Looks like Tild’s back, Norweganity commenting,
Just to kick things off, a contest! She doesn’t specify a prize in her post, but I know we were talking about something along the lines of a free trip to Arak, Iran, for a chance to meet Mohamed ElBaradei and maybe see a spectacular fireworks display.
Which is my way of leading into how I have indeed been thinking about Iran but have had no inspiration to comment upon it. I give a brief read through posts like Hullabaloo’s Bush’s Nuclear Dictatorship which references Billmon’s “Mutually Assured Dementia” on the prospect of Bush dropping tactical nuclear bunker-busters, which I’d also read yesterday then went back to working on my painting of Paul Bunyan. Which to me all fits.
What I reflected on while working on Paul Bunyan, having prepped to do it by reading H.o.p. the tall tales, was several parts the fiberglass sales attraction, the big draw on the horizon, and several parts Bunyan ripping through the land, tearing up trees, clearing the way West, the Anglo occupation of the continent tied up with the near worship of the subduing of nature.
Paul Bunyan may have started out as French Canadian lore to do with a specific event, but when I was a child, the tales of Paul Bunyan in school were largely related to impart the BIGNESS of Anglo-American determination to occupy (though no one called it occupation, instead it was all land improvements, like a giant real estate venture) become almost mystical with visions of second-wave settlers driving their wagons through hills and mountains already nearly conquered for them by the voracious hunger of Paul Bunyan’s gigantic ax, which retained a peculiar French accent. Paul was not only the twilight bridge between the “beast” and “civilization”, he represented the notion of divine right; the initiatory human actions of settlement, of occupation, clearing the land, becoming in themselves a sacred stealth authorization making treaties null and void. For which reason when I read the tales to H.o.p. I felt it was time to talk about what that gigantic, plundering ax and showed H.o.p. also graphics of the reach of forest several hundred years ago as opposed to today.
Paul Bunyan may have been popularized in the 1900s by the Red River Logging Company, a sales scheme, but he entered the schools as tales for swaddling, well, the children of Manifest Destiny and letting them know it was all A-OK.
To me this leads right up to today. So it’s not as if I ignore the present while working on a picture based on a 90s photo of a figure that became a successful ad campaign clearing the consciences of the children of Manifest Destiny. I don’t know how successful a campaign it was for the Red River Logging Company, but several generations of school children have been so indoctrinated with the tales of Bunyan that I imagine there are adults raised on tales of Paul Bunyan who would say it woul be near illiteracy to not regale children with them now.
When I was working on the painting of Paul Bunyan I was painting that history. There is not a tree in sight around that Paul Bunyan.
I wrote a post recently on the fight to preserve Bear Butte, a sacred place for a number of First Nations, but Jay Allen in early April won a liquor license for his biker bar complex 2 and 1/2 miles from its base. A biker complex, the first phase of which is promised to be over 150,000 square feet of asphlat and 22,500 square feet of club and eventually an ampitheater that can accomodate 30,000 concert goers.
He (Allen) argued at the hearing that he has a right to develop his land, which totals about 600 acres. But amid strong opposition from a room full of Indians from several tribes, Allen pledged to be a good neighbor.
“I’m embarrassed that it’s evolved to this,” he said.
State officials have said at least 17 tribes place special significance on Bear Butte. Others have said nearly 60 tribes consider the peak sacred. Bear Butte, a volcano that never erupted, has been a state park since 1961, and a special area is set aside for Indian ceremonies.
Opponents of Allen’s project said at the hearing that thousands of noisy motorcycles and other large campground and entertainment complexes near Sturgis already disrupt the serenity of Bear Butte.
“We need a quiet place,” said Arvol Looking Horse, a Sioux who wore a fully feathered headdress and buckskin tunic. “Bear Butte is a very sacred place.”
Indian groups, led by the Bear Butte International Alliance, oppose all development that would disturb the tranquility around the peak. The alliance has been pressing county officials to stop issuing beer and liquor licenses within a seven-mile radius of Bear Butte.
Dean Wink, a county commissioner, said he understands the significance Indians attach to the butte. But he said other businesses in the area have received alcohol licenses and to forbid Allen the same opportunity would be to deny him his rights.
Work on Allen’s project is under way.
Here are photos of the an April 4th rally to protect Bear Butte.
How did I get from Paul Bunyan to Bear Butte? Paul Bunyan’s exploits take him across the land conquering by way of appropriation. Paul Bunyan’s blue ox, at its death, was buried in South Dakota, and its burial mound is now the Black Hills. To children this means something. And what it means is that “this land is mine” because Paul Bunyan went in and by means of his gigantic, nearly sacred nature obliterated First Nations’ treaty rights. No, I don’t think anyone was thinking about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox while fighting over Jay Allen’s liqour license, but the tales of Paul Bunyan and others help set the standard of what is right and meet and seemly to do in the eyes of generations of kids who become adults and may have forgotten that Paul Bunyan told them it was A-OK to build the BIGGEST BIKER BAR IN THE WORLD at bear butte, but the BIGGEST LOGGER THERE EVER WAS is certainly part of America’s occupation-propaganda litter jamming their brains from mustering any sort of rational, responsible, reasonable thought.
A friend asked me recently if I felt some affection for America’s giant roadside attractions and its kitsch cult. After all, the centerpiece of Amazing Wonders of a Subatomic World or In Search of the Great Penguin is a gigantic fiberglass penguin.
I responded, “Do I feel affection for Americana? I look at it this way. (The character of) Faith is all purchase power as action and the unhealthy part of consumerism is all tied up in her. But she’s also creative. Purchase and trade of goods is a fundamental part of being human and socializing and connecting with humanity at large and even the universe. So there’s a lot in Faith and Americana that’s creative and even inspirational and one can have some affection for it. But it is in a sense its own religion/spirituality (which makes sense, as it makes connections and sense of place and belonging) and doesn’t honor other spiritual systems very well. Tends to be pretty dead set on mowing its way over other spiritual ways/religious systems. I can feel empathy and affection for people enjoying the bonding and finding place in Americana. But I’ve not much sympathy with it when it crosses the line and becomes destructive, which it too often does. I do look on America as being a nation of homeless and these things like the giant Oscar Meyer wiener as a family bonding event are both heartening and distracting because advertising has made it a part of that peculiar purchase/trade church, and it unifies and supplies a certain piece of ‘home’. This may sound an extreme view but I think it’s very much a part of what happened here, so many people coming from different places, leaving communities and familes of origin, ongoing with the ease of people moving all over the country…” the culture of consumerism becoming the place where individuals strive for their meaning in relationship to the all.
Thus Bear Butte. Which may be said to be just business and even fair play in conducting business (can’t deprive Allen of his liquor license when others have their own), but it isn’t just business.
People talk about the separation of church and state but it’s pretty well impossible when it’s business interests that operate as the spiritual heart of the United States, and the church of consumerism its official relgion.
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