Concerned Citizens
Jay Hamilton and Madison Adams were forthright members of the White Knights of the Grassroots (WKG) determined to stamp out the influence of the “elitist literati” of Mooncalf Village in the heartland of This Great Nation. All manifestations of literati teachings, no matter how innocuous, had to be opposed with the ferocious vigor of those long ago hired thugs of medieval lords. On this particular Friday morning they were stealthily taking their position at the Paine Public Elementary School, where Ms. Precious Motherlove, Adjunct Kindergarten Facilitator (budget cuts prevented the hiring of a regular teacher) and recording secretary of the Moderate-Centrist Daughters and Sons of the Reasonably Realistic Democratic Alternative (MCDSRRDA) had just released her large class into the extreme southwest corner of the severely rundown schoolyard. All the swings were broken, the unsafe slide and the seesaw had been removed and the asphalt ground cover was cracked and studded with potholes. However, due to the courageous campaigning of the MCDSRRDA, the school budget still allowed for a mid-morning snack every Friday, a small cup of Muscle Annie’s tasteless prune juice and a very stale marshmallow delight, more difficult to chew than a boiled rhino hide, for each and every one of her students.
Kindergartner Henry Aldrich found a bench which was still intact in the neglected schoolyard, removed a shoe and stuffed the stale marshmallow delight in the sock; whereupon, he stomped the miserable snack with his shod foot so he could actually eat the concoction. While engaged in this effort to put something edible in his stomach, the young boy suddenly heard a whisper from outside the ragged hurricane fence that encased the school.
“Hey, kid! Don’t eat those socialist cookies; you’ll only get sick.”
“They’re not cookies. It’s that health food Ms. Motherlove lives on. That’s why she always looks so unhappy.”
“Oh, listen, kid! She looks that way because she’s a subversive in the employ of an international conspiracy.”
“No, no, you have it wrong! Ms. Motherlove is a substitute who was hired because the school couldn’t afford a regular teacher.”
“Kid, will you listen up? She’s in the forefront of a movement aimed at undermining the traditional values of This Great Nation.”
At the mention of TGN, the boy snapped to attention and saluted smartly; after which the three of them shouted in perfect unison:
“Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray!”
Then, they bowed their heads in a minute of silence.
Having displayed their patriotic homage, a ritual expected on a regular basis by the imperious TGN leaders, Patriots Hamilton and Adams continued with their effort to save Henry Aldrich from the international conspiracy.
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“Kid, what you have to do is have your mother bake some good old TGN homemade cookies,” then Hamilton and Adams chanted: “Yum, yum, yum!”
“Kid, what you have to do is have your mother bake some good old TGN homemade cookies,” then Hamilton and Adams chanted: “Yum, yum, yum!”
“Are you kidding? My mother can’t boil water; we have a live-in cook.”
“A hired cook? Hamilton and Adams asked in unison. “Is he one of those illegal aliens?”
“Naw, she’s a poor displaced person from the Ravaged Island of TGN’s extensive backyard.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed the two patriots.
“What’s wrong? Hey You doesn’t bother anybody.”
“Hey You?”
“Yeah, that’s right. The poor little woman can’t talk and doesn’t respond in any way, so my father called her ‘Hey You’.”
“Well, your family’s probably harboring a damn illegal alien!” said Jay Hamilton in his usual arrogant tone of voice.
“Naw, Hey You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
There was a minute of silence, then Madison Adams asked: “How much do you pay her?”
“Oh, we can’t afford to pay her; neither of my parents has worked in quite awhile.”
“Unemployed, are they?”
“Heck no!” snapped the filial young boy. “My folks are loyal citizens of This Great Nation.”
“So, they never filed for that socialist unemployment insurance?” the two patriots cross-examined at the same time.
“Not on your life! That would raise the unemployment rate in TGN. My parents would never do such an awful thing like that!”
“So, how do they pay this alien in our midst?” Madison Adams asked.
“We let her sleep on the kitchen floor, near the sink, and she eats what Morgan doesn’t want.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Jay Hamilton asked, sounding like a hard-nosed detective.
“He’s our pet boxer. My mother thinks he looks like that Robber Baron who once cornered TGN’s gold supply.”
“Whaaat,” shrieked the two patriots. “Your mother refers to that great representative of the free enterprise system as a ‘Robber Baron’?”
“Sure, everybody we know does,” replied Henry Aldrich.
At that point, Jay Hamilton and Madison Adams began crying hysterically and the commotion brought Adjunct Kindergarten Facilitator Motherlove to the scene.
“You get away from here!” she scolded the WKG patriots. “How dare you bother the children while they’re having their snack?”
“You call that socialist slop a snack?” demanded Jay Hamilton, with tears welling up in his eyes. “Why, you’re poisoning the youth of This Great Nation. You should be exiled from the fair village of Mooncalf.”
“Yes, yes;” Madison Adams chimed in, “off to sinful Gotham! That’s where your kind belong.”
“On the contrary!” countered Ms. Motherlove righteously. “It is your budget cuts that are depriving these children of what they need.”
When the hubbub got too loud, the neighbors living near the school summoned the police to the scene and the WKG patriots were forced to withdraw.
As Henry Aldrich put his sock and shoe back on, he plaintively posed a question to the Facilitator. “Any chance of us having chocolate-chip cookies and apple juice as our Friday snack?”
Ms. Motherlove shook her head. “No way, Henry, not while the WKG patriots are still on the loose. Next week, we mightn’t have any snack at all.”
ANTHONY GARAVENTE
LOS ANGELES, CA
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----------------------------------------------- Part 5/Back in Marfa, TX We left the desert of Study Butte just as it was beginning to bloom. Truly the earth is so forgiving, like an indulgent mother, and the intensity of color in those delicate little flower petals surely is attributed to how much they must struggle to exist. So I guess our own struggles must makes us better people as well. We had a real struggle accomplishing much of our work for the website and newsletter so we decided to leave a little early and get all that work accomplished. The newsletter hard copies will be late this issue due to a lack of print shops out in these remote locations, but Beatlick News is currently updated online at www.beatlick.com. Now we are in Marfa, Texas. This is such a special little town and we continue to make contacts here. I want to emphasize again I don’t think we would be having the social experiences we do have if we were in an RV or truck camper. It is our VW bus that attracts others to us. Already we have a VW friend here, Pat Rogers, a mechanic. He moved his shop from Dallas to Marfa and works for a wealthy investor who has set up a car museum in Marfa and Pat runs it and maintains the cars. There is always an international flavor here and the first night in town we were going to an art opening at Ballroom Marfa featuring Mexican artists. The Chinati Foundation, the Judd Foundation, and numerous other enterprises that this town is revolving around bring in artists from around the world. This night as we left the building a Hispanic and another Spanish artist were standing outside. For some reason we they saw us wanted to take a picture with us. They thought we looked like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. Ouch! I want to mention the most dramatic person I met at the “In Lieu of Unity” exhibition - political artist Teresa Margolles. Her artistic milieu is the morgue and dissecting room. She has a degree in Forensic Medicine and Science of Communication from the Universidad Nacional in Mexico. She calls herself a forensic artist and uses this imagery to renounce violence in Mexico, not only that which has been attributed to the drug cartels but the individual murders of so many women in Juarez. Her work is shown all over the world. The project for the Marfa exhibition was a movie showing a street cleaning truck spraying water on a highway, mile after mile. That is all. But what was represented so subtly was astounding. Over the course of a month Teresa presented a fake press card to gain access to the murder scenes in Juarez. There she took pieces of clothing and used them to sop up blood from the streets where so many are being murdered. Then she dried all of these articles of clothing in the hot Mexican sun. Next she took all those clothes across the border and rehydrated them and mixed that water with the 5,000 gallons of water in the truck. This is what was sprayed onto Highway 90 in Presidio County of Texas. She waited for a really hot day so the water being sprayed out of the truck would hiss on the street to symbolize the screams of the murder victims. Teresa said she wanted to accomplish this because 90 percent of the weapons that are being used in so many murders in Mexico come from the U.S. and this was an appropriate way to distribute the blood shed because of those weapons. I asked her is she was afraid of retribution by drug cartels accused of many of these murders. "Fear is a fact of life in Juarez." This is the quality of artist found in this tiny little Texas town. You can still expect to see locals riding horses down the middle of the street. So many people we have met told us they don’t bother to lock their doors. I didn’t see a single bicycle, which are prolific here, locked or chained. They are simply leaned against the buildings. The Hotel Paisano, where we park, is so hospitable and laid back. We go in there every day to use the wi-fi all day long. We use the bathrooms and help ourselves to the big fruit basket and coffee without ever being confronted or asked if we are guests of the establishment. We were taking a walk down the road on Sunday and a man stepped out of his tiny little barber shop and just started a conversation with us. I guess Beatlick Joe and I are some kind of sight. His name was Abe Gonzales and he is the former sheriff and county judge here. We spent over an hour talking with him in his shop as he recounted his life as a boxer, track star, border agent and law enforcer. Today he enjoys taking care of his beautiful young granddaughters and resists the efforts locals make to lure him back as sheriff. There are some real issues here about the sheriff’s office and the jail house which has been closed down. But I’m not informed enough to go into that. Even Abe, in that short time we spent together, wanted to offer us the hospitality of his property for the van, just as Pat has. But for now we are happy across the street from the Paisano. I can get five bars on the wi-fi reception even in the van. We will be here one more day and take the slow ride back to Las Cruces. Mid April we will be house sitting in Albuquerque and Placitas again. Looking forward to the hot water and electricity. Find out more about Teresa Margolles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtLcedTTIBc
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/teresa_margolles
http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?1013
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Marfa Lights The mysterious Marfa lights. I saw ‘em. We teamed up with a fellow tourist named “Sparks” at the film expo the other night, he is staying at the Paisano Hotel with some other friends all from northern New Mexico, and they invited us to ride out to see the lights. They also invited us up to shower as well, which I found extraordinarily kind. But first we all packed into Gary and Pat’s Lexus and took the nine mile ride out to the viewing stand. I never expected to see anything, but we no sooner got there when we definitely saw some lights off in the distance. They are so far off on the horizon that you really have to look hard. But we saw small lights flicker, move about randomly, come and go. It’s not a big show, but they were definitely there. We spent all our time trying to rationalize what we were seeing. The lights flickered and faded, advanced and retreated to a degree. It isn’t so amazing now, but I wonder what someone would think of all that back in the 1880s when they were first reported. It’s not like there would have been electric lines run out there back in the old days. We speculated that the one red light might have been something on a railroad track; we saw that off to our left for a mile or so as we drove back into Marfa. I didn’t go out to explore but anyone will tell you that there are no highways out there or homes. The line of lights was sometimes broken into twos and threes and they all did seem to rise, fall, sway and slightly vary in colors as we watched them. I can say that the distance from the lights on the left all the way to the lights on the right had to be a range of four or five miles at least, probably farther. At times they would flicker out to just one then reoccur. The most I saw at one time along with the one constant red light was about eight. There was one strong light to the left of the red light then a group of three lights which seemed to sway together, a couple of other sets of two lights each, which again seemed to move in tandem. I can’t explain it all I can say is I saw it. Happy Trails Beatlick Pamela
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