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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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

“Standing at the River, from the Road”

 By Linda Bergeron

Standing at the river, from the road ~

It’s in-con-se-quen-tial if your eyes are closed,

And you’ve opened your senses to the world.

Watching from a place that is afar ~

When you know a river, you can see it anywhere,

Even when the fog is thick you see it still.

            The rocks are always at your feet,

            The skirmish on the bank is small;

            In the great adventure of grav-i-ty

            The long shared feast is best of all.

Being-in-the-world’s the place to be ~

Quieting the self to hear the message in the wind,

When you’re standing at the river,

                                    At the river, from the road.

[under the influence of a bluegrass music festival, and the early morning hour in Denali at Kantishna, “the meeting of the rivers”]

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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I came to understand that, looking at societies and even people in general, there are basically those who are earth-based and those who are not. In simple terms, there are those who appreciate the gifts of survival and living that come directly from the earth and respect them enough to protect them, and to teach their children about them.

And there are those, ‘civilized’ to such a degree, that they live out their days not in the context of the earth, but of buildings, social institutions and packaged realities.

After this insight, I was reading a Jack Weatherford [professor of anthropology] book, which carried the reader from the formation of continents, through the various ages of man and the important division of foragers and farmers. I was struck with the simplicity of this concept of the diversion in the path of men, and where it led.

And then the phone rang and I was talking with a friend of like ponderings. After we parted, I returned to the keyboard, intent on not dropping the thread of thoughts I had earlier. Since I was reading another book on and off, I noted its influence. Oh yes, a little background: I have been re-educating myself on the aboriginal experience on the so-called North American continent since late 2006, taking the time to review what current school textbooks on American history look like these for middle- and high-school students, and digging incessantly deeper into source documents and eye witness accounts while visiting regional sites [northeastern corner of OR counties; western Central Idaho – all Nez Perce homeland].

“Thoughts brought up by reading (mostly) from Weatherford’s Savages & Civilization, with topical checks into Johnson’s History of the Jews:                      

HISTORY [which enlightens the topic of Christianity]                                     

• School history: does not describe – favorably or extensively - about non-Christian science, art, unbiased politics or literature, etc.
• Suspicion: farmers thought they had to work harder than foragers [Old Testament taught they should toil and suffer] – while foragers played and enjoyed life more; farmers had more stress, required more specialty…..Qs – Did they become angry? Were they coerced to be/remain farmers? If so, by who? What?
• Farmers/Domesticators
  • don’t allow for nomads
  • ‘squeeze out’ nomads and foragers
  • cut up geography with ‘owners’ and ‘conquerors’
• word: colonize (v.) from Fr. colonie; Latin, colonia, colonus meaning husbandsman, from colere, to cultivate…………….[sadly interesting]
• you-are-your-language (p. 132)….modern: other countries want to learn English,  may be a very good language since naturally derived from all other languages….
• An earlier insight: people are earth-based or not-earth based
  • earth-based : loves and appreciates and works with
  • non-earth-based: struggles, holds grudge (afraid to be angry at God when they should be angry at their religion – not the same)

EDUCATION in America

• If teachers are asked, “Why don’t US students’ world history classes include as much about Canada, Africa & S.America (and other nations) as it does western civilization? Some likely answers: “So much history to cover, they’ll get more if they go to college;” ….and all those who do not go on to college, but still vote and raise children?
• What is not said – western civilization history is ruthless, disturbing, in conflict with religion – so ‘we can’t teach the truth’
• Not unrelated: I remember as a high school student who was very familiar with the library shelf, that those Dewey system areas for Medicine and Law in the late 1960s were always empty; I wondered, why?  It didn’t take me long to consider that Doctors and Lawyers had hold of and a monopoly on  the information
• What Oregon education [the only one I’ve studied] provides is a diluted, incomplete and misleading history education; as a library worker who watches the incoming catalogues and constant advertising, a new suspicion: mainstream textbook publishers are as controlling and narrow as the rest of the media  
• “Still worried about Infidels” – mainstream educators and historians continue to present history from the deeply ingrained western viewpoint – even the secular ones don’t realize it; and I am reminded of Professor Jim Craven’s concept - the cloning of ideology.

Excuse me while I get back to burning leaves.

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October 28, 2009 by Clair Button.

Oh, unkind fates! Oh, Evil spirits!
While plotting my own corporate raiding and pilfering strategies the other day, and while reading various and sundry economic predictions and pithy stock market blogs, I stumbled upon this incredible revelation, to wit:
“Apparently in light of recent developments, Cramer has shifted his perspective on Lockheed as of Monday night’s show.  Although Lockheed beat estimates, Cramer referred to it as a bad quarter and said that Lockheed is suffering from a priority shift at the Pentagon.”

That evil spirit, the contentious and either beloved or much reviled James “Jim” Cramer, the “Rill O’Beilly” of the CNBC network stock market show, “Mad Money,” dared to abandon the favored military industrial complex stock of the Ockham “Razor’s Edge” anonymous “staff” who wrote the article to which I had been lead by titillating internet linkages. These all-knowing lords of economic wisdom were quite justifiably outraged by Cramer’s callous abandonment of Lockheed’s military and economic prowess in favor of the less well endowed Northrop Grumman corporation, whose missiles were presumably fully extended already and not capable of further growth such as those of Lockheed. – Scumbag! How dare he? they raged.

“This is a clear reversal from his opinion of just two weeks prior, and it is his purgative to change his opinion as more evidence is made available.  While he may be right about the shifting priorities from the Pentagon, we are sure that Lockheed will not be caught unaware with no alternative course of action.  They will continue to compete for contracts same as they always have, and for now we are not overcome with concern for future sales.  From our perspective, he seems to have written off LMT for dead rather quickly (especially considering his bullishness two weeks ago).”

Fickle bullishness indeed! Scoundrel, I say!
Yet, despite being a stock market hobbyist and enthusiast, I find my literary leanings difficult to overcome when reading this kind of stuff.  I found myself compelled to sign in to the blog commentary with a short riposte:

“While it may be Cramer’s prerogative to take a purgative, it is a crappy choice. I just thought I would share that.”

Those scoundrels! Without even acknowledging or allowing my spontaneous quip to post, edited their own words. Oh, to be deprived of my one glorious moment of fame in the economic world. My visions of being cited and revered as a great sage like Warren Buffet were dashed once again.

As Monsieur Poirot was noted to say (on the famously literate Public Broadcasting show) “They have not the humbility.”

Clair Button occasionally posts a bit of questionable humor here.  Hope you have fun with it.

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August 8, 2009 by Clair Button.

East-side Oregonians have many traditions. Last week, we went out to participate in a local tradition, picking huckleberries. The following Tuesday, we intended to set off for the Oregon coast to escape the hundred degree heat of early August. This is also a tradition among the town-folk of eastern Oregon.

It did occur to me that it was my civic duty to wash the dust off of my eastern Oregon pickup truck before heading west. Huckleberry picking necessarily means going long distances on dusty gravel roads through the forest. No need to make those big city tourists think we east-siders are all slovenly low-lifers. So, I went to the local car wash, which luckily, happened to have a 50 gallon drum of “pre-wash” detergent and long-handled brushes to loosen up the dried bugs and what not before entering the high-tech automated spraying barn.

It was the “what not” part of the dried material on my east-side truck that turned out to be more of a problem than I had anticipated. You see, my east-side Oregon neighbors have other traditions. Like, at the end of July, the lowland range pastures are totally dried out, and it is time to either take the cattle to higher elevations, or put them on irrigated pasture for the rest of the summer. Over time, this has created the tradition of the “cattle drive.” For you non-east-siders, this does not mean you put old Bossy in the back seat of your car and take her out for a Sunday drive. Actually it means you do a round-up of four hundred or so nameless cows and push them out onto the highway on foot, or on hooves. You then trail behind them down the highway on horses (or more likely 4-wheelers now) for several miles with the help of a few border collie cowdogs while bewildered town-folk and smiling, pointing tourists try to figure out how to get through the whole mess and resume their high speed adventures into the forest without bumping number 432 in the butt or running over her frightened calf who witlessly dodges in front of their bumper every two minutes.

A cattle drive, while appearing somewhat haphazard and disorganized, is really not a mess. Given the difficulty of convincing the cows not to climb into the cars passing through their midst, it is a fairly well organized process. The mess is what the townfolk and tourists drive on, other than the actual pavement or gravel. It has a tendency to be semi-liquid at the time, loathsome olive-green in color, and fulsome in fresh, organic odor, if you know what I mean.

So, bring the tradition of huckleberry picking and cattle drives back to the car wash. I find that one long handled brush is insufficient to remove the dust and the mess, which together, have dried to an indistinguishable splattering of lumps on the side and underframe of my pickup truck. I take a second brush, and using both at once, discover that the lumpy dust on the side of my pickup becomes a slimy, green-brown mud that no amount of brushing will ever remove. The frame beneath the doors of the truck had significantly larger lumps of stuff, which when knocked apart, turn out to be only partially dried. The wheel-wells of my truck turn out to be indescribable – lucky for you.

Another customer pulls up behind me, waiting patiently for me to finish. Returning to the drum of ice-blue detergent pre-wash for the sixth time, I find it has turned a dark, muddy, green-brown, and smells more like a barn than detergent. Rinsing the brushes, I make one more attempt to wipe the smears of green from the side of my truck, but notice the detergent water now leaves an equally dubious film on the door panel, and it smells, well, rather bad.

Returning the brushes to the drum, I wave at the lady behind me and pray that she does not get out to use one of the brushes on her own car. I drive in to the automatic wash, thinking it was very smart of me to have paid extra for the “ultimate” wash. I knew it was going to take some serious spraying on the underbody to get my truck clean.

The soak-down cycle with more pre-wash detergent was understandably dingy as it dripped down the outside of my windows. The flashing light sign let me know the regular high-power wash cycle was going to help, and it did. But the rinse cycle still had a distinct olive tinge to it as it drained down off the roof. When the “clear protective coating” light came on, I had second thoughts about spending the extra money. I was thinking that might mean something like a coat of shellac that would permanently attach any remaining green residue to my nice truck. Not a happy thought at all.  However, the final rinse cycle did not obscure the outdoor sunlight with a fog of green, so I figured everything was going to be OK.

The blow-dry cycle did about as much good as a short popcorn fart. I hardly know why they bother. When I got out to use the old chamois skin to dry the truck, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it did not come away stained green, and the truck did have a nice burgundy gleam to it, fairly similar to the original paint-job. However, I did notice the seams around the wheel wells still had some dark green material packed into them. I avoided those.

It was on the trip over the Cascades when we finally found some real rain. I mean, it rained hard for a little while, nothing like that 20 percent chance rain that they keep promising us out in the eastern hinterlands. We happened to stop at a little rest area on the west side of the mountains as we headed down toward the coast, and walking back to the truck, I noticed some very distinct dark olive green racing stripes on the side of my truck. All that west-side rain had loosened up some of that indescribable stuff from the inside of my wheel wells.

Oddly, the olive color didn’t look that bad against the burgundy paint, as long as you didn’t look close enough to see the fibrous nature of the basic material, now welded to the side of my truck with green slime infused with shellac. “Wow, that is a cool paint job with those dark racing stripes,” an escapee from a Salem nuthouse said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I paid extra for that.”  Funny how those old traditional things are still so popular that even the city folk like them.

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December 26, 2008 by Clair Button.

I left alone at quarter to nine, the road dusted with icy crystals over black frozen dew from the night before. Fog from the river filled the valley below low-hanging clouds, and black Angus cattle drifted through shrouded pastures, their backs striped with white, looking like giant skunks. The smell of sodden leaves, hay, and fresh manure hung in the valley like fog, to reassure me that it was just my imagination.

The sun, only a pale imitation of the moon, briefly tried to lift the clouds, before giving in to gravity and the weight of snow-laden masses descending from the mountains where I headed. Wet snow began to stick to the windshield. As the road lifted above the valley fog, every living thing wore a top-dressing of white, black alders dripping cones even before the snow could begin to melt, red dogwood, yellow willows, and conifers painted with shades of blue and green over stark black trunks, all limned in white as though the artist had first painted in oils, then cut through edges of white on scratchboard. Mysterious realm, where even the rocks could be seen to have form and life. And there above the fog, the sun tricked the wind into complicity, revealing more here, less over there, shadows and light, magic of artist’s skill.

Hissing splash of melting snow beneath my tires gave way to muted crunch and whisper of dry powder settling deeper. Alone on the road for so long, it was easy to let reality slip and imagine myself a pioneer tracking through wilderness, but the blowing white had not completely obscured the evidence of some other brave soul who had gone before me into the mountain stronghold. I longed to see his tracks turn off and leave me to my wilderness alone, and when a truck passed going the other way, fleeing down to the valley, I hoped it was him.

White curtains swept across the landscape, and pulling close, confused my path, forcing me to slow and guide the wheels only by the distance to the nearest obscure dark shapes that lined the trail. Deeper still, I floated in silence broken only by gusting winds that pushed me toward the edge of … I knew not what, perhaps a flight into the void where only white winds ruled.

Wind stopped and dark trees reappeared, marching back to the edge of the trail, looming and drooping over, forlornly observing my passage.  A gray ghost of an owl turned the round disk of its face toward me as though it resented my presence in her silent realm, as I had resented the fool driver who had gone before me earlier.

Sun emerged, and patches of bright blue sky, putting an end to the rule of monochrome. Revived, trees shook off clouds of snow that drifted gently in my passage.

Then over the crest, emerging into another universe, where the next range of mountains and forests can be seen swathed in white, lit in gold, and surrounded by wild platinum and silver clouds, and in between, golden valleys streaked with green and black rivers and dotted with white farmstead homes, whose chimneys hint of warmth and life within. Beauty to fill the darkest soul that revels in isolation. We are never truly alone, for the artist has been there before us.

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October 24, 2008 by Clair Button.

Thank God the political season silliness is drawing to a close! After two years of nonsense, two weeks looks like the light at the end of the tunnel. I know, I know. It might be a train. Put that aside for now.

It looks to me as though we once again missed our chance to have real, honest to goodness, intelligent discussions on real issues. And once again, we pretty well dragged everybody through the pig pen with various forms of distorted propaganda, weird rumors, outright lies, and digging up stuff from the outhouse of past lives and relationships. The thing we all seem to have forgotten, is that once the election is over, we still have to figure out how to work together if we don’t want to have civil war.

You can’t tell me there aren’t going to be a lot of disappointed, bitter, angry people out there on one side or the other. For that matter, the winners might not feel too much like kissing and making up with the other one who said somebody’s grandmother was the illegitimate child of Adolf Hitler born to Joseph Stalin before he had a sex change operation.

So, I thought we might start the discussion now about how we are going to smooth over those ruffled feathers and hurt feelings. We need a little I’m OK, you’re OK session, sort of an old-fashioned love-in without the sex. Lord knows we don’t really want to get in bed with each other, but a little conciliatory expression might not hurt.

In that spirit, I offer the following suggestions to both sides:
Republicans, shake hands with the nearest Democrat and say, “Yeah, you are a human, even if you did vote for a socialist terrorist. I forgive you.” Next time, try it without muttering “You dirty so-and-so” afterwards;

Democrats, prove you are liberal and forgiving by pulling out your wallets and donating a dollar to Sarah Palin’s IRS defense fund (since the liberal media dug up her per-diem mini-scandal). Promise never again to say “They all ought to be in jail.”

I admit, it’s just a first step, but we have to begin somewhere. By the way, take me off your phone call list. I already voted.

Clair Button is the author of three mystery novels and also writes the odd bit of humor.

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October 15, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Five ways of looking at…….Harvest

I.Stepping into the morning yard with hot mug,first outdoor breaths,I spot the fallen plumsnestled in the rascal grass.I stretch my shirt into an apronthat will hold each oneas I take them to the kitchen,close to my chest, full of aroma,little fleshy bounties at last, since the long ago days of spring.

II.When the heat and spirit-warmth of Sunchange how it arcs the day,and knowing that diminishing is the next journey-way,one hungers alreadythe absence that will comeand runs out of doorsto greet the more precious September sunin a desperation July did not know.

III.Last flower of its kind, from the bush that a moon ago was full-headwith blossoms.I pluck it with my nail, todaya valuable harvest of pink and yellowto set in a tiny vase - remembrance and presence in a single one.

IV.Tucking in the still-green tomatoes in the coming on of twilight,under a sheet, draping off the edges where the cold could come in;

covering the solitary late-flowering morning glory ~all grown up and ready to bloom, so late in August, then willing to adjust from the random weed-and-rock bed to a pot of soil I gave it, a sturdy rod to lean on.She adjusted and continued to present her daily purple show;and lastly, the petite pepper who tried so hard to bear some fruit, andcarries now ~ a large and a small ~ misshapen bells,glossy greens that hang awaiting weather’s final tale.Covered, tucked, little attentions ~surely a way to say a fortnightof evening goodbyes and I-love-you’s, to the season’s garden.

V.What abundance!the evening bird voice, no longer the cacophony of many in unison,but now a single abbreviation of one telling the listening a single secret;

the bowl of fruit and the ease with which my hand travels over thelushness to select and bite into, another

the dried slices, plump and plentifulin an aromatic cupboardawaiting the hunger that winter’s coldwill bring;

how like the other side of the fecundityof spring is this:richness, plenty, fruition,blossoms and bees and breezesthrough long hot days,evening stars, meteors,Pleiades sparkling in the nighttime black,and chilled rosy sunriseslaunching toward autumn.

Poetry by Linda Bergeron

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October 15, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Awake. Last night’s full moon

still present, in predawn’s dark.

Out I aim, to the balls of lit clouds

that fill the great sky above this valley town’s stillness,

single stars scattered in the sky beyond.

My feet bridge me to earth,

my torso pivots slow moves,

my face is given to seeing everything,

to surrender to the endless vault of it all ~

my aloneness finally altered and dissolved

by the saying-goodbye coyote clan yips,

as She, in her brilliance, descends beyond the shadowed west ridge.

The small house behind my footsteps is hardly there.

Poetry by Linda Bergeron

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October 11, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Untitled Poem by Linda Bergeron

Bahama cruise:

no news,

sun, sea,

take-care-of-me,

horizon blue,

endless view,

cloud-watch sky,

unseen tide,

arising moon,

autumn soon,

present care,

home out there,

friend and kin,

without, within.

Return to shore?

Aground once more.

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