Blind Faith

October 2, 2009 in  uncategorized
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All sight is a form of nostalgia for something lost.

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Hardin Jail: (American Police Force) President Michael Hilton: Scam Artist or True Western Hero?

September 30, 2009 in  American Metaphors
Michael Hilton of American Police Force in Hardin, Montana to discuss plans for Hardin Jail

Here’s a new joke we tell out here in the windswept plains of eastern Montana: what do you get when you cross a wanna-be Serbian Militant with a Southern California car salesman? That’s right, the keys to the Hardin Jail.

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The Fix Is In (140Miles East of Cool Recommends)

September 24, 2009 in  American Metaphors
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OK. You surrender. The little white flag is now raised high over your cubicle. Your weekend is all laid out for you. After taking the kids to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs you’ll take in The Informant. Why? Helloooooo. Do you really think we have a choice? Is NOT choosing to slap down the green on the new Diablo Cody/Megan Fox vehicle Jennifer’s Body really “voting with your dollars” or are you caught in a double-bind with your consumptive choices cordoned all around you and shoveled down your sometimes-metaphorical throat?

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Guest Columnists: Grace + Ruth

September 20, 2009 in  Montana
mom

Mom is out of town this weekend.

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Lock and Load Them Ballet Tunes Boys, We’re Headed to Hardin

September 13, 2009 in  Montana
American Police Force comes to Hardin, Montana

I associate Ravel’s Bolero with, if not softness itself, the soft curvature of a woman.

Imagine my surprise to find it as the website theme American Police Force, a group that sells arms in Afghanistan, and is a general one-stop shop kidnap and ransom/fugitive recovery/spousal infidelity service group that also does international military and paramilitary operations, cruise ship and shipping security, and trains special forces.

Oh, and this they’re the new residents of the Hardin, Montana jail.

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Police Room 619, September 12

September 12, 2009 in  Childhood Delusions
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When I got home, I ran up to my room, tossed in a fresh dip of Copenhagen, dropped the needle on Peter Gabriel III, and jumped back onto my big sloshy hand-me-down-from-my-brother water bed to sink into the music.

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In Defense of Fanaticism: Breaking Into the Twin Towers

September 11, 2009 in  American Metaphors
World Trade Center Twin Towers

They were a ragtag band living overseas watching the World Trade Center towers go up. And they knew, even before the towers were built, that they were going to break into the towers; they knew they were going to commit crimes.

They spent six years planning every aspect of the operation: where to hide inside the building, how to sneak in, the rotations of the guards. It was an exercise in extreme detail and brilliance.

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Lesson Plans, 2009

September 10, 2009 in  Montana

Timothy Egan’s last two posts on the NYTimes site deserve your attention. Check ‘em out:

Lesson Plans, 2009 – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com

Hunting Wolves, and Men – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com

And while I’m…

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Obama Wets His Line in Montana

September 9, 2009 in  American Metaphors
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I often find myself checking out the White House Flickr stream, partly because I like Pete Souza’s photography, and partly because Souza uses the same camera and similar lenses to me which makes me curious about his shots (and Flickr posts much of the metadata so the nerds can check out lens, aperture, etc.)

I also find that on the White House Flickr stream, one can find really candid and interesting photos. For example this one, where the Park Ranger at Grand Canyon is clearly holding the President’s ear while the Obama kids are bored out of their skulls, hunched over in the hot sun with that “dad, can we just go now” body slump.

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The Public Option in Short: Robert Reich Lays It Out

September 8, 2009 in  American Metaphors
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Adopt Me: on Madonna, Malawi, and Adoption

August 28, 2009 in  Films and Projects
Adopt Me: on Madonna and adoption

When Madonna’s black-with-dark-tinted-windows Land Cruisers came barreling down the dirt road towards the orphanage, the locals thought they were ready. They had printed up t-shirts with the “Adopt Me” slogan and an arrow pointed towards their face. They were ready to run down to the main road with their shirts on, line the road out to the orphanage, and wave at the cruisers as they sped past.

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African Sausage

August 10, 2009 in  Films and Projects
African Sausage

Find a patch of brush. Light it on fire. Catch all the mice as they race to escape the flames. Toss them into boiling water. Wait. Scoop their wet-soaked scraggly carcass out of the water pot. Jam a dozen between two sticks. Run out to the road. Wait for a passing minibus. Sell for 150-250 Kwacha (USD$1.00-1.75)

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Chakhala

July 31, 2009 in  Films and Projects
Chakhala, Malawi, Africa

In 1988, on a trip to Uganda, we carried a polaroid and were able to take family shots, village shots, etc. and give them the photograph right then and there. I can’t seem to find a Polaroid these days. And while everyone seems to get a kick looking at the LCD screen on the back of my camera, it’s not the same.

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Pakati

July 28, 2009 in  Films and Projects
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In Chichewa, a pregnant woman is described as pakati (between life and death) or matenda (sick).

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July 16th along the Jornada del Muerto

July 16, 2009 in  The West
Trinity Atomic Test, July 16, 1945

They are walking in prayer today in Church Rock New Mexico, thirty years after the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history (Three Mile Island happened a few months earlier, in March 1979). When the dam broke at the United Nuclear Corporation’s Church Rock Uranium Mill in the early morning hours, eleven tons of radioactive wastes and ninety million (90,000,000) gallons of radioactive waste poured into the Rio Puerco with such force that the liquid waste lifted manhole covers throughout Gallup twenty miles downstream and people fled to hospitals complaining of burning feet.

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National Park Fee Free Days, in a word, glorious

July 16, 2009 in  American Metaphors
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While Yellowstone is posting record numbers of visitors this year, National Parks as a whole have seen attendance slide in recent years.

In hopes of reversing the trend and re-introducing folks to our wonderful public lands heritage, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced back in June that the Department would waive entrance fees nationwide to all parks on three prime summer weekends. This is no small offer as park entrance fees have really climbed in past years. Nearby Yellowstone sits at $25 for entrance (that does give in and out privileges for 7 days).

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“Mad Money” Indeed: CNBC’s Jim Cramer, High Priest of Death

July 15, 2009 in  Montana
Jim Cramer is a bobble-head

If we have learned anything from the past year, we should have learned that we are plagued by a kind of dark age, an age of ignorance, an age of economic illiteracy…

We rely on the priests and the prophets who have unmediated access to the gods of commerce. They translate the dense, opaque, confusing world to the rest of us. And they wield enormous power. They are often referred to in otherworldly, nearly priestly terms. Warren Buffet is interchangeably the “Sage of Omaha” and the “Oracle of Omaha.”

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Have Camera, Will Travel

July 14, 2009 in  Films and Projects
Malawi Girl by gunnisal, on Flickr

The tickets are paid for, the seat assignments are locked in, and at this time next Tuesday I will be headed to Africa.

This trip is part of my commitment to “be like Barack,” that is to do everything Obama…

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