This is normally Steve Kelly’s area of expertise, as he is a lifelong wilderness advocate. It has long been an interest of mine as well. My activities in wilderness ceased when I resigned in disgust from the Montana Wilderness Association years ago. While I was an active member, the group was always short of money, the trademark of a genuine environmental group. Over the years, the Pew Charitable Trusts, as an active strategy, took over funding of groups like MWA, removing anyone with a backbone and replacing them with industry “collaborators,” or people who do not believe in confrontation.

They are showered in cash from Pew and other organizations that want to put an end to wilderness activism. MWA now has a large and well-paid staff  (I count 21, whereas when I was a member there were three), and they all wear outdoor apparel and appear in natural settings. Their main funtion is to make the group look like it is doing useful activities while accomplishing nothing. I don’t imagine them to be outdoorsy. 

Pew’s task is now complete. MWA is an industry front group, and not a proponent or defender of wilderness.

(One good thing came out of my years with MWA – it is how I met my wife.)

Continue reading “A justification for wilderness” →

Not sure I want to publish this, as it is something I ran across via someone to get to the original, and I am not even sure it is an exact quote nor have I read the entirety of the original, nor will I. Poetry to me in all my life has only had meaning when read to me by someone else with the necessary inflections, deep voice and added drama. If it is just words on a page with me alone, it deflects off me like wind outside as I drive my truck, sheltered from it. It just doesn’t affect me. I wish I knew more than I do and appreciated more than I do how poetry works. There are a few phrases that move me, and I have them on a bulletin board behind me, so well known that I don’t need name the authors …

If you can hold your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you …

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though…

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

Continue reading “Resist much, obey little” →

Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who had 30 or more victims in the 1970s, and is suspected of even more. He was captured in Florida, and executed on January 24, 1989. He was 42 years old.

That’s the official story. I just spent the last hour or so re-reading two papers by Miles W. Mathis on Bundy, one from 2014, and the other 2018. That part was fun, as the papers read well. In the 2014 paper, MM tries to tie Ted Bundy, pictured to the right, as a true member of the Bundy family, Boston ultra-wealth and lineage with members like Willliam (foreign affairs advisor to both JFK and LBJ), and McGeorge (yes, that was his real name) (National Security Advisor to the same two presidents). He might well hit that nail, as Ted Bundy bears strong resemblance to the Bundy line.

In the 2018 paper, MM follows the Bundy trail of murders through Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and finally Florida. It’s really hilarious to read, the things they expect us to believe. I won’t repeat anything here as the papers are easily available to the reader. Just enjoy them as I did. I am neither going to add to or detract from the Mathis work, as what I do here is my own research. His stands by itself, as does mine.

Continue reading “The Ted Bundy nightmare … a hoax” →

A hat tip to another blog for posting last week in regards to Penn State convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, and allegations of his innocence from investigative reporter John Zeigler. To get deep into it as I have, you will have to listen to a couple of two-and-one-half hour broadcast from Thaddeus Russell, starting here. Zeigler also runs a website called Framing Paterno. In addition are more interviews and a long series of blog posts, 2012-present by Zeigler.  You are, like me, on your own. I spent a weekend, maybe ten or twelve hours of listening and reading and came out refreshed. Now is time to write, hopefully capturing the immensity of the injustice done to Jerry Sandusky.

I am a walking thinker, that is, I cannot just sit and listen to people talk. I have to move about. Maybe this is why schooling never did me much good, as I watched the mouths of teachers and saw the cascades of words coming out of them, but they did not cross the divide. John Cleese, quoting someone else I am not going to run down, told us that a teacher’s lecture is a series of notes on paper that become a series of notes on the student’s paper, without passing through the mind of either.

Continue reading “Is Jerry Sandusky innocent?” →

I could do a post like this every day, so productive is Ab at Fakeologist. (Be sure to use fakeologist.com/blog/ when you visit the site to get the latest.

Here is one that caught my eye that needs to be spread wide and far – It’s not PPE – it’s a religious garment. Ab is bringing to us a study done (quietly) at Stanford University (linked in an American Conservative Union article) [see note at end] showing what we all know anyway, that masks are useless. I regard them as nothing more than ritual shaming.

However, I am on the other side of a barrier in this debate, as arguing about the effectiveness of masks against something that does not even exist (SARS-CoV-2) seems not only moronic, but oxymoronic. That puts me squarely outside the framing of the debate.

Continue reading “h/t – Ab” →

Note to readers: It is apparent that this blog is going in two directions, and this troubles me not in the least. We have Stephers, Steve and me, and we each have our own ideas. Please note on the left (on a desktop) that you can follow the writer of your choice. The following piece is my type of thing, a reminiscence about a man I admired, mixed in with a trip we took and some side canyons. Stephers is writing about the intricacies of Covid and the vaccine. Steve is about wildness (and a man I suspect he might know, Howie Wolke, turns up in this piece.) There is no conflict among writers on this blog. If I was any kind of a computer guy, I would redesign the blog to accommodate all three of us. That is way above my pay grade.

Last year we took a trip north to my old haunts growing up, the Beartooth Mountains of Montana, and Yellowstone National Park. We revisited places I had known as early as a youth of ten years old, finding them intact. I vowed that the trip would not be sullied by electronic communication … no blogging, no email, and certainly things I had already quit doing … no Facebook, Twitter, and things I had never done, like Instragram.

It was a rough trip in some regards, sitting on the bank of the Gallatin river, nothing to do but watch the passings by, the birds, boaters, fishermen and sons, but no way to exhort my family and friends and former classmates to share in the adventure. It had to be done without outside approval, those obnoxious “likes” that take on unwarranted importance in that small world. I had to watch the river, the boaters and their dogs, a flock of wild geese stupidly imprisoned by wire fences (we set them free), and the father and son sharing the adventure of fly fishing. I took it all to heart without broadcasting, as in the old days, the small events of my life, shared with no one, the meaning of which were in my heart, meant to stay there, but unlike most, later shared by written word.

This year my wife and I revisited our adventures of twenty years ago and more recently, and a place that defies description, though I will try … Utah. It is vast and beautiful and charming, haunting and harsh. The desert has unique flavor and beauty, and can kill a man. We’ve just returned from that trip, and I’ve been writing off and on about a man I much admired, Edward Abbey.

Continue reading “Down the river” →