“In the last days of a painted sun” - William S. Burroughs

During the summer of 2013 I was fortunate to visit some memorable parts of the US and Canada. Although I had to break the bank to afford it, it was a chance to take my son and his friend on a high school adventure and show them the real America. I think they enjoyed it and it helped to interrupt their nonstop addiction with iPhone, so that in itself may have been to the good.

Traveling at various times with friends and family, we first visited the most eastern location in the US: Lubec, Maine. The lighthouses, foghorns, forests, bogs, cliffs and scenery is spectacular and the seafood delicious, and less radioactive than can be found where I normally reside, Japan.

Maine is one of the most beautiful, if not temperate, but friendliest places in the US. On one road we pulled into a driveway because we were a bit lost, and because there were normally so few cars a woman pulled over to give us directions, without our even asking for help. Now that's hospitality.

Driving along the roads from Bangor airport to our first destination, we did see a bumpersticker that said “Irish need not apply” which is an unPC joke about old ethnic rivalries. Maine was settled by New Englanders, Irish and many of French extraction. I think they are mostly all mixed up now, in more ways than one.

In Maine they say “ah-yuh, you can't get they-ah from he-ah, ah-yuh” (Yep, you can't get there from here, ah, yeah). “Ah-yuh.” I guess that is because there are so many hills and mountains, peninsulas, swamps and moose blocking the roads.

People may have too much time on their hands ­ true -- it is not uncommon to see a car or truck artfully placed atop a house as a kind of monument, a comical sight given it is not where one normally parks. Excuse me, are you lost?

Folks in rural Maine are lovable, if rough around the edges. On a chilly summer day you'll see a fella' walking down a small town street in an old t-shirt, unshaven and disheveled, and probably hung over while on his way to have the hair of the dog that bit him at the bar. Rural Maine is not for the faint of heart. The northern region we passed through is one of the poorest counties in the country. But people still seem friendly, quick to smile, and part of a community. They are “Mainiacs”-- home to loggers and fisherman, and, Stephen King.

Along our trip we stopped at a famous local restaurant to have the classic lobster dinner and piece of blueberry pie, it was exquisite. Next to us were seated a large group of locals who had dropped by on their motorcycles. Even though it was a cool day one rugged fellow in the group wore a tank top shirt­ hey, it's summer. I eavesdropped and enjoyed their distinctive Maine accents while they ate huge lunches before hurtling their motorcycles on down the road.

A few days earlier two women had gotten lost in the foggy darkness of a back road and driven into the ocean. They drowned. The lesson is, if you drive into deep water and your car goes under, fill your lungs with air and then roll down the window and swim the hell out of there, don't just wait and call 911!

We stayed for a few days in Canada on Campobello Island. Crossing the border one day while going back to the US, the immigration officer, Officer Fox, said in the most northeastern/Maine/east coast accent you could imagine: “Now let me get this straight, you's all is camping over there in Canada?”

I was nervous given I did not want to be sent down to Gitmo, having criticized the government in articles posted at the world's leading alternative news website, Rense.com. “Yes, we are camp...camp...camping on Campobello,” I said in a shaky voice-- confused because if we were “camping” it should have been obvious that it was at “Campobello.” I would have gladly submitted to a full body cavity search if it meant getting to the lobster restaurant on time, but he just waved us through.

The weather “down east” (which actually means “up north” according to Maine speak) can frequently be foggy but when the fog lifts while standing on the high banks of the Bay of Fundy-- Heaven is revealed-- the most wonderful vista you can witness (and I've been to the African Serengeti and New Zealand's south island, both places of unparalleled charm and beauty). The fog would sweep around from time to time, flirting with the sunshine and depositing rainbows across vast stretches of water, waves and tree covered islands. We enjoyed walks on rocky coastlines at Quoddy Lighthouse and Liberty Point, threw skimmer stones into the indifferent, tumultuous and gray ocean and looked down 1,000 foot cliffs to the rocky shores and the lighthouse.

Captain Tubby, named thusly due to his being a captain of a “tub,” and to his personal width and girth, who took us on a whale watch was an hour late because of a mix up with passengers, but the weather lifted and Capt. Tubby proved to be an affable and competent guide. I could have spent the whole day cruising the Bay of Fundy and the two hours aboard went by far too quickly. Luckily, we spotted a few of the well known minke whales that inhabit the area along with plenty of porpoises, seals and sea birds.

Although disappointed not to see humpback or fin whales, a minke rose out of the water (breached) belly up just a few meters from where I was standing in the boat. It was a “half breach” given it did not leap out of the water entirely but emerged with great force and vigor. In an instant before the whale breached, which exposed intricate lines on its giant white belly, flocks of gulls seized the opportunity to swoop around the whale to eat morsels of plankton or fish. The birds obviously sensed that the whale would be emerging at just that one second in time, only to disappear into the briny depths of Davy Jone's Locker a second later. Timing is everything.

One theory of why whales breach is that the whale is trying to shake off ticks from its skin; another theory is that it is a way to help digest food. Or maybe they are just having fun. It was my first time to see a whale leaping from the water like that, one of nature's most wondrous spectacles.

Back at one of Campobello's only restaurants, we had seafood chowder which was packed with a variety of local seafoods and about as richly flavored a dish as one would ever find, and reasonably priced. On the TV was a Canadian show about a dog who saves a boy's life, by rescuing him from a car accident. It was a very simple story which made me think that these Canadians are so pure and innocent, and naïve, compared to the jaded American culture of endless sex, violence, war and Hollywood depravity. While it was probably a kid's show, it also seemed like something adults would watch.

When we went to the adjacent part of the restaurant to buy some fresh lobsters, we stood by for a few minutes before someone waited on us. Finally an older lady emerged and said “have you been waiting long?” No, we had just been there a while. “You should have pushed the buzzer, here” she pointed, to a small sign with an arrow indicating a buzzer that was obscured on a back shelf, completely out of view. Now that's just kooky. It was no problem either way and we loaded up with some of the biggest lobsters this side of the Mississippi river.

Campobello's foggy weather drives locals to drink and to want to move to Florida, but it also has its charms. One day while standing out at the area's legendary lighthouse, we watched the gray seals in the harbor positioning themselves to intercept fish being swept down the current from one section of the Bay of Fundy to another. We had good views of the seals and snapped photos and watched the scenery, and the boys played mock kickboxing and karate. In that single area I experienced hot sun, cool winds, shifting fog banks and a combination of weather types at once.

And the sun was dripping, buckets of gold

Rafting The Rapids!

We drove our logging truck to Baxter State Park, Maine's most famous and northerly nature area, named after the ecologist and fore-thinking governor of the state, Percival Baxter.

This is moose country, and moose being such a large animal it can easily be observed, but we did not encounter any of the critters on this trip. We did see a life sized chocolate one at a tourist gift shop.

There was a time not long ago when woolly mammoth or mastodon roamed the same parts, the Pleistocene megafauna, now having vanished and been displaced by shopping malls.

Seasonality, grazing factors and wet weather had kept the moose in other parts of the park or hunkered down in the forest. *(I recently read that in Minnesota, also famous for moose, the populations are plummeting and biologists are keeping a close eye on the worrying situation).

We had a terrific day floating down the Penobscot river in rubber rafts, making our way through level four and five rapids and not even tipping over, but getting plenty drenched (watch: 1). We saw a loon with his pointy beak trying to figure out how to eat a huge bottom feeder fish, a sucker. I think this chap was trying to swallow the sucker whole, but that was not going to happen. The Penobscot river is habitat to bird life including the bald and the weightier golden eagles, the latter being rarer in number. We watched the majestic bald eagles fly from one tree to the next ahead of us on the river, searching for fish while maintaining a safe distance away.

After battling many rapids and feeling confident that we could have managed the Lewis and Clark expedition, during the sleepy and warm afternoon we floated past several stunning views of “the greatest mountain,” Mount Katahdin. The name given by the Penobscot Indians to Maine's tallest mountain is well deserved as it cuts a pronounced and jagged profile across the horizon.

“Good Luck With The Weather”

Occasionally I would ask locals in a jocular way, “Have you ever been down Mt. Katahdin in a toboggan while drinkin' egg noggin'? Considering that Mainers are generally of good humor, they'd look at me with a troubled grimace, “this fellow may be mentally ill, but we'll take his money.” Mainers also have their own sense of revenge. When entering Baxter park in a heavy downpour, the ranger at the gate let us through and said “good luck with the weather.” Yeah, right! Actually, the weather cleared up later so his good wishes were the charm we needed that day.

Dave, also known as “The Marine” and “Mountain Man” who is my sister's husky hubby, was set to climb Katahdin in a few days. It is a formidable climb at 1,600 meters to the peak, and often given to ferocious weather patterns. Katahdin marks the start/end point of the famous Appalachian Trail which stretches from Maine to Georgia (See: Bill Bryson's terrific book, A Walk In The Woods). We were lucky enough to climb part of the AT and saw beautiful water falls, and now I can say I “did” the AT (only about 0.001 percent of it).

One day after a hike I dove in the lake and swam around, the water was very clean, warm and refreshing. This was obviously a functioning ecosystem and not yet ruined by Man. At the other side of the pristine lake there was an islet, from where we heard the call of a loon, the most haunting aural delight in all of nature (listen: 2; 3).

I should report that I saw chemtrails all over Maine and Canada as documented by Geoengineeringwatch.org. This sickened me to no end, the aluminum micro particles are coating the cell membranes of all living things, and this is a crime against nature and humanity, being carried out by the “globalists.”

Back at the campground a lot of people from the southern Maine and Boston area were visiting as part of their summer vacation for the river rafting. I did sense that these folks, many of them younger men, were more jaded and dumbed down than what I normally (probably idealistically) imagined real Maine folks to be (always friendly, sincere and generous). I tried to talk with some of the frat-boy types but I got mostly one word responses. “Duh,” “Uh,” and so on. One older guy in charge of their all night drinking party wore an American Flag t-shirt. I did not think I would ask his opinion about America's legacy of mass slaughter of millions of innocent people around the world carried out for no goddamned good reason whatsoever. After all, Americans get their “news” from the mainstream Zionist owned media and believe that America is “good” no matter what the cost (several trillions of dollars and millions of wounded, displaced and murdered people).

Broken Heartland

Arriving in the Midwest, weather patterns ranged from gorgeous azure skies and glistening sunshine followed by sudden rain storms and cooler than usual temperatures. On many days there were massive numbers of chemtrails which really put a damper on my normal love of summer in the heartland. What is amazing to me is that only one person I met while I was there acknowledged that chemtrails are real, even though this is a recent phenomenon and jets did not leave huge white streaks across the sky in past decades.

But my son and his friend had a great time, we went horse back riding, swimming, fishing, boating, hiking; we played tennis, yard games, ate all sorts of gorgeous American styles of food that the Japanese high school boy took pictures of; met lots of friendly midwesterners, and enjoyed every day as the time flew by too fast. We played mini putt golf and road go-carts, and the boys shot real hand guns and rifles in Jim's backyard. They kept the target, apparently I hit the bullseye. We visited the bison ranch where original breeds of about 200 of the animals roamed relatively freely over a large acreage of field.

It was gratifying to be able to show the boys an exciting time, I hope they will cherish the memory even though at 15 years old you tend to take things for granted. The boys had an endless array of naturalistic and cultural experiences they could have never had back in the urban chaos of Tokyo, although I had to constantly shout at them to turn off their iPhones, eat their vegetables and go to bed on time.

Where are all the people? Not on the tennis courts

Family members tell me that you don't see people outdoors during the summer months like you used to. Tennis courts, which are a luxury in Japan, are in abundance but no one seems to be using them. On the days when we played there was hardly anyone there on the several courts, and the beautifully constructed park area with fields for baseball, football and soccer were mostly vacant.

When I grew up there in the 1960s and 70s the area adjacent the chain of lakes near my house was a wilderness of woods, fields and marshes. I remember one time we teased a possum out of the tree, watched him squirm around make strange noises and then run away. Another time we turned into primitive cavemen and had a mud fight and became completely covered in mud from head to toe. We thought we'd walk the neighborhood to see if anyone would notice our appearance, only to be caught by my Dad who was driving by and yelled at us to go home and hose ourselves down.

Gone are those Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn days, kids spend most of their time indoors watching TV and videos, playing games or glued to their iPhones (24/7 except for a few hours of sleep time).

The Cult Of The Reptilian Republican

One of the advantages of living abroad is that when you infrequently return, the observations are more stark than if you were a frog in a slowing boiling pot. While most people are cynical about America's declining state and Washington DC (District of Criminals) mismanagement of the country, no one can agree on what to do, if anything.

One night at dinner someone told us that when they got out of school they joined a cult. I joked, “Don't tell me, you mean you became a Republican?” That got a big laugh from her, but not the other reactionary Fox News Republicans at the table who have a dogmatic belief in the two party political system.

Later I was lectured about how the problem with America is that young people don't go into “the service” and “serve” their country. This old man should have read Smedley Butler, the US Marine General who wrote that “war is a racket” that serves corporate interests, not the health and well being of the American people, let alone the people in those countries who are being raped. Ironically, bringing back the draft might force Americans to wake up to the brutal wars they are engaged in, and cause them to reflect on their Zionist controlled and genocidal military policies in the Middle East. In fact, it is a good sign that an overwhelming number of Americans are opposed to a US bombing intervention in Syria.

An Omission Of Cognition

Here is an example of the shocking level of cognitive dissonance that I encountered. A college student I know was originally going to be a medical school, but has now changed his goal to become a teacher. When I asked him about current political affairs, he said he intentionally does not watch TV or listen to the media, and does not look at or read anything from the internet either. He told me he knows everything he needs from his Dad who gets all of his information from Fox News!

What is worse, kids who graduate from college with worthless degrees in the humanities cannot pay back their student loans, and are saddled with debt for the rest of their lives while attempting to live on meagre salaries in the restaurant, teaching or health care fields.

And this fellow is going to become a “teacher.” I admire his purity of vision by going to church and avoiding trouble at school, but he will be easily manipulated by the powers that be. When I mentioned that America has killed millions and millions of innocent people he seemed offended. “Americans are so naïve, they have no clue how many millions of innocent people they have slaughtered.” The future teacher had no response other than a look of disbelief.

And yet a lawyer I know who works on labor issues reacted similarly, he also could not believe America has killed millions, questioning whether I was exaggerating or not. The number of people who know nothing about American history is amazing.

Americans will never wake up ­ they are buried under so many layers of entangled propaganda, some of it crass, much of it sophisticated, that finding their way out of the matrix without a concerted effort will be impossible. As the prolific political analyst Jon Rappaport recently wrote, “Ever since television came in, there’s been nothing but television. All other reality was banished. People just don’t realize it yet” (4). That's right, unless they unplug the TV they will never be free.

Gaming The Population

When I was a kid we watched a lot of sports and other shows on TV but also played out of doors all year round, even in the cold and snowy winter. We would watch some games on TV but soon get bored and go out and play for ourselves. We enjoyed baseball, football, basketball and even ice hockey when the local pond had frozen over.

Today there are so many sports on TV-- an endless parade of teams and games 365 days a year. The seasons drag on for months and games are played late at night when advertising is most lucrative. The amount of arcane knowledge possessed by TV sports commentators is astounding but misplaced. Do any of these jokers know that JFK was assassinated by the New World Order (NWO) to overthrow America? Such thought processes are taboo.

If sports is not your thing the TV (Talmud Vision) is packed full of commercialized programming. Horrendous amounts of toilet humor comedians; recycled dramas and pointless “reality” shows. My favorite “reality show” is about desperate businessmen who scour the country to collect junk. Now that the US manufacturing sector is dismantled (thanks a lot Slick Willy) and Detroit a ghost town, all that is left is to strip down the US infrastructure and sell the scrap metal.

Lots of crime shows are definitely being produced by the NWO in order to brainwash the masses to be like subjects in George Orwell's “1984.” Factually and historically inaccurate and intentionally misleading narratives flood the air waves. The message of all these police state dramas is clear: you need the police state to protect you from terrorists, and you don't need the Bill of Rights as it is just an outdated piece of paper.

If the public's brain survives all that, drug commercials urge people to “ask your doctor” if the latest anti-depressant drug treatment is the right chemical lobotomy for you. People don't play cards, sing songs, dance around the fire pit, look at the stars or catch fireflies anymore, they watch TV.

Incest Is Not Best

One afternoon we went to the county fair to see the farm animals and have a different kind of cultural experience. Seeing some of the traditional farming implements and tractors, and watching the 4H kids compete in the horse riding events was well enough. But the people at the county fair are what really make it a unique and troubling experience. Never have I seen so many malnourished, overweight, and frankly, incestuously bred humans in one place. This is not a joke, there is no doubt that it is an unspoken fact regarding the rural poor is that there is a considerable amount of incest, and this is evident by the obviously malformed phenotypes, the unusual facial appearance of many individuals in this permanent underclass. The huge amounts of junk food that is the standard diet and lack of knowledge about healthful living doesn't help.

It didn't have to end up that way, wealth and social inequality is appalling in what was once the richest country in the world. Education could easily solve most of what this desperately sad underclass suffers from, but we have to send trillions off to fight insane wars instead.

One evening at the Elks Lodge I met a woman who grew up just down the street from where I did. She was ten years younger than me and married to the brother of one of my old friends. They had a daughter and she worked as the local school social worker. I asked her if there are a lot of problems with school children these days. Yes, not just a few, but a majority of kids have one sort of learning or behavioral problem or another.

Price inflation of every day goods and services in the US is noticeable. Prices creep up and up and up but it is doubtful that wages have kept pace. I noticed that at some stores and restaurants the personnel are short tempered. They are being told to do more work for the same wages, and the pressure builds. At one restaurant they told me they had 52 kinds of beers but could not name one of them, and had no menu. Poor and rude service is common and yet you are supposed to cough up a 20 percent “tip.” Huh? What about the employers paying their workers a proper wage in the first place, and then the employees could do their jobs properly?

American Nuklehead

After playing tennis one afternoon a fellow noticed that our car had a university bumpersticker, the same university we had all attended. We chatted about the good old days, and then I found out that this guy who looked in his thirties, was severely overweight and smoking, was pro-nuclear. He had been in the engineering department and said “absolutely” when I asked him if he supports nuclear power. When I brought up the issue of Fukushima and nuclear waste he seemed to know very little about the realities and relied on mainstream news for his ill informed opinions. I guess Fatso didn't care that back in Japan the Fukushima radiation continues to flow into the ocean having already deposited quadrillions of becquerels of radioactivity.

While millions of Americans are on food stamps, eat unhealthy food, are overweight yet “malnourished,” or are actually lacking in basic provisions for survival, the US is a huge food waster.

My Mom told me about a family that throws away anything they don't eat at the nightly dinner. They live in a huge house but both parents work hard at their jobs, but don't save leftovers because it is a bother. That is money going directly into the garbage can or the dog's dish. Most Americans seem to eat processed “foods” and lots of meat, but not enough fresh fruits and vegetables, and too many starchy white foods like potatoes, bread, rice and grains. Americans need to wise up to a healthier diet, exercise more and get up from in front of the Talmud Vision Tube and go out and play with their kids.

My relatives grow fresh vegetables in their garden and often visit the local Amish farm to pick up produce they don't have. It all tastes better and is healthier than anything that comes out of the big box grocery conglomerate.

The Message Of The Amish And Jean Stratton-Porter

On one of the last days of our visit we drove down to the part of Indiana that was originally part of Michigan, and saw the workings of the region's oldest water powered grain mill. It had been in the same family for over a hundred years. The mill was constructed from the giant hardwood trees of the day with beams placed by hand three stories high. Not an easy task. Unfortunately this mill which produces organic types of flour was struggling to stay in business due to competition from the corporate food cartels.

The one group of people who continue to thrive are the Amish, who immigrated from Germany three hundred years ago. The Amish use minimal amounts of machinery, farm with horse and plough, and work hard from dawn to dusk. They have managed to keep out of the grips of the usurious and debt-driven banking system and yet still prosper.

“Amish church members practice nonresistance and will not perform any type of military service. Members who do not conform to these community expectations and who cannot be convinced to repent are excommunicated. In addition to excommunication, members may be shunned, a practice that limits social contacts to shame the wayward member into returning to the church. Almost 90 percent of Amish teenagers choose to be baptized and join the church. During adolescence rumspringa ("running around") in some communities, nonconforming behavior that would result in the shunning of an adult who had made the permanent commitment of baptism, may meet with a degree of forbearance.Amish church groups seek to maintain a degree of separation from the non-Amish (English) world. There is generally a heavy emphasis on church and family relationships. They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education at grade eight (age 13/14). They value rural life, manual labor and humility” (5).

America could use a bit more humility, and can you imagine how much better shape the country would be in if Americans rejected military service and financial servitude to the Wall Street Zionist Banks?

One of our last excursions to was to the cabin and museum of Jean Stratton-Porter who wrote novels and nature studies around the turn of the 20^th century. The cabin on Lake Sylvan maintains the original flower garden that Jean and her daughter created about a century ago. We strolled through the old growth woodland and lakefront and admired the wide variety of beautifully arranged plants and flowers at the garden. Ironically, although Porter spent most of her life promoting nature conservation through her writing, she died in an accident in California when a limousine crashed into the street car she was riding on.

Hoosiers pride themselves on the lessons of Porter's legacy. As one of her biographers has written:

“Her advocacy for protecting the environment is as timely today as it was a century ago. She understood--intuitively and from years of close contact with wildlife--that people must live in harmony with the natural world and that if we 'madly and recklessly' chop down forests, dirty rivers, drain wetlands, destroy vegetation and allow animals to become extinct, we do so at our own peril. The planet is a gift. We are called--as she rightly said--to be nature’s good stewards”

On the last day I said goodbye to my family and sat with my Dad for awhile on a nice bench overlooking the lake near where I was raised. When growing up we spent most of our time arguing but now that he was older and having suffered a few health set backs-- I felt the deep sadness one feels when departing with family, but had to toughen myself up for the drive back to the airport. Lack of economic opportunities had driven me away in the first place, but now my life was set up elsewhere, in a faraway place.

While I waited in the airport I drank a fancy margarita with my last ten US dollars and then happily levitated myself onto the plane. I recalled the prose from one of the greatest American novelists-- the lesser known but no less brilliant Mark Twain of his time-- Thomas Wolfe. In his nearly thousand page opus, “Of Time and the River,” he too had gone on a trip and suffered forlornness while in the streets of an ancient village, where he enjoyed a meal and bottle in a cafe. While my superficial and modernistic existence cannot compare to the wanderer Thomas Wolfe, I can share the depth of his feeling and appreciate the glory of his radiant prose (7; pp. 882 -883):

“It was a street in the little town of Arles, at night-- an old, worn, rutted, curiously dirty looking street, haunted by the trunks of immense and dusty-looking trees.... And suddenly, with a thrill of recognition that flashed across his brain like an electric spark, he saw that he was looking at the same trees that Van Gogh had painted in his picture of the roadmenders at their work in Arles, that the scene was the same, that he was sitting where the painter had sat before. And he noted that the trees had tall, straight, symmetrical trunks, and remembered the trees that Vincent had painted had great, tendoned trunks that writhed and twisted like creatures in a dream.... When he got up, the waiter was still racking chairs upon the tables, and the white and quiet light from the cafe fell like a tired stillness on the dusty street, and he walked away, haunted by unfathomed memories of home, and with something in his heart he could not utter.”

Richard Wilcox holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from a social science, holistic perspective. He teaches at a number of universities in the Tokyo, Japan area. His articles on environmental topics including the Fukushima nuclear disaster are archived at http://wilcoxrb99.wordpress.com/ and he can be contacted at wilcoxrb2013@gmail.com

References

1. 2013/08/01 Alex Rafting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmZtcQI9epo&feature=youtu.be

2. Voices: Common Loon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ENNzjy8QjU

3. Common Loon Birdcalls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTH30m87yL4

4. The war on Syria is just a television series

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/the-war-on-syria-is-just-a-television-series/

5. Amish

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish

6. Interview with Gene Stratton-Porter Biographer

http://ihspress.blogspot.jp/2011/01/barbara-olenyik-morrow-is-journalist.html

7. Thomas Wolfe (1935). “Of Time And The River.” The Sun Dial Press, Garden City, New York. 912 pages.