams.

“Hey, you! What time will it…?”

Pink escalators spun candy to heaven.

 

More Tall Tales for Tight Whales

Corpses wash up in surf. Crabs!

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Cracking Open Reality

“Enlightened people become non-functional,” said Tina Rasmussen to our group as her husband Stephen Snyder nodded in agreement toward the end of a Samatha Buddhist Meditation Retreat. “They inhabit the crack in consensual reality.”

Let’s go burst open these cracks! Together we can bust open reality! What happens to how we perceive and experience reality when our mutual consensus for it breaks down and dissolves?

“It’s really amazing,” Tina continued. “When you live in such a world long enough, you’re no longer functional. These enlightened people, it’s wild, and they’re just not functional. It’s almost like if, well, if you live that kind of lifestyle long enough, you see it all over India and Southeast Asia, it’s pretty common there, but when you live like and immerse yourself for such a long time in these practices, when you truly become aware of what the world really is, what the world really looks like, there is a big, big crack in the consensual reality.”

“And sometimes when you get there,” broke in Stephen, “you can’t leave. There’s no going back.”

Continue reading

Calling Down Mars, God of War: Questioning the Nature of Reality

Once upon a time on a hot, late summer night we gathered in a cutover cornfield and called down Mars, the God of War. I remember clearly seeing the Red God as he made his appearance. What disturbs me most, however, is not that we accomplished such a feat, but I can’t recall what we did it for and why. My ego has great pride in my memory of events, especially as I have an almost-photographic memory. I say almost, as I seem unable to remember numbers, mathematical formulas, musical notes, the names of people as I’m more of a face guy, and the titles of songs, poems, and books, especially who wrote what when. What I do know is one night in a Virginia cornfield in the vicinity of old Civil War battlefields the God of War came down in a blaze of sparkling, red haze.

We were Witches back then, American Neo-Pagan Wiccans of blended eclectic traditions to be exact. Neo-Celtic-Germanic, often shortened to “Celtic,” was the predominant cluster of traditions we wove into a tapestry of magick, ritual, and celebrations. As the term “Witch,” unfortunately, carried such a negative charge around the world since the Christian Inquisitions and the Muslim Conquests, many of us publicly used the term “Wiccan” as we also worked to rehabilitated Witchcraft and Witches.

We also used the term “magick” to distinguish “real” magick from the tricks and illusions performed by showmen proclaimed “magicians.” These stage magicians were astounding at what they did, of course, and skeptics rooted in material science used such stage tricks as “proof” there can be no such thing as true magick. Real sorcerers scoffed as such foolishness as card tricks and derided illusionists who pretend to make things disappear. After all, real sorcerers know magick demands disciplined practice and focus. As such they can conjure up gods, goddesses, angels, and demons from the Spirit realms. As we Witches did with the God Mars. Well, we got part of him to show up.

It’s an argument as old as philosophy – did matter come first or did mind? Did mind arise from matter? Or did mind come first and matter arose out of mind?

Continue reading

The Grinch is Gone!

Somebody stole The Grinch from Candy Cane Lane! What a vile and horrid thing to do. Whoever stole The Grinch and thus robbed us all and not just the Whos of Whoville must have a heart so teeny tiny as to be even tinier than the Grinch’s. Hey Dude, yeah, you, you and your giggling, drunken, lamebrain buddies with cigarettes dipped in stale Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, hey, do y’all need suspenders to hold up your hearts or what?

Candy Cane Lane is Heaven in Seattle for Christmas lovers. It’s a small crescent shaped block of classic brick and wood homes from bygone “Grandma and Grandpa Days” carved out of a hillside in the woodsy Ravenna neighborhood of North Seattle. And a huge, big cutout of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was stolen a couple of days ago. Cindy Lou Who and Max the One-Horned Doggiedeer Reindeer were left stranded and sad.

What will happened to Christmas without The Grinch? What will Santa do? And all those poor Whos way off in Whoville? What about all the good people of Candy Cane Lane right here in Seattle?

Continue reading

The Gaza Mess: Is Global Intervention Needed?

Today is Monday 29 December 2008. Already Jewish Israelis have killed more people in their airstrikes on Hamas and Palestinian Arabs in Gaza than Muslim terrorists based in Pakistan killed in Mumbai, India a month ago. While tensions between India on one hand and Pakistan and Bangladesh on the other seems to have subsided, at least for now, they have exploded between Israel and not just Hamas but the Arab and Persian streets.

It is time for the international community to unite, invoke global sovereignty, and launch a massive planetary police intervention to stop this local and regional cycle of hatred, revenge, madness, and stupidity once and for all. This situation is so serious it warrants acceleration of human cultural evolution toward democratic planetary union.

Continue reading

Mumbai: Opportunities Lost

A Postscript Foreword:

The following essay was written soon after the Mumbai attacks and massacres on Wednesday to Saturday of 26-29 November 2008. At first blame was placed upon India’s own restive Muslim population. Sporadic Hindu-Muslim-Sikh communal riots still tend to break out now and then, and Kashmiris fighting for independence from India sometimes strike India.

Subsequent investigations uncovered the terrorists were not Indian at all but Pakistani Jihadists from Lashkar-e-Taiba, based in Pakistan. The same group was responsible for the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Both likely involved the Pakistani ISI. In both 2001 and after the Mumbai attack India and Pakistan came close to war. Their last major war was the Kargil War of 1999. Minor yet deadly on-going wars include the Kashmiri War and the Siachen Glacier War.

Both India and Pakistan, nominal allies in the larger Global War on Terror, are on opposite sides of the battle when it comes to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and their own frontier including tribal-autonomy issues over Punjab and Sindh. In fact, soon after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan, while denying anything to do with the attacks at first, massed troops along the border even while fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda forces along the AfPak border.

Mumbai presented humanity with a novel opportunity. It especially presented India and Pakistan such an opportunity to rise up over their ridiculously infantile yet murderous differences. Even China, Russia, and the United States and perhaps Afghanistan missed a significant opportunity with far-reaching implications to help facilitate peace between these nuclear-armed nation-states.

What follows is an in-depth view into the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, what the world came close to without much general awareness in the mainstream mass media or the populace at large, and unfolding scenarios. All-out destruction is still possible even as Mumbai recedes into the past, the situation in Kashmir remains highly inflamed, and tensions are high between India and China along their borders. The situation inside Pakistan has deteriorated so greatly many consider the nation a failed state. Perhaps more disconcerting, the relationship between the United States and Pakistan worsen with sporadic violence and open distrust breaking out between the two. Continue reading

Remember the Pygmy Holocaust

A holocaust has been going on under the radar of the world’s media and the canopies of the African rainforests. “Never again!” has become an empty cry as one genocidal massacre after another continues to pinball through our post-World War II history.

Little known is the on-going extermination, enslavement, and even cannibalism of the Pygmy people. Yes, you read that right. Cannibalism. While Pygmies have not risen in armed revolt against any government nor engage in combat against any armed faction in the Great African War, they are nevertheless hunted down like wild game animals, killed, and eaten. By other people. Continue reading

Congo: Nkunda’s Terror in the Great African “World War”

Foreword 2011:

Within this narrative we’ll study the rise and fall of Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general in the Congo Wars against the backdrop of Central African history. These Congolese conflicts are in turn part of the Great Central African War or the so-called African World War, a series of parallel, overlapping, and interlocking local and regional wars. Nkunda exploited the resulting chaos to set himself up as a warlord. He carved out his own little empire among the Virunga Mountains, the African Great Lakes, and other border areas of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

At the height of his power, Nkunda came close to bringing down President Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, humiliated larger United Nations military forces in the region, and was wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Some thought it possible he could unify Tutsi tribes across international borders, take over the DRC, and attempt to conquer an empire. His pride proved to be his own undoing. In a classic story evocative of Shakespeare’s plays reflecting the foibles of human nature everywhere, Laurent Nkunda was responsible for his own undoing. Continue reading

Two Days After Veteran’s Day 2008

Veterans’ Day 2008 in the United States has come and gone now. It originated as Armistice Day to celebrate the armistice that ended combat on the Western Front in Europe in the First World War. It evolved into Veterans’ Day within the U.S.A. to honor veterans of all America’s wars. In other countries involved in the First World War it is still remembered as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day. Major hostilities officially ceased with the German surrender in 1918 at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Called the Great War, the War to End all Wars, it was neither the first nor the last world war, although it was the most terrible up to that time. Nor did it end with the signing of the Armistice. The actual peace treaty officially ending the war wasn’t signed until 1919 and fighting continued on other fronts as the international slaughter morphed into a vast, interconnected network of revolutions and civil wars across several continents and included great violence in Russia, Germany, China, the Middle East, Mexico, and elsewhere.

The so-called Spanish influenza pandemic swept around the planet in the wake of the First World War and killed more people than the war itself. The wars spawned by World War I eventually converged into the Second World War such that some historians include the violence of 1914-1945 with the Great Depression in between all one monstrous war. Some go further and include the Cold War of 1945-1991 as the last phase of a truly Great War.

My grandfather, Carroll M. Bass of Richmond, Virginia, served in the U.S. Navy in the Great War. All I can remember from family stories of that time is that he was out in the Atlantic Ocean hunting German U-boats as part of an anti-submarine unit. There was always present the fear of being torpedoed, blown up and sunk in unimaginably deep, cold water. A medal lies on my desk, an old tarnished coin-like medal. Face-up is an image of what I fancy is woman in a long dress waving good-bye or hello with a smaller, encircled image of the Goddess of Justice. On the back is inscribed, “Presented by the citizens of Richmond, VA to C.M.B. (illegible) in grateful recognition of patriotic service in the World War, 1917-1918.” Continue reading

Obama: Our First World President?

Postscript as Belated Prologue: Voting for Barack Obama for U.S. President proved to be one of the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes of my life. As I write this almost five years after I voted for this brilliant, captivating, but mediocre man who waffled as much as he smiled, I’ve come to loathe Obama as much as I despised Bush I & II. I’ve since disowned the Democrats as well as the Republicans and wish them both a speedy death into the garbage cans of history.

In the wake of the still-ongoing Great Global Recession with its corresponding economic, financial, environmental, and social turmoil, I’ve also disavowed and spurned Capitalism. All attempts to reform Capitalism with the most generous and heartfelt of intentions failed. Finance Capitalism still wins out. FC is also known as Predatory, Disaster, and Crony Capitalism for a reason. Capitalism conquers Democracy and leads to Fascism and Imperialism New, reformed kinds of cooperative Socialism and Neo-Communism is far more desirable. In 2012, I voted against President Obama and for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party.

Obama won, and I became further engaged in the Green Party of Seattle. The Greens stand the best chance during these uncertain times to build pragmatic bridges between the Far Left and the Mainstream Middle where I live in the United States of America. I would say the same thing in regards to the Libertarians as building bridges between the traditional, conserve-Conservatives and Libertarians of the Far Right and the Mainstream Middle. What follows serves as the power of illusion, desperation, manipulated rebellion, and, yes, the deliberate deception and continual betrayal of the American people as well as the rest of Earth. ~ the Author, 19 July 2013.

 * * *

Barack Hussein Obama is now President of the United States of America. He was inaugurated today this Tuesday of 20 January 2009. To the relief of many, George W. Bush handed over the reigns of power without declaring martial law. After all, “W” wanted to get back to his ranch outside Crawford, Texas. Obama’s elevation to the Presidency is historic for a number of reasons, many of them obvious and oft commented on. What is not so obvious is that unofficially and energetically he is, at least for now, the de facto President of Planet Earth.

This became clear during his Berlin speech in the Spring of 2008. There he addressed throngs of people as a citizen of the world to point out nations of the world must work together to resolve the numerous challenges facing all humanity. We ARE one people. Today in his Inauguration speech he again alluded to the need for our community of nations to work together. Obama is energetically the unofficial President of the World. Take note. This is a historic first. And it is to be celebrated.

National sovereignty is as obsolete as the divine right of kings. An integration of personal and global sovereignty may well evolve to replace this outmoded and violent concept. We today have a planet of co-dependent nation-states and dependent stateless-nations. Yet nations still exist and their institutions can be leveraged in mass collaboration. We all must learn to work together to resolve a convergence of severe global crises unique in human history. Continue reading

“How did Republicans become Communists?”

“Obama is a Socialist!” We heard such slogans shouted and banded about by U.S. Republicans in the waning days of the American Election of 2008. Arizona Senator John McCain and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the respective Republican candidates for President and Vice-President, used the S-word in an attempt to fire up conservatives and scare the hell out of mainstream moderates. Few bit, however.

First, most Americans realize and accept they have some form of mixed economy where free market capitalism operates inside a container of government regulation and control and that was what saved us from the Great Depression and the Second World War. Yes, many Americans also realize their economy has a tint of socialism in it, but unlike Communist regimes the U.S. does not spout Marxist rhetoric or squash liberties and freedoms or slaughter millions of it own people like the Communist states of Soviet Russia, Red China, the Khmer Rouge, or North Korea. So McCain and Palin’s claims of “Socialism!” fell flat. Many people yawned, and many Republicans felt embarrassed.

It’s hard to yell “Socialist!” when you identify yourself as a Red Stater. Hey, hasn’t anyone else noticed that the U.S. Republican Party identifies itself with the term “Red State?” Has anyone else noticed that ultra-conservative Republicans identify as “Reds?” It must drive a conspiracy theorist wacko to think hey, the Communists actually won the Cold War after all by infiltrating and silently taking over its archenemy those U.S. Republicans. Continue reading

Obama Stands Tall…and the World Wakes Up…in 2008

Postscript as Belated Prologue: Voting for Barack Obama for U.S. President proved to be one of the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes of my life. As I write this almost 5 years after I wrote the original essay, I’ve come to loathe Obama as much as I despised Bush I & II. I’ve since disowned the Democrats as well as the Republicans and wish them both a speedy death into the garbage cans of history. In the wake of the still-ongoing Great Global Recession with its corresponding economic, financial, environmental, and social turmoil, I’ve also disavowed and spurned Capitalism.

All attempts to reform Capitalism with the most generous and heartfelt of intentions failed. Finance Capitalism still wins out. FC is also known as Predatory, Disaster, and Crony Capitalism for a reason. Capitalism conquers Democracy and leads to Fascism and Imperialism New, reformed kinds of cooperative Socialism and Neo-Communism is far more desirable. In 2012, I voted against President Obama and for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Obama won, and I became further engaged in the Green Party of Seattle.

The Greens stand the best chance these days to build pragmatic bridges between the Far Left and the Mainstream Middle where I live in the United States of America. I would say the same thing in regards to the Libertarians as building bridges between the traditional, conserve-Conservatives and Libertarians of the Far Right and the Mainstream Middle. What follows serves as the power of illusion, desperation, manipulated rebellion, and, yes, the deliberate deception and continual betrayal of the American people as well as the rest of Earth. ~ the Author, July 19, 2013.

* * *

“Obama rocks!” my daughter Kate shouts, pumping her fist high in triumph. She’s three and a half weeks away from her 10th birthday, and she is excited about politics for the first time in her life.

I realized for the first time just how ashamed I felt to be an American under the Bush-Cheney Regime. I have both supported and opposed various policies of different administrations over the years, demanding the light of truth be shined on any and all things. Despite terrible things done by Americans over the course of U.S. history I was proud of what we achieved. I was proud of what we stood for even in the midst of our imperfections. Continue reading

A Retrospective: Political Parties and an Endorsement for the American Presidency 2008

Postscript as Belated Prologue: Voting for Barack Obama for U.S. President proved to be one of the biggest and most embarrassing mistakes of my life. As I write this almost 5 years after I once endorsed this man, I’ve come to loathe Obama as much as I despised Bush I & II. I’ve since disowned the Democrats as well as the Republicans and wish them both a speedy death into the garbage cans of history. In the wake of the still-ongoing Great Global Recession with its corresponding economic, financial, environmental, and social turmoil, I’ve also disavowed and spurned Capitalism.

All attempts to reform Capitalism with the most generous and heartfelt of intentions failed. Finance Capitalism still wins out. FC is also known as Predatory, Disaster, and Crony Capitalism for a reason. Capitalism conquers Democracy and leads to Fascism and Imperialism New, reformed kinds of cooperative Socialism and Neo-Communism is far more desirable. In 2012, I voted against President Obama and for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Obama won, and I became further engaged in the Green Party of Seattle.

I feel the Greens stand the best chance these days to build pragmatic bridges between the Far Left and the Mainstream Middle where I live in the United States of America. I would say the same thing in regards to the Libertarians as building bridges between the traditional, conserve-Conservatives and Libertarians of the Far Right and the Mainstream Middle. What follows serves as the power of illusion, desperation, manipulated rebellion, and, yes, the deliberate deception and continual betrayal of the American people as well as the rest of Earth. ~ the Author, 19 July 2013.

December of 2011 is half over now, and the Election of 2012 is already in overdrive. As a group, the Republicans have seen many of their candidates make fools of themselves. The Democrats demonstrate an astounding lack of spine and decisiveness. Together they antagonize the general American Public. Nor have the Green Party, the Libertarians, or even an Independent party emerged with viable candidates.

Certainly there isn’t anyone who ignites people with passion and vision. The other minor parties field extremists who may in all fairness have a few good ideas but also many terrible and certain impractical ones. New groups have emerged fielding alternative ways to choosing our leaders, such as the Americans Elect and the Win Win Revolution (see their URLs below).

The Tea Party revolt was hijacked by the ultraconservative superrich and after a great noise faded from prominence. The Occupy Wall Street movement exploded worldwide and made an even greater ruckus, initially appealed to a broad majority of American citizens. Support for OWS may be fading.

Police intimidation combined with a growing perception among the 99% the general assemblies of those groups camping in public spaces may be internally hijacking OWS with their own radical agendas. Efforts to unite both “TP & OWS” by Venn diagram-wielding visionaries have yet to bear results. It’s still too early to tell what will arise come Spring from the Winter of both groups. Continue reading

Over Meditated

After four days away in the woods of Cloud Mountain, a Buddhist meditation retreat center down near Mt. St. Helens, Washington, I’m back in the Emerald City of Seattle surfing traffic in my four-wheeled kayak. With fiercely serene contemplation my breath guides me to all the sweet spots between grinding dump trucks and vrooming sports cars and teeth-gnashing morons, oops, excuse me, peoplyps, wow, post-meditation Freudian malapropism there smashing together people and polyps! Oops, back to the breath. Breathing in, breathing out. Good thing we worked with our nasal orifices and not any others. Indeed.

During the retreat, we focused on Samatha or Concentration and Tranquility Meditation with Jhana practices. Samatha is “the other twin” to Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, and is little known in North America. It’s beginning to take root, however, as it is rediscovered by many practitioners. My two teachers, Tina Rasmussen, a former nun, and Stephen Snyder, had immersed themselves deeply in these Samatha practices. They mentored under a rare master, the Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw of Myanmar/Burma.

After studying and practicing Vipassana in Seattle for two years it proved to be the missing link. For the two middle days I spent at least nine to ten hours in sitting meditation, or attempting to, and the rest of my time awake meditating while walking, eating, and during tasks such as brushing my teeth or working as one of two “soup yogis.”

As part of trading work for money to get myself into the course, I set up and maneuvered giant soup contraptions for the cook. It wasn’t hard, especially as a tiny woman with a head-spinning mane of hair who once spent five years as a bald nun on a silent Zen meditation retreat handled those big soup gamdoodles even faster than I did.

Continue reading

Stages of Collapse

“Collapse” here refers to the process and stages a civilization descends through as it falls, crumbles, and collapses into extinction. Or manages to turn itself around at pivotal points on the way down before its too late. The term originated from the title of Dr. Jared M. Diamond’s pivotal 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

What human-made forces and institutions kill most people? History provides the answers. Political and religious institutions kill the most as they shape our beliefs, perceptions, and cultural reactions to reality. Civilizations arise within these structures. As nomadic hunter-gatherers settled down and began to congregate and work together in increasing levels of complexity, their populations expanded. Cities develop as local villages, markets, and fortifications merge and consolidate. Continue reading

Little Red Boots

I loved my little red boots. Little itty-bitty cheap plastic boots with plastic rubbery pull-up handles. They were so RED! And I loved red. I felt so PROUD! Cuz I wore them, or rather lost them, in receiving (remember, medals of honor are not awarded to winners but recipients!) my very first concussion, which was also the first time I fell out of a tree, and the very first time I broke through the ice over frozen water. Now, one can imagine little red boots venturing foolishly out onto the ice, but what in tarnation where they doing up in a TREE?

Oh, by the way, this was back when I was a little boy. I was a bad, bad elementary school lad trying to tag along with those badder than worse pre-teen boys my Momma hated me playing with. Of course, we didn’t use “pre-teen” back in those halcyon red rock-throwing1960s. Back then we li’l kids call ‘em “the Big Kids.” I grew up, see, in rural Virginia, on my parents’ dairy farm outside the town of Farmville, yes, the real Farmville, halfway between Richmond and Lynchburg.

One day a long, long time ago, decades now, I ventured out after a long and terrible storm. In my little red boots, of course. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. And all the plants and everything else outside was slick and glistening wet. It must’ve been Spring or Fall because I do remember wearing a coat and a hat.

I climbed up into a tree. I loved to climb. That’s why I was up in a tree. I began playing in it the previous summer. It was a scrubby, bushy, shrubby tree growing wild around the corner of the yard. My parents just mowed the grass around it. It was a tangle of shoots with myriad branches forking forth in all directions. At one point I slipped and grabbed, stopped myself, and ended up with a mouthful of leaves. Apparently I used my mouth as an extra hand. No wonder I have jaw problems these days! Continue reading

Yellow Jackets Swarming Ants

A cloud of yellow jackets gathered over the yard as a dark storm of malevolent invasion. The black and yellow wasps were at once beefy and lean from a summer of feasting and hunting. They circled together in the air; then dropped to attack. God, they were FAST! I stumbled backwards in panic. Dozens of yellow jackets swiftly assaulted, killed, and ate hundreds of ants. The massacre was over in minutes. Life and death right there in my front yard. The ebb and flow of nature I unwittingly contributed to in a reminder we humans live within nature. Continue reading

Interview Impromptu with a Murderer

People have no idea what a person goes thru in life. As a young man working on the family dairy farm I had the occasion to work with at least three murderers. All three were men. One was White. He boasted of what he did and would do. He later did it, too. Cut his own Momma’s head off. Two others were Black. One of those was matter of fact about the psychology of killing and was all business about it. The other hid out in plain sight. There may have been more killers working alongside me, too, but I only knew about these three during this time period of 1981 – 1984. This was back when I lived in Prince Edward County, tucked away in the Piedmont hills and low valleys of south-central Virginia. As I worked side by side together with them on the farm, we got to know each other well.

All three stirred powerful emotions in me. Once I almost killed one guy, a drunken horror named Paul Jenkins. It was my day off work, but I had to come in as Paul never showed up to milk the cows. He was home drunk off more cans of the cheap beer he called “liquid steak” then one could count. He jumped my back and drunkenly tried to choke me as we prepared to milk the cows, I lost it. Enraged and scared, I broke loose, ran into the cow barn, snatched a pitchfork from where it stood buried in a bale of hay, and charged him to drive those prongs in deep. At the last minute I stopped myself. I felt too much empathy. Reminded myself some of us carry a heavier cross than others at different times in life.

My drunk coworker then begged me to kill him, or he would commit suicide. He threatened to hang himself off the side of our 75-ft high grain silo. Another fed-up coworker, an older man semi-retired, would have no more of this interruption of work that must be done, and shouted at him to “Go ahead and hang your own damn fool ass off that silo! I’ve had it with all your shit!” After a few deep breaths I backed off as he flopped crying in the grass and almost knocked over a big, smelly pan of cow milk set down for the kitties. Yeah, we had a lot of cats and kittens around back then. The other man calmed down. Together we got the cows milked, but Paul staggered on off down the road, found a way to Charlottesville where his MaMa lived, slipped into her home in the middle of the night, and cut her head off. She whipped out a pistol from under her pillow, the same one she’d shot her abusive husband, Paul’s daddy, dead with, but she wasn’t quick enough. Not this time. Her son severed her head right there in her own bed.

The scariest one was a young man whose name I’ve forgotten. Although I can see his face clearly in my mind as I write this piece. So I’m gonna call him Mike. Though it might as well ’ve been Dick. Wait, I remember now. It’s Thomas! And one day during a slow time “cleaning up the barn,” our job description for gathering up and removing leftover hay, cow manure, bovine urine, trash, and anything else, I interviewed him. What follows is not a formal interview of direct quotes, but a close approximation as I paraphrase his stark use of language. In some ways it felt as if I interviewed him only yesterday. He, however, acted as if he was somehow my mentor, as if he was going to train me in one of the darkest arts, murder. I shiver even now in remembrance.

Continue reading

Homeless along the Freeway

She stood surprisingly tall and alert but worn out and desperate. Unwashed blonde hair hung over gray-white skin. Her clothes were ragged, drab, and yet rich with color all at once. Bands of red, purple, and green zigzagged through the fibers of a dirty Sherpa hat pulled down tight. A turquoise scarf was wrapped around her neck and flung over her shoulders. Her eyes flickered between the waning control of high intelligence and the growing impulses for beastly survival. She looked real. She was real.

Upon the edge of an exit ramp off the freeway along which traffic thunders through Seattle, she stood there in mismatch boots holding up a ragged cardboard sign. It stated:

COLD

HUNGRY

I NEED MONEY

PLEASE!

Continue reading

All Eyes Are

When I am certain
No one is watching,
Not a single soul,
When I am certain
No one can see me,
I stop.

I sit
and meditate.
I sit on a cushion and feel
my own breath alive in me
and outside of me.

Complete but never done,
I rise to sing,
and dance,
and rock my pelvis
at nothing in particular,
just to loosen up my hips.

Naked I stand.
Naked I twirl.
Feeling foolish,
Feeling good,
A hirsute man in my early 50s.
Why, I am not even old yet.
I could live another 50 years,
or drop dead before I finish this sentence.

As I sit so alone and so naked
and half-aroused,
dreaming of mounting vibrant, exciting women
who dare look me deep in the eyes
to see if they trust my soul,
I realize
God is watching me.
That He watches from above and from within
as Goddess watches from below and all around.
She slithers up inside to me to embrace God.
I feel a quiet explosion of Love and Power
expanding from that unity of Spirit and communion of all Souls.

All eyes are upon me naked,
even if many are closed.
Everyone sees me,
and in looking out together
I see myself.
Everyone sees me
as we see you.

 

William Dudley Bass
2 December 2011
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at <http://www.cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/04/all-eyes-are-when-i-am-certain-no-one.html>. Revised and republished here on my new blog On Earth at the Brink on December 2, 2011 at <https://williamdudleybass.com>. Thank you.

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

*

I ain’t no man

I ain’t no man. That’s just a word. Somebody else’s word.
I’m not my name. I’m not my history. I’m not my past.
I ain’t the future; ain’t happened yet.
I’m not my stories – they all made up.
I ain’t dead – but will be eventually.

I’m not my personality or my character. I’m not my identity.
I’m made up in my own mind, and I’m not my self as there is no self.
I ain’t no ego or no id. I’m not my consciousness or my subconsciousness.
I’m not my shadow or my inner child or adolescent or whatever.
I ain’t no woman tho I came outa one and like all humans who ain’t cloned or genetically engineered with sheep & cows & chimpanzees cuz
I’m a mix of Y & X but ain’t no frakkin’ mutant Z, Z & Z.

I have all those things, but I’m not those things. I’m not my body.
Yeah, I have one. I have a body. My frakkin’ body. Love it, too. But I’m not it.
I ain’t nothin’. Rip off all my clothes.
Ain’t got no shame. Ain’t got no pride. Ain’t got nothin’.
Feelings & emotions rise up roiling hot scorching magma…
but I let them go & cool off. I ain’t nothing.
There’s no AM in my I.

Standing in wet emptiness a hot flash of darkness renders naked all creation. Moving into light I start up again cuz I’m the DNA engine…move people move!
Move into possibility…move into my power…into love…cuz I’m done Seeking.
Tears find me. Carve gullies down my chest and belly.
Tears burn open holes in my flesh and fill my heart as wine.
The more I cry the clearer I see.
I cry so hard my head breaks open round my tears.
Salty wine pours down my insides and out.
My legs rust apart like iron and break upon my feet like clay.
All dissolve into the sea.

I topple into sand beyond the furthest stranglehold of my own hands.Ozymandias dead and unremembered even after the winds long blow away the sands. There is nothing but this present moment, nothing beyond death but words. Nothing explodes into everything becoming anything.
Power flows and love churns reborn.
Flowers crack open concrete as massive stars destroy whole galaxies.

In the Bang of Big of Everything
every tiny quantum particle wave bursts into a genesis of evolution
from which arises after 14 Billion years the capacity to forgive and feel compassion, to feel empathy and love, to embrace paradox with and not or,
to transcend the horror we visit upon one another, to open up and cry, and to love, and to love with power, and be love in the power.

Love…it is our gift to gift as a species, our art we put out into the multiverse of billion billions of planets with billions likely teeming with life…when we finally face the mysterious beings afar will be our greatest challenge to love…and sometimes in 14 Billion years things move fast and “they” may not wait for us Humans to get our act together & stop slaughtering each other & wake up into our own power to understand to wake up to get LOVE powers the Universe.

 

William Dudley Bass
Spring & Summer 2011
Seattle, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

NOTES:

  1. Inspired post to Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group, “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY” on May 25, 2011 and later revised on May 27, 2011 as A Prose Poem Written With Pounding Heart.
  2. Reposted to one of my earlier blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, on July 8, 2011, at <http://www.cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-aint-no-man-i-aint-no-man.html>.
  3. Revised, restructured, rewritten, and republished here on my blog On Earth at the Brink at <https://williamdudleybass.com>.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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I am not my Name

My name is William,
William Dudley Bass,
And I am not my name.
I am my Word.
Nurture, nurture myself:
I love, honor, and respect myself.
I love, honor, and respect myself.
I love, honor, and respect myself.
AHO!
I am alive.
I am here, right here now.
I have a history.
I am not my history.
Nor my stories or identities.
I am not my legacy, or my reputation, or anyone’s opinion.
I am not my own beliefs, views, or interpretations.
I have my beliefs, views, or interpretations I give meaning to,
Of course,
But I am not any of those…things.
I am here, right here now,
And I am alive.
What happened is what happened, just what happened.
Truth.
Meanings, interpretations, perceptions, views, myths, filters, beliefs
Are all made up,
All stories,
And stories are lies.
Unless it is, of course, called “a true story.”
Would that be a false lie?
We all have views,
And only God has View.
If such exists, either View…or God.
Views are not truths,
just events filtered, deleted, and interpreted by mind.
I am not my body or my feelings and emotions or even my thoughts.
I do have a body, and with feelings, emotions, and thoughts, of course,
But am not any of those…things.
Even a construct of mind is made up by the mind to be a construct of mind.
In the beginning and yet again there was nothing leaving nothing but The Word.
I am my Word.

 

(Influenced by works as diverse as Landmark Education, Peak Potentials Trainings, Scott Brooks’ mythopoetic men’s work, Vipassana Buddhist Meditation with Seattle Insight Meditation Society, and Jeff Shushan’s psychotherapy and counseling.)

 

William Dudley Bass
20 April 2011
Seattle, Washington

NOTE: Originally published on another one of my blogs, Cultivate and Harvest, at <http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html>, then republished here on December 2, 2011. Thank you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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The Three F’s

My wife
She & I fight
I hate it
She does, too
I saw a pattern
Called it “F & F”
For “Fight or Fuck, Fuck or Fight”
Ken Wilber once wrote the
primal male drive toward everything
Is to “Fuck it or kill it.”
My wife liked to quote Ken Wilber a lot
when I was horny and she didn’t care
if she made love for over a month or two
or even a year or ever again
I, however, was horny a lot
K added the third F
“F, F, & F”
Shit, I hate all this F & F & F
Keeps us apart
Tears open our hearts
As mad dogs rip up a coon
Caught alongside the river
Deep down below a full moon
My point of view was
“Fuck or Fight & Fail”
Her point of view was
“Fight or Fuck & Fail”
Still the same 3 F’s
Shit, I hate all these here F’s
A long time ago
In a circle of men gathered around a big drum
On a sawdusty stone floor before a fire
A shaven-headed skinny dude with a beard
Pointed his long index finger to the North Star
“We all have a fuckin’ point of view,” he said.
“That’s why we have so many wars.”
He jabbed the shadow air again with bony finger.
“Remember this, I say it now, remember what I say, OK.
You and me, we all have a different point of view,
Yes, we do,
But only God has View.”
Around and round the wife & I rumble
Struggling to beat together as One Heart One
In sweat-drenched sheets shoved aside
I surrendered to her
And she was all mine
As we ground out electric Tantra sparks
Amid blazing pillows and melted wax
God saw through our eyes all at once
Our points of view became only View
I was in her and she in me
I was Goddess and she God
With a cry of submission
To the Divine Within
The One God Beyond All saw everything
And so could we
For a time, for a time.

 

William Dudley Bass
From a desperate & broken prose poem from 30 May 2009
Turned into another bad poem on 20 September 2011
Published here at On Earth at the Brink at just after midnight on Friday 2December 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Blogging the Deborama

“Tuesdays with Deborah” is a circle of bloggers and writers I gather with to listen and to share about and for blogging. Author and editor Deborah Drake facilitates, and she pours her soul into our meetings. She’s passionate and generous for the art of crafting language…and how we can all market it. Deborah recently guided us through our blogger version of November’s National Novel Writing Month.

Good thing I didn’t keep what I originally put down as my title, “Decembering the Deborahma.”

Better yet I’m glad I paid attention to my intuition, something I’ve been known to neglect with interesting consequences. My intuition said, “I betta lookit uppa!”

“Decembering” stems from Olde English per the on-line Urban Dictionary & as December’s the first true month of Winter means, “to give a cold shoulder.” To dismiss, “to blow off,” even, uh, um…“hate.” See for yourself at:  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Decembering. Worse, my spellcheck suggested I respell it “dismembering.”  I’ve been playing a bit too cheeky with words, I see. Continue reading

Balance in Forward Motion

Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Balance in Forward Motion! “Go faster, Daddy!” Bass Family Bike Ride, “Iron Horsie” Trail, WA. August 2006. Photo by Kristina Bass.

Balance is overrated. Balance achieved is motion frozen in time and space, all energy internalized to remain upright against gravity. Some speakers up on stage I’ve heard like to refer to achieving balance in your life as creating “homeostasis.” Which is supposed to be “healthy.” It’s a misuse of a cool word. Homeostasis is merely the biological process in which organisms regulates and maintains their physiological and chemical systems in a stable manner.

Homeostasis as a process can even be disturbed to exist and continue in a state of imbalance. It’s definitely not the same as balancing a stack of plates upon your head while standing atop a ball. It’s not turning the messy breakdowns and re-creations of daily living into a brightly colored pie chart called “Designing a Balanced Life.” Do you really want your “life balance” to feel as if you’re splitting down the middle like an amoeba about to reproduce?

Up in Canada once for a series of trainings I witnessed Bob Proctor in action. He’s a master trainer in the field of personal and professional growth and development and a highly successful entrepreneur. Well-dressed and about 70 years old, he popped out behind the curtains and raced across the stage leaping and shouting as if he was a superbly athletic actor in his 20s.

“Balance!” roared Bob. “Balance is waaay overrated! It’s boring! Boring! You cannot move forward standing still trying to stay balanced. I’m living my life OUT of balance!”

He stopped and spun around, stood perfectly still as a warrior poised to pounce, then jumped as high as he could with one arm pointing straight up into the air. And laughed, laughed loud. Continue reading

Twittering the Revolution to Facebook at the Occupation of the Washington State Capitol

 Click on any picture to enlarge the foto. Click again to diminish it.

Monday 28 November 2011

Good Morning! It’s 5:43am here in Seattle, & I’m proud to announce my oldest daughter Morgan got her first letter of acceptance to college (University of Portland in OR), my middle one Kate made straight A’s on her rc, & my youngest Talia can make a violin sing. And I’m off to help Occupy the State Capitol & Legislature down in Olympia, WA today. 5:46 am.

Crowds roaring & more buses roll in & dropping people off from all over WA. OCCUPY our Capitol & Legislature! In Olympia. 11:17 am.

Continue reading

Why the Hell Can’t We Grow Up?

American’s dislike and distrust of their government and their politicians is at an all time high. Such sentiment is echoed around the world against governments everywhere. Occupy Wall Street has exploded across the United States and across Earth. People are disgusted, fed up, mad, and scared. And we Americans are polarized between ourselves as never before, with the possible exceptions of the 1850s and 60s and a hundred plus years later the 1960s and 70s. Both were periods of intense civil strife and turmoil.

“The solution to the problem is pretty simple,” wrote Michael Scott Brooks as he expounded upon what I assumed to be his reference to our local, national, and global challenges, “People just need to grow up.”

He’s a friend and a local leader in the mythopoetic men’s movement. This is perfect synchronicity, I thought, as my wife Kristina and I had a similar conversation hours earlier. But I challenged him.

“We’re all at different levels of evolution,” I posted back. “Gotta learn to work together as we are with what we have. Now that’s hard work!” Remembering our shared love of poetry and its power through the ages to move sages, warriors, and common folk alike, I signed off with “It’s time for a Poem.”

“I think some of you are missing my point,” he retorted to all of us.

Well, y’know what? Scott’s on to something. Why the Hell can’t we grow up?

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What’s Your Purpose?

Hello, there! Ready or not, here’re a few questions to consider. And answer. Especially since life is what it is and doesn’t wait for us to feel ready.

Consider just what is your deep Purpose in Life? What drives you to do what you do, how you do it, who you do it for, and what you do it for? Without Purpose, how successful is your business? Your primary relationships? And with Purpose, thrive!

Are you clear what your Purpose is?

What is your Purpose? Your deep, life Purpose?

Are you on Purpose?

If you feel off, what do you do to get back on track?

Or did your “Purpose Train” derail and crash and the wreckage overwhelms you? Are you taking the crash personally?

Are you already on Purpose and you navigate through challenges not necessarily with grace but with clarity? What works for you?

What the heck is a “Purpose” anyway, and why is that “P” so big? Continue reading

Go Write! Write like a Dog!

 

William at Work, Home Office, Dragonfly House, Seattle. October 24, 2008. Photo by Kristina Bass.

 

William Bass, Guerrilla Writing. Always be Writing! Seattle. August 14, 2011. Photo by Kristina Bass.

I grew up writing like crazy. My Mom, a poet, encouraged me to write from the get-go. I’m told I could write my name by age 3, although I don’t know if anyone could read what I wrote. I learned to write with both hands and even with both feet. Never had the elegant cursive of my lettered ancestors, though. I was too impatient and liked to go … FAST! You should’ve seen the jagged sentences scribbled with a pencil gripped between my toes.

One sunny afternoon in October 2008 as I drove around the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Garrison Keillor came on the radio. One of his short, nap-time blurbs for NPR. He quoted another writer, Augusten Burroughs:

“The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.”

Now that kicked me in the ass. Ow! Continue reading

What is Deep Listening?

Are you a Deep Listener? If not, would you value learning the skills required to practice Deep Listening? And just what is Deep Listening anyway? You hear pretty good anyway, right?

Consider these:

  • What do you listen for?
  • How do you listen?
  • Who do you listen to?
  • Why are you listening?
  • Are you listening about something or someone, or are you listening for something or someone?

As you ponder these five questions to come up with your answers, below are several things to consider. There’s work to do and practice before we can answer those questions on a deeper level. Continue reading

Microwaving my Blog

Doing everything one isn't supposed to, zapping a tin foil hat & all.

Doing everything one isn’t supposed to, zapping a tin foil hat & all.

Goodness, my Blog must be a tinfoil hat. In desperation I stuck what I loved in the microwave. Gonna transmute tin and wool into GOLD! Maybe even transform positive influences from inspired dreams into birthin’ out some reality! Yeah! What a mess! A bloody, damn mess! Woo Hoo! Sparks arced from brain to computer screen. I channeled the dead but dreaded whatever it was as it wasn’t human, or worse than demons, a mad old blue-haired biddy floating up from her vacation lounge chair down in the Underworld to grasp my face with crooked fingernails and smother me with lipstick and bad breath. Ow. Horrors of childhood. Birth’s a mess all right, and I’m alive to add mine to make our world a more positive place.

I’m writing every day. But not posting every day. Back toward the end of October I attended a meeting of a Blogger’s Circle that met every Tuesday afternoon in Bellevue, Washington. I hadn’t been since my first visit back in August. I longed for the company of other writers and wanted to learn what actions do I take to publish and market and effectively do so at low cost?

Cuz I’d lost my job, investments, and homes in this Great Recession. After short-selling our homes, my family and I moved into a beautiful rental with what was left with the possibility of buying it someday. Three months later faulty wires in the wall ignited a blazing inferno in which we lost everything but our lives. So reeling a little bit still, just a tad here and there, if you will, so I turned back to writing to help heal my self. Continue reading

Original American Thanksgivings Redux: Lessons for Today and Tomorrow

 

Thanksgiving: What was, What happened, What's possible.

Thanksgiving: What was. What happened. What’s possible.

As an American one of my favorite holy days is Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving. And as much as I love the food and the sense of community I feel, for me it really isn’t about food, family, and friends. It’s more for being aware of and the expression of gratitude and appreciation. We give thanks on Thanksgiving.

It’s a time to pause and reflect, to slow down and be aware of what is. It’s a few moments to be thankful for all the things we take for granted.

Thanksgiving has a dark side, too. It’s often glossed over and forgotten in history books and magazine articles. For a short time Thanksgiving blended together Native American Indian and European-American traditions in celebrations rich with the fragile promise of two very different racial cultures co-creating a new, hybrid civilization. This failure ranks as one of the great tragedies of human history, and one of the greatest unsung ones.

Continue reading

Collapse is a Choice

Collapse is a choice. We can choose to work together across Planet Earth for life, liberty, health, and prosperity or for global collapse and omnicide. Wait, let me say it plainer. We can choose to work together for life or die. Remember, wherever you live right now is on the same planet in the same biosphere as people in other neighborhoods on the far side of the globe. Except, of course, for a few spacefarers who hope to come back to their beautiful and precious world below.

Our species, as far as we know, originated in East and maybe Southern Africa and has spread all over Earth and walked on the Moon. We can choose to pull together or die. Retreating into your fortress with stockpiles of supplies or fighting other people over race, religion, nationality, language, geography, resources, and violent politics will not help anyone and shall make things worse. You, yes, I’m talkin’ to you, men and women and children, must get over your rage, your shame, your fear, especially fear that is all made up in your minds as False Evidence Appearing Real. Because there are real things out there to be truly afraid of but nothing to be paralyzed by.

Our news is full of doom and gloom, from the mainstream mass media to alternatives on the furthest fringes. In the midst of all the negatives the majority of politicians and their pet economists are saying what most people want to hear and wish could be true: “Folks, things ARE getting better. These trends prove it. See, this and that are going up while that and this are going down. It is a new day for another new beginning again! Yes, times are hard, but they don’t last forever, and this is proof they’re not.”

Meanwhile many of those who know better and know otherwise, regardless of their ethnicity or their political or religious beliefs, are shaking their heads “No, you idiots!” while stomping around in circles pulling out the remains of their hair then sighing in frustration. I confess to having done some of that myself before I remind myself to breathe and wiggle and breathe again then be still. Conservatives and Liberals, Socialists and Libertarians, Progressives and Regressives; across party lines you will find a rising tide of dissent, dismay, anger, and resignation. The magnitude and reality of Collapse simply overwhelms.

It does not have to be this way. Collapse is a choice. We don’t have to be automatons to our own reptilian and mammalian brains or even our subconscious. We don’t have to react with fight or flight or freeze to what’s coming at us right now. Engaging in blame games and one-upmanship is merely another way of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as she sinks forever into the cold North Atlantic.

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Empire of Bases for Wars without End

Hey, guess what, folks? It turns out the leaders of the United States don’t even know exactly how many American and Allied military bases exist. Furthermore, the number of wars the so-called, unofficial but still real Euro-American Global Empire is engaged in does not match the official count. Because there are more violent military and intelligence operations occurring simultaneously than Empire wants to admit. When Special Forces engage in covert hostilities behind enemy lines of a state or quasi-state we are not technically at war with, or when the CIA fires drone missiles into countries that we’re also not technically at war with, isn’t that “war?”

There are two ways the great, borderless superpower of today behaves in a similar fashion to empires of old.

During the height of many large, polyglot empires from the Roman to the Mongol to the British, the imperial Center, i.e. the homeland realms, were often in a state of prolonged peace.  Except, of course, for an occasional civil war for control of the state. The majority of the population enjoyed the illusion of a peaceful world of trade and commerce free of war. What they actually meant, however, were their cities and countryside were free from invasion.

The far-flung borders and colonies of these empires, however, were often in a state of chronic warfare. These conflicts included tribal wars, local ethnic rebellions, and frontier guerrilla wars. There were unique situations where off and on border wars raged between large empires without either committing fully to what would have been a Phyrric victory. Ancient History buffs may note one case in particular, the Roman-Parthian Wars. A Modern example would be the American-Soviet Cold War, although the Soviet Empire  collapsed at the end of it.

Today, the dominant region of the Euro-American Global Empire is called “the United States Homeland.” “Homeland” is a post-9/11 term that recalls a time not all that long ago when the Nazis emphasized Germany as “the Fatherland.” The Soviet Communists did the same with Russia as “the Motherland.” The focus has shifted from American liberties and protecting Constitutional rights to enforcing Homeland Security with domestic surveillance and militarization. The militaristic and ultranationalist “feel” these terms evoke is quiet different from the peaceful, loving reverence many feel for “Mother Earth and Father Sky” for example.

The second similarity is the vast number of military garrisons empires establish to maintain control of far-flung regions, whether it is political control, to promote and protect certain religions and corporations, to defend against enemies, to hold territory, or to allow for safe commerce to flow. These imperial frontiers and colonies were dotted with numerous forts, castles, and other fortifications. The First and Second World Wars destroyed the concept of “forts.” Now they are called “bases.” Forts became something preteen boys built back in the bushes from which to lob rocks and sticks at one another.

Continue reading

Remember YOU are the Government! Where are you shut down?

One of my most influential trainers is Harv Eker of Peak Potentials out of Vancouver, British Columbia. He constantly reminded my fellow students and me that “Your inner world creates your outer world.”  OK. Thoughts and emotions lead to actions. The unconscious mind really drives the conscious mind to leverage the body to create and implement, or to regress and shut down.

Harv, dressed in black and highly animated up on stage, was dynamic. “Now stand up and say it out loud,” he urged. “Together!” We stood up from our chairs and all said together “My inner world creates my outer world.” It is as true for communities and organizations of human beings as well as for individuals. Harv went on to remind us with loud enthusiasm “How you do ANYTHING is how you do EVERYTHING!”

I live in the United States of America. A native of Virginia, I’ve lived almost two decades in the City of Seattle which overlays King County in the western part of Washington State. It is April 2011. Recently, close to midnight last Friday, April 8th, the American Federal Government narrowly averted a total shutdown. A partial shutdown was underway. The Republicans and Democrats, the two major parties that currently dominate U.S. politics, are more interested in bloodless civil war than in peaceful cooperation and bipartisanship. As large groups, they approach the art and craft of politics, including compromise, as schoolyard bullies with regressive, reactive emotional intelligence. Yes, individuals stand out for collaborative policy making, but they are run over by tsunamis of angry and divisive people more intent on destruction and ideological purity rather than creation and pragmatic innovation.

In my own state of Washington the financial warfare 3,000 miles back east has infected our state and local government. The state government is paralyzed with decisions regarding budgets, taxes, and services. The city and county governments where I live are engaged in unrelenting, neverending battles over mass transit issues and other services costing more than what is available to spend. Other governments in other areas of the world seem really shut down or in a state of warfare, from Afghanistan to Libya to Ivory Coast and elsewhere. The European Union is lurching from one financial crisis to another. The United Nations is bereft of power and agreement.

Back home Americans rail against the Government shutdown. Some even call for it, bring it on, they say; let it force us over the brink to see what happens, clean house, etc. etc. Others scramble to prevent it from happening and to maintain a status quo. Neither approach is healthy and neither is sustainable. The underlying issues, fundamentally who and what controls the Money Power, is barely recognized and not even addressed. And yet, we the people are at choice here.

We are the government, are we not? Have we abdicated responsibility to those with the money and the power and the media skills? Have we forgotten government is of the people, by the people, for the people? That the institutions of government from the global to the local are composed of fellow human beings? That “all these governments” are our governments? That the government is us?

Continue reading

Electoral Reform is Urgent, Overdue, and Needed Now

Electoral reform is urgent. Many proposals have been presented in numerous countries including the United States over the years with few results. There is too much inertia within the Establishment. The political machines and the transnational corporations including the Big Banks controlling them easily resist such threats to their power.

It’s easy for them to do so as they control the voting: they simply vote “No!” when real change is presented. We jerk about like puppets on strings and deride one another as “sheeple” or  “bloodthirsty communists” or “capitalist pigs.” Aren’t you tired of that? I’m tired of it.

What will work? It will take noisy mass movements out in the streets combined with quiet and deliberate political actions to legally and openly infiltrate the Establishment by winning at the ballot box to initiate changes. If we can actually win power even when we win an election. And it seems too late as so many challenges demanding significant transformation, not just change, are avalanching down upon us all.

Electoral reforms are a must as it will allow us to more effectively and radically address our problems. Open, free, and fair elections under the eyes of impartial observers and vote collectors and counters are vital for any functioning republic. Elections are one of the cornerstones of Democracy. This is especially so for a democracy such as the United States of America that is a constitutional federal republic.

Yet we find our political parties and the electoral process corrupted by Big Money, i.e. private control of the money power. Two dominant parties, Republicans and Democrats, work together so much to control elections at all levels from the national to the state and local they are often detested as “the two-headed snake.” Together they accept financial support from the same corporations to such a degree many politicians are generally considered “bought.” Such corporations leverage this special relationship to finance powerful lobbying groups to advocate on their behalf.

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Abolish Political Parties from Our Elections

Yes, abolish political parties from electoral campaigns at every level. Ban them from lobbying on behalf of their agendas. Ban them from endorsing candidates. Ban them from organizing front organizations, shell companies, PACs, shell NGOs, and other rackets on behalf of candidates and party agendas. Ban political parties from giving money, assets, and even volunteer services to candidates.

The term “candidate” refers here to both human beings running for elected office or nominated for an appointed position as well as proposed legislation including laws, bills, referendums, etc.

Abolishing political parties and any similar organizations from the political process is a necessary, even urgent electoral reform. Many may view it as a radical reform. Which it is, especially when you consider one of the earlier meanings of the word radical is “root.”  Returning to our roots, in a sense, as the American Founding Fathers abhorred the concept of political parties.

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Turning Points? The Occupy Movement Keeps Spreading Amid Rapid Change

The Occupy Wall Street movement is alive and growing rapidly. It continues to expand and spread despite early cries of an early death. Even in the face of ridicule and dismissal the movement continues to defy predictions. The mainstream mass media and the punitive pundits among the 99% who’ve sided with the 1% continue to scoff at the protesters as “stinky hippies and punk rockers,” or “communists, socialists, anarchists,” even “racists.”

These lackeys for the 1% ignore the masses of families with children, middle-aged professionals, blue- collar workers, and just regular folks supporting OWS at their peril. This mass welling up of dissent and “I’m not gonna take it anymore!” protests has reached a tipping point where anything can happen.

People are pissed off! More and more people are getting pissed off! Yet they’re not retaliation in the form of mass violence and rioting. And the dismissive chattering harpies of the mainstream media reveal their own ignorance.

Several recent events are worth looking at as harbingers of change. These points of note are: Continue reading

Harbinger of Civil War? From Compromise to Conflict: America Gets Positional and Forgets How to Get Along With Itself

INTRODUCTION: This essay was first published in early August 2011. It is reprinted here with few changes such as “Harbinger of Civil War?” added to the title.

Occupy Wall Street had not yet erupted. The Arab Spring was in the throes of a Summer of Conflict. The UK was in flames and the rest of Europe was rumbling. Inside the U.S.A. disenchanted and angry people by first hundreds then thousands rallied and marched as the Tea Party in 2009, 2010, and 2011. That wave seemed to crest with rallies in Washington, D.C., some with over a million participants.

In Madison, Wisconsin in February 2011 an uprising among the workers, sparked by teaching assistants against the harsh cuts of Republican Governor Scott Walker, broke out that electrified America. It was primarily non-violent and was embraced by so many different groups of Americans including Police officers. This uprising lasted well into April and at one point over 100,000 people and then 185,000 poured into the streets. In many ways the Wisconsin Uprising was a precursor of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As “the Empire Strikes Back” against the Occupy movement with heavy handed militarized police, we see the current escalation of violence and intimidation. At the same time Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt erupts into days of at first peaceful protests against the military dictatorship with dozens of demonstrators killed by militarized police. In the following article we revisit the underlying tensions leading to the widespread protests we see today.

The Author

Wednesday 23 November 2011

————————————————————————————————-

Several essays I read recently by different pundits and news analysts gave me pause. They addressed different points of the same view. Much has been written about the rising vitriol in American public discourse with the spread of far-right and far-left extremism to infect the great middle.

Note the resurgence of armed militias and racist groups with the rampant rise of violent hate groups first under President George W. Bush with many more under President Barack Obama. The tragic shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D) and others around her this past January triggered a national debate that went beyond passion to inflammatory rhetoric. We have become a nation polarized and divided that refuses to get along with itself.

There have been calls for a military coup, threats of martial law, and fears of riots. Even the specter of a possible civil war or revolution has been raised as our nation reaches levels of polarization not seen since the 1850s with the possible exception of the 1960s. The uprisings sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East with rioting and protests in Europe and elsewhere, including the American state of Wisconsin, have been hailed as harbingers of similar upheaval here at home. London burns as I write. So many cities across the United Kingdom are in flames the term “riots” has given way to “insurrection.”

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UFO witnessed in action from atop Mt. Erie, Washington

A group of six people, including myself, witnessed an unidentified flying object from the summit of Mt. Erie on Sunday 3 July 2011. We observed what we eventually determined to be a large, garbage-can lid type flying saucer shrink down into a bizarre high-speed orb. The other five observers were my then-wife Kristina (then age 42), my daughter Kate (age 12), and three men who appeared to be in their mid-to-late 60s. As I write this article I am 52 years old. Mt. Erie itself is a relatively short but steep mountain amid those scattered across the San Juan Islands. At 388 meters high (or 1,273 ft.) it is the most prominent in the area and dominates the Skagit River Delta region of northwestern Washington State. It also dominates Fidalgo Island and looms above a string of lakes near Deception Pass. The peak lies in the City of Anacortes park system. From the mountaintop we six saw a UFO engaged in unusual actions. Those actions were as if a machine ship or biological organism behaved as a subatomic quantum particle/wave.

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UFO Encounter in Virginia

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their's wasn't saucer shaped. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm

Classic flying saucer image from the Rex Heflin Orange County case in Southern California, 3 August 1965, the same general time period the Bass Family encountered a UFO in Southcentral Virginia. Except their’s wasn’t saucer shaped. To their surprise, the UFO they saw was a sphere. From: http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/1960s/Photo305.htm.

My entire family of origin had a vivid UFO experience back in the mid to late 1960s. The event was exciting, even amazing, and also at moments terrifying. For years afterwards this encounter affected my family and me in unexpected ways such as the odd actions of the FBI and weird behavior among certain people involved with this incident including myself. Ever since then I’ve had a deep, personal interest in so-called “Unidentified Flying Objects” and the controversies UFOs generated.

Despite some apprehension I feel it’s time to tell my story and some of what I’ve discovered since then. My story is long overdue, too. As I stand for transparency and full disclosure, I feel strongly all of us Americans, indeed We the People of Planet Earth need to know the full truth whether or not others feel we can “handle it.” Indeed, I stand for full and immediate disclosure of all information from all organizations and institutions private and public regarding UFOs and the immense complexity of what’s alleged to have gone on in some cases for millions of years and what goes on in our current timeframe.

The list of what so many credible whistleblowers are claiming is long, overwhelming, unexpected, and goes far beyond flying saucers, claims of galactic empires, alleged free energy, and underground bases. They include numerous species of ETs/ESs/EDs/IDs (extraterrestrials, extrasolarials, extradimensionals, and inter- or intra-dimensionals), Majestic 12 and other hypercompartmentalized units within Earth nation-state regimes, various breakaway civilizations, ancient even prehistoric ET and human civilizations with ruins supposedly throughout the Sol System, the Secret Space Programs (SSPs), the alleged Inner Earth civilizations, secret societies, the mythical German role, the Cabal/Illuminati/Elitist crime syndicates and factions, black budget ops and other USAPs or Unacknowledged Special Access Programs, advanced and hidden technologies and scientific discoveries, global economic and financial manipulation and fraud on unprecedented scales, debunking and disinformation campaigns, grotesque medical and genetic experiments on many lifeforms including Earth humans, widespread human trafficking and slavery, Solarian bases, possibilities for a Star Trek-style civilization, exopolitical ramifications, orbs and plasma life forms, an apparently extreme intergalactic A.I. or Artificial Intelligence menace more omnicidal than nuclear weapons, new understandings about the nature and possibilities of consciousness, and considerations regarding densities versus dimensions and biological evolution with spiritual ascension. The claims are staggering. Many of the claims listed above simple feel unbelievable.

The lines between so-called academic research, mainstream mass media, alternative media, and so-called conspiracy theory first dissolve into murkiness before becoming clearer. Everything one thinks they think they know regarding consciousness, compassion, health, money, politics, religion, spirituality, war, genetics, science, energy, love, relationships, and the definition of life may well be turned upside down and inside out. No, shall be. Let’s return, however, to where and how my involvement in this labyrinthine entanglement began and back to what occurred.

Our family UFO encounter happened on a warm late afternoon after I was home from grade school following a long ride on a yellow school bus. It was dinner time. I think it was early Autumn, although it could have been Spring. I sat around the dinner table with my younger siblings. They were my sister Beth and brother Joe. Our mother bustled about in the kitchen. Our kitchen was a big farmhouse kind of kitchen, and the dinner table was pragmatically placed there off to one side of the room. Dorothy Ussery Bass was my Mama’s real name, but most people who knew her called her Dot. It feels strange to me the actual events of almost four decades ago were so dramatic I remember them in great detail, but, alas, I can’t recall whether it was Spring or Fall.

We had a table full of food, however, a big family dinner farmer-style. We kids began to shove food into our mouths, which annoyed Mama. We were supposed to say grace. My Dad, William M. Bass, known as Bill, was away where he worked up the hill at “the Barn.” As the large cow barn with the enormous hayloft dominated the center of our dairy farm as some Medieval Great Hall, we simply called it “the Barn.” The rest of the farm’s buildings circled around the hill and ridge. The family business had long been named Riverview Dairy Farm from the proximity of Big and Little Sandy Rivers as they looped around the estate. We were in the Rice – Sandy River – Green Bay belt of northeastern Prince Edward County. This area’s in turn is located in Southside Virginia, i.e. Virginia south of the James River, in the Piedmont of rolling hills, woods, ravines, and cultivated fields.

Mama was mad because we’d started chowing down before we said the Blessing. Dad wasn’t expected home until later. As we munched down into our dinner, we heard an unexpected ruckus. Daddy burst through the back door into the house.

“Come quick!” he shouted. “There’s a flying saucer out back!”

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Give a Damn! Occupy Seattle! My Impressions from a Few Hours on the Streets

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

For the first time in ten years I felt We the People had Purpose. Purpose with a capital P. And greater clarity than the mainstream mass media would dare admit. As zombies staggered down Wall Street chasing dollar bills recently, at least they gave a damn.

The mainstream mass media think it’s cute when crowds of otherwise “normal people” dress in bloody rags and paint themselves up as zombies to parade about setting new zombie world records. The same media, however, heap scorn and ridicule upon all those “crazy people” costumed as zombies to protest the insane gluttony of Wall Street and its cronies. Well, at least those zombies give more than a frakkin’ hoot. They gave a damn.

When elderly war veterans, middle-age White ladies hobble together down the street with old hippies, tattooed punks, the newly homeless, Native Americans, grizzled union workers, and white-collar office workers, all getting in the way of our fellow 99-percenters willing to slave away for the Puppet Masters among the 1% superwealthy, well, we have an insurrection, folks.

A young man in Downtown Seattle held up his sign and challenged us: “GIVE A DAMN!”

Damn right.

GIVE A DAMN!

Bright, blue letters blazed neon from cardboard on a wooden slat stick.

It’s time. Leave the Parties behind. Coffee, tea, water, and whiskey; milk and soy, almond whatever. It’s time. Time to get to get serious.

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Sleep Crash Chainsaw Legs

OWWW here it comes . . .
Restless Legs jerk as bad poetry
My flesh hums and crawls
As soon as I lay down
As soon as I lay down!
Restless Legssa misnomer
Cuz it moves everywhere
Like a bad Johnny Cash song
Ragged with non-stop hurtin’
As train whistles blow holes out my skin
Covering me as I slide naked beneath angels.

Spider fish swim up my insides.
Vibrating tendrils of smoke
Wrap around my blood
Squeezing tightening up tight
Reminds me of
School back in Second Grade
When all excited we kids spoke in whispers
Only to get taped silent by our Teacher
Yes, her with her grim grin and perfectly bloated hair
Who glared as she marched at our faces with a roll of tape
Wide yellow white masking tape
So as my legs twitch I remember
Masking tape tugging across chapped lips
Back when Missus Wells did it
Day after day week after week
While the principle laughed
With his red tie knotted tight
Against his wide collar white
Till enough parents banded up to shout “Stop! Hey!”
Damn that Teacher.
Good thing there wasn’t any duct tape back in 1968.
And Americans wonder what rilly led to Abu Ghraib.

Please please please let me sleep
Let me sleep
I’ll give ‘em to you
My legs, yes, my legs
They’re yours, all yours!
Stihl chainsaw oil & lubed
Each fanged link of metal
Sharp to rip out all flesh
Slice to the bone
Grip-ripped through the bone
Nothing stops ‘em, tho.
Spiders
Worms
Snakes
Beetles
Ants
I feel ‘em
Wiggling
Crawling
Even bouncing on tightrope wires sawin’ violins
Up inside my legs…

I don’t sleep. Much. Miss it, tho. Up all night sometimes. Only time I can get stuff done. Then I wake from my desk. Meditate. Go to the Gym. Sweat. Dripping wet. Soaked. But at least I don’t roar and grunt and slam dumbbells the size of Texas slapdown in front of spidercrack mirrors. Still no sleep. How’s my broken down body’s gonna heal? Aye ya…!

Sleep.

Got too much to do. When I lay down the tremors start. In my lower legs. My posterior lower legs and ankle region, to be exact. Both of them at once. Bilaterally. The vibrations began to flutter and dance and jerk in my flexor halluces longus, my flexor digitorom longus, in the tibialis posterior, and move around laterally to the peroneus brevis and longus. Then the creepy crawlies surface into my soleus and gastrocnemius muscles. The vibrations move around to the Tibialis anterior and other muscles, travel up the hamstrings. Damn.

I feel my glutes jerk next and my piriformis ripple, too.
Lats flutter
Trains of ants spasm up my spine
Ain’t no kundalini this time
Twitch beetles flutter in my triceps
My suboccipitals and sternocleidomastoid
Jerk my skull into an almost-Tourette’s
My pelvis jerks
Shoulders dance
My tongue refuses to heed
But I don’t cuss
Maybe it is Tourette’s
But as I’m already duct taped up with so many labels
I don’t wanna know

Deep down inside my legs I feel my muscles drum against my bones
Wild, spasm, taunt-fiber vibrations
I timed them a few times
I count over one hundred vibrations per minute
A thousand in less than ten
And it’s all night long…. sometimes.
Wears me out.

Too much exercise makes it worse
Too little makes it worse
Too much sitting or not enough
I used to climb mountains
And backpack for months at a time
And dance for hours holding my woman
Up in the air as she shouts and laughs
As we rain sweat upon wood, earth, and stone

Angel spreads his enormous wings
Then with stern visage
Wraps them gently around Grim Reaper
Who cries oily tears into white feathers
Outside the entrance to a merchant’s cave

Together with love we tack across the Straight Path
No arrow am I
For I dance all crooked with joy
As I climb beyond my rabbit hole
Upon ladders twisting to the stars
Atop between the legs of Giants
Great Gates swing open in mute invitation

I see everything I see
And more than most would even dare believe
With a nod of incineration
I let go of all belief
And surrender to submit
Into Divine jubilation

Ten thousand Gods
Twenty thousand Goddesses
And One Beyond All and Everything
The One Beyond Gender
The One Beyond the Sum of Many
The Namefree One for whom any name is limitation

I awake and launch upright
And by Dawn
In Mirror bright
I see myself
As clear as Light
With legs filled with snakes and worms and buzzing flies
For Ancient Gods who died inside
I wonder
If so blessed
How do I make
Those mountains yawn?

 

William Dudley Bass
19 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Occupy America: Let’s Dump the Term “Homeland”

“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.”

(Words & music written in 1940 by Woody Guthrie, 1912 – 1967.)

It’s time to dump the term “Homeland” as a synonym for America and erase it from our vocabulary. What the hell is this word anyway? A gang of vipers in suits and ties dreamed it up after 9/11, that’s what. Neo-Cons and Neo-Libs working the Rep-Dem two-headed rattlesnake. Yes, I lost a family friend from Virginia and his wife in the plane that hit and disintegrated inside the Pentagon. But I don’t support this mutant Patriot Act and Department of Homeland Security.

Never mind Benjamin Franklin, one of the American Founding Fathers, wrote back in 1759 “Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Or even earlier in 1738 when Franklin warned “Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.”

Do mind security is an illusion even today. The term “Homeland” is an abomination and so is the despotic department named after it. Dump the name, abolish its Department, and reorganized the institution into a leaner, more integrated agency which stands for freedom rather than neo-fascist tyranny in the disguise of pseudo-democracy all dressed up pretty for the election prom.

Look what fellow monstrosities inspired such a grotesque abomination as “Homeland:”

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Occupy Wall Street? Occupy the Banks! Seize the Fed!

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

William Bass @ Occupy Seattle! Rally & March. Foto by Syd Fredrickson, Saturday 8 October 2011.

Occupy Wall Street?
Why stop at the door?
Occupy the Banks!
They made us all poor.
Seize the Fed!
Think we’re dead?
We’re far from beat!

The Occupy Wall Street protests are spreading across America. They’re growing in number. Other demonstrations for causes specific to different local and regional areas are merging into the national tapestry of Occupy Wall Street. Now protestors gather in the nation’s capital for Occupy Washington, D.C. A loose, leaderless web of networks with many different causes, there is one overarching theme: people are fed up with “corporate greed.” Even some individual military personnel, both veterans and those still in uniform, from different branches came out in support of the demonstrations. One old Army veteran posted one of his buddies from the Marine declared he “didn’t fight for Wall Street, but for America.”

The United States of America at its worse is a schizophrenic place. It is a constitutional democratic republic on paper with a once vibrant and prosperous economy. As such America is a beacon of hope and admiration for much of the world. The best aspects of America continue to inspire people. There is, unfortunately, the nightmare side of America with its muddied racism, genocide of Native American Indians, massive penal system, great economic disparity, out of control intelligence agencies, CIA torture in secret prisons, multitudes of military bases scattered across Earth, and gruesome clandestine medical and biochemical weapons experiments.

Our United States is also part of a growing global empire in the making. As such the U.S.A. is also the bastion of finance capitalism where corporations and big banks dominate and influence politics. The political machinery is deeply corrupted by the Corporatocracy and not just in the nation’s capital. The money gamers heavily dominate the so-called pillars of democracy, the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, and the Judicial Branch. What results?

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Skin

Former slave Gordon after he escaped a Mississippi plantation to join Federal troops, March 1863. Unknown photographer, U.S. Civil War.

 

Skin
tells a story.
Only problem is
God Knows the Truth.
Come back, o scattered bones,
come back to me, I cry.
But only dust…and ash…
return.

 

William Dudley Bass
Sunday 11 September 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

NOTE: First published on 9/11/2011 on Facebook in Prezz Pressley’s Facebook Group “MEN who r NOT AFRAID 2 CRY.” Then published again later the same day on my blog “Cultivate and Harvest” as a “Poem from Spirit” at http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2011/09/skin.html and is reprinted by me here. Thank  you.

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Changes

People don’t like change. Do you like change? To change? Most folks are just too busy trying to be disciplined with their own routines when they don’t really wanna to be distracted with having to change.

“Oh, no, not again!” Changing diapers is a mess, isn’t it?

Change seems to get people going, though. Galvanizes them.

What fires you up?

What inspires you?

What are you passionate FOR?

I don’t want to know what you care about. I want to know what you stand for. And what you’re gonna next. Continue reading

Boomerang Tree

Once upon a time when I was a brave and crazy fool I rode a tree like a dragon. Armed with a homemade boomerang, I was a pretty young lad somewhere in that transition between preteen to true teen. My exact age and even what grade I was in remain lost to memory. What I do remember is a gusty, late afternoon storm with cloudy skies churning the color of dark green moss. It happened in Virginia where I grew up on a farm, and I thought I was gonna die.

I felt proud of my boomerang. I’ve spent hours carving and sanding it from a piece of wood. When I whipped it through the air across the cow pastures on my parents’ dairy farm, my boomerang actually returned. It would spin away from me whirling like a helicopter propeller. As my boomerang spun it rose high and higher still, turned, and came zooming back to me. Sometimes it flopped and dug into grass and dirt and skittered off rocks. At other times, however, I had to duck as it zipped over my head. I dared not reach out to grab it. Those were the best!

My buddy Jerry Vernon and I were out in a huge cowpasture on the Gates Family Farm. Jerry’s dad worked for the Gateses milking cows and fixing fences, so we played a lot. My brother Joe, six years younger, also hung with us that day. Our dad ran the Bass farm for his uncle, who was cousins with the Gateses and further down the road the Bruces.

It was one afternoon after school, and I can’t remember if it was November or March. The weather felt heavy with a cloudy-late-afternoon-right-before-supper-time feel, and we had one eye out for bulls. Rumor had it the Gateses had turned loose a bull into the pasture to impregnate the cows, and he would snort, charge, stomp, and gore you all to bloody pieces if he discovered you simply existed. We were terrified of bulls.

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Veterans Day 11/11/11 – Remembering Horror to Stand against War for Love, Peace, and Light

Most of us, including myself from time to time, forget the significance of acknowledging today. This 11th day of November 2011 dawns as arbitrary numbers from an artificial calendar. Popularly transcribed as 11/11/11, it has become wrapped in New Age mysticism as if something prophetic is to occur simply because of how numbers line up and combine in people’s minds. It also marks Remembrance Day among the victorious Allies of the First World War (1914-1918). It began as Armistice Day and, certainly in the United States, evolved into Veterans Day. Much was lost in the process, including remembering much of the world once agreed to outlaw war.

The First World War was known simply as the Great War for many years. People simply didn’t know what else to call it. The term “world war” was used, but it wasn’t the first or the last. It didn’t begin in a vacuum either. As do many large conflicts, this Great War arose from a convergence of smaller wars. While the Armistice of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 1918 marked the formal end of combat on the Western Front, the war continued elsewhere around the world.

The Great War morphed into a viper’s nest of local and regional wars around the planet. They eventually converged into the Second World War with such violence many historians consider the period 1914-1945 as one war much as we look back upon prolonged and widespread conflicts of old as singular wars with multiple phases and theaters.

We’ve forgotten the horror of it all. As veterans and survivors die out our memories become those of old photographs in old textbooks. While the First World War wasn’t the first, it was the first global war of industrialized mass slaughter on a scale previously unknown anywhere in history. The horror of industrial combat shocked Europeans and the rest of humanity. Battlefields had mutated into vast human slaughterhouses filled with broken charnel.

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November Heart

November crawls out of my skin
Leaving my insides naked
And cold
At the bottom of old trees
Whose rough roots toil to keep warm
My soul as it burrows into mud.
Huddled on mountainsides
Bent crooked in wind
Under the first blast of snow
These trees, oh, these trees,
Oh, I hear them laugh and sing
As they shed orange-red leaves before blue-white snow.
Those old trees, they call my name
“Hey!” they shout
“Why are you so dark?
Open your heart!
We trees don’t have one.
How lucky you are.”
Ameen.

 

William Dudley Bass
9 November 2011
Seattle, Washington

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

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Envisioning Future Networks Now

With so many people choosing to become entrepreneurs, what does that look like? Especially during this Great Recession? What 3 trends may be developing? Trends you can jump on and drive?
Our Great Recession is far from over, and its trajectory continues to defy many experts and pundits alike. Why’s that? Many keep looking to the future while staying stuck in the past. Our current economic mess, and it is a mess regardless of what label historians will ultimately stick on it, is just as different from the “first” Great Depression as the Second World War was from the First.

Many changes are happening, and are happening faster and faster. Globalization, relocalization, sustainable economics, the linkage of environmental and social responsibility to economics and finance, integrated and mobile digital technologies, and the global long war on terrorism all squeeze the status quo.

Amid all this pressure, however, opportunities await and trends are discernable. As alchemists once believed they could transmute lead to gold and we do know intense pressure transforms carbon into diamonds, so too can you generate value from great change. Continue reading

Asteroid 2005 YU55 zooms inside Luna’s orbit as it zips by Earth for a Happy Birthday

Asteroid 2005 YU55, Radar Imagery from Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, CA, 7 November 2011.

Asteroid 2005 YU55, Radar Imagery from Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, CA, 7 November 2011. Wikipedia.

A big but small asteroid rapidly approaches Earth as it karooms around our solar system. And just in time for my wife Kristina’s birthday. On its merry way Asteroid 2005 YU55 shall pass inside Luna’s orbit as our moon revolves around Planet Earth. It’s a bit too close for comfort for such a large rock barreling through space, but all government officials and NASA scientists involved are calmly warning us not to worry. It most likely won’t hit us, “too close” is not the same as “direct impact,” and besides, it won’t wipe out all life on Earth. It won’t even smack the moon. I imagine them scampering back out of sight hunched over gnawing on their fingertips. Or blissfully ordering another cup o’ Joe.

YU55 only 400 meters across, darn it. Way too small for the excited little boy in me who revels in blowing shit up. That’s the size of about four football fields lined up side-by-side. Big American football fields, too. Scientists advise us to imagine a giant bowling ball the size of an aircraft carrier, which, of course, doesn’t look a thing like a bowling ball sailing through space. It’s that big. And there were bigger ones once upon a time. And many more still out there.

The one that smashed into what’s called the Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico today to exterminate most of life on the planet including the dinosaurs was about 25 times longer and over 15,000 times more volume. Still, I can’t help but wonder if today’s my last day on Earth. At least I got to wish my wife “Happy Birthday” this morning. As I’m still a mammal with a reptile brain, I got urges to satisfy later tonight! Especially before we go extinct.

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Iran, Syria, & Pakistan: Feint, Bluff, or World War?

Gold has shot up again and is close to $1,790 an ounce even as the U.S. Dollar strengthens at the same time. That’s somewhat unusual. Dollars generally go up in value as gold declines, and gold strengthens as the Dollar drops. (See http://www.kitco.com/ for details). In addition both Crude Oil commodity prices are up (WTI or West Texas Intermediary, the global oil benchmark, and the Brent from North Sea deposits, but see http://www.oil-price.net/ for details).

This is not simply because the European Union is tanking over the euro, anti-austerity rebellions, and internecine squabbling between its member states. There has been a parade of recent disclosures revealing much more regarding Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program, the covert war between the U.S.A./E.U./Israel/Saudi Arabia and the Iranians as well as mounting tensions between the U.S.A./NATO and Pakistan. The Libyan War winds down as Syria plunges into civil war as President Bashar al-Assad threatens to go down fighting and take the whole Middle East with him. It’s Monday, November 7, 2011.

While the mainstream mass media is preoccupied with riling up opinions over Kim Kardashian’s divorce from Kris Humphries or Justin Bieber’s alleged sexual dalliances with older young ladies, it ignores or whitewashes the massive military buildups currently underway across an expanse of territory and nations from Europe to North Africa through the Middle East into Central and South Asia. Not to mention Africa. Or East Asia. Or Latin America. Or back home on the streets of America and Europe and their Allies.

What’s going on? What’s really going on that is either being downplayed or ignored by the mainstream mass media? Or cast in a certain patriotic or threatening light?

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“Bobby’s shot! Bobby Kennedy’s been shot!”

When we first learned Bobby Kennedy was assassinated

Hot, muggy day in farm country Virginia. Late spring, not yet Summer. The Solstice was about two weeks off, but all practical purposes it was Summer with school soon to be out for the season. Humid with a hint of afternoon thunderstorms, the air was pungent with honeysuckle flowers and tree pollen and the promise of picnics in the shade and swimming in lakes.

I was outside in the yard playing. My little sister and brother were probably around somewhere, playing with me, but I don’t remember them this particular day. I just remember my Momma, and Daddy, too, a little bit.

We grew up on Riverview Dairy Farm in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Outside of the town of Farmville. Earlier in the late 1950s and early to mid 1960s the Civil Rights movement had swept across the South and into Prince Edward Country. Racial desegregation and integration efforts polarized whole communities, shut down the schools, and brought Mike Wallace to Farmville for the Evening News and Prince Edward County before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Vietnam and Southeast Asia burned overseas and riots and urban guerrilla warfare kept erupting all around the United States. We were still in the thick of it all, this second revolution or quasi-civil war or whatever you wanted to call these rock’n’roll times, with no end in sight. As time would tell, these Troubles would grind and rumble on till 1975. Though many in the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere on Earth movement today claim to draw their inspiration as much from these turbulent times as from the Arab Spring.

The sharp staccato roar of the gasoline-powered farm tractor washed over us as Daddy drove it around and around the pasture out back. We were used to that awful mechanical racket, however, and other than a glance over now and then paid it no mind. It was a green and yellow John Deere 420 with a wide, adjustable-width front end manufactured back in the mid-to-late 1950s. Dad sat up in there turned sideways in the seat as was his custom, one hand on the steering wheel, the other gripping the big fin of the rear fender as he made sure the tractor and the mower and the line of hay and the lay of the land were in perfect alignment. He wore blue denim jeans, a white, short-sleeved T-shirt, and a khaki baseball cap. Back then he smoked Camel cigarettes, too.

I heard a shriek. Loud one, too. Momma! I stood up.

The back door of the house slammed open and Momma sailed down the stairs. I remember her in slow motion, dressed in white clothes, had on a white skirt or dress. Black hair thrown back. Her legs wide as a ballet dancer’s leap. She raced shouting toward my father as he rounded the side of the pasture closest to our backyard. By then I was running there, too.

“Bobby’s shot!” Momma yelled. “Bobby’s been shot!”

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Our Worldwide Economic House of Glass and Cards

 

As I write this November of 2011 as our pie-in-the-sky economy crumbles, the tallest building yet constructed on our planet by human beings is the Burj Khalifa. It is a stunning achievement of human engineering, beauty, perseverance, collective international teamwork, and magnificent awesomeness. This skyscraper tower also reflects the ultimate distraction of egoic pride, shortsighted and archaic nationalism, and cooperative stupidity and waste. The crowning achievement of building such a giant is the perfect example of Finance Capitalism at its finest worse.

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back when we welcomed the invasion of the first colored television

I’m in my early 50s now, just a little bit more than halfway to a hundred. I know, I know, those elderly gents snort and splash air at me with wrinkled old hands, grin a somber smile, and remind me “Young man, you’re still just a puppy! Only fifty some years outa diapers.”

Tho I imagine another voice cackling among fluttering pigeons not to worry “cuz you might find yourself back in diapers before you get to turn a hunnert years old.”

Once upon a time, however, way back a long, long time ago, long before old folks could depend on Depends,  (wait, little ® there, right?), I was a wee little bitty fella all excited because every Monday night I could snuggle up next to my Momma on the sofa across from the TV and watch “Lost in Space.” Then talk all about spaceships, alien planets, and monsters in school the next day. Especially with my buddy Eddie. I was in First Grade, and our television was black-and-white.

B & W was all I knew. Clear, crisp black, grey, and white. Unless zigzagging zebra stripes took over the screen.

One evening my parents were giddy with excitement and anticipation. They beamed at me with eyes like flying saucers. I looked around in wonder.

“Come on,” Dad said. “Get ready. We’re going up the road to Charlie Watt and Rosella’s new house.”

“What for?” I asked.

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Reticence

“OK, who’s in?” asked Deborah Drake for her scary, post-Halloween blogging challenge. She threw down yet another gauntlet to our delightfully strange circle of creative writers and business bloggers. “It starts next Tuesday, November 1st!”

Slouched in my folding chair with my legs flopped out from once sitting excited on the edge of my seat with my feet planted, I raised my arm. It was as a dead tree limb except it moved. It moved “yes.” My arm stuck up higher than I expected in spite of my reticence. And oh, I was reticent.

It occurs to me as I type we associate dead things as “heavy.” Dead weight. I think of death as lighter. If you’re an animal, well…uh…stuff drains out. Air expires. For a little bit, anyway, right, till decay generates more, uh … gas. Plants decay, too. In the water dead things float, become waterlogged, and sink to the bottom. Now that IS added weight, unlike the Lady of the Lake who turned into soap at Lake Crescent. But if there’s any spirit or soul, well, we’re a few nanograms lighter after bio-death, right? Hmmnnn…no more glazed donuts and Boston cream-filled shuga yummies adding to the scales. But a dead branch still jutting from a tree is dry and hollow, much lighter than a living branch heavy with water and life. Good Lord, see what happens with me living in my own ADHD? Everything relates. Oh, good, I’m now at 217 words.

That’s 117 more than the minimum per blog post. Deborah Drake is fierce in her advocacy for writing, or rather the discipline of writing every day even if it isn’t much or all that great. We return to the mindfulness of the practice of being mindful: we wash the dishes to wash the dishes to wash the dishes, not to hurry up and get out of the kitchen so we can rush off to the next distraction. We create to create. I write to write to write. Strip out the “because to’s” or the reasons why and all the “in-order-to’s.” We hone our craft with the presence of someone sharpening a dull axe or a big-bladed knife. I pay attention and drop into the flow of sharpening my edge whether it’s my axe, my writing, or, more challengingly, my children and my wife. Continue reading

Untangling the Octopus

Cartoon.02_Federal_Reserve_1912_Coming_Money_Trust

The Octopus as viewed in 1912 on the eve of the Bankers’ Coup of 1913.

Alfred Owen Crozier, an attorney and activist from Michigan, Ohio, and New York, drew the above cartoon in 1912. He warned the public of the banksters before the Bankers’ Coup of 1913 issued in the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service. The Octopus was the first illustration to grace the interior of his 1912 book, U.S. Money vs. Corporate Money, “Aldrich Plan,” Wall Street Confessions! Great Bank Combine! In 1913, Crozier testified against the Federal Reserve System, originally proposed by the Aldrich Plan as the National Reserve Association.

The Octopus as viewed in 2011 in the midst of the worldwide Occupy revolt.

The Octopus as viewed in 2011 in the midst of the worldwide Occupy revolt.

The Octopus represented the art of 1912. Almost a hundred years later, in October 2011, three complex-systems theorists crunching algorithms determined 43,000 TNCs (Transnational Corporations), represented by all the dots in the 3D image, dominated the global economy. Among these are 1,318 core companies with interlocking ownerships. The collectively controlled 20% of global operating revenues and another 60% of global real (manufacturing revenues.) Of these 147 formed a supergroup of <1% controlling 40% of the total network. The majority were Big Wall Street Banks and investment firms.

See “Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world,” in New Scientist at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

and “The network of global corporate control” at http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf.

Interlocking Relationships and Web of Control.

Interlocking Relationships and Web of Control in 2011. Capitalism, especially Finance Capitalism, now dominates politics, governments, academia, NGOs, markets, businesses, and finances locally, regionally, and all across the planet.

Over time we see a much more convoluted and intricate network of interlocking, non-democratic entities formed. This has grown to dominate politics and governments as well as marketplaces and businesses around the planet. Perhaps the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street and Everywhere movements can find common ground. Neither will they or anyone else, however, be successful in political, economic, and financial reforms unless we go straight to the hearts of the Beast. The foundation of radical reform is simple in concept and shall be challenging to execute: We the People of Earth must establish public control of the money power similar to civilian control of the military power. Such public control must be transparent and accountable with all information open to public audit.

NOTE: This is from a from a larger work in progress looking at the de facto Euro-American Global Empire, which may be more correctly termed a Postmodern and neo-feudal Empire of the Money Power.

William Dudley Bass
2 November 2011
Seattle, Washington
Cascadia

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.

Dancing at the Gates of the Underworld

“Celebrating the 13th Mortiversary of the best man I’ve ever known,” leapt from the glowing blue and white screen a few days before Halloween. The author was a gorgeous and stunning enigma who turned heads whenever she strode into a room, or in my case, a tipi during an all-night Native American prayer meeting. “Mortiversary?” I wondered in awe. “Oh, he’s dead!”

Then I felt the glow of shame for not getting it right away at my friend’s expense. Here was a woman honoring the life of a man who once moved her deeply by celebrating his death. From beyond the veils between worlds he continued to move and inspire her. In allowing her self to feel so moved she inspired me and my heart opened to the pain and the sadness and even the magnificence of death.

As storyteller and mythologist Michael Meade said about two years ago on a blustery November night in Port Townsend, “Welcome to the Endarkenment.” He felt the world has energetically moved away from a period of awakening, enlightenment, even bliss into a period of darkness and turmoil and chaos. It wasn’t all bad, either. Such dark times are often the cauldron of creativity and transformation. Our spirits fly away leaving our souls burrowing into dirt and filth, transforming both into rich soil.

It was Samhain, the Celtic New Year, All Hallows Eve 2011. This year it fell across a three-day weekend with October 31st falling upon a Monday with two more dark holy days following. Samhain (usually pronounced as ‘sow-win’), Feralia, Pomona, Halloween, Hallowmas and All Soul’s, Dia de los Muertas … it’s that time of the year to really celebrate Summer’s End and herald in the Endarkenment. I love how they mix and blend together like the blood and genes in our Postmodern flesh.

Continue reading

October Falls

I love October. Leaves burst with color then fall leaving the conifers green. Rocks turn dark. Bright sunny warm days dance with chilly wet rainy days. Crunch of twigs, grit, and animal bones. Samhain awaits at the Gates of November stirrin’ up what’s left of my old, hot Celtic blood.

William Dudley Bass
October 2011
Seattle, Washington

 

Copyright © 2011, 2016 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.