Northwestern Energy and the Montana Folk Festival

^{There’s been another oil spill in the world. This time in Alberta’s oil patch[i]. It’s a new kind of spill, not like the old kinds that have limited point sources such as leaky pipelines, busted drill rigs or train wrecks. This one is from an underground bitumen reservoir that has been super-pressurized with thousands of gallons of steam through a process known as “high pressure cyclic steam stimulation”. The heat liquefied the bitumen, the pressure broke up the geology that contained it, and now the liquefied bitumen is spurting uncontrollably into a forest, a lake, a muskeg. There’s no known way to shut it off. In fact there’s no consensus among experts as to exactly what the oil company—Canadian Natural Resources Ltd—has wrought. There’s certainly no way to verify claims by CNR that everything’s going fine with their “clean-up” because no one’s allowed near the spill site to verify or discredit their messaging claims. All we know is what the oil industry in general wants us to know, that by 2020, 40% of all tar sands oil will be extracted using this mysterious, high-risk, high-profit method so get used to it. Starting to sound like the same old song?}

^{Speaking of folk music, I didn’t go to the Montana Folk Festival in Butte again this year. It’s free admission, they have awesome acts and I'm a folk musician. What’s the matter with me?}

^{Well, the matter with me involves the reason I have always wholeheartedly loved and participated in the folk arts at all. As so often happens when a culture that has lost its way and starts missing itself, rather than deal with the issues that fester and alienize, the organizers of the Butte Folk Festival are looking at their bellybutton.} 

^{“We present artists” their performer guidelines instruct “who are firmly rooted in the community from which their music derives rather than ‘interpreters’ of tradition, such as contemporary singer-songwriters or ‘revivalists’ performance groups…” Thus it bills itself as “the story of America”.}

^{In a cultural vacuum, that’s O.K. as far as things like that go, and this is certainly not a critique of the acts at this year’s festival, the volunteers who give of their time or the people who went to it. The performers are always top-notch, and the People have a good time, which is all how it should be. God knows it’s hard enough in this fractured culture to find a paying gig these days. Maybe any days. The problem is not the performers or the people. The problem is that the folk festival is funded, in large part, by Northwestern Energy, and that “folksinger-songwriters” and “interpreters of tradition” need not apply. The organizers--some of them volunteers--are adamant on this point.}

^{The problem is that Northwestern Energy is no vacuum. It’s a high-pressure system[ii]. Consider: In Montana, where Northwestern ever-seeks positive P.R. such as funding “our” folk festival, we seem to actively court--and then ignore--fossil energy disasters. The Yellowstone River spill (the Yellowstone River!!!)[iii] , the Crow Reservation spill[iv] , and recent un-discussions about endless coal trains rolling through oxygen-breathing human communities where childhood asthma is at unprecedented levels. Coal trains that actively and profitably abet the global warming crisis we ignore even in the midst of Western Montana’s unprecedented string of 100-degree-plus heatwaves. Add to these tragedies the spill disasters in Arkansas, Quebec, the Gulf of Mexico, Alberta (ad naseum[v]) within the incredibly short memory span of your average American T.V. viewer and ask yourself whether any of this child-killing, suicidal behavior will get any “folk time” at a folk festival sponsored by an energy giant, especially if “interpreters of tradition” need not apply. Think, please. Was anybody singing about Global Warming a hundred years ago?}  

^{When we consider who defines “culture” and “art” within the context of such an all-encompassing culturally-cultivated disaster as Global Warming, the singular question that we absolutely must pass down to our kids and grandkids has to be no more nor less than this paradox we so willfully avoid. How far, in other words, do we allow ourselves to fall before we become mere caricatures of ourselves? When does perserverence of folk traditions morph into pretension (think cowboy wannabees)? How do we, as individuals and as a culture, creatively question and challenge some of the less-savory values and standards passed from generation to generation before we “as a community” fry our friggin’ selves with our own inherited bigotry. These are “folk” questions that, in our world-devouring corporate culture, need immediate answers.}

^{The Yellowstone River, the Crow Reservation, the coal trains speak to us from generations past, but do we listen? As a contemporary singer-songwriter who not only feels firmly rooted in the culture from which American music derives but who also feels it’s imperative to use one’s rooted “art” to ask just such questions, all I can say about Northwestern Energy’s definition of folk music is “how interesting”.}

^{Global Warming should be the main, if not the only, base and focus for any serious constructive cultural creativity well into the foreseeable and the unforeseeable future. Sure, fun's fun, and I approve of fun. But as a general thing “Art”, as we like to term it, is nothing if not our individual and collective attempts at maintaining a cultural continuum to the point that we create a better, or at least a more understood, world for ourselves and our offspring.}

^{I hesitate to post this, because I can’t seem to write this down without it coming off as merely sour grapes. Maybe so and so be it if so. But as a lifetime folk musician I feel it’s a responsibility as well as a right I took on and then earned when I agreed to give my heart and soul to a thousand and one free gigs for "good causes". Look at it this way. To me, a folk festival tainted by a folk-anti-Christ like Northwestern Energy is like watching a family member on drugs. It hurts.}

^{Today’s Folk Question}

^{Q. What do you call a solar energy spill?}

^{A. A nice day.}

^{[i] http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/21}

^{[ii] http://www.deq.mt.gov/ClimateChange/Energy/EnergySupply/CoalFossiFuelElectricity.mcpx}

^{[iii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14005350}

^{[iv] http://www.greatfallstribune.com/viewart/20130705/NEWS01/307050006/Gas-line-spills-25K-gallons-Crow-Reservation}

^{[v] http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/23-11}

A Pretty Good Dream

In my dream I went to Colorado, where there was a golf tournament which I was supposed to participate in. I don't play golf, and so I begged off, saying I couldn’t even hit a golf ball let alone make one do what I wanted it to do. Everyone was in agreement that I should spend my time instead with a family of interesting characters doing outrageous things. They were mostly grownups.

One guy had a pondful of exotic fish in his room that had tiny lion heads. He threw bits of food into the pond and watched them snap the bits up. The heads turned into the heads of pretty young ladies when they breached the surface. They were mermaids. Their hair dried instantly in the air, and they were beautiful. But when they dunked their heads into the water again they looked even prettier, like almost anybody who smiles. Some in-laws of this family were doing a recording in an interesting room with an old analogue board, listening to the music while they all lined up and ate a long and excellent dinner. I stayed there exclusively until it was time for my adventure, which I always have in  dreams. 

One of my interesting friends accompanied me. We entered a cave and encountered a group of beings going out. They were human but “other” in a good way and had strange customs. They touched me on the left shoulder in greeting. The women were flirty. They all had excellent senses of humor, just like my family of instant friends.

Then my fellow adventurer and I had to cross a city. It was traffic-jammed with aggressive young men revving their muscle cars and fearful people trying to keep up with them in their motor homes. It was Van Nuys Boulevard, where at a tender age I first confused growing up with loud cars. But this Van Nuys Boulevard had a gangland twist. The People didn’t want to upset the angry ones by going too slow and so the whole flow of traffic was suicidally-fast. On the side streets of the main drag were ambulances queuing up for the inevitable carnage built into the fabric of this society, which was ours.

The ambulances were five deep, and the last I remember I was going underground again with the flirty women and the others, all of whom had excellent senses of humor.

It was a pretty good dream.

Legacy Ranch Subdivision Update 2

"Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell."     Ed Abbey

How would it be for you if you went to a wealthy oncologist to deal with a potentially-fatal tumor and were told in clipped, obscenely-expensive words, that "growth is inevitable" and that "you can't stop progress"?  

Below is a synopsis of what happens when you strain a recycled teabag into a cup of that curdled milk. A hackneyed bromide, in other words, served in a silver, publicly-funded cup, offered up by Legacy developer Alexandra Morton and the surprisingly well-paid commissioners to the taxpaying serfs of Ravalli County, Montana. 

For those of you not from the Bitterroot, Legacy Ranch subdivision may seem minor and almost trite, given that cynical developers like the Mortons and condescending commissioners like ours have gotten away with this sort of rape and pillage all over the country for many decades. Indeed, we in the Bitterroot can't claim pristine privilege either. We've had carcinogenic government colluding with sociopathic developers before. But we’ve only recently had huge premeditated land-use tumors going for our lymph nodes, and so we’re not quite so ready as the Mortons and the local teabaggers which comprise our current county government would like us to be in accepting the their silver cup of crap.

“Change is inevitable.” Indeed. But who defines “change”? The few silver-tongued pillagers who make a living off of our collective degradation? Yes, degradation equals “change”. But so does putting up your dukes and fightin’ the bastards.

Beware the hackneyed bromide that serves to engorge the already-rich  at everyone else’s expense. We’ve still got something worth fightin’ for, and we’re gonna.

The Letter

Citizens of Ravalli County, you have been dismissed.

Last week, despite overwhelming and substantive opposition from the public to the  thirty-year construction zone in a formerly-rural corner of our valley adjacent to the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge, the Ravalli County Commissioners unanimously approved Legacy Ranch Subdivision.

That’s right. A handful of Ravalli County Republican Central Committee (RCC) operatives—including RCC chair and Planning Office Manager Terry Nelson, RCC precinct captain and Legacy developer Alexandra Morton, and of course the five RCC commissioners who owe their catbird seats to the likes of Nelson, Morton and other developer interests in this valley—not only unanimously approved this inappropriate monstrosity, they unanimously ignored your public comments and concerns one by one, point by point. In fact they hired an extra lawyer, on top of the SIX the county already retains, to do this work for them.

This seventh lawyer repeatedly advised the commissioners to “capture” the multitude and valid concerns you raised, and then dismiss them, one by one, by claiming that all the horrible results that will inevitably follow such a poor land-use decision will be “mitigated” by private, unenforceable covenants and “notices”.  As stated above, each and every one of these cynical condescensions to our democratic process and your concerns was “concurred with” unanimously. There was no debate between the commissioners—and certainly none between the developer and Nelson’s Planning Office--about whether or not the developer has a right to claim that unenforceable “covenants” and “notices” can count as mitigation for such an alien creature as Legacy, or even about the propriety of dismissing citizens’ heartfelt concerns so offhandedly. Remember: public comment was done. The public was not allowed to talk during these final proceedings. In other words, only the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee operatives (the developers, the commissioners, the planning staff) had a place at this table. Not a one of them was disagreeing with the proposal, let alone advocating for anybody except the developer. A more incredible example of abnegation of public responsibility would be hard to find, although this commission has come up with some doozies in that regard ever since the extremist commission took over county government in 2010.

Consider: THIRTY YEARS of construction on that little piece of rural property. In one fell swoop, the Republican Central Committee, euphemistically known as your county government, has declared that you and your children, and even your children’s children have as much right to peace and quiet as any city-dweller.  In other words, if you can’t afford a castle and a spread the size of the Morton’s estate up against the mountains west of Victor--complete with government firefighters ready to protect that castle in the event of inevitable forest fires--then you and yours don’t deserve any peace at all, ever again.

Contrary to news reports, the commissioners did not “ban” woodstoves. Just like so many other blow-offs of the public’s sincere concerns, the commissioners merely requested that a restriction on woodstoves be placed in the notices and covenants. Now ask yourself: who is going to enforce all these “mitigations” and which commissioners are going to do anything about it if they don’t get enforced? Are you aware of ANY  homeowner’s association that isn’t dysfunctional in this valley? Remember the homeowner’s association dispute that ended in a shooting up Little Sleeping Child recently? Is that really the kind of government these commissioners think works best? Put bluntly, homeowner association “covenants and notices” are not restrictions or legal “mitigations” at all. Eventually, and probably soon after “phase one” begins, they will all be ignored, and we who are already here, whose lives will certainly be degraded by this renegade decision, will pick up the tab, while the commissioners’ political benefactors—the developers—whistle to the bank.

The decision to allow Legacy Construction zone into your rural backyard is bad enough. But when you consider the screaming conflict-of-interests issues between the developer and the commissioners, between the “planning board” and the Republican Central Committee, I think most reasonable, agenda-free folks on either side of the political divide will agree that this debacle is not only not the Good Government we expect from our paid help, it’ not anything close to our cherished democratic process, and is therefore un-American.

This is the price You The Taxpayers are paying for the Republican Central Committee’s (euphemistically known as your county government’s) extreme ideological purity.

How’s that feel, folks?

On Rainbow Gatherings and the 70s Thing

After the 1978 apple picking season I drove my hippy van up to Ione, Washington to a relatively new phenomenum called a barter fair. Kind of a twin to the Rainbow Gatherings that sprang from that same era and demographic. Lots of young folks like myself as well as a fair amount of what we called middle-aged folks at the time (mid thirties). Big party out in a wide open meadow surrounded by mountains, is what I remember, which is a good thing, considering. 

The organizers, probably the owners of the land, had set up a few “squat pits” for people to use in place of communing with the surrounding woods, which many people did anyway, and so you had to literally thread through the toilet-paper blossoms if you wanted to take a walk outside of camp. Made the saunters more adventurous, if nothing else.

I of course wanted to do the right thing and when my time drew near I headed for the pit, which as far as I could see from the outside consisted of a makeshift wooden privacy wall with a long co-ed line outside, to which I attached myself and waited as best I could. For twenty minutes I stood in front of a very cute and stoned flower girl in a tie-dyed granny skirt and even though I wanted to think of something witty to say to her, I didn't, because I was single and shy, and she was very cute.

It finally got to be my turn to go “behind the wall” and there I found myself standing on an open-air rough wood platform with two openings in the boards five feet apart. I hadn’t known until this critical moment that it was a “two-squatter” and that if I wanted to do my business in private, which I think most people prefer, I’d better hurry up which, everything being equal, is neither natural nor preferable. Nevertheless, there it was, I had to go, and I fell to in as speedy a fashion as I could, hoping the next person in line was too stoned to move in too quick, which I thought she was.

I was about halfway through when in she came, lifted her skirt, and joined me. This not only didn’t help my flirting skills, it seized me up. I shut down on my appreciation of the scenery. What else could I do? I continued squatting, red-faced, she finished and left with a brush of a tie-dye skirt and a smile, and I was constipated for the next two days. I figured I had been some kind of smitten, but to this day I’m not sure what kind it was, or if I ever recovered from it. I did recover from the constipation after two days of eating one Red Delicious apple from a box I had stashed under the bed of my hippy van every two hours, and this is a cure I would still recommend to alleviate the symptoms of various conditions, such as constipation, stomach pains and precipitous declines in self-confidence associated with Failed Flirting Fatigue (FFF).

Regarding the Rainbow Gathering in the Big Hole this week: I think most young people have experiences that seem incredibly adventurous at the time and that play havoc with their self-esteem and upbringing. I just want to let them know that we all go through that stuff, whether we admit it or not, and that it's generally all right if you keep in mind that the main object is to stay in one piece. We elders should all wish you youngsters the best, and I do.

Have fun, and play safe.