Tissaw & Erica announce engagement!

The Day that Earl came around

One perfectly sunny day, the Sun Valley workers came home to a rotting sea of smashed wood and brick. Their humble dorms were completely turned to smithereens and nobody knew what was going on.

However, there was a huge white tent standing across the street.

Earl hit a button on his remote control and Wally, dressed in a green Emerald Wizard costume, thrust open the curtain.

“Boy Howdy!” Shouted the crowd in unison.

Yepper, said Wally, This cheer’s your new home.

It was better than Googleplex.

Each tenant now had a full house and was going to be paid to housesit it.

Wally tugged on a cable, which revealed mini-gondolas coming out from each house to intersect with the main Baldy Gondola.

Earl himself drove by in a Sinclair tanker and tooted the horn.

Everybody cheered Earl, even louder than he had been imagining their cheers, before his transmogrification of good will towards the dispossessed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Act two:

The electricity flickered out at Allen & Company. This reduced Sergey Brin and Rupert Murdoch to a game of marbles.

Stakes were raised to a million bucks a shot. And Rupert was about to ice the game.

Suddenly, someone thought to test Rupert’s marbles for magnetism and he tested positive.

This was a worse sin then testing positive for steroids at the Tour De France.

Rupert stood before the intimidating judge, and was handed down his sentence.

He was given the choice of manning the Gondola for the newly goldenized dorm workers or dispensing spit-chew canisters at Sun Valley Drug.

Rupert chose The Drug Store, thinking he could sneak-peak a gander at Paris Hilton in one of his magazines in between sandwiches.

The judge saw right through this and put Rupert on triple secret probation, where he stands as an untoppled statue today.

Dedicated to Harold Smith

Headline: Invest upstairs

Jim Banholzer

(2006)

An investment in Knowledge pays the best interest -Ben Franklin – Poor Richard’s Almanack

Chugging along in traffic behind grand-mamma’s jalopy, I started grumbling amidst the slow moving merger. Then, I caught myself, nailed between a carpenter truck and a van stuffed with gee-gaws to increase the dog’s elevation. Teetering in this see-saw I considered most of us are cogwheels, caught in ways, contributing to this valleys vast machine.

Prying open the gorge so that more will thrive here

My colleagues and I fine-tune sparkly guides into the wee hours, and then diaphanously dish them into translucent trays about town. By what right do we have to complain about traffic? We're letting the secret out, inviting international readers hovering in cyberspace and skies above, to surf convincing infowaves, about how dang tootin’ swell, it is here, with a side angle of buy and sell.

Prying out layers of seldom scene stories. Listing fascinating reasons to thrive here -all along the watchtower calendar brimming full of everlasting gob-stopping events. What grounds do I have to complain about timmering traffic when I’m winking that Idaho trails are confirmingly super? None it seems. It’s as if I’m driving ten passenger buses myself.

One winter, I delivered some firewood to the house of a man rich on paper. He needed ten times more wood than I. Did he expect that he would become that much colder than I? “Hi, I’m Bob” he said, “I own seventeen properties in the same breath.” Hello there Bob and weave this thought:

Have you ever considered that we teetering bulbs of dread and dream are merely guardians of these fine estates and acreage? That may have not actually been mentioned in the disclaimer ad. We are mere caretakers, short temporal renters, trying to polish up the odds of earning the next pearly powerball leveled ticket, tenderly set through standards over the blessed grounds we garden. Bob, when you were fencing off undesirables did you ever put your ear to the earth to catch a different vibe? With your head laying down there and the fungi tugging your curled hair, you might glance up at the light and notice rainbows crystallizing toward you through the eternal waterfall. A tracking system more advanced and with better vibrations than the NSA.

A friend had a heated discussion with his sister about Real Estate. She sells spinning beachfront seashells. Unlike a mouse, she shreiked, “Mike, you really oughter to invest in a house.” He was going for his doctorate and said, “What’s more important than investing in my head? What’s more vital to the future?” Outstanding point I thought.

Why is it that no one asks, "When is the new Poetry guide going to hit the stands, Jim?" A few requests like that and then we’ll really know that this valley has reached the next level of enlightenment. All I can say for now is that we’re working on this Buzz. We’ll think big while starting small. Maybe Ferlinghetti will wink and share that secret handshake with me, after all.

Poet living in ghetto seeks to ascend out of current situation. Helpful and interested parties need apply.

An ad for that should be listed fast under “Home Improvement”. Seems like some of us put thousands $ fixing up our homes, but less sense nailed into improving our interior beings. The next wave of words streaming out of some people’s mouths is predictably magnetized with negative polarities.

But then I discover when fixating on that,

Often I’ll find that I’m wrong once again,

For soon when I start thinking less of a friend,

I’m blown around by some great breath of change

Yes, that’s the story of my life, the second I think I’ve come to a solid conclusion, more parameters abound, turning me hard into a listener of ground. But no matter how tight you press your ear down, some things are never heard again. Today’s thoughts are the oldest yet. Parents transmogifying into grandparents are sated, finally seeing we readily whooped snappers tasting varied sunshine colors they hobbled through, before attaining golden ages of honored fiery cups, which we gaze at in ancestral skies.

They did the best they could,

With the tools they had,

Why did I always mouth off bad?

Cam Dagget that’s sad!

Quite tight, we used to blindfold the Professor and spin him brightly about the library in his lengthy Copernicus costume. We would direct his sightless hand to one of two thousand books. Nine times out of ten, he would know the books

name by feel and without opening a page tell us a story from within it. His natural selection gifts were on par with those of athletic librarians.

There never was an asterisk below,

The sanctified guide book,

Showing whose land this future was once,

Now for sale, which we took

Dog-eared Pamphlets tossed on a trail of tears

Title assurances, to not fear but be fair,

You’re fenced in proper by your silver gold hair,

TV Goblets wobble on edge from GPS air

Cheerily pick some fruit from real estate basket,

Ceremoniously move in with christening task set,

Stock market experts if they really could foresee,

Wouldn’t waste time telling you what’s free.

Link: Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Poetry as News

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Future Friedman: A place for healing war wounds?

By Jim Banholzer
For The Wood River Journal

Ancient warriors were given special care upon returning from battles. They were brought into spas at outskirts of cities and slowly cooled down with extraordinary nurturing concern for long spells until it was determined that it was safe for them to return into communities-unlike modern times when soldiers more often get dumped straight back onto the streets with little or no benefits. Nowadays, many of our Country's Veterans are homeless or incarcerated at record levels without support, while perpetually mired in post-traumatic crises. As Dennis Kucinich put it, “Homelessness and poverty are weapons of mass destruction.”

Men develop with different levels of mettle, but sanity has limitation points for even the bravest of soldiers. “Soldiers Heart” affected many Civil War Veterans (and their families). In later wars, this became “Shell Shock” then “Battle Fatigue.” Now “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” is the expression. During World War II Gen. George S. Patton was nearly court-martialed after slapping a hospital patient whose conscience was suffering from “Soldiers Heart”, thinking that he was just a coward.

A historically safe place, which soldiers used to convalesce, both physically and psychologically was the Sun Valley Lodge. Many World War II soldiers, who rehabilitated there in its fresh air, became attached to this area -and for good reasons. Some remain as helpful contributors within our community to this day.

What safer place and further away from war (Mountain Home Air Force Base notwithstanding) could there be for a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center, then the good earth on where Friedman airport currently sits? It's been reported that if the Friedman family recognizes a suitably significant cause, that they will consider donating this prime Hailey Real Estate for that concern -if the airport relocates, whereby the site reverts to the family.

I believe it's not too early for our community leaders to begin contemplating constructive ideas about what they might create from this once-in-a-lifetime possibility.

We could transform this airport acreage into something for truly banking on; besides generous monetary donations from valley benefactors to help establish a healing foundation center, this could also be a prime opportunity for us to show how rich we are in spirit, by personally welcoming these recuperating warriors back into our community. As part of their continuing recovery, we could thank our Veterans for their Herculean efforts by offering desirable jobs-some perhaps related with support services for the healing center.

Moreover, we could construct hundreds of affordable-housing units on the land, along with potential worker-retraining facilities for displaced warriors to re-attach to our community by becoming useful contributors. Some of the recovered will have rejuvenated with a broader sense of understanding and develop the desire to become healing practitioners themselves. A “Walter Reed West” center would create bountiful meaningful jobs here. Already established organizations such as Sun Valley Adaptive Sports and The Advocates could tie in well with such a “permanent wellness festival”. The College of Southern Idaho could even expand its nursing center here. Perhaps an owner of one of the locally underutilized hot springs could pipe in some of their healing waters into such a splendiferous spa with government stepping in to help fund construction logistics of the donation.

The relocated airport could even benefit, becoming a busy transport center for the steady streams of patients, visitors, hospital personnel and supplies.

Posttraumatic stress disorder therapies could feature recently advanced Somatic Experiencing, MDMA and Propranolol treatments, as well as other well-proven curative methods-both ancient and newly developed. Even if we are somehow fortunate enough to be without war as the airport shift occurs, Doctors are now seeing that PTSD is a condition that is a normal part of life, which often actually strengthens us. How many times for instance, have you heard someone say about an adverse situation, “I wish it hadn't happened, but I'm a stronger person for it?” A trauma-stren transformation clinic could assist and focus on numerous variables of this.

Let us extend our common senses with high-tech hospital wings, blooming with curative physicians.

You priests and holy leaders who keep so mum about the wars, now are the times to call for fresh miracles. Let us forcefully implore that our Pentagon redirect its forces into tools that enable the blind to again see, the deaf to hear and the lame to walk. Let us ask for a peaceful turnover of these suppressed cutting-edge technologies, so we may transform our energies to relieve this terrifying violence, which only perpetuates further violence. Let our common senses soften no more. Those in wheelchair pews ascend over foxy TV skies. Demand that your tax barrels of cash handed to war profiteers is flip-flopped to trickle down just amounts of funds to help our globe spin a little truer, for battle amputees, brain-injured and psychologically traumatized.

Let us hope that our soldiers' hearts heal well enough in this Idaho land to walk again peacefully on the world we worship, and that through another miracle, diplomacy prevails rather than our wrongly “war shipping” of the good earth, with land mines, undepleted uranium and a general malaise to eliminate those who we do not understand.

Movers and shakers heed this clarion call. Come together with equally powerful ideas for the potentially soon to be changed vast ground where Friedman Airport now abounds. It would be nice to have feasibility studies set up in advance to see what else might be achievable for improving our community in positive ways, if the Friedman family continues to stand by this intention.

With the sunny climate, fresh air and clean water inherent to this valley, enhanced by the numerous enlightened compassionate people who flourish here, our community could set a new standard for positive rehabilitation by improving on some of the shortcomings now plaguing Walter Reed Veteran's hospital and hand our modern warriors the deserved special treatment, most have earned.

I ask that our community leaders strongly consider holding a feasibility study, in the near future, to see if this idea or similar ones hold enough water to transform soldier's widow tears into flowing fountains fronting a first class “Friedman Memorial Trauma-Stren Conversion Center.”

This story posted: http://www.woodriverjournal.com/features/sockdolagers/sockdolagers.txt
Tuesday, July 10, 2007 5:48 PM MDT

Simply Spiraling:
http://privateidahoconversationleague.blogspot.com/2007/06/simply-spiraling.html

New Post on Idaho Conversation League blogspot:
http://privateidahoconversationleague.blogspot.com/2007/07/kindly-recompensating-impossible-man.html

True Insanity

The forces that put a plug in John Lennon are so evil

That you don’t even want to know about it

It’s like examining poop or filthy war cadavers or true insanity

Sometimes it’s healthiest to leave radiating Owl medicine beakers mostly untouched

As I spoke these unexpected dirt words in a bold voice

At our writing club forum, within the church a shadow

Like form that had been eavesdropping on our group from an adjacent quarter

Quickly rose and whooshed over to the furthest corner of the tiny chapel

Actually knocking over a floral vase with a revealing crash in its hasty retreat

From within the vase spilled out a wet copy of that rare edition comic book

Which held the puzzle key to all Mercury Rising matters

This was the same one that Science fiction writer Phillip Dick always yearned for in his reoccurring poverty dreams

An unfunny back page of the colored comic unfolded to reveal a paradigm

Shift so intense that our assemblage felt as though we were

Under a weird and wonderful magnetic force

We could feel it in our cheeks, our frontal lobes churned like soft liquidey whirling gears

We started remarking to each other that our facial colours were intensifying

In sprays and swirls of dark pinkish signatures

Icy hot faces rapidly reddened

This was definitely a new experience

Two of our group were driven to hold mirrors a league apart

And a member with spirited vision

Glimpsed into the next dimension for a nanohour

As Pluto anchored forward, like a skittering gnat -progressing one inch

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The shadow returned to its bottle as we adjourned

I jumped in the truck and

Dialed the radio in on some crystal blue persuasion

And listened for hours until Paul Simon cried

One more time about December 8, 1980

Then I drove home and scribbled out on the hidden side of a tiny fortune cookie paper:

Did Hinckley think he was somehow paying back society in some sick way for the ill deed cast upon John Lennon? Then for the rest of evening I picked through meaningless anagrams for “Mark David Chapman.”

http://nwfolk.com/songlists/john_lennon.html

Belief

I didn’t think that I would be able to write about ‘belief’ and rather thought I would find some convoluted way to write about how recent army discharge

Doug Clement approached me in our school hallway and snaked me hard in the chest with his two strongest fingers. That story would have been called Snakes in a Hallway.

But then I remembered, right after the tragedy back in ’82, I was applying for a job as a minimum wage rock & roll janitor at a church in the old neighborhood, where we used to watch Mayberry R.F.D. on live T.V.

I waltzed five minutes late into the interview as the Church deacon gazed at me to see if I was the right man. He spoke over an open copy of a tomeish Bible in the sanctuary room, as we reviewed my qualifications:

1. Ever done time? Nope

2. Can you sweep? Yessir, Like Elmore James!

3. Do you believe in Godspeed? I don’t rightly know. No – I guess not. Not right now.

I had been rebelling against whatever was out there at that point. And guess what, I didn’t get the job. Certainly the deacon must have believed that he made the right decision, when he saw me walking away from the Biblical debriefing room, with a copy of Huck Finn sticking out my back pocket, only slightly obscuring beneath some Catcher in the Rye.

Later on, I snuck up behind Doug Clement in Darkbarlington Hall and applied a sneaky snake to his chest, until he exclaimed, “Ow, my stars!” Then I told him this story.

“A Sense of Place” writing prompt from Tony Evans’s writing class -Summer Solstice 2007

One Rich Pilgrimage over Dollarhide Summit

It’s the perfect distance from town. A destination place to go and see the forest for the trees. I’m just sitting here watching the trees breeze by; I really love to watch them turn. The cell phone sinks around where that Cottonwood is that must be on plant steroids or something. Tony himself wrote about it, saying how a beaver probably chomped on it for practice –to keep its teeth up to snuff.

First June here, I got the bug to get up thar. ‘Straight to the top’ –as Tom Waits sang some drunken Frank Sinatra. Rolled up a bend with radio id on full blast and found hundreds of trees had brokeback down the avalanche. Shoot. Never made it up there that first year.

But made it up most years since.

Last summer went camping in Dollarhide’s sparse foothills. I didn’t even have to drive, just rode shotgun daydreaming up peace-frogs, R.C. Colas and moonpies - stuff like Jim Morrison used to, as Steve piloted the windy warshboard road to our pinnacle.

The sign said altitude 8715. Fifteen feet higher than Galena Summit. Only a foul shot taller, but the road stays closed in foul territory til June -Junebug. Every summer some eccentric cousin gets Spring fever, tries to shake off their winter Brrrrhs, drives up there and high- grounds in the northside path snow. Best to pack a spare spare and that full ambulance of stuff those cowboys always require for their wild ways.

There’s an old mining claim up there, where somebody probably went broke, just like me, destined for poverty, sending a short sad morse code back to ma. Yet strangely some days, things simple and nice, simply happen, And we’ll notice them if we meditate close enough; a kind word, a genuine smile, a connected eye contact enough so much that I begin to feel like the richest man in Sun Valley now and again.

I find myself daydreaming about Dollarhide Summit for hours sometimes. More time invested daydreaming than I have actually spent there in reality.

The cell phone works very sketchily from the top. Etch-a-sketch Morris code. May have to make several calls to get yr mssg across. This July One I was going to call her. The girl I had been seeing. I looked up at the sky and the sign there said, it was not a good time. Storm clouds were gathering too. The year was perfectly split in two.

Didn’t call her back, til we returned from our camp trip. Then called four times, never heard back. I guess we were playing softball that summer. Four strikes and you’re out. Later when I ran into her, she mentioned that her investment house down by the Fairfield crossroads had been lightning struck that stormy first of July. Baked half her house. No ‘surance either. I said, “You never told me your house was struck by lightning."

That day July 1, kept crawling in my craw. I felt there was something significant there, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Weeks later, I discovered my Grandmother’s recent passing notice. I was reminded that my Grandfather had passed from this earth on July 1, in Pennsylvania, exactly twenty-seven years before.

~ ~ ~

Last week, I went to a birthday party for Maddie Mackenzie. You may have seen him traipsing around town with the large toy dog he carries and talks with. Even though he has Down’s syndrome, he is a savant level curly impersonator. Soitenly Idaho’s greatest Stooge impersonator. In some ways, Matthew and I are much alike with our level balancing challenges. Mathew was turning 27. For a gift, I gave him three stooges CDs –mostly with Curly’s imbedded -naturally.

He responded by saying, "I really love you, Jimmy" as I placed my arm around his shoulder in the living room, right before the special occasion dinner.

After we expressed our thankfulness, for this opportunity for us all to congregate, we partook of Mary's sumptious servings. Soon the occasion formed into a ceremonious opportunity for us to hand Maddie his remaining gifts.

Maddie’s brother Joe, gave him a radio controlled Dukes of Hazard Racecar. It makes perfect horse sense that someone made a kind remark about Daisy, saying he wished she could have popped out of the cake for the party. On the package of the racecar, it was splashed in large lettering 27 MHZ. Seeing this made my heart run like the General Lee. I reminded everybody that it was Maddie’s 27^th birthday. As they inserted the dozen batteries, and honked General Lee’s horn, I wondered if on some level the 27-splashed number subliminally attracted Maddie’s brother into buying the toy.

After all “Real Job in MHZ” is an anagram for my name, “Jim Banholzer”

Later, I found out that as I got to the top of this Smoky Mountain, that there is an even higher hill .

to conquer

Isn’t there always?

Tim Quietly Conquers Idaho

Tim Quietly Conquers Idaho

Reminisces of an amazing bicycling savant

In 1998, Tim visited me here in Idaho to triumph over some great mountains. This was the same summer that Roger Maris’s fabled home run record was finally surpassed. Days after work, friends begin asking; “How many homers did Sosa and McGwire slug out over the fence, and what high mountain peak or ultra-marathon feat did Tim accomplish today?”

This was Tim’s third visit to Idaho. We had been close friends since 1969, when in fourth grade we used to construct elaborate mazes for each other in Mrs. Adams’s class. Tim was probably the quietest boy there. We were both shy on our outsides and would regressively mirror our quietude into each other, with these evermore-challenging paper traps -trying so hard to stump one another. Though we were mostly silent boys, our constant Tom-Sawyer-foolery, did not make us the apples of Mrs. Adam’s eye. When I wrote about this before, in a memoir called “Solid Oak View Memories”, which ended up published on our alumni website, Tim strongly defended himself, by saying that other children back then also partook of the Huck-Finn-Foolery and were constructing elaborate mazes during instructional periods.

It only occurred to me later, that Tim was defending himself, because, now in his forties, he still lived with his mother and that when she got wind of this newest paper trap, that she might still say, “Tim what was it that you and Jim meant to do by constructing small baffling mazes in class?” Especially now that Tim had struggled at Virginia Tech, withdrawing from school there the year after his fathers agonizing defeat by cancer.

Upon Tim’s non-victorious return from college, it was easy to see the burden manifest in his pinkish face -and now with his dad not around for emotional and financial support. Out of our high school group, Tim and I were the only stragglers left, apparently destined to scrabble through life with a series of underpaid janitorial and maintenance man jobs.

And I with my own far-fetched emotional trauma recovery plan from Plutonian, Idaho.

Perhaps we became closer friends through default. Nonetheless, our friendship grew and besides often working together, we begin training for elaborate athletic events. Together we would construct intricate bike routes traveling through the hilly labyrinths of Virginia suburbia, often bicycling in fifty-mile neighborhood loops all the way down to George Washington’s Home at Mount Vernon. Tim would usually draft me, letting the pull of my wind drag him along, as back then I was the stronger rider, probably from all those basketball years.

When I first moved to Idaho, It was another big blow to Tim as he had two wonderful sisters, but no brother and now I- his brother from another mother was essentially gone. When he came out here, we essentially jumped back to where we had left off with our friendship. Allowing little time for altitude adjustment Tim started pumping up hills his first week out here. Evidently, after I left Virginia, the bicycling hobby we enjoyed together grew into an all-consuming passion for Tim. He would take weekend trips; in one-day ride all the way from Boston to Rhode Island, and back alongside busy highways –unless of course for his magical mystery tour, he could predetermine some elaborate backdoor blue-jay-way labyrinth for doodling through.

He looked good too. Healthier than I had ever seen him. This bicycling Zen of his had even allowed him to break whatever barrier it was that was locking in his shyness and people discovered that once you scratched the surface with Tim that he was filled with unlimited intelligence and richly humorous insights.

Compared to conditions back east, chugging up the 44 miles to Galena Summit from Hailey was a cakewalk for Tim, with its elements of good road surface, steady grade and sparse traffic.

The second week of his trip, he decided to go for broke and do the fabled Dollarhide Summit loop on an old mountain bike. Exactly, what some people might consider ninety-eight miles of agony was something Tim embraced. The bike he rode didn’t even have shocks. He started out from Hailey around ten. I was hoisting rocks with Gene Olson for some chimneys in Lane Ranch and told Tim that I would drive out Warm Springs around seven –until I could find him.

Tim had gone straight out Croy Canyon, over Richardson Summit and that back ways towards Fairfield. Unfamiliar with the area, he became temporarily bewildered, but soon figured out the answer to the maze with his oversized map. He took the correct turn at that inviting sign below Soldier that says “Ketchum 55 miles”.

A sign that every spring some Fairfield cowboy gets his dander up and tries to romanticizingly wahoo over the pass; only to get quagmired in mud, and then has to wander unprepared, back to town, with blister boots and tail between legs. Then call Dick York and with a ticked off gaze, ride shotgun in the retrieval tow truck never establishing eye contact with the fellow travelors in the area, who all know he’s the durn fool that tipped it this year.

Tim pedaled steadily. He startled an occasional fox or superquiet rabbit into the sagebrush. While chugging up that long rocky dirt grade, he passed some sparse campers. Being the middle of the week and not yet hunting season, there weren’t many folks around yet. He noticed the ninety-foot tall Indian face chiseled in stone by mother nature, which guards over one of Idaho’s perpetually best hot springs, but even though nobody was soaking today he didn’t take time to temporarily sooth his legs.

Tim had bigger fish to fry than what Warswick Hot Springs could provide.

The steeper grade leading to Dollarhide summit remained to rise over as Tim continued pumping and grinding furiously to defeat everything that stood in his path. As he weighed up the hill, he wrestled with bumpy ‘warshboards’ and rocks that could throw you, which twinged his arms to sleep with their constant pounding. Dust filled the chain rings, but the little two hundred-dollar bike held up amazingly with only one flat.

Tim flew like Steve Miller's eagle past Carrietown, a ghost town I had been haunted by enough to write about.

He made it to the summit around 5:30. To loosen up he took a few victory hops. Later on, I took a photograph of him standing there with his bike and believe that this depiction deserves placement on a pedestal next to a shimmering waterfall birdbath.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At 7:30 I came around Frenchman’s bend, discovering Tim halfway between there and Rook’s Creek. His arms were sore, he was a mite dusty and the headlamp burned out from the rattling bumps. But he was in high spirits. I duct taped a fresh flashlight to his handlebars and insisted -nay forced him to sip a cool Budweiser for 'loosening up'. He started to speak about the trip and some of its tedium, but insisted that he would try to complete the full loop. I went back to Baldy View Apts., where in darkness, around ten o’clock -exactly twelve hours after he had begun, Tim, in his oft-silent manner, returned victoriously from his mighty Herculean effort.