Greetings, Friends.

If you could get through to them, I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that Jesus did not found America. Probably, these are the same people who are Christian Zionists. It’s okay. I don’t blame them. Because religion is synonymous with politics in America, it’s easy to be confused about history and who did what.

The truth is, men founded America, and not expressly according to Christian values so much as by their inner values which were predicated on a belief in Deism, a system of belief that doesn’t think god has much interest in interfering with us.

Still, our founders also seem to have accepted some enlightened principals that were akin to the mystic principles of Christianity prior to its co-option by the Romans who, after 450 AD, finally said sod it, if we can’t beat the Christianity out of these numbskulls, we’ll package and export it as our own product, creating the first international corporate monopoly. Of course, if your product is crap, it won’t sell, but this thing had some staying power.

Still, it’s unwise to underestimate the power of packaging, and now we have Christianity that is not just a religion but an American lifestyle brand with adherents who like to signal just how saved they are.

There are the mandatory gold crosses the size of telephone poles hanging from the necks of blonde babes who know things, and men’s tattoos of ornate crosses that may or may not mean the bearer of said tattoo is a Nazi, or that he actually knows how to achieve anything useful. Ever the expansionists, the brand managers in this Christian house of fashion are recruiting new influencers: Jews for Jesus. It’s so retro. Their tag line is “Bring Jesus back!”

The original Christian Jews were not the brain child of these Christian Zionists. No, they were the ones who, back in the 1970s and 80’s, stood politely near where you were about to board your plane, asking if you would like a pamphlet about how Jews missed the point of what Jesus of Nazareth was trying to tell them. (And you thought only Hare Krishnas used to hang out at airports, tucking daisies in your lapel.)

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Greetings, Friends.

Hello to our new friends who subscribed recently.

I’ll explain those two sweet Japanese kids in a sec. First…

I took a little break to deal with chronic migraine that turned into one seemingly endless hellacious headache, and was looking forward to writing to you all over the weekend when, yes, another headache. I am still foggy now, but this is getting ridiculous so I am typing through the fog. Let’s hope there’s nothing for me to smack into with such low visibility.

Indeed, I know that I need to have some medical attention for these migraine malaises, but when I went to the doctor this past week, the clinician (a NP, I think), had kept me enclosed in the waiting room for an hour with no explanation so that when she finally did appear, I. was. hot. I mean furious. I know someone who works at the clinic, who indicated the woman had been doing paperwork that whole time. I am well aware that medicine in America is a business more and less a calling anymore, but there are rules to business, and stranding someone with out communicating to them what is going on is not best practice.

If you have had bad service at the doctor’s office, feel free to share your stories in the comments. I feel like I need friends to commiserate with.

Here’s what I promised you!

I signed off from docu-mental recently, with the intention of creating Small Town, Big Picture as my primary publication on Substack, with everything else folded in. I had misgivings, though. Have you ever read any Paul Theroux? I so enjoyed The Mosquito Coast when I read it in college. Also, Half Moon Street, the film adaptation of Doctor Slaughter, with Sigourney Weaver as a call girl (!) was unexpected.

But when, about ten years ago, I picked up his travelogue, Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, I was not just disappointed. I was irritated. Why is it that the late Jan Morris, an excellent observer of people around the globe, seems to have liked the book? When I read it, I could not get past the fact that Theroux, a New Englander who now lives in Hawaii (if Wikipedia is correct, and you never know…), objectified every Southerner he met which I found objectionable.

So, that was in my mind. I don't want to objectify my small town community, and even if I didn’t commit such a sin, I am sure I would be accused of it anyway. I mean, if Lake Woebegone had been a real place, do you think Keillor’s depictions of its residents would have been so successful? I doubt it.

Instead, we have a Field Guide to Americans, because I can confidently write under that banner knowing I run the risk that I will offend everyone, which ultimately means it will much offend no one sane, and it is a topic I know a lot about and enjoy thinking about…

Tabs

docu-mental

…However, docu-mental is still a tab because it is one of the oldest urls on substack, given that I was among the first to take up residence here in 2018, when I secured “documental”. And small towns are part of America, so I can still talk about the big picture there.

Gen X, etc

I mean, if I know anything it’s that I am getting older, and as a member of this generation, I have thoughts. I also am a parent to Gen Z, so thoughts about that, too. I know you all have your own views. We can discuss here.

Habitat

Where we live, the homes, the environment, the nests we make or ourselves, the places we end up and maybe stay.

Behavior & preoccupations

Well, this will be a free for all on how and why we think what we think, obsess over what we do, and how we spend our time.

Confessions

Mine, yours. Honestly, we are far more interesting than the weirdos celebrities, politicians, and billionaires, and their strange predilections that we read about in People Magazine or Vanity Fair. Just not as wealthy. (Although there still might be some of you private equity guys that used to read me still hanging about…)

Reading List

Self explanatory, but okay, a list of books or other written material I am reading or just read, and which I reckon you might enjoy, or be intrigued by, too.

Reviews

Once a critic, always a critic. A nice one, though. But still honest. (I have been a theater, opera, and classical music critic at various points in my career.)

Japanese-American dream

In between the stretches of extreme pain in my noggin, I have been feeling weary and even sad about our incursion into Iran specifically and about who we are as a nation generally. You know I don’t pay any attention to the corporate news because what about it is ever verifiably true, and what could we ever possibly do about any of it anyway? But a war is unmistakable, and we started it. Could we not parse the details, please? The US, because we are beholden to Israel and to energy, started this war.

It’s just the latest in a litany of actions that now describe our nation as a chaotic bully. I’m long past reckoning with all the dark truths about the propaganda we’ve all been raised, fed, and sustained on until we weren’t, either because we woke up to the truth, or because we never believed any of it in the first place. I know who we really have been in this world. I understand empire, and I have observed the truth of critical race theory in my society—no formal instruction about it necessary, and I know what the CIA really does.

That is to say, I have grieved and moved on from the lies. But I am still an American and I still am represented in this world by this class of possessed lunatics who decades go now surpassed being able to claim sanity by way of being the “better” political party. Which is why I tend to just keep to myself, live in my small town, and do things that seem to need to get done. What I don’t do is think much about what I have no control over.

But in that light, I felt such a lift of air beneath my wings this weekend when, as the publisher of a small news outlet in town, I attended an exchange program dinner held in honor of our high school guests from Hokuto City, Japan. That we have this exchange program has to do with the late Paul Rusch, a Kentucky missionary, who, after WWII, was on a mission to Japan and found that the people of Hokuto City were starving. He taught them American farming techniques and saw to the delivery to the city of several dairy cows. He taught the people there how to milk and care for them. He also somehow gave the people there a John Deere tractor so they could farm larger crops.

Years later, in the 1980’s, so goes the story I was told, the people of Hokuto City wanted to learn more about farming, and since they now believed the people of Kentucky to be angels from heaven, a delegation of Japanese people arrived in Louisville, asking for help. Eventually, someone in that pack of bewildered Louisvillians figured out that where they needed to go was our town, Berea, Kentucky. And that is where they went. They met with our city officials, and that meeting resulted in an exchange program that has not only endured, but has spread to become a countywide effort.

Each year, a delegation from one of the Japanese town’s two high schools visits a high school in Richmond, our county’s largest of two cities, in March. In October, the same happens with the other high school and ours here in Berea. And also twice a year, we have either an adult Kentucky delegation go to Hokuto City, or vice versa.

When the Japanese delegation comes to town, it’s a huge party. We have a Folk Center here, built in the style of a Danish gathering place (another nationality we have commerce with here), it’s where we vote and where we gather for square, contra, and other antique dances. It is also the place where we welcome the Japanese with a meal of fried chicken, of course, and then they teach us a Japanese dance or something about their culture. Last year, they taught us something closely resembling the Hoky Poky. I was laughing to see City leaders bounding up and down shaking their things.

Earlier this year when the adult delegation returned from Hokuto, they shared their photos of the prefecture’s annual fair: it is always done in the theme of Kentucky. Photos showed that on the arch above the fairground, with Mt. Fuji standing in the background, there hung the flag of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and all manner of Kentucky-themed things were featured in the fair’s booths. Surreal.

This dinner I mentioned was an American Thanksgiving. Those two boys were about to eat their first-ever turkey drum sticks. It was so good, let me tell you. I ate just like it was November, and loved every bite, especially the green bean casserole and banana pudding. The festivities took place in the library of a local school. Afterward, the students were asked to come to the podium where they were given a bag of gifts and asked to make a short speech, in English, telling what they enjoyed most about their visit, and what Kentuckians should be sure to do when in Japan. A lot of them want us to eat matcha candies, and to visit Shinto shrines.

Many of us when we were younger participated in foreign exchange programs. For me, it was with a town outside Paris, France. I went there, and Claude came to stay with us. But in the war, the US saved France, not bombed it like we did Japan. And not just bombed it, decimated it.

One of the girls who spoke at the Japanese event caught me off guard. She talked of how she had been watching American movies to help her learn about us and our language. She always wanted to attend an American high school prom, she said. And without any knowledge of that, the kids in our town had planned for their guests a “Japrom”, a high school prom for their Japanese visitors, complete with formal attire, just like in the movies. “Thank you for making my American dream come true,” said the young visitor in her impeccable English.

After what we did to her homeland. After how the lunatics are behaving now.

I teared up. We are not who our leaders represent us to be. We are made up of the elements around us, and by how the land has shaped us, and how we have formed ourselves around what we have been given and what we offer others. People see who we really are. And I know we see them. The rest is just noise.

Thanks for being here,

Whitney

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Thanks for being here. I had a crusher of a week, which included an uncanny moment where I wondered open-heartedly why I’ve never been a person who could accept a religious explanation for things. I mean, that would make my life so much easier.

It is tempting to contemplate a savior, or a God-given purpose, and actually I do contemplate the latter one a lot. But I have no answers, only the questions you’ve already been reading me ask over the past few weeks.

(If only I wrote fiction. Science-fiction. Instead, I am stuck offering theories that come from outer space.)

So, I thought about it, and figured the best thing to do would be to shower you with more questions. You are so welcome! Anyway, we’re done with the book here now. Thanks for your interest and feedback. Think good thoughts for me as I send it out.

Meanwhile, this is the prologue to the book. You get a preview! As I was reading through it all, I questioned myself: is all this even leading somewhere? The idea that we might be caged beasts never to be truly free that dements and torments me.

I have a core belief that we have never been free, don’t even have a clue what it actually means to be free, and are scared to even ask about it. And yet, if there is one thing in my life I haven’t ever stopped pursuing, it’s the idea that it is our actual nature to be free, to be creative, to be dynamic and not static.

For me, I guess that is the purpose I was given—to bang on the door to be let outside into the wide world of liberty.

Who gives out these things anyway?

Whitney

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Phew, November is here at last. October felt like a swell that never hit the shore, probably because it’s five weeks long. But now the wave has crashed and the tide is running out on the year. And yet, my To Do list is still so long. I am still hacking at the enormous amount of unread email I have.

I read through so. much. stuff. this weekend while clearing out said inbox, I kept thinking over and again, how grateful I am that you spend one of your most precious resources—time—reading my thoughts. You could be doing so many other things. But I guess not many people are writing books about alien consciousness. And yet…

The last installment of the overview from my current book proposal, which (to my surprised, but cautious delight, because I can offer that to the agent as proof this is salable) has been popular with readers, is here.

Pulling away from my own work and viewing it from a distant lens, is it fair to say it’s something like a mash up of Original Sin meets the life of Siddartha Gautama meets Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s silent black and white German film that, in my opinion, with its army of mechanical drones who would do as instructed, the martyrdom of the robot woman at the burning stake, the machine, the tension between the individual v. the Group Mind, it all warned of Hitler’s coming war and the military industrial complex to follow…? Well, that’s what I am going with.

The first time I saw Metropolis was in Le Chat Noir, on Wisconsin Ave., just after Fessenden Street and before Ellicott, near where DC becomes Maryland—about ten blocks away. Is Le Chat still there? I don’t know, but it was one of the eccentric little restaurants in about a three block radius in the Tenleytown area of Washington where certain dependable dishes became go-tos for me when I lived there. Le Chat’s steak frittes was my fave, and perhaps a Bourdeaux red to wash it down. And a silent film. The restaurant’s proprietor played them on the wall upstairs where I tended to sit.

I was transfixed by the space age beauty of the machine-man and the massive sky scrapers towering over the little mechanized people dance-moving like an animate machine, because that is what they were. It all looked familiar.

The movie is nearly 100 years old, and even without dialogue, it tells a contemporary tale of wealth subverting the ones who cannot see to the top of the massive structures built by the commoners, but ruled by the wealthy + a crazed scientist (tech brahs?).

It reminds me of the story of Buddha because one of the protagonists is a spoiled prince of industry whose complacency is rocked when a group of workers catch a glimpse of his opulent life, he takes a forbidden trip beyond the walls of his penthouse into the streets, where he sees an industrial accident and hallucinates that the resultant dead workers are being fed to a monster named Moloch. I don’t know much about Moloch other than he’s associated with the Old Testament and human sacrifice.

Okay, so now the truth is out about the who and the what of all this inequality, and a race to kill one or the other is afoot, a class war to end all wars. Based on the novel by Thea von Herbou, the theme that flashes on titles at various points is, “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart”.

I am describing the film here because, as I note in the final installment of this overview, I don’t think I am saying much that hasn’t been considered before. It’s just that it all engenders the question, Why are we on this merry-go-round and how do we get off? That’s the quandary I am focused on.

From a review I found online, the critic describes the end of the film as a “…peaceful redemption, for the workers have won out over the seductions of rogue technology…” which for us today, is a real threat (AI) that I don’t see us making peace with in our life time. Were humans to overcome this hell that has been unleashed upon us, and notably without our permission, then we would be the ones controlling it, not the invisible ones atop the tower. Which is why, unlike the creatives behind Metropolis, I don’t see the forgiveness and reconciliation happening between the overlords and the rest of us.

What I do see, as I lay out in the proposal, is essentially ignoring the ones in the way, which I think can be done more easily than we believe is possible. Or I am just utterly out of touch with reality.

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Thanks to those of you who wrote me with your thoughts on the first installment of the book proposal I have been working on and sharing with subscribers. All of it was encouragement, and one was a kindly written counterargument that humans are “just that way”. By the third, and final, installment of the proposal, I hope it is clear why I disagree. All thoughts I have appreciated all of your thoughtful feedback. Please keep it coming as you see fit.

I’ve spoken with an agent who has invited me to send her my proposal, but before I do, I want to start shopping the manuscript, I would like to be sure that even if my theory is bonkers, it at least holds together. So, thank you for being willing to read and respond. All of you responded privately, which was interesting, and I suppose, gracious since it was one-to-one feedback, so thanks.

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Well, I promised this to you a while ago, and here it is. For you, my hardcore, stick-with-me docu-mental members. This is a very vulnerable moment in the process of writing this book, because it’s a sci-fi proposition that I suggest could very well be real. Here’s part one of the book proposal for The Earth is My Bitch: An Effective Guide for the Subjugation and Enslavement of Humanity*.

(*not)

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I think I have finally caught up with myself now. It’s been nearly a week since the Spoonbread Festival ended (it wasn’t over until 5pm), and I woke up this morning feeling fairly rested, a feeling I haven’t had for weeks.

This was the first time I ever purchased a booth at any kind of festival such as the one here, the biggest one of a year of festivals, in my festival town. In fact, signs for the October festival are already strung across the main drag through town.

For my booth, I had four helium-filled neon green and pink mylar, star-shaped balloons fluttering beside my table. Behind me hung a neon green and pink banner telling everyone what kind of journalism The Edge (Reporting from the edge of Appalachia in Berea, Kentucky) does, and on the table next to three clipboards, each with a pen and a stack of surveys beneath the clip, was a massive jack o’lantern-themed bucket of various chocolates and assorted candy with which to reward people who completed the surveys I’d made to gather information on what news means to them.

There were more than 20,000 people who came to the festival, if the tallies are to be believed, since admission is always free to Spoonbread, and no ticket sales reveal the total number of folks who passed the gates. Thankfully, I did not talk to all of these people, as it turned out.

More likely, some of my board members and I, probably spoke to around a thousand folks, all told. Of that, we managed to convince about 10 percent of them to fill out the surveys, and I shall now keep what I have learned from them in mind as I sally forth in a world that hates reporters.

It was early on Sunday that a man wearing suspenders over his t-shirt to hold up his dungarees, slowed his pace as he read my sign and contemplated what I offer. He was nearly past the booth, and still walking when he called out to me over his shoulder, his lips caved slightly inward, indicating he has no top teeth: He said, You’re gonna get fired from that paper. I called back, I’m the boss. I ain’t firing me. He replied, now walking backwards so as to make progress while putting me in my place: You’re gonna git shut down. By who? I asked. Trump’s coming for you, he said, then turned to face the direction he was headed, and so, ended our cozy repartée.

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