A Visit to Fiddler’s Green
Hope for the best. Expect the worst. Life is a play. We’re unrehearsed. –Mel Brooks As 2013 nears, nothing is really new, local gurus predict. For one thing, according Madame Blavatsky in Cornville, the world will end (again?) soon. Too, beliefs have become facts— e.g., climate change is caused by a liberal press, and if all the environmentalists would just fade away, then the Old Guard could retake control and start bulldozing the Verde River to accommodate floating timeshares. Next, they’d rip out roundabouts and return the “Y,” and a certain retiring senator would come to town to give a lecture…
Who Was He Anyway?
An atheist is someone who has no invisible means of support. Buchan, 1875 Don’t look now but a hullabaloo is roiling the waters from Bangor, Maine to the Three Sisters Wilderness in Oregon. What it’s about is that Jesus may be on his way back. An Ohio lady reported that the face of Jesus appeared when she was cooking Polish dumplings for Easter dinner. First she froze it, and then she sold it. There’s the problem, because no one knows what to expect: A fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist predicting the rapture, or the carpenter who taught love, tolerance, charity and humility. Fortunately,…
Good Looks Are Everything
The whole world is science fiction. – Ray Bradbury Before Homer took to the sea to write, and very, very long before Brad Pitt acted to recreate the Trojan War, the club-bearing Theseus ventured boldly into the Cretan labyrinth to slay the ferocious Minotaur, who was half-bull, half-man. What was the Minotaur’s crime you have every right to ask? It wasn’t prisoner abuse. History informs that the creature’s specialty was dining on ugly little urchins, not favored by the gods with beauty. Were this larger-than-life-creature to be among us today, it would find itself in the immortal words of raconteur William…
Don’t Blame it on British Petroleum!
How clever you are, my dear. You never mean a single word you say. –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Icebergs melting, polar bears drowning, desert city air dirtier by the day, peak oil here or near, and so the people bombard their political representatives demanding pollution-free renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Happily the state of Arizona responded to public outcries and is committed to achieving higher levels of renewable energy-powered electric power–up to 15 percent by 2025. Predictably, crusaders for such breakthroughs are overjoyed. Daily, they tell members of the suspicious press that more and more leaders realize that…
Heading For The Last Round-up . . . By Bishop
“This ain’t the same old range. Everything seems to change. Where are the pals I used to ride with? Gone to a land so strange. – Sons of the Pioneers Remembering the Hopi prophesy, when we dig precious things from the earth, we will invite disaster. Indeed, near the day of purification, cobwebs will spin back and forth while a container of ashes will one day be thrown from the sky that could burn the land and boil the oceans. To the Ancient ones, that situation was dubbed Koyaanisqatsi, meaning life out of balance, “life in turmoil, life disintegrating.” No…
Will There Be Bookstores On Mars? . . . By Bishop,
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of all true art” –Albert Einstein “It is not what people know that worries me; it is what they know that’s wrong” –Will Rogers It is any wonder that more and more folks gladly avoid reading or watching the news. Day after day, they avoid learning that glaciers are melting, wolves are back, America is at war, repeatedly, the Verde River may not be flowing much longer, and Arizona’s tough new governor hopes to spend more money on prisons than…
Bombarded By Junk . . . By Bishop, Excentric Dumpster Devil
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves —-Goethe All sorts of records are being set these days in sports, in finance, and for endless flatulent political bum fog. However, one record being set this year, as Christmas fades into memories is nothing to be amused at. Each of us will have received almost 560 pieces of junk mail out of 38 billion sent, and an average of 54 catalogues out of 14 billion mailed (an average of 54 per American) and 38 billion pieces of junk mail, and I bet you even receive more! Altogether, that’s 4.5 million tons of…
Good News And Bad News – Telling The Dissimilarity. . . By Bishop, Unusual Excentric Seer
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance… Edward Gibbon Rumor has it that a Reinast toothbrush sells for $4200 versus a $2 dollar brush at any Walgreens. Which, gentle reader, points out the runaway conspicuous consumption disease sweeping across our land, faster even that glaciers are melting in the Yukon. Weep not that due to the disappearance of first rate reportage, good news has essentially vanished from once legendary press and TV outlets, replaced with pretty visitors from somewhere far away where witlessness is celebrated and mediocrity quipped, Beerbohm can always be trusted to be at…
Stress Secrets Revealed . . . By Bishop, Special Excentric Winter Tryout
Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. ——N. Goldberg Emergencies are everywhere! No one really knows how many emergencies have been declared since World War II, so it is little wonder that citizens feel wrapped in blankets of stress. Concoctions of all sorts have been bottled and canned to alleviate various nerve-wracking stress conditions, but so far, none seemed to have worked. Whatever the potion, neighbors still fear other neighbors, and run hot over any hint of hearing jazz music in the air after dark. In the hunt for treatments, one fell into my lap,…
Truth Or Myth . . . By Bishop, Outgoing Summer Trainee
Why beauty? It breaks us free of the domination of economics; it is the path for living well. Dandy Randy Huge snails were seized at LA Airport, a delicacy in Hollywood salons, when not being eaten or eating paint and stucco off the side of brick houses if veggies are not available. Not far away, a famous movie star is building a nine-foot fence to protect her family from noise and neighbors. Meanwhile, in a hotel nearby, a peevish, angry rage has been unfolding in a massive ballroom. Men’s faults, failings and foibles are the target of third-wave feminism. A…
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction . . . By Bishop, Special Excentric Savant
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. H.D. Thoreau While they were drinking shots of primordial vodka, gorging on caviar and sharing philosophies, the then-jolly Soviet leader gave the then-President Nixon a slice of advice: Alleged Khrushchev: “The trick is tell the people there is a river over there. And if they say they don’t see it, if they say there is no river over there, tell them to look harder, there is a river over there.” Of course, the Soviet propaganda was nurturing Nixon’s imaginings, perhaps thinking such a tip would help Tricky Dick get some…
Treasure Reserves Discovered . . . By Bishop, Special Excentric Buccaneer
Gentle readers perhaps you have heard the tale about the two fishes arguing about the existence of the ocean first told to me by Dr. Blanton amidst a seminar at the Pink Nectar Café on the outskirts of town. Seems that two fish were arguing about the existence of the ocean. The first fish says, “it is all around you. You are surrounded by it. You have lived in the water all your life.” Demands the second fish, “show me! Prove it. Where is this ocean?” Where are lot things, gentle reader, which we can’t see even though it can…
Let Us Return To Shady Grove . . . By Bishop, Special Excentric Intuit
Is the world bring run by smart people who are putting us or, on the other hand, by imbeciles who really mean it? Mark Twain Seems that all of Sedona have gone gaga about some planet my friend Alice calls Mercury. According to an intuitive cosmological friend, this distant planet is in the process of reversing itself in the great beyond. It is sending weird vibrations everywhere. People are cleaning out their garages, hiding file cabinets concealing timeworn love letters and swearing off coffee of any kind from Starbucks. The word at Rene’s is that Mercury may just stay in…
Is The Lone Ranger Returning? . . . By Bishop, Excentric Task Force Manager
Give me silence, water, hope Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes Neruda As buzzards circled through the smoke above City Hall, a tourist from Maine mumbled to a lady of the night, “so this is what the end of the world looks like!” “Not so,” reported Josh, an expert member of the legendary, mythical Monkey Wrench Gang, “It’s just Ed. He said he’d come back, some day. He said he would settle for the sedate career, serene and soaring, of the humble turkey buzzard, the only known philosophizing bird.” And what a world he’d come back to, not forgetting Sedona and…
New Addictions Discovered . . . By Bishop, Excentric Therapeutic Consultant
Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life. Burton Hills Truth be told, it is said that in greater Sedona, people are either therapists, former therapists or thinking of going into therapy. Now arriving is a puzzling new strain of emotional emotions, so widespread that self-published, self-help books are even now being created. One need not be a therapist, however, to detect the trend. One can sense the trend almost anywhere, from the markets to the barbershops, from the dry cleaners to post offices and resorts: people have glum looks on their faces. Drivers glower at one…
Quiet Please . . . By Bishop, Special Eccentric Free Lancer
Silence is always there; all we can make is noise. . . . Mother Mirabel Time was that neighing of horses was the loudest noise in old Sedona with the exception of closing time at the old Oak Creek Tavern when publishers and film stars went screaming off into the night. Now it is airplanes which seem to cruise above town, faster and lower and louder, accompanied by helicopters. In the streets to the west of uptown, bellowing Harleys race up and down while autos with out of state plates scrape by one another, often blocking postmen and women from delivering…
A Whiskey-Golden Time . . . By Bishop, Special Eccentric Excentric
As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from concern…there is nothing which has yet to be contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced by a good tavern. Samuel Johnson, London, 1777 The news spread faster than a Tea Party Lie. In legendary London, and in villages nearby, 7000 pubs are being closed—forever leaving local quaffers and boozers to face a dreaded, dryer future: No local community gathering place to have a nip, hear the gossip and bet a bit on Cricket. Longtime Sedonans know that…
Welcome The Cypress Queen
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. Lily Tomlin (1939 – ) “Day dies into night,” wrote the great Tertullian “and is everywhere buried in darkness…and yet again it revives, with its own beauty, its own dowry, the same as before, whole and unimpaired.” Is that a fair description of Sedona? Perhaps one day that was true about residents as well as landscape. But it would be irresponsibly misleading to declare that today. Day after day more and more land is being impaired by ‘dozers; more of the blessed Verde River is heading for dry sections; and…
Neighbors & Other Ironies, by Bishop
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive. – Robert Heinlein Now we know, with John Keats that there is no point in waiting for warm days, now comes a dose of reality as the New Year dawns. Don’t look now, gentle reader, but you, we, every Tom Dick and Harry are knee deep in irony, otherwise called incongruities. Consider the principal threats to a healthy community, namely our own. Some say it’s the tree huggers, others cite liberals or Tea party strategists, or ex- Stalinists or uninformed, vision-less mayors. Truth be known the…
Are Political Labels Extinct?. . . By Bishop, Home For The Holidays Reporter
In politics absurdity is not a handicap – Napoleon In his cups, Doug Rigby, an author in Sedona’s early days, before all the experts in planning and parking arrived, loved to talk. In particular, he loved to tell visitors at the Rainbow Inn saloon that Earth, with all its wars, tyrants, dictators, half-wit politicians, crooks and gamblers, battle-hungry generals was here for the simple reason that the Gods needed something to amuse them, so easily bored they get, from time to time. Indeed, with all the cutting and running nowadays in Washington where Nixon, a conservative, is now being as…
