A Note: I am going to try like heck to take a break from this kind of writing and am going to post stories of my life that some people think are worth jotting down, like the time the boys in 6th grade locked me in a pit. So look for that short story called “The Pit and the Playground.” Or the time Roger O hit me with a baseball bat (although it wasn’t his fault. I was chasing after Johnny M. and ran across home plate.) Or when Qwenny R pushed me over the bridge into Tinley Creek and why I deserved it. Or when Barbara Van hit me over the head with a rock and why I deserved it. Or why Miss Bloemendal kicked me out of my 3rd grade classroom every week for things like marching in the opposite direction to “Onward Christian Soldiers and why I didn’t deserve it.” Or why 30 years later I got kicked out of a Hollywood talent agency for having the Puck Syndrome and why I didn’t deserve it or maybe I did. Or why after a meteoric rise in politics I left the Democratic Party because I saw it was a coop and not a co-op and more like a Roach Motel. Why like a Cicada I lay low for awhile and then go all buzzy ape sh*t crazy every 17 years. Find out how this Hollywood agent ended up on a cattle ranch in Montana. Join me on the “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” that has been my life. ©
Most of us at one time or another experience a cooperative organization as opposed to one of hierarchy. In smaller cities especially in rural America there are food cooperatives and banking cooperatives. There are also insurance cooperatives. That’s how “insurance” started hundreds of years ago amongst merchants who sailed the seas and had to worry about shipwrecks. Farmers would lend each other seed if one’s own crop was destroyed. They pooled their machines. Continue reading
Montana ‘s Inquisition
(This was originally published in 2010 and I think it’s time for re publishing it. With all the hubbub and disagreement surrounding the film “American Sniper”, we should try not to fling around the word “treason” for people who disagree with you. I heard about Christine Shupp at our watering hole, The Grand from a neighbor.)
So you are a little girl in grammar school in 1917. Your name is Christine Shupp. You related to a neighbor here in Montana that as a child you were forced every morning after the pledge of allegiance to the flag to kneel down on the floor and kiss the flag. It is because you were German. And say you are a rancher in Rosebud County, Montana and you call WWI “a millionaire’s war”. Whamo, you are dragged off by neighbors to jail. You’re in a saloon and call war time food regulations “a big joke” and you are sentenced to from 7 to 20 years. http://www.seditionproject.net/index.html
Montana played a huge part in suppressing free speech during WWI. In light of all the noise about Julian Assange, Wikileaks, and Joe Lieberman’s “upgrading” The Espionage Act of 1917, it ‘s probably a good idea to take a look backwards to the Montana Council of Defense. (Yes, President Obama and MSNBC, it’s a good idea to look backwards because leaning forwards can more often than not have you falling on your face.)
Historian K. Ross Toole wrote a chapter called “The Inquisition” in his book “Twentieth Century Montana: A State of Extremes” about a very dark time in Montana’s history. At the beginning of WW I, Woodrow Wilson formed a National Council of Defense and asked each state and each county in the state to help with war propaganda, helping in recruitment of troops, and getting people to buy Liberty Bonds. The Montana Council of Defense went whole hog into this endeavor and was especially keen on finding “slackers” and “draft dodgers”. The Governor of Montana, Sam Stewart called a special session of the legislature in part to make the Montana Council of Defense a legal body with funding by the state. The legislature also passed the Sedition Act and the Criminal Syndicalism Act, which the federal government would use as a model for the federal Sedition Act which was an amendment to the Espionage Act of 1917. This act was probably one of the harshest anti-speech laws ever passed in the United States. Continue reading →
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Posted in Montana Life, Social Commentary, The Accidental Activist