First Frost..., 11-19-15

That ought to finish off the spud plants in The Garden.  Yeah…, about half of them were still green and hanging in there.  OK…, the monsoon rains had beat them down pretty good…, but they were still green laying there on the ground.

A few very short years ago…, yeah the years are slipping away way too fast these days…, I wrote a piece for The Agonist called, “Biscuits and Gravy and the First Killing Frost”.  It was dated 10/12/09.  A very late first freeze this year…, and a very early spring and summer that helped set off a fire season for the record books in the Pacific Northwest.  The dry spell during the summer browned up our grass pastures here on the Olympic Peninsula to a state that I haven’t witnessed in my 25 years here.  We got some early rain this fall…, enough to green the pastures back up…, but it didn’t seem to cool off that much.  September furnished us with some hot flashes..., but not much out of the ordinary.  October was about average…, during the days..., it seemed.  But I noticed that it didn’t cool off much during the night.

Totally Pure - Joe Bageant Drops Out

I posted pieces about Joe’s books, “Deer Hunting in America: Dispatches from the Class War” and “Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball”and “Rainbow Pie”.  I noted that it took a few essays to really set the hook at first…, but hooked I was…, and am.  Probably…, hell…, no doubt…, my favorite essay is, Ghosts of Tim Leary and Hunter S. Thompson.  Yeah…, Joe and I had a lot of likes, loves and lusts in common…, liquid libations, lovely ladies and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.  And always..., always..., some music in the background.  The dedication to that piece was a teaser too, “This essay is dedicated to Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988).”

The intro to it was this…,

Everything Americans think they know, they learned from a televised morality play. It's all theater. You root for some good guy and boo some bad guy. You pick your own, but you dance to the tune of the men running the show. It's mind control, pure and simple, and if there is an American immune to it, then he is probably living in a snow cave somewhere in Alaska.

-- Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988), prospector, self-educated philosopher and horse trader


Damn right I Googled “Gypsy Joe Hess” when I read the essay a couple years back…, and got no hits.  I do now though…, after this title piece by John Lingan was run at The Baffler - Totally Pure - Joe Bageant drops out.

Gypsy Joe Hess & Joe Bageant

The First Time

I thought it would be more painful.  It wasn’t completely painless, to be sure…, but after 63 years of absolute abstinence, there was bound to be a little discomfort, at the least.  Luckily, it didn’t last long.  It was over almost before I knew it.  I was left with some feelings of guilt…, maybe remorse.  Time will tell about that…, I guess. 

I left my name, mailing address, phone number and email address.  No physical address.  I learned that lesson many years ago.  When all I used to give out was a post office box for an address and had an unlisted phone number…, not even the IRS could track me down.  And they were trying…, family and ex-employers told me so.  Two weeks after I got a phone listed in my name for a house I was sharing with the rest of the logging crew working on an out of town job…, an IRS agent left a note on the door for me.  But I digress…, in this case I want some acknowledgement of my contribution.  Then again…, I don’t want it to turn into a constant and relentless demanding…, or begging…, for more.