A flock, it is not. There will never be a revolution in America.
More like, when I say jump . . .
Kinda like Bugs Bunny getting his feet shot at while Yosemite Sam demands he ‘Dance!’. . .
It’s a relationship.
Americans will never revolt. They will never rebel. I’m not talking our military here, I’m talking the people, the masses, who will gladly vote for war if they are commanded by their team, but who will never en masse lift a finger in inconvenience to support it. A placard, perhaps. But not a pinky finger otherwise.
Why? This man nails it and it’s so spot on I fear reposting it. Truth bombs this huge are usually dropped by assets. Even listening can get you on a list, I’m sure. Because, America is so damn free.
But this murdering convert to Islam is correct nonetheless. Our guns can’t save us from, or in, this battle. We have already lost. We were conquered from within long before this current administration. We do not have the heart to rebel because rebellion and revolution require artists, the kind of artists, and warriors, who cannot be bought. We don’t have that, we haven’t had that for a long time now. We have conformity, collusion, corruption and therefore we’ve got what we deserve. Politics is downstream from culture.
Start at the 1:15 mark, it’s only about 10 minutes, and it’s brutal. Not for the feight of heart, I’m afraid, but absolutely the truth as I see it. Listen and weep, or not.
Back to this unpleasant subject again. It’s been a very long loop; I haven’t considered it much since first attempting to barter goods from the wee homestead.
It’s something we really do take for granted in our modern economy, whether one takes that as an inherent good or evil.
The good part is that it’s comfortable and I prefer it, on the surface. I hate bartering. I SO suck at it. I suck at it for reasons that are so deeply-seated (seeded?) that no logic can ever possibly be applied.
On travels to some countries barter was the norm and I was told to keep practicing as I’d get better at it. Some seem to enjoy it. These sorts always baffled me. They say, “Treat it like a game!” But that is really stupid, isn’t it, because I did not go out shopping in order to play a game. I already don’t like shopping much, to think I’d like it more by making it game-like is to make it ever closer to hellish.
So while it may not sound like it, this is the good side of money. It took me a long time to learn that. Not until I had to consider such exchanges as, which was of better or equal value, the handcrafted Top bar beehive, or the wormy, bossy, but still a good milker, Summer, a 7-year old goat?
Money, in partnership with “the Market”, make such exchanges far more simple. Since none of us has a crystal ball, and I have no idea how long Summer will live and there are no guarantees, and my friend has no idea if she’ll enjoy beekeeping, or be able to keep bees alive in our chemskies and YoYo climate, our exchange is made more simple by imagining what would be the ‘market value’ of each of our offerings.
The dark side of money it seems to me relates quite easily to the dark side of most things—like religion, or science, or even education—it provides, by its very nature, an endless potential for ‘middlemen’. It becomes a profession, then a vast sea of professions, then an institution, then an institution ‘too big to fail’.
It’s convenient and comfortable, no doubt about it. It’s easy enough for a child to use, but complex enough to build empires upon. Try to imagine living without it.
Do we really consider how we, as individuals, would place value upon goods and services anymore?
What about once money is replaced with tokens. It’s pretty much the same thing already, right? Tokens as a medium of value exchange—your massage is worth 2 dozen yard eggs. Right?
Well, the market value of your massage today is 20 tokens, but the value of my eggs is 10 tokens, today, and 15 tokens last week, and is projected to be 25 tokens tomorrow. That’s the real problem with the market, right? For you and I, as individuals deciding value between us, the eggs and massage exchange didn’t fluctuate vastly over a matter of days, or even weeks. It’s pretty steady, really. You use 2 dozen eggs per week, I like 1 massage per week, stable value exchange.
But I’ll bet you 5 economists in the room with us would tell us 50 ways it’s not really a stable value exchange. And, why be stable at all if there might be a profit to make? Then a dozen lawyers will tell us why those economists are right. And a nation full of universities will continue to produce a fat muffin top of middlemen to stuff between every simple interpersonal transaction in every tiny hamlet around the world.
I’m bothering to restate the obvious at this moment because I’m trying to re-assess the value of technology in my life. It started with the recurring headaches of social media many years ago, then moved to Smart phones, and lately it’s WordPress.
Then a cyber-friend shared a dream, which caused this spark of inquiry.
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
Can we make a more agrarian life through technology? Which I understand as, can technology help us to get back to basics? And by basics we mean an understanding of nature, an appreciation of its organic processes, a “re-enchantment” as I’ve heard it lovingly expressed, with the natural world. Working with our hands again, I presume, creating items of value to exchange with one another. A slower life perhaps, where we have the great luxury of time to enjoy our lives and our nature world to a greater degree than afforded to most in the modern world.
A ‘re-enchantment’ with nature, I like the sound of that.
An ‘agora’ that’s not corrupted by fiat, usury, taxes, violence and coercion, perhaps?
Technology in our private life here on the wee homestead has benefitted us in a few crucial ways—helping us to learn new skills has been the most significant. But keeping us from feeling terribly remote and unconnected and uninformed has also been very important. I’ve made a few good friends thanks to the internet and I’m very grateful for that. Feelings of isolation and loneliness can be significant spiritual hurdles for some of us living rural for the first time.
And I have seen promising shifts over the years. Homesteading is clearly a bonafide cultural movement at this time, I think primarily thanks to technology, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Herbalism has become more appealing as Pig Pharma breathes heavier down our necks. Pockets of interest and learning are all over the cyber world, every craft, trade or skill imaginable is available somewhere with a few clicks, I’m sure.
But I have seen and heard some really concerning trends lately, which makes me realize that the time to be re-assessing the value of the tech in our lives is reaching a crescendo.
For example, the young entrepreneurial types who are coming in to fill the needs of the rural communities with essentials like raw milk, homegrown veggies at the farmer’s market, small service businesses and the like, well they aren’t like us in some really fundamental ways.
They trust The Science, for the most part, evident in their willingness to vaccinate, medicate, use the latest supplements and vitamins, and not question any of it. They also love the tech and fully embrace the insane trifecta of the Global Grid: Surveillance cameras, Smart phones and digital payment systems.
How is that value assessed? Who is benefitting more?
My guess would be, more often than not, the middlemen. Like any pyramid scheme a few must be making good for anyone else to follow. For a while.
Seems to me these young entrepreneurs are setting themselves up for certain failure. I met one of these ambitious young women last week on my quest for raw milk, now that my goats are mostly gone. I really miss making cheese. The price of raw milk, not even organic, has gone through the roof as demand has perked up—$11/gallon around here. It’s too much for us to afford.
What did I learn from this experience? Her surveillance cameras everywhere tell me she doesn’t trust her customers or neighbors. Her vaccination schedule tells me she does not do her due diligence in caring for her animals. Her price and her preferred payment by QR code tells me she prefers dealing with middlemen over direct transactions and getting to know her clientele.
I will not be doing any business with her, that’s for sure.
So, while I still have a lot to learn about assessing value, there is a point to this rather rambling post: The goat is dead, no bees have yet to make that hive a home—but no one else profited or lost from that private exchange—and our relationship stayed in tact to trade another day despite these apparent failures. I think nations have gone to war for less.
And that’s something so far social media, Smart phones, WordPress, and indeed money, all fail to assess a proper value.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or ramblings about my cyber-friend’s dream, what do y’all think, is it possible? Would you want such a world?
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
How long before this field gets paved over for yet another Vape Shop, or Dollar Store, or Walgreens?
Is it considered an improvement if it’s a Smart Farm run from Brussels by robots?
The plot thickens, and twists. This time we learn from Wiki that after the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, there were indeed body remains found after all. According to this source, the remains of all of the bodies of the astronauts were found. Someone should really share that info with Rich Husband’s people.
Kalpana Chawla, our next look at astronaut lore, was also a music lover. She served as the shuttle’s flight engineer. She was married to Jean-Pierre Harrison, who has written a book about her and is the president of two dubious-looking companies for which I was able to find no information.
“Steve Morse of the band Deep Purple released the song “Contact Lost” in 2003 in memory of the Columbia disaster.[50] Chawla took three Deep Purple albums on STS-107, using their song “Space Truckin’” as a wakeup call. One of their albums was found in the shuttle’s wreckage.”
Wow, so an entire album was discovered, as well as a CD. She had room for 3 albums, and clearly must have had a player for those. These space shuttles must be roomier than a magic bus! I wonder if they ever had arguments over who got to choose the ‘wake-up’ music. I know that much Deep Purple and I’d definitely be wishing for some disintegration.
She was accused of screwing up during the previous mission, but was given a second chance. On a YT video of day 4 of that mission we learn that one of her colleague’s favorite songs is from a popular Japanese television show about puppets in space.
“Chawla first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and robotic armoperator aboard STS-87. Her role in the flight caused some controversy due to the failed deployment of the Shuttle-Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy (“Spartan”) module. Chawla’s second flight was in 2003 on STS-107, the final flight of Columbia.”
In an interview about her previous mission the reporter writes:
“We’d be very foolish if we tried to second-guess or tried to figure out what the actual turn of events were without having all the information… We’re six folks up here, we know what happened on our side, we’ll get together with the folks on the ground and we’ll put the whole story together and make sure it never happens again. Sure, we’re always a bit disappointed if we don’t get the full mission accomplished, but we did retrieve the satellite, and so the important thing is we’re bringing Spartan back down to Earth and it’ll get to fly another day.”
It’ll get to fly another day. And so will Chawla, but apparently just the one.
She is now in Zion, her final resting place being Zion National Park, Utah.
In our last post we took a look at Laurel Blair Salton Clark and learned that human bodies and space shuttles disintegrate at different laws of physics than CDs, which are now nearly lost to time, but apparently not to space.
Moving on to the hero of the story, we have Rich Husband, Commander of the mission. He had an illustrious career as a fighter pilot and astronaut and is accredited with a long list of honors and awards and even has a statue.
But what some may not know is he also was an actor. He played himself in a series called Our Jewish Roots in 2003. His wife, Evelyn, has also played herself in numerous programs. Unfortunately as miraculous as our cyber world is, I can’t find a way to view this episode; it doesn’t even seem to be available for purchase.
Rick Husband – IMDb
His also the subject of an episode about the failed Columbia mission, played by actor Brian David, born September 11, 1965 in Kansas City MO and appearing in 3 films in 2004, 2005, 2006 one quite popular. But he’s not in any recent films. Quite a handsome fellow, I wonder what happened to him.
Running To The Light, Columbia Space Shuttle, Modern Myths
I came across this photo on our nearby city map and found it so compelling I thought to do a few post about it. This is from Palestine, Texas. The Columbia Space Shuttle was reported to have exploded over this area of East Texas killing all these crew members.
Rick D. Husband, Commander; Kaplan’s Chawla, Mission Specialist; David M. Brown, Mission Specialist I; Williams C. McCool, Pilot; Michael P. Anderson, Payload Commander; Lian Ramon, Payload Specialist I; Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Mission Specialist 4.
We will start with the latter, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Mission Specialist 4 Wiki page:
The Scottish band Runrig pays tribute to Clark on the 2016 album The Story. The final track, “Somewhere”, ends with a recording of her voice.[18] Clark was a Runrig fan and had a wake up call with Runrig’s “Running to the Light”. She took their 2001 The Stamping Ground CD into space with her. When the shuttle disintegrated the CD was found back on Earth, and was presented to the band by her family.
I will be accused of being hyperbolic. Melodramatic. Perhaps I complain too much. Might my standards be too high?
It’s not that bad, they will say, or think. You still have a house and a husband and a relatively stable life. Just think of those miserable folks in . . . And all those who . . . And don’t forget the starving children in . . .
All over the place. Like, seriously, all over the god-damned place, and still everywhere, also, simultaneously, I hear such minimizing, avoidance, redirecting, marginalizing ‘advice’ from those high on their horses.
So if my experience, this time, is not as hellish as the last time, or as his or her or their experiences, on our vast continuum of hellishness, I should just move on. Get over it.
No matter how hard it gets, the social contract requires you stay positive, hopeful, forever gazing over the rainbow at the future potential for success, and perpetually focused on the life lesson.
It’s not hard, it’s challenging. It’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity. It’s not theft, it’s redistribution. It’s not a real lie, it’s a lie of omission. It’s not a failure, it’s a stepping stone. You’re not beat, you’re regrouping.
I still get counseled from others, unwanted advice (well-meaning I’m sure in their own minds) on how to see the bright side.
As if I don’t know how to do it! I was born and raised painting a silver lining on every cloud. I’m American, we’ve written nearly every script on this bullshit.
But, I grew up and got over it.
I was also a teacher for 20 years and sometimes I was actually a good one. Ok, maybe only occasionally, but that counts.
When I was good it was because I was tough, but fair. Not nice. Not compromising. Not lenient or understanding. Not painting rosy pictures or being sweet and kind.
And in such moments of lucidity it became very obvious to me that most students fail due to one thing: unrealistic expectations.
Our culture is saturated with them. Because it’s really, really good for business.
Lots of students sincerely wanted to learn the foreign language I was trying to teach them, and certainly had the smarts to do so because it’s not difficult, even a child can do it. And almost always does!
But they bought the hype of some advertisement or second hand story from a braggart who swears anyone can learn a language in three months by listening to tapes on their work commute. They bought the expectation the process would be smooth sailing all the way.
They are a lot like these types who are constantly insisting everyone see the bright side of every situation. They’re all like mood police. Like moms who make kids ‘kiss and make up’ while they’re still seething inside. Emotional bullying based on unreasonable expectations. It reminds me of an awful photo I once saw of a child model posing for the camera with a forced smile on her face though her eyes were red and puffy from crying.
So, with all that out of the way, this summer has SUCKED for me.
There, I’ve said it. I haven’t written a Homestead Happenings in months in order to avoid having to try to make it palatable for readers. I know how to paint the silver lining on it. But, it also irritates me that those are the only kinds of stories we’re allowed to tell in mixed company. If there’s not some triumph over adversity, keep it to yourself.
If there’s not gratitude somewhere for the gift of life, no one wants to hear it. Stop whining. Get over it. Make lemonade.
Some of us have known for decades what’s coming. Actually, what is here, already here, has been here, and has been destroying families and communities for two centuries, at least.
You need look no further than the “Civil” war to see it.
Others are just coming face to face with this reality now. It’s a horrifying reality for such folks, not only has their reality bubble been burst, but now they must face such dire facts while trying to fight for their homes, their properties, and their lives. Just as happened to the Southerners. Just as happened to the ‘Native Americans’. Don’t believe the war propaganda; every day is Groundhog Day. Every land grab scheme has been played before, now they just have fancier weapons to do their dirty work.
Waking up is hard to do in the best of circumstances, so I can imagine the hell when attempting to do so in the worst of them.
It’s not just the weather! I know, I’ve been focused on the weather for so long, it’s been my obsession, because trying to deal with it on a daily basis is no picnic.
I’ve also felt like the manufactured weather is like a baby step, a gateway, if folks would get their minds around that fact, and the very serious implications of it, then they would be better able to face the far more dire situation we are in.
Now that the cyber world is finally facing up to the manmade weather chaos, I feel it’s time to take the next step, because in fact, the reality of the situation is FAR worse.
During the series of tests at the High Energy Laser System Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range, the Demonstrator Laser Weapon System (DLWS), acting as a ground-based test surrogate for the SHiELD system, was able to engage and shoot down several air launched missiles in flight. The demonstration is an important step of the SHiELD system development, by validating laser effectiveness against the target missiles.
DEW—Directed Energy Weapons—are that reality. This is not a conspiracy theory. Those in the know, those in the positions of power in this country, they understand very well these weapons are real, and they are being used against us in this country as in many others.
This book is from 2003.
“Several nations are engaging in development and production of directed energy weapons. Recent scientific advances now enable the production of lethal lasers and high-powered microwaves. The current growth and development in this emerging area strongly suggests that directed energy weapons of lethal power will reach the battlefield before 2010. Since proliferation of lower power laser weapons has already happened, it is likely that proliferation of high power or high energy weapons will occur as well. This paper expands on this development and posits potential impacts on a plausible future battlefield, developed in part from the Alternate Futures of AF 2025, where all comers deploy lethal directed energy technologies. From these impacts, which span doctrine, organization, force structure, and systems design, this paper recommends changes to better posture the United States for this potential future.”
Who you vote for will not change this. This is being carried out from above our political class. As I asked in a previous post: Who owns our airspace?
“The NOAA Project Report below includes information regarding “Weather Modification experiments through electromagnetism” starting 01/05/2023 through 01/01/2026. The submitted application includes a World Economic Forum Global Weather Modification Alliance STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING which discusses “manmade electro-magnetic storms which may render another region powerless to floods, extreme wildfires and hailstorms…”. The applicant states, “I created a Strategic Intelligence Map this year as well and sent it off to UNOOSA and the United Nations in hope to create a weather modification alliance…”
Who owns our airspace? Does this answer my question?
The ‘race for space’ is not about gifting the world with Internet. It’s the modern battlefield. All that sits below ‘space’ is the fallout zone. We are the fallout zone.
They don’t just want the most beautiful places either, the mountains and the coastlines. They want what is beneath our feet. In some cases, that means lithium and other desired minerals.
East Texas, along with a good chunk of the South is also lithium rich territory, not just our miserable neighbors living in the current hellscape called Appalachia.
“In this episode, we dive into a timely and fascinating topic: the growing importance of lithium extraction in the United States and what it means for mineral owners. In fact, long-time listener, Barb R. shared a news story about Standard Lithium Ltd’s discovery of the highest confirmed lithium grade brine in North America in Cass County, Texas. This discovery has sparked conversations about the ownership of lithium mineral rights and who owns the valuable minerals found in produced water and the potential impact on royalties. Whether you have minerals in the Smackover Formation or anywhere else in the United States, be sure to listen to learn how you can navigate this developing landscape to make sure you get paid for these valuable minerals.”
For those new to the topic of mineral rights here’s a noteworthy fact: Most mineral rights owners do not live on the property for which they own the mineral rights. And most land owners do not own mineral rights.
That means they, ordinary mineral owning Americans, profit, sometimes substantially, if the Public-Private partnerships drill on the land, even against the desire of the land owners.
Furthermore, if those mineral rights owners don’t know they own those rights (for example a death where those rights weren’t specified so the inheritor has no idea), or aren’t informed of the prospective drilling operations (because these international corporations are not always forthcoming), that money goes to the US federal government.
As the famous quote goes:
Thank you to The Tactical Hermit who has been covering the news of our fellows in our latest war zone. Follow link for more info.
Surface modification control stations and methods in a globally distributed array for dynamically adjusting the atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic properties
“Surface modification control stations and methods in a globally distributed array for dynamically adjusting the atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic properties. The control stations modify the humidity, currents, wind flows and heat removal rate of the surface and facilitate cooling and control of large area of global surface temperatures. This global system is made of arrays of multiple sub-systems that monitor climate and act locally on weather with dynamically generated local forcing & perturbations for guiding in a controlled manner aim at long-term modifications. The machineries are part of a large-scale system consisting of an array of many such machines put across the globe at locations called the control stations. These are then used in a coordinated manner to modify large area weather and the global climate as desired.”
Listen to the beginning of Dane’s broadcast this week where a man confronts the (supposedly ignorant) atmospheric terrorists and makes them squirm like the worms they are! 😆
What do you think? Have you had a personal experience of transformation through art?
I wrote my Master’s thesis on social engineering in 90s, before I had any idea what social engineering was. I didn’t know at the time that’s what I was writing about. The thesis was about women writers of francophone West Africa using their novels as a means to catalyze social change. Liberation through literature, I called it, where practices like polygamy, female genital mutilation, and lack of educational opportunities were voiced in fictional form by the otherwise voiceless.
Certainly it is not at all uncommon for writers to use their works toward such ends. And yet, something about the timing of my thesis, or perhaps the content, resonated less with others than I expected.
I found that instead ‘Art for art’s sake’ had become the more popular mode of the times and works that were considered to be ‘too pedantic’ (which seemed to mean any fictional work with a purpose other than sheer entertainment) were heavily criticized.
I tried for years to pitch similar ideas for publishing to various entities and could find no interest and quite a lot of criticism. Folks wanted to be entertained, not taught. If they had to learn something, they wanted it tightly obscured in a bubble of excitement, like a Dan Brown novel.
But times seem to have changed again and authors and artists with a serious message, with deep societal concerns, seem to be able to find, or are perhaps themselves creating, a growing audience hungry for their transformational content.
It reminds me of some of the criticisms I heard in the 90s—art is not meant to transform or educate, but rather has the sole purpose to simply express the subjective worldview of the creator. Any feelings of universality in a work of art is essentially meaningless coincidence. Art should not be held in the clutches of meaning-making. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art cannot be personally or socially transformative, except to the artist himself, that is an establishment myth of conformity.
I even had an artist friend, with an art degree, who assisted at a gallery, try to insist to me that the glass flask full of the artist’s excrement (I’m not joking) was to be considered art just as much as any old famous painting.
So I’m very pleased to see this more recent ‘re-formation’ to art with purpose. But, I wonder, can it actually be transformative? Or were all those critical voices in the 90s correct?
What do y’all think?
Here’s a couple of amazing pieces which might have such power. Do you know of others to share? If so, please do link below!
In Shadow: A Modern Odyssey
Kingdom
These works are both by: Lubomir Arsov and you can find an excellent interview with him here:
Accepting the unacceptable. We all must learn to do it, they say. It’s the Gospel of all Gospels. Humility. Here we must go into the higher realms of consciousness. Those feared and revered and most hallowed of places where we learn how to bow gracefully. Where we learn our pride is misplaced. Where we learn to swallow our tears. Where we learn to stifle our voices and especially to keep with the program.
Did you learn all the right tricks? Do you still pledge allegiance to the flag on cue? Do you still believe the hollow rituals and shapeshifting lies?
Lucky you! Here’s to the happy few!
Historic picture of Bathhouse Row, Hot Springs, Arkansas
A short trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas and I’m deep in the sticks, and deep into pondering the relevance of free speech. Why? Because I realize you can’t have free speech in a nation if you don’t have free speech in your own family.
It’s more than freedom of speech, it’s freedom of thought, which begets freedom of information, which begets freedom of ideas freely circulating, because one hardly exists without the others.
We don’t have that and we need everyone to stop pretending that we do.
It’s much more all encompassing than I think most folks realize. It begins in the family, because it begins in consciousness, which is something that is exceptionally easy to limit. Especially when we are very young. A few simple lies of omission and generations are easily compromised.
Imagine what chaos the biggest lies create.
It’s happening in the micro and macrocosms simultaneously, filling up, in and through, the waters of life, saturating the atmosphere itself, all has been compromised. It would seem not just the walls, but even the air, have ears.
I learned a new word on the roadtrip there while listening to a podcast: Iatrogenesis – from Wikipedia
“Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence.[1][2][3] First used in this sense in 1924, the term was introduced to sociology in 1976 by Ivan Illich, alleging that industrialized societies impair quality of life by overmedicalizing life. Iatrogenesis may thus include mental suffering via medical beliefs or a practitioner’s statements. Some iatrogenic events are obvious, like amputation of the wrong limb, whereas others, like drug interactions, can evade recognition. In a 2013 estimate, about 20 million negative effects from treatment had occurred globally. In 2013, an estimated 142,000 persons died from adverse effects of medical treatment, up from an estimated 94,000 in 1990.”
In Hot Springs I’m headed directly to Bathhouse Row in the National Historic Landmark District, part of the Hot Springs National Park, alone, for a bit of site seeing. Back in my heavy travel days I often traveled alone and I don’t mind it, I actually rather like it, in moderation. It does get lonely, and sometimes awkward, but that’s balanced with the reality that I’ve known very few people in my life who appreciate the same types of exploration that I do.
A National Historic Landmark District nestled inside a National Park, that’s an awful lot of ‘protection’.
Bathhouse Row—Where our ancestors once turned to bathing in mineral springs and walking in wooded mountains to restore health. How silly!
More online historic photos of Bathhouse Row
I like visiting odd and anomalous sorts of places off the beaten track. I like old architecture and ruins. I especially like the places where city and nature become fused.
Hot Springs, Arkansas is definitely one of those places. And so much more. Bathhouse Row was once a spa destination for the rich and famous and boasted healing springs on par with the greatest European spa cities, like Karlovy Vary and Baden-Baden.
That was definitely boasting, I’ve been to many of them. But, there’s no doubt in its heyday it was very impressive. Especially considering Arkansas has for a century at least been considered a hillbilly-type haunt in the middle of the ‘flyover states’ and certainly not a hotspot for anything, except maybe the Dixie Mafia.
But, like in so many other places, something very strange is happening with the history, and I don’t mean the tall tales of gangster stories and bizarre wax museums and outrageously lame ‘haunted house’ tours meant to sell over-priced tickets to the vaudeville-loving masses.
What I really want to know is: What are they actually still hiding here in plain sight? And how is it they are still able to get away with tearing down pristine architecture and carting away the evidence unquestioned, even in the protected area of a National Park, which is Bathhouse Row?
So I started to do a bit of digging.
“The Bathhouse Row cultural landscape is located along the foot of Hot Springs Mountain. It is identified it as one of six landscape character areas within the 18-acre Reservation Front. The cultural and natural features of the surrounding areas are evidence of the historic recreational and spa experience that have brought visitors to Hot Springs since the 1830s. Bathhouse Row is historically designated as an “architectural park” in which the buildings and landscape were designed to be a cohesive unit.”
“According to the National Historic Landmarks Program the status of Bathhouse Row was threatened as most of the historic bathhouses were vacant and are not being maintained. Some have had “damaging uses” contributing to the severe physical deterioration of the majority of the historic bathhouses. Bathhouse Row was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation list of “11 Most Endangered Places” in 2003. It was removed in May 2007 because the National Park Service began to rehabilitate the buildings. Hot Springs National Park now rents the renovated structures to commercial enterprises who submit an approved request for qualifications. The restoration of Bathhouse Row and commercial leasing of public structures has become a model for similar projects across the country.”
In 2007 the NPS began to rehabilitate the buildings? You mean, like, these abandoned buildings I photographed a few weeks ago? Of which there were plenty more.
Very clearly not being renovated, not even a little!
So, they say Bathhouse Row will be a model for similar projects across the country, eh? My guess that is a model for how to. . . stall, defraud, gaslight, loot, and plunder, all while spinning a positive image of public care and service.
As a case in point there’s the demolished Majestic Hotel Resort Complex where I walked among the ruins.
There’s even been a documentary on the ‘controversial’ decision to demolish it by a young filmmaker who is making his career in filming abandoned buildings. He certainly has a long and busy career ahead of him! The Abandoned Atlas Foundation.
So I paid the few dollars to watch his story about the destruction of the once glorious Majestic Hotel and the (pathetically meager) attempt of a few locals to stop it.
An online historic photo of the multiple-acre Majestic Hotel Complex
A few interesting points I learned from the film:
The Majestic was sold for $1.00 (One Dollar) with the legal agreement that it would be repaired and reopened within a few years. That did not happen, though no problem for the buyer, he incurred no punishment and resold the abandoned buildings for a cool $2 mill. What does he care?
Our hands are tied, a few locals cry! The city is run by the mafia!
Apparently the city has always been run by the Mafia. Which makes perfect sense right, because the official story is the city went into major and rapid decline as soon as gambling was made illegal. So, we went from pristine health resort, to rich and famous gambling haven, to neglect and dilapidation within just a few decades.
My those gangsters and gamblers were sure able to fill a lot of hotels!
Seeing what an enormous challenge they had to save this architectural gem, they bring in the big guns to fend off this centuries-long all-powerful Mafia, which apparently still runs this neglected National Historic treasure that is Bathhouse Row in the middle of a National Park: An Asian ‘local’ historian who barely speaks English, a novice documentarian who waxes romantic over logoed plastic pens from a decade ago, a full-time nurse wannabe local politician, and some clueless young architecture students from another state.
Brilliant! I can’t believe that didn’t work!
The documentary does not answer any of the questions I would’ve asked, but then, they never do. Questions like:
What happened to all those red and yellow bricks? As well as all the other artifacts, that is, besides those awesome plastic pens the filmmaker found. And, where did the materials come from to build all that in the first place? That’s an awful lot of infrastructure to build into the sides of mountains at a time when local folks were mostly moving around in horse-drawn carts.
And why were They (the Mafia?) so keen on destroying it all? What do they care about some old buildings anyway, considering demolition costs are super expensive?
While the documentarian gushes at his found pens, he misses every other clue and congratulates himself and his fellows for creating an everlasting tribute to yet another ruined structure.
Poor sod, didn’t you ever learn you must . . . Follow the yellow brick road?
“Originally named the Avenue Hotel, the Majestic was built in 1882 on the site of the old Hiram Whittington House. The Avenue Hotel was notable for its amenities such as streetcar service to transport guests to and from the bath houses every five minutes. In 1888, the Avenue Hotel was renamed the Majestic Hotel after the Majestic Stove Company of St. Louis, Missouri, though the precise connection is unclear.”
(Since it’s so unclear, good thing you chose to include it in your online information encyclopedia, such a fascinating unclear detail!)
Free speech can’t save us now, because there’s not enough people willing, or capable, of speaking freely from a place of wisdom and clarity. Just look what passes for encyclopedic facts these days.
The confiscated bricks, like our confiscated history, may as well be ground into the Smart Dust eternally absorbing the consciousness of the masses.
As we watch and record the destruction of our country As we wonder, how it has come to this As we wait for the next shoe to drop And the next Still, we remain Still As the deer in headlights Still As he charmed by the snake Still As she alarmed by her fate
Doomed As we watch and record the destruction of our lives As we wonder Still As we stop wondering Still We remain As the fox wanders by . . .
A fox occupying the ruins of the once Majestic Hotel and Bathhouse
