Lunar Skeletons

The next day we set out to backtrack up the Interstate 90. Now Mrs. Moonbones has a friend named Lorie; she and her husband are motorcyclists, members of a Xtian motorcycle club. And so Lorie has traveled here and there about the emptiness of Montana, and one of the interesting places in Montana she mentioned that she had seen is the St. Ignatius Mission. She suggested that we stop there to visit it. A short distance north of Missoula is the exit to State Highway 93. We found it and turned right to head north toward the Flathead Indian Reservation, where the St. Ignatius Mission is located.

While most of the the Northwest isn’t what I would call “cosmopolitanâ€, at least not in the same sense that I would call Southern California “cosmopolitanâ€, by which I mean that Southern California has a very diverse makeup of different ethnic groups from all over the world. And while the megalopolises of Seattle and Portland also could be considered “cosmopolitanâ€, yet most of the Northwest isn’t, especially in the interior away from the coast. However, there are some very large Indian reservations, and so Indians could be considered the predominate “minority group†in the inland portions of the Northwest. Again, I am excluding from consideration Seattle and Portland, which are largely exceptional.

For example, not too far south of Coeur d’Alene, here in the Land-In-Between, is the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. Now I have on various occasions traveled across the reservation, which is done by taking State Highway 95 and heading south, and the overall impression I have of the reservation is that the Coeur d’Alenes seem to be mostly prosperous ranchers and farmers, their land being mostly trim and cultivated. There are of course the discount tobacco shops along the way, and, unsurprisingly, they also run a very large hotel and casino, near the town of Worley, which are frequently advertised on television. But that is the impression I have, and appearances may or may not be deceiving. The name “Coeur d’Alene†was assigned to them, so the story goes, by the French fur traders as a remark about their sharp business sense. The words “coeur d’alene†can be translated over-literally into English as “heart of an awlâ€, but a more accurate translation might be “sharp wittedâ€. The Coeur d’Alenes, as far as I know, don’t mind being refered to by this name, but their own word for their tribe is difficult to pronounce and even harder to spell. Concerning the ownership of the southern half of Lake Coeur d’Alene, they recently won a court case involving a resolution of a conflict between their treaty rights and the state constitution. As I understand it, now they have gained control over the southern half of the lake, which means, among other things, they collect licensing fees on the boats in their part of the lake. Occasionally, some Coeur d’Alene Indians come into town to go about their business, but by and large this doesn’t happen often, as far as I can tell. The Coeur d’Alenes do host an annual “Julyamsh†in the nearby town of Post Falls, which is a sort of Indian cultural convention attended by various tribes from all across the United States.

Montana also has Indians, and probably more so than Land-In-Between, although I am not sure of the exact population statistics. One of the largest reservations in Montana, where we were headed as we traveled northward up the 93, is the Flathead Reservation, which takes up a large, broad valley that stretches from the southern half of Flathead Lake all the way down to near the Bitterroot mountains. It is a fairly sizable chunk of land. The town of St. Ignatius lies at the southern end of the reservation and is where the mission is located.

Now, most people who are into various “New Age†religions—those sensitive people in contact with their spirit guides from the other higher dimensions, and who have dream-catchers hanging off the rear-view mirrors of their SUVs—they probably would think that the Flatheads would have been perfectly happy to continue to conform nicely to the usual “New Age†idyllic conception of the “Noble Savageâ€, that is, peaceful and environmentally friendly hunter-gatherers who therefore would have remained content with worshipping rocks, trees, and animals, and who would have continued to consult their medicine men and shamans for whatever advice could be had from whomsoever happened to be floating around in those higher spiritual planes. Well, surprisingly enough, the Flatheads didn’t seem very content with their idyllic condition and actually wanted Xtian missionaries to come to them. What exactly led to this discontent isn’t completely clear, other than perhaps they were tired of worshipping rocks, trees, and animals, were sick of the crappy advice their shamans were giving them, and wanted to know more about the One who is the Creator of all things. In fact, they were so persistent about this, they sent four different delegations eastward, hoping to find someone interested enough to send them someone. They especially wanted the “Blackrobes†to come. The first three delegations met with various disappointments. But finally, in 1839, a fourth two-man delegation managed to meet in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a certain Jesuit from Belgium by the name of Peter DeSmet. With his help, the delegation met with the Bishop of St. Louis, who in turn wrote to the Jesuit Father-General in Rome. Fortunately for the Flatheads, at that time there were still people in Rome who thought that preaching the Gospel and converting the heathen was something the Catholic Church was still in the business of doing. And so, by and by, Father DeSmet had the support he needed to carry out the work, and in 1841 St. Mary’s Mission was established near the present town of Stevensville, which lies on the Bitterroot River not too far south of Missoula.

[to be continued]

Vast Montana lies across the Coeur d’Alene mountains to the east of here, the mysterious Land-In-Between where I live. Now the Montana that is there is indeed and very truely green and beautiful, but sparsely populated as far as states go in the United States. This means that its electoral votes don’t count for very much in the Electoral College, which occurs at the end of each quadrennial donnybrook to choose the next president. And because of this, Montana is very much ignored by politicians, the major news media, and by the rest of the country, which goes about its business as if Montana did not even exist. We here next door in the Land-In-Between, however, do not ignore Montana, for Montanans quite often come and go, and they often shop here as well. I suspect they like our malls, but for what I don’t know. And likewise, we In-Betweeners often will fugitate to Montana for a variety of reasons. Howbeit, Montana is mostly ignored by everyone else. Montana is a “fly-over countryâ€, an irksome “red†state, similar to the even emptier North Dakota, which is now inhabited mostly by North American bison, grazing on grass growing through the widening cracks in the streets of long abandoned rural towns. And for most Americans, who crowd themselves on the left and right coasts, Montana serves as a large filler space, a buffer zone, bumping up roughly in the middle of that long flat line which divides the U.S. from Canada in the North. Montana has even less glamour than North Dakota, for even North Dakota had one of its hitherto unknown towns mentioned in a widely playing movie. But how often does one hear about Montana? Go to the left or right coasts and ask anyone there about what goes through his mind at the mention of the word “Montana†and he might say “it sounds like a place in Spainâ€, mainly because the word itself does sound like a Spanish word, which it isn’t. Or he might say “cowboysâ€, which is somewhat closer to the truth, for indeed there are of necessity cowboys in Montana because there are places in Montana where cattle are raised, and cows need cowboys to herd them. Nevertheless, what the word “Montana†conveys to most people is emptiness. Something vast and empty, a somewhere where nothing much is there. Montana is also called “Big Sky†country because there are comparatively few people there to look up into that sky. But there are cows there who do see that sky.

The western quarter of Montana has beautifully forested green mountains cut through here and there by lovely river valleys. Two of these rivers, the Bitterroot and the Clarks Fork, meet each other in one of the larger valleys near where the city of Missoula is now situated. Over a century ago, Lewis and Clark—while on their famous exploratory expedition, commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson for the purpose of developing a profitable fur trade, which would have had the effect of inflicting the maximum possible cruelty on furry creatures everywhere in the American hinderlands, but which ended up only spreading a few cases of syphilus amoung the various tribal peoples along the way—well, the aforementioned Lewis and Clark, they took counsel with each other near present day Missoula on how best to proceed on their way to the Columbia river. They could have followed the Clarks Fork northward and eventually end up in the Land-In-Between at the lake with the funny French name, Lake Pend Oreille, which is not at all pronounced anything like how it is spelled, thanks to those obnoxious Frenchmen who somehow, inexplicably, managed to get there first. And from Lake Pend Oreille, following the Pend Oreille River, past the Arbeni Falls, Lewis and his friend Clark, and the rest of their merry men, could have floated all the way up into Canada and eventually meet there with the Columbia river, which is what they were looking for. But their guide, that devious Indian lady, Sacajawea, who never explained to anyone exactly how to spell her name, having decided to teach the Pale Faces a nasty lesson in privation and hardships, such as often experienced by hunter-gatherer peoples such as herself, told Lewis and Clark to make a hard right turn and try crossing instead the Lolo mountains in the middle of winter, a difficult but more direct route. After losing some fingers to frostbite, they later complained to her about the decision, but her response must have been “Hey, life is tough all round, kemosabe.†Of course, I don’t know if this is exactly what transpired, but it is somewhat fun to imagine that it might have.

Now Missoula is probably the largest city in the sparsely populated western quarter of the already un-densely populated Montana. During my recent stay in Missoula, I sensed that the city seemed larger than my home town Coeur d’Alene (another strange French word) yet it was definitely smaller than Spokane next door in Washington. Spokane is supposedly the largest city between Seattle and Chicago. Though not too large, Missoula nicely filled the river valley where it was situated, and it is indeed a major enough city to have its own airport where jetliners can land and take off. Yet Missoula is no sprawling megalopolis like what is found commonly in Southern California, monster-cities which extend from horizon to horizon, and whose air is suffused perpetually with ozonish, smoggish haze. The air over Missoula is nice and clean, though on the particular day I was there it was cloudy with scattered but refreshing rain showers, punctuated with an occasional boom of thunder; and one could readily make out that the town didn’t extend infinitely in all directions. One could still see the nearby mountains, such as Jumbo Mountain and Sentinel Mountain, standing tall and proudly. Accordingly, Missoula was quite finite in look and feel. Yet being there was somewhat like being nowhere in particular, as far as the urban quality of the city was concerned. The town itself had no particularly outstanding qualities. It had very much the same “geography of nowhere†that has rendered nearly everywhere else in American into bland homogeneity. Missoula has the usual ticky-tacky suburbs which feed automobiles into the congested thoroughfares criss-crossing the town. And on these streets are the same old faces of “big name†retail commerce which one finds everywhere else in America, the same old big chain hardware, grocery, pharmacy, and so forth stores, added to which are the smaller strip-malls and fast food drive-throughs. The south end of town has a large and nicely done mall, the Southgate Mall, which I strolled through during my visit, taking note that I would never have known where I was if I went only by what was inside the mall, for it looked mostly like any other nicely done mall that one could find anywhere else. The northern end of town, where I was staying in the C’mon Inn hotel (a nice spot which I recommend), had the distinct feel of crisp newness about it, as though the area had been built up during the last five years. One would suspect that Missoula had recently grown in a sudden, unanticipated spurt, which overwhelmed the city streets with more auto traffic they they were designed to handle. But where all the people came from, the source of the sudden growth, would be hard to say, for there are not really that many people in western Montana. Were they expatriated Californians?

The only notable thing about Missoula is the University of Montana on the east side of the town. I guess this would make Missoula a “college townâ€, having somewhat of an abundance of college age men and women. While my wife and I strolled through the Southgate Mall, it was apparent that about eighty percent of the employees in its retail stores must have been college students working part time while attending the university. Furthermore, it seemed that an equal percentage of the people strolling through the mall seemed to be college age as well. Other than that, the Southgate Mall was as mundane as they come, having very much the same retail stores that one can find in malls everywhere else in America. There was only one peculiar thing of note. In one of the gift shops, we discovered that bottles of dandelion wine were being sold, whose vintage was somewhere in a town called Alta, Montana, a town apparently so small that it doesn’t even appear on my map of Montana. Now I have heard of dandelion wine, from the title of a science-fiction story written years ago by Ray Bradbury, a story which I never have read. But to find that there is actually such a thing as dandelion wine was an interesting discovery and a rare opportunity which I couldn’t pass up. So we bought a bottle of dandelion wine to take back home. It cost about fifteen dollars. It also turned out that the lady who rang up our purchase had once made dandelion wine from scratch, and she explained to us the process of making it from what she could remember about it, though it had been a long time ago she said.

[to be continued]

FrontPage Online, the web site of an English language newspaper in Portugal, has a strange news story, dated May 22th, entitled “Hindus worship at Fátima altar.†Several past stories coming from this news source have alleged that the Fátima shrine is being converted into a “ecumenical†center for all the world’s religions. This story makes me wonder what is happening, and why is it happening, and who is really in charge at Fátima, especially since the current PP has a personal affinity for the Fátima shrine, since he considers his surviving the assassination attempt on his life as a fulfillment of the “Third Secret.†But if the story at FrontPage Online is true, I think I can safely predict at least two things: (1) It will be strangely under-reported in this country from independent sources, and (2) some Catholic are going to be seething angry about it.

Zowie! The irrepressible Hippo has struck again in his May 20th essay at FrontPage Magazine entitled “Abu Ghraib Worse Than 9/11?†Here’s an ending quote: This essay will certainly get the attention of many people in Catholic Blogdom. One thing is certain, unless there is a change of course at the Vatican, in the not too distant future the Patriarch of Rome will end up in the same position of dhimmitude that the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria find themselves today. And that’s the optimistic outcome.

As I have said earlier, “We have a shrill, self-serving, egotistical news media that in earlier times would have been considered as engaging in outright sedition and as having no intent other than reversing our successes, undermining our military operations, and being the propaganda mouthpiece of our enemies.†Well, it seems that the eloquent Wretchard has picked up on this thought and carried it forward. In fact, he has shown that it has long since dawned on our enemies to use our news media as a strategic weapon against us. Be sure to read his May 17th entry on The Belmont Club, entitled “News Coverage as a Weapon.â€

Addendum: Even the perspicacious Steven Den Beste has noticed that the media is apparently more interested in helping the enemy than anything else.

In his May 15th blog entry, the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson explains “How To Lose This War.†Things are in the balance now. The battle is raging here in America, and in America the war will be won or lost.

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson, in an article entitled “The Wages of Appeasement†on OpinionJournal.com, has trenchantly analyzed why it took so long for the United States to recognized the resurgency of Jihadistic Islamism, beginning all the way from the feckless policies of Jimmy Carter, through various presidential administrations, up to the disasterous event of September 11th, 2001.

His essay almost seems like the beginning of a book that would cover in greater detail the complete history of the origins of the War against Islamist Jihadism. However, there are some things that I think I would disagree with. First of all, Hanson seems to me much too optimistic about the ability of American society to rise to the present challenge. I am not so sanguine regarding this. We are simply not the same society as that of our grandparents, who fought in WWII, and who exhibited a far greater capacity for sacrifice and an ability to focus their determination on achieving a national objective. We also have had thirty and more years of a pervasive moral and spiritual dissolution which have corroded the metal of our society, making it increasingly fractured and brittle. We have a shrill, self-serving, egotistical news media that in earlier times would have been considered as engaging in outright sedition and as having no intent other than reversing our successes, undermining our military operations, and being the propaganda mouthpiece of our enemies. Our political parties sashay with each other like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, driven all too often by little beyond selfish ambition, and who act with such complete and reckless disregard for the general welfare of our country in the face of our vicious, external enemies, that it is difficult to distinguish their actions and words from the course of outright traitors. I deem that earlier generations would have labeled them as such if they were confronted with the same sort of threat as we are.

Secondly, Hanson seems to think that Bush has recognized sobermindedly that our policies with respect to the Islamic world has been a general failure. Hanson certainly has well outlined just what a failure those policies have been. But I think that Hanson is only partially correct in one regard. President Bush has recognized the danger of our previous course in part but not in whole. Why, as just one example, is the Saudi ambassador not sent home with a demand that he be replaced? Why is this unctuous smooth-talking peddler of influence from the world’s leading funder of international Jihadist Wahhabism allowed to operate and to continue to pull the many levers on influence he has acquired over the years in this country? Nothing has been done about it. In times past, he would have been considered agent of subversion. Why is it always business as usual in the State Department, whose bureaucracy seems intent on nothing other than undermining the President’s policies whenever possible? Yet nothing has been done about it. If Secretary of State Powell cannot get it in line with our national objectives, then Powell’s dismissal is in order, and someone should be found who can. If he has not yet been dismissed, then President Bush needs to explain to us why the Secretary should continue to have our confidence. Finally, why is the President not on television every night to remind us what the stakes are we have in this war? That if we do not prevail overseas, then Jihadism will certainly visit us here again, and with even more horrifying consequences. If his duties are too pressing, then at least send his capable Vice-president. It is clear to me that the current media brouhaha has been shaped into a weapon and that he is the one that is under dire attack by it. Why is he doing nothing to counter it? Sending our chiefest military men to grovel before Kennedy and his ilk is incomprehensible to me. Why throw more bait to the sharks? It’s not going to deter the sharks from wanting to eat you. It will only drive them into a frenzy. Instead, every night I hear nothing in the media echo chamber but the endless drumbeat about the malfeasance of a few, amplified beyond all limits so as to disparage and undermine the endeavors of so many. Yes, Bush has said he is disgusted by the actions of the few. Okay. Fine. Enough already. But what is he going to do to make sure we crush the enemy in Iraq? We are winning, aren’t we, Mr. President? Yes, it is good to know that you are basically a decent and kind-hearted man. But that of itself is not enough. You are commander-in-chief because you are to command men in battle. You are not therapist-in-chief for a nation of couch-potatoes.

Hanson seems to think that Bush’s presidency has caused this country to turn the corner, away from the foolish policies of the past. It has, but only to a degree, and I think that is only because Bush is in some measure exceptional and out of the norm. But Bush was very nearly not elected. And it is beginning to appear that his future election to a second term is not at all sure. And once Bush passes from the scene, I fear that our country will revert back to the useless and ineffectual policies of the past, and that the Jihadists will have achieved a tremendous victory and will see their suppositions about America as having been proved entirely correct. I think that everything that is happening right now is militating in that direction. President Kerry will certainly return us to those policies of the past. And then what? Depend on the United Nations for our security? What? If Iran or Syria are refining weapons grade Uranium, send in the French inspectors? Determine the course of our country on the basis of how popular we happen to be in the degenerate Leftist™ salons of Europe? And whatever we do, don’t offend the tender sensitivities of the Arab lumpen? Admonish the Israeli government not to respond harshly whenever its citizens are brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists? But give Arafat use of the Lincoln bedroom? If Kerry is serious about this, then truely he must be a complete nitwit. If really he is not, then he must be disingenuous merely to keep the support of the scoundrels in his own party who are even more vile than himself, in which case he is a two-faced ambitious liar. Perhaps he is both nitwit and liar. It is hard to tell sometimes. But either way, it is no comfort to me, because the American people have a habit of picking all too often the wrong passenger to fill an office. See what self-serving liars and lubricious knaves have been elected in the past. So for them to continue to be elected in the future would be completely unsurprising. For example, what is there about Ted Kennedy that the people of Massachusetts, to their own shame, continue to choose him to be their senator? He is a disgrace to them all.

Anyhow, I am feeling paricularly pessimistic right now. I feel that the balance on the knife edge of the battle has tilted in a terrible direction. Washington is beginning to stink once again like a pouncet-box of defeat and confusion.

Whether it’s a million or a billion muslims that now hate me, it doesn’t make much difference to me either way.

The only thing I am worrying about now is that sound of Iranian (and now maybe Syrian as well) centrifuges I keep hearing purring away in those underground factory floors, busily purifying more and more of precisely that isotope of Uranium that is fissile at just the right mass.

The other thing I think about is the half-life of Cesium-137.

So What are we going to do about it? What? Send in the French inspectors? Depend on the United Nations for our protection?

President Kerry would certainly make sure of that, wouldn’t he? But I guess that depends on which side of his mouth he is talking at the moment. If so, then I feel really protected.

The United Nations, that bastion of world peace and moral rectitude and safety for civilized people everywhere, has been doing a mighty fine job in Kosovo lately.

It should be noted that the irrepressible, controversial, brazen, outspoken and dynamic “Hippo†has published, at FrontPage Magazine, an interesting article entitled “The Ford Foundation’s Proxy War with the Roman Catholic Churchâ€

I would suggest to the Hippo that he has only touched the tip of the iceberg. Everytime I listen to that fountainhead of Leftist™ claptrap on the radio, NPR, I take notice of how many “foundations†and “charitable trusts†are sponsoring it all. I suspect that there is more than just the Ford Foundation at work here in trying to bring about the final goal of extirpating Xnty from out of the minds and souls of people in this country. So I would suggest, my dear irrepressible Hippo, that you dig even deeper and see if maybe you have found gold in those hills.

The always inimitable Victor Davis Hanson has some choice things to say in his essay “Our Weird Way of War—Our enemies know us only too well.†Here is a quote from his essay: It is very sad seeing the Bush presidency grovel before the unprincipled, lubricious, and ludicrously hypocritical Senator Kennedy. Why have things reached this point? Because, although President Bush didn’t underestimate the difficulty of establishing some sort of decent and civil government within Iraq, he gravely underestimated the strength and ferocity of the enemies here within America, whose lust for personal ambition and their desire to satiate their own colossal egos have no regard even for the safety or morale of our soldiers, or even the safety of us all, and who will wager even the destruction of their own country merely to gain some personal and fleeting advantage for themselves. What word can describe such people? I think there is only one word that fits: traitors. Only one epithet sticks: Benedict Arnolds.

Enough with the apologies! Let justice takes its steady and determined course. No more groveling either before Kennedy or the Arab lumpen. Otherwise, this administration will have defeat written all over it, and we may as well bring our soldier home now. But the shame will be only our own, because while they didn’t fail us in their duty on the battlefield, we instead failed them here at home.

Addendum: My neighbor blogger, Russ Lipton, the proprietor of Coffeehouse At End of Days, who resides over in Spokane, Washington—which is not too distant from me here in North Idaho—well, he also has some choice words about what is going on: I agree with Russ that there is more going on than meets the eye.

Addendum: Patrick Sweeney, New York Irishman and Extreme Catholic, has compactly and succinctly summarized what are the goals of our enemies, and what we are fighting against, in case everyone has forgotten: As I have said, let justice be done. We have the code of military justice, and courts-martial and tribunals. If laws were broken, may the guilty be punished and the innocent exonerated. But I cannot see how it is at all possible to fight this war to win if we make it our paramount concern to not offend the “pride†and sensitivities of the Arab lumpen.

The Southern Baptists are pondering whether it is such a good idea to send their children to public schools: As I was telling my friend Patrick Sweeney, “Yeah, it is kind of ironic that Satan now controls the public schools; they’ve become his special little laboratory for creating the new homo satanicus. But I’d want to take my kids out too before they are formed into little good-for-nothing drug addicts and prostitutes.â€

However, back way long ago, I graduated from a Baptist college, run by the Southern Baptists in California, and I can say that it was perhaps the most sexually immoral place I think I’ve ever been in—at least that is how it was back then in the dissolute Nixonian era of the early 1970s. So I would say that there is really no safe place left anywhere.

In his essay, on the National Review Online, “Lessons from Iraq—Can Arab democracy happen?†John Derbyshire ponders the future of multiculturalism in American, and he says that whether it survives may depend on if President Bush’s democratization project in Iraq succeeds or not. Be sure to read the whole article for context, but here is his ending quote: I think that, in his deliberations, John Derbyshire failed to mention the one critical fact, which must be advanced to the forefront if the overall picture is to make any sense: the fact is Islam. The arabs are overwhelmingly muslim. Is Islam itself the final “barrier†to arabs ever having genuinely democratic governments? I suspect that it might be. Although President Bush has said, more or less, that the desire for liberty exists in the hearts of all men, yet it also remains true that other competing things exist in their hearts as well. Only the future will tell which of those things will finally win.

I am currently reading Edmund Burke. Here is something interesting that he wrote back in 1790: Considering that England has “uncovered its nakedness†and has embraced thoroughly the hellish, post-modernist void of secularism, that its empty churches are now hardly better than historical curiosities and quaint landmarks, is it not little wonder that a resurgent, jihadist Islam should rush in to fill the void, both in England, and even more so in France? Though the churches are empty, the mosques are spreading and are crowded, and the message being preached in them is all too often one of violence. What Edmund Burke wrote in “On the Revolution in France†now seems strangely prophetic of what would happen two hundred years later, when Europe began to turned into Eurabia.