December 24, 2009 by Clair Button.

I read in the news that Americans bought 12 BILLION rounds of ammunition this year, about 38 bullets per man, woman and child in this country. You might be surprised by that figure, but not if you live in my neck of the woods. The surge in bullet and gun purchases actually started during the 2008 elections. My neighbors got swept up in the right wing hysteria of internet rumors intended to get them out to vote.  The Republicans lost the election, but the media campaign generated record profits for gun and bullet manufacturing companies. TARP funds didn’t keep the economy from going to hell, it was us.

I doubt liberal easterners paid much attention.  A lot of them are asleep at the switch, anyway. But here in the west, most of us got weekly reminders – recycled email forwarded umpteen times.  While not exactly asleep at the switch, my friends forget who they mailed the message to the previous week.  Bob was not bright enough to check the list of names that Dave and Bubba used when they both sent the email to him. I was on their lists, too. Also, Mrs. Bob, Mrs. Dave, and Mrs. Bubba included me on their mail lists.  Everybody figured “what the heck, he’ll want to know this anyway, and if he got it before, he can just delete it.” Most of us didn’t even read it. We knew what it was about, anyway, and went right out and bought more bullets – each time.

Those damn Democrats were going to take our guns and make us get a criminal background check just to buy bullets. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the bullets after the Democrats had taken my guns, but I figured, what the heck, it can’t hurt to have a few more rounds.  Plus, I sure did not want to have anybody check into my background the next time I ran out of bullets, so I pulled out my wallet and beat them to the punch.

With all the reminders, I went out and bought 3 new pistols, 2 shotguns, an M-60 machine gun (slightly used) and a couple extra grenade launchers, too.  I already had enough automatic rifles and night-vision scopes. Don’t ask how many bullets I bought.  Somebody had to bring the national average up to 38. Those dumb-ass liberals back east didn’t do it.

Well, it looks like the rumors fizzled.  Nobody came to take my guns or ammo. So now, like most of my neighbors, I am sitting on an ammunition dump that will take out two square blocks of homes if we have a fire. The chain reaction that would set off in this town would probably make the Iraq war look like a picnic.

In other words, what we have out here in the west is a glut of stockpiled munitions. When my friends die, the estate sales alone will flood the market with guns, bullets, armored personnel carriers, and grenades.  I might pick up another machine gun or two if my neighbors die first, but eventually, even my guns will get back into the supply chain.

This is the beginning of the third dip in the economy, bigger than the commercial real estate bubble.  We are going to put a lot of national defense contractors out of business when we go. Be smart. Get out of the stock market now.

Disclaimer: Clair Button is not an investment adviser.  If you are dumb enough to take this as investment advice, you ought to check in to buying a burial plot instead of stocks. The odds are you probably don’t have long to live.

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I saw him twice, bringing donations of books his children had outgrown; the children who were here in the summer but returned to live with their mother in California; his smile, his concern about the book he could not find that was overdue and how much it related to his life overseas.

After his death I was in a quandary for a few weeks, knowing it was inappropriate to send out the library system notice after his sudden death. I sought the advice of a warm-hearted clerk at the main library after realizing the family could be going through his things and that the library was hoping to get back that brand-new book – so that correspondence was probably timely. She suggested a well-worded gentle letter explaining the situation.

The obituary did not have local addresses for his relatives although the surname has many people here whom I don’t know that well. I wrote a note to the funeral home director, who called me, aghast. “I’ll pay for the book myself! The family is absolutely devastated.”

I felt horrible; she was right. I said the branch library could simply cover it. We ended the conversation with her saying she’d seek permission to get into the house. In a few days I found the book in the book drop. I checked it in, relieved, paid the fines, and took it home to read what he had read.

I was halfway into it, having marveled at the writer’s talents which were those of a remarkable person who had amazing life experiences and discovered rather well into maturity that writing was a venue for him. The stories were wondrous and disturbing. I was soon done. This was, I knew, not a book to simply put on the shelf between the alphabet of other author names. It needed cleansing, and release, and so, at home, I ‘smudged’ the pages with great intent and compassion for this soul who held it at a poignant time.
Judging from his presence with me and the little I knew of the situation I came to believe that with the children gone, he was bereft and floundering. The story in the newspapers was that he had been drinking with a visiting friend in the evening at home, after a day of shooting, and accidentally shot himself.

I can believe all of these possibilities ~ that the book was not lost, but that he may have decided to keep it as meaningful and at hand, and to pay for it [Have I not done this once myself?]; that the accidental shot was truly an accident, or, perhaps it was no accident at all ~ perhaps even the friend could not tell; and that it does not matter to any of us here on earth what happened because it was a fateful moment between him and his Creator; and all who are left behind – whether of flesh, entanglement, embrace or simple acquaintance – are minus his presence and simply given a mystery to come to personal terms with. LWB

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

Taking the flame to the crisp
Dry-green sweetgrass’ end curl;

Keeping the blow of my breath
Captive in my mouth while the feather instead
Takes the task: to fan the barely alive ember
into a purging spirit;

Holding the book of stunning stories aloft,
so every page is arrested in the new air
of sacred smoke;

Preparing for this next change ~
The sudden, unexpected one
That will fit the puzzle someday,
That will come to be understood
As, even pained, perfect.

Linda Bergeron writes from Halfway, Oregon.

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