Holiday Gifts - Images and products

Holiday Gifts - Images and products created with my images available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mindscapeimages/

First Snow on a Larch Bog

New Hampshire Moose Poster

“The Distant Sound of a Different Drum”

Bar the Door! We're Here.

A Marine's Pride

As most of you know by now, my ancestors on my father's side were members of the Iroquois nation. To them we are all illegals. John Kelly's remarks on NPR made me wonder what the story was behind his own family history.

Here's a useful tidbit of information. File it under: "Bar the door! I'm here!" (General) John Kelly's ancestors, who arrived in America before we began classifying immigrants as documented and undocumented, included his Great Grandfather Giuseppe Pedalino and Pedalino's second wife Concetta. (Kelly's great-grandma died in 1898.)

Giuseppe Pedalino was a wagon driver. It is unlikely that he had more than a few years of schooling but we don't know this (yet) His wife was illiterate and could not speak English 10 years after arrival.

John Kelly's maternal grandmother Teresa is shown below as a child in the 1900 census. Her father, a day laborer named John DeMarco had been here for 18 years.

He had not become a citizen.
He could not read, write, or speak English.

The 1930 census shows his great-grandparents living with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, one of whom was Kelly's mother.

John DeMarco had been here for 47 years and was STILL not an American citizen ("AL"). His wife Crescenza had been here for 37 years and STILL spoke no English.

pic.twitter.com/N9AfuLNvb1

These facts tell us a number of things: 

1. In only 3 generations this immigrant family went from "the great unwashed" to the ancestors of the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States of America. That is nothing short of a true American success story.

2. General John Kelly is either completely ignorant of his own family's history or a hypocrite - I'm guessing the latter. This is less of a disappointment than his behavior in not having the courage to speak out against the treatment of John McCain at the hands of his own Whitehouse Staff but it's right up there.

A Marine's Pride
https://www.redbubble.com/people/waynedking/works/2282692-a-marines-pride

Spirit Buffalo Before a Frozen Lake

John Kelly, General, hypocrite, Chief of Staff, POTUS, President, ancestry,

Wages continue to Stagnate

If you missed my column from 2 months ago about the Hidden Time Bomb in the unemployment numbers, I am reprising it today because 3 month have passed and the numbers still show the same troubling figures. . . and they will continue to until we face up to 45 years of stagnant wage growth.

"If you ever needed proof of the disconnect between Wall Street and average folks it is the response of the Markets to the unemployment numbers from last month. Not only were markets excited with the growth in the number of people employed but they were especially excited at the lack of wage growth. Their argument was that it means that inflation is not heating up; but lets call it what it is, a continuation of nearly 50 years of stagnant wages for middle class and working class families." http://bit.ly/WageStagnation

Adopt an Image and Raise Money for Your Non Profit or Small Business

Alton Washday Expressions

Alton Washday Expressions

Produced by special request in an affordable limited edition of 100 signed and numbered originals for the good folks at the Rumney Village Store - that would be George & Sheila - a beautiful 8" x 20" signed image with a certificate of authenticity. You can purchase this original art for just $95.00 at the Rumney Village Store on Main Street in Rumney, New Hampshire. If it's too far to travel and you'd still like an original signed print, you can order it right here and we'll see to it that the Rumney Village Store gets credited - but you can save the cost of shipping by stopping by RVS and buying it directly and maybe purchasing one of their great deli offerings! or grab a copy of Sacred Trust 😉 . http://bit.ly/AltonEXP

As a way to support local businesses and nonprofits I have created this Adopt-an-Image program. If you or your nonprofit have an interest in adopting your favorite image its easy, just click here: http://bit.ly/AdoptImage 

Finding the Center

This Week's View from Rattlesnake Ridge

"A serious and substantive discussion about lowering the voting age to 16 instead of 18 is also in order. Ten other countries now permit it. In Scotland the Parliament passed the franchise to vote for 16 and 17 year-olds unanimously after successfully testing the premise during their referendum on independence."

http://indepthnh.org/2018/03/18/finding-the-center-reversing-the-hollowing-of-the-political-center-in-america/

Colors of a Pike NH Home

Restoring the American Voice

http://indepthnh.org/2018/02/14/restoring-the-american-voice-from-rattlesnake-ridge-nh/

Stinson Brook Camus Poster

Wayne King’s New Novel Echos New Hampshire’s Own Ongoing Battle Over Northern Pass

News Release

For Immediate Release

1/23/18

For more information: 603-515-6001

“Sacred Trust” Now Available in Bookstores and on Amazon

Wayne King’s New Novel Echos New Hampshire’s Own Ongoing Battle Over Northern Pass

If the cover of “Sacred Trust”, created by Mike Marland, doesn’t clue you in, it won’t take long to realize that this novel is written as a vicarious homage to New Hampshire’s own ongoing battle over the controversial “Northern Pass” project and other similar projects.

Author, former State Senator and 1994 Democratic Gubernatorial nominee Wayne D. King adroitly weaves a story with a familiar ring . . . the clash of ordinary people confronting money and power in an epic battle to protect the land they love.

“Sacred Trust” is the tale of a rollicking campaign of civil disobedience against a private powerline, pitting nine unlikely environmental patriots, calling themselves “The Trust”, against the “Granite Skyway” transmission line and its powerful, well-connected consortium of investors.

With an obvious deep fondness for both the people and the land, King weaves a fast-paced tale filled with both real and fictional stories from the political world and life in the Granite State.  In a rich tableau that includes sometimes hilarious and sometimes hair-raising stories of Senators driving North in a Southbound Interstate lane after a night of drinking at the Highway Hotel; Doctors sneaking a pregnant Llama into a hospital surgical ward for ACL surgery; A bear and a boy eating from the same blueberry patch atop Mount Cardigan as his father, the Ranger, watches helplessly from the fire tower, and more.

Among the heroes of the story is Sasha Brandt, an Iroquois woman from Canada. While hiking the Mahoosuc Range of the Appalachian Trail with her companion - a wolf named Cochise - Brandt meets Daniel Roy, a New Hampshire “boy” and now a guide and outdoorsman. After a unique first encounter they continue their trip together, eventually finding themselves camping with an unusual assortment of people including a former Olympic paddler, a conservative deer farmer, a retired spook, sidelined when he became the first US victim of Lyme disease; and an iconoclast and former Army Ranger named Thomas who lives in multiple backwoods abodes in the Great North Woods and rides a moose named Metallak – aptly named for the “Lone Survivor of the Megalloway” tribe, who in the late 1800’s was reputed to ride a moose himself.

The group quickly discovers that – despite their very broad range of ideological beliefs - they are united in their deep concern about the Consortium’s proposal to bisect the most beautiful parts of the state with massive 150 foot towers and clear cut forests for the sole purpose of transporting electricity from Canada to more affluent markets beyond its borders.  Like Oligarchs of the Gilded Age who minimized their costs by creating a legacy of polluted land and water, these modern Oligarchs stand to reap 100% of the benefits while passing off a large portion of their costs through the generations-long visual pollution of the public commons and all the economic shockwaves that result.

Determined to do more than shuffle papers and employ lawyers, the compatriots form a band of brothers and sisters - along with Cochise and Metallak. Armed with only their wits and a lot of heart they embark on a rollicking campaign of civil disobedience that would make Thoreau and Dr. King proud.

Although “Sacred Trust” is a work of fiction, King says that educators will find the novel a great classroom resource as well. Adding a new dimension and lively discussion to classes on the emergence of the renewable energy era, sustainability, and the American tradition of protest and its place in an “Era of Terrorism”.

“in the coming “Age of Electricity” “ King says, “a principal battleground will be over who controls the production and distribution of electric power. Across America today, the battle lines are being drawn. Utility companies, many in an existential battle for survival, are pitted against advocates of a new distributed energy paradigm where small, renewable power sources replace today’s large electricity generation plants.”

“Most Americans” King asserts, “notice that things are changing, but have yet to fully grasp what a sea change in life it will be for every American.”

“Sacred Trust” follows the trail of heroic citizens banding together to stop one especially egregious powerline. The citizens who stand to lose most are dead set against the project . . . but the political winds are against them. It is in this setting The Trust takes on the Consortium.

As the actions of The Trust gain traction and momentum, other citizens join in support including a wave of supporters on social media; “The Gazetteers”, a group of citizen activists writing in the style of the Federalist Papers; and journalists including one business writer who weaves together details of the historic record leading his readers through a virtual primer on the evolution of a post-carbon energy paradigm beginning with the 1972 election of Jimmy Carter and the passage of the National Energy Policy Act into which NH Senator John Durkin inserted an eight word amendment that rocked the world.

"Sacred Trust" is a hilarious and vicarious, high voltage campaign to stop the “Granite Skyway” leading the reader through the hijinks of The Trust, and the series of choices we all are currently confronted in the emerging “Age of Electricity”.

For each of the members of The Trust it is a sacred campaign fought against an impending legacy of steel towers and scarred lands - an existential threat to an entire way of life. The Trust is all that stands between the people and their worst fears . . . and they are willing to pay any price to prevail. 

                                                             

“Sacred Trust”

Paperback: 354 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN-10: 1981490302

http://bit.ly/STPaper

Price: $14.95*

Sacred Trust Kindle eBook

http://bit.ly/STrust

Price: $2.99*

https://thesacredtrust.blogspot.com/

* Special discounts are available to schools, libraries, and nonprofits. Please contact 603-515-6001

The Last Lynching - Ted Koppel

Veteran broadcast journalist Ted Koppel focuses on a 1981 lynching in Alabama to tell how acts of hatred and racism have affected the lives of three Americans:
Congressman Robert Filner who, as an 18-year-old Freedom Rider, was thrown into Mississippi's Parchman Prison (currently representing Calfornia's 51st congressional district); Florida school teacher Lizzie Jenkins who recalls tales of her grandfather watching the lynching of five African-Americans in 1916; and Congressman Artur Davis, who as a law student worked to hold the Ku Klux Klan accountable for the lynching (currently representing Alabama's 7th congressional district).
This year they each played a role in Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) becoming the first African-American tapped to be a national party's nominee for president.
"The Last Lynching offers a look at how far we've come on the racial front, and how recent some of the worst days of racial violence really were," said Koppel.
It's a story about how 19-year-old Michael Donald was killed in 1981 in Mobile, Ala., by two members of the Ku Klux Klan.
"Lynchings are a form of terrorism. And the particular purpose was to say to African-Americans that you will never vote or be a part of the political process in this country. And if you think you will move in that direction there will be terrible consequences," Koppel told Tell Me More host Michel Martin.
Created for the Discovery Channel.
Listen

The Deep State from Rattlesnake Ridge

The Shadows We Cast Haiku

The Deep State from Rattlesnake Ridge

This week, between caring for Alice who came down with a stomach flu on New Year’s eve and bringing in enough firewood to keep the woodstove cranking as I watched the thermometer plunge from zero to minus 10, then minus 20 and then down to minus 30 degrees below zero, I managed to catch just a bit of news where I heard that President Trump had turned his attention to what he – and Steve Bannon – despite their recent fall out, refer to as the “Deep State”.

For those folks who don’t breath the rarified air of Washington DC., The “Deep State” is a term that has gathered some cache over the past few years as the whipping boy of both the far left and the far right – mostly those who never heard of a conspiracy to which they didn’t subscribe. They somehow have become convinced that there is a nefarious and shadowy group that acts to undermine elected representatives of the people. 

Based on this, I thought I’d take a shot at describing just what the “deep state” means here at 2,500 feet above sea level in the shadow of Rattlesnake Ridge in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

At 32 degrees below zero when I click that special button on my key fob that starts my Jeep remotely, making it warm enough to keep Alice happy, I thank the “Deep State” at General Motors that makes sure that my Jeep works at this God awful temperature and that the “Deep State” at EPA, the US Department of Transportation and the NTSB make sure it doesn’t blow up or seize up on the road. . . no matter who the President is or who’s in charge at GM.

When I walk into my house, turn on the lights and turn up the heat. I thanks the “Deep State” at the NH Electric Cooperative and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for providing the rural electrification that made it possible for electricity to power lights and an oil furnace to keep us warm and dry even in below zero temperatures and the “Deep State” at Dead River Heating and Propane for their oil and for our friend “Deep State Dave” the driver who dares our steep driveway even when it is covered with snow.  

At the Grocery Store when we buy meat or fresh and frozen vegetables all winter long we thank the “Deep State” at FDA that regulates the safety of beef and pork and chicken and veggies as well as the Deep State at Market Basket or Hannaford’s that makes sure they arrive on a regular basis so that we are never without the sustenance to keep hearth and home together – no matter who is President of the USA or CEO of our grocery chain.

When I stop in at the Pharmacy to get a prescription I thank the “Deep State” at the FDA that makes sure my drugs are safe. “Dr. Mike” our pharmacist one of the cogs in the “Deep State” counts every pill twice and checks to make sure that my prescription doesn’t interact dangerously with other medicines I take.  “Deep State Zita” takes the time to ask about Alice and our son Zach and still makes sure I’m not overcharged.

When a police officer stops us for a broken tail light I thank God for the “Deep State” department of Justice, the local police and courts and the “Deep State” at the ACLU that create a nexus of counter-veiling forces to assure my rights, even when I’m wrong.

When I turn onto the highway to return home, especially in a snowstorm, I thank God for the “Deep State” at the Highway Department and the Department of Safety and State Police that assure passage and protect our safety on the roads.

During the last few months we’ve read of several thwarted terror attacks here and abroad. You can thank the “Deep State” at Homeland Security and the Department of Justice for that. 

The “Deep State”, to those of us who do not see gremlins behind every bush, is just another name for the hard working, patriotic folks who go to work every day and do their jobs, even when some blowhards and politicians denigrate them and their efforts. 

This week President Trump took credit for the fact that no American had died in a plane crash on US soil in 2017 - though an army of journalists working feverishly over the past 24 hours has been unable to uncover a single point of contact between the President and anyone from the FAA or airline industry. With the entire airline regulatory infrastructure still in the hands of Obama appointees he might want to thank President Obama, or just the “Deep State” at the FAA.