Pinto Bean Politics!

When I was growing up in a country store on Beaver Creek in Knott County Kentucky, we sold pinto beans by the pound, weighed from a galvanized barrel that sat under the main counter in the store. We bought the beans in 100 pound bags, dumped them in the barrel which also held a pretty nice blackjack carved from a piece of wood to a shape just like a miniature baseball bat, about a foot long with a nice handgrip and about a 3-4 inch circumference on the head which was drilled to about three inches down the handle to include a nice round cylinder of lead. To my knowledge the blackjack was never used in the long period my parents operated the store. Our customers came in, usually talked small talk for a short while, bought whatever they needed, maybe even a pound or two of pinto beans, and left without ever needing to be knocked out with the blackjack in the bean barrel. I no longer own that blackjack but in today's world of the most corrupt politics in the history of the nation, and the worst living example of a human being working on a daily basis from the White House to destroy the entire nation and our democracy, we sure need a good metaphorical political blackjack. On a recent check of the price of pinto beans, I found that WalMart is charging $14.94 for a 20 pound bag of pinto beans. That boils down to about 74.7cents a pound for bulk pinto beans. WalMart is now selling the one pound bag of pinto beans for a dollar. When I was often helping my parents behind the bean barrel, I don't think we ever charged more than 10cents a pound and we were making a decent profit in those days. The point to this focus on pinto beans is important because there are millions of Americans of all stripes and cultures who are eating pinto beans on a daily basis. Several different cultures are highly dependent on pinto beans as a staple source of protein. Most people of moderate to poor means in the American south depend on pinto beans as a major portion of their diet. That includes both Caucasian and African American citizens of the deep south. Most members of the various Hispanic cultures in America are also largely dependent on pinto beans. Frijoles, in many forms, are a common sight on Hispanic dinner tables. Nearly every person who ever grew up in Central and Southern Appalachia grew up, in large part, on pinto beans. We even had pinto beans once a week in the high school lunch room at Knott County High School at Pippa Passes, Kentucky, when I was a student there. Pinto beans may well be the answer to help us solve our ongoing attempted tyranny by TRAITOR Trump and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party.

One of my favorite memories about pinto beans goes back to about 1992 when I was working for a short while, between human services jobs, at a horse farm in Central Kentucky. I was salesprepping several brood mares which were headed toward a November Breeding Stock Sale at Keeneland. The mares were actuallly owned by a man who was contracting for the sales prepping with the owner of a farm I was working on at the time. I was sent to the owner's farm to do the work. One day, the owner who was born and raised in Quito Ecuador, a Mexican immigrant blacksmith, and I were standing in front of a barn in a conversation and found ourselves talking about how we had grown up in three very different locations and cultures. We suddenly discovered that all three of us had grown up eating pinto beans, one in Mexico, one in Ecuador, and one in Eastern Kentucky. It was an educational moment for me for sure. What is the point to all this and politics? What the Democratic party needs to do to win all the next upcoming elections in this country is to locate, educate, register, and guarantee the turnout to vote of the great majority of the pinto bean cultures in America. If we do that we will be back in control of our country, our Democracy, and our future. We will no longer be facing the horrible situation in which we finid ourselves today. We can begin the next 25 to 50 years of necessary work in order to save our country after all the political, moral, and ethical damage which has been done over the last ten years by TRAITOR Trump and the other TRAITORS who facilitate most of his crimes against the government, the country, the world, and the planet. The answer is all about pinto beans.

"Aylesford Place: The Second Year" by Steve Demaree

On July 8, 2025, I wrote a blog post about the first book in this series by Steve Demaree, "Pink Flamingoed". My wife and I just finished book two in the series, "Aylesford Place: The Second Year". These books are self-published by Steve Demaree and he sells them on most of the available internet book sellers including Amazon. Aylesford Place is a mythical neighborhood on a single street in a town somewhere in Central Kentucky. The real Aylesford Place is located just north and east of the University of Kentucky campus right off Euclid Avenue. Physically, the mythical street in the books bears little resemblance to the real Aylesford Place. The neighborhood in the book is peopled by a collection of eight or ten different households ranging in age from late twenties (perhaps) to somewhere near the late seventies or eighties. Most of the characters have lived on Aylesford Place most, if not all, of their lives. However, the characters whom I consider to be the primary protagonists of the book are a young couple, Brad Forester and Amy Carmichael, a male mystery author and his female photographer girlfriend, who are married by the end of this book. Their best friends are Allison Davenport and her boyfriend Chuck Madden who are also married by the end of the book. As this novel begins, Chuck lives elsewhere in the mythical town and Allison owns her own home on Aylesford Place. After the wedding, they are both residents of Aylesford Place. Brad and Amy, after their marriage, decide to remodel the two adjoining Aylesford Place homes in which they were already living to make a connector between the two and turn Brad's house into a Bed and Breakfast. Allison is in a wheelchair and runs some kind of never quite fully described business from her home. Her inclusion as a character in the novel, actually a major character, is the best part of the book for me since my wife Candice has been in a wheelchair for almost thirty years. I commend Steve Demaree for creating this character and dealing with her appropriately. Few novelists in today's world have the strengthy of character to create such a character in their books. I suspect that Steve Demaree has, or has had, someone in his life in a wheelchair. He has Allison take part in the life of the neighborhood just as fully and functionally as any other character. She tackles life head on and usually wins. Nothing seriously dangerous of deadly ever happens on Aylesford Place. Everyone in the novel is generally always happy. They might have brief periods of being less than content but the causes are never earth shattering and they always come to a happy ending. For me, two of the major aspects of good fiction writing are the creation of an element known as Conflict and the Resolution of Conflict. Not much of that happens in Steve Demaree's books. No one ever develops cancer, hepatitis, insanity, or much more than an occasional headache or hangnail. The books lack sufficient of the reality of life to be the kind of writing that makes one wish to see the next book in a series. My wife Candice likes these books considerably more than I. I doubt that I would have read the second book if she had not wanted us to read it together as we always do with one book at a time, spending about 30 to 45 minutes a day with Candice washing our breakfast dishes while read from our ongoing book aloud. It works for us, keeps us close, and interested in the same topics most of the time. Our habit can be a good one for other couples to try, especially if you both love literature. I'm simply saying I love a higher class of literature.

"Mountain People, Mountain Crafts" by Elinor Lander Horwitz

Lately for a variety of reasons, I have been reading a lot of books about Appalachian Folk Art which is one of my favorite types of art and, in my opinion, some of the best art in America. Elinor Horwitz was a very prolific writer who published about a dozen books including at least three on Appalachian Folk Art and/or Appalachian Crafts. This particular book was published in 1974 and I actually learned about Horwitz and her work while reading a classic book on Appalachian Folk Art, "The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and The Genesis of Twentieth Century Folk Art" by Julia Ardery, a Kentucky writer. I will write about that book in a day or two. This particular book has one chapter on woodcarving and that chapter focuses heavily on Edgar Tolson and his work wiht several excellent photographs of Tolson and his work. I never knew Edgar Tolson but have heard numerous stories about him and his work from his son Donny Tolson who is also now dead. Interestingly, the photographs in this book, or at least most of them, were taken by Horwitz's two teenage sons who had traveled with her to visit various folk artists and crafters all over the region of Central and Southern Appalachian. One of her sons also took most of the photographs for another of her books which I will also write about in the upcoming days. This book is directed toward a general audience and makes no attempt to go into great detail about many aspects of Appalachian Fok Art and crafts. But Horwitz and her sons did visit most of the subjects of the book and I am also led to believe that she was a major collector of Appalachian arts and crafts. Some of the photographs are stunning and as good as one could expect to see from truly professional photographers. I haven't yet done enough research to learn if either of her sons pursued photography as a career, but I would not be surprised if they did. She broke the book down into three major chapters plus a short epilogue entitled "Today And Tomorrow" which reflects on the potential future of Appalachian Folk Art. It is a shame that the book was published with all the photographs in black and white. Many of the subjects of those photographs such as quilts, paintings, and other works would have been much more attractive and informative if they had been shot and published in full color. For several types of the work featured in the book, Horwitz discusses at length the process the creators used to produce the work, and her sons provided excellent photographs of several phases of the creative process when they were able to do so with the cooperation of the artists. It is also a good review of quite a few Appalachian Folk Artists and crafters who are now dead. But the book is well worth reading if you can find a copy since it is now more than fifty years old. I found my copy on a used book website and it is actually a former library book which I often avoid buying. But it was apparently not the most read book in that particular library and is in good shape. If you are interested in Folk Art or crafting, the book is worth digging up a copy.

"The Unvanquished" by William Faulkner, A Wonderful Novel of The Civil War And Reconstruction!

"The Unvanquished" by William Faulkner was originally published in 1934 and has been a staple of many college classes in Southern Literature, Civil War Literature, and general American Literature ever since. It is one of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County novels and features several key figures in the saga of his mythical county: John Sartoris, John Sartoris Jr., Ab Snopes, and others. The novel covers both the period of the Civil War and of early Reconstruction. The protagonist is John Sartoris, Jr. who is about 12 years old when the novel begins and a full grown adult at the end. His slave Ringo is also a major figure in the novel. The two are just a few months different in age and literally grew up together much like brothers, but clearly also a slave owner and a slave. Their relationship is a major key to everything in the novel. They are inseparable, literally bound at the hip. That relationship, as Faulkner portrays it, is both an indictment and an apologia for the entire slave holding culture of the south. The two work together to attempt to murder the first Union officer they ever see using a musket which resides on most occasions over the mantel in the main room of the Sartoris mansion. They are still together at the end of the novel as young Sartoris goes to confront his father's former business partner and killer. The novel is the basis of a strong argument about the much vaunted code of honor of southern gentlemen, and parts of it are said to have been a fictional portrayal of some events which took place in the life of an actual Faulkner ancestor. The individual chapters of the novel, seven in all, were originally published as short stories and the book is sometimes drawn into the perpetual argument among students of literature about just where a collection of short stories with common characters ends and a novel begins. In my opinion, it is a novel and that argument should have been ceased many years ago. For an example of a collection of such short stories with common characters fails to fulfill the requirements of a novel I suggest that you read "The Hawk's Done Gone" by Mildred Haun which is a fine book but not quite a novel. You could never find two better books to read in order to fully comprehend that argument, and to help put an end to it also. As the book progresses, John Sartoris, Jr. and Ringo progress from being two boys playing war in the dust near the slave quarters to become two young southern men, both black and white, who have survived both childhood and the Civil War to become very typical white slave holding and black slave men who are still, at least in their own eyes, brothers. John Sartoris, Sr. looms over the entire novel as a larger than life Colonel in the Confederate Army and as the head of the Sartoris family although he is not present on the plantation most of the time as the novel progresses. He is both a patriarch and a symbol of the failed Confederate effort. He is a role model for his son in the most traditional of senses, and is the axis on which much of the novel moves. His mother-in-law, Granny is a major character of the novel, maintains order at home while the elder Sartoris is off at war, and is dearly beloved by her grandson, the Sartoris slaves, and most of their neighbors. She concocts a plot to use a letter signed by the commanding Union officer in the area to confiscate over two hundred head of mules, disburse them to the poor, both black and white, in the area of the plantation, and is eventually caught in the scheme along with her grandson and Ringo. Ringo is both the brains of much of the operation and a loyal servant and man Friday to his young master and companion. Drusilla, a young female distant cousin of the elder Sartoris is a young woman who loses her fiancee to the Union forces and seeks to avenge his death by utilizing her talents with both guns and horses to assist the elder Sartoris and his troops in their doomed war. Her mother uses the old southern mores about what "good women" are supposed to do and be in order to force her to marry the elder Sartoris because she has spent many weeks riding, fighting, and hiding in the woods with him and his troops as a young single woman. This is a powerful novel of the Civil War and Reconstruction by a man who lived his life in the shadow of his own ancestors who had fought and lost in the effort. It addresses multiple issues which have arisen for several hundred years in the south: slavery, male and female relationships, rich versus poor whites, Union versus Confederate, young southerners living in the oversized shadows of their elders, and the dominant question since Lee surrendered, "just how do southerners go on living after the war?"

When Impeachment Happens, It Must Be Multiple And Simultaneous!

During the so-called "Alaska Summit" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and TRAITOR Trump, it should have become apparent to most rational Americans that TRAITOR Trump is owned and controlled by Putin, cannot take any definitive action on any subject which remotely involves Russia without the approval of Putin, and will do literally anything and commit any crime in order to appease Putin and attempt to legitimize a man who has open arrest warrants from the World Criminal Court as a result of his war crimes in Ukraine. Actually Putin is the second person TRAITOR Trump has held "summits" with who has open arrest warrants from the World Criminal Court also. Various journalists from every legitimate American media company have stated clearly after that so-called summit that the event was a disaster for both Ukraine and for TRAITOR Trump. It was immediately referred to by several journalists who are experts on war journalism as a "nothing burger", an old expression from the world of Hollywood gossip columnists in the 1950's to describe an event which has no worth, no significant importance, and is of little consequence to anyone. But it also signaled once again that TRAITOR Trump will do anything to appease and legitimize Putin, will do literally anything to harm Ukraine, and will stoop to any crime which will, in his twisted brain, give him some kind of advantage over anyone alive. Sooner or later, TRAITOR Trump must be impeached, removed from the White House by military force if necessary, indicted in federal criminal courts of at least part of his recent crimes, arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced, incarcerated, and left in federal prison until the day he dies before being buried beside Osama Bin Laden. But this blog post is really intended to impress on the world that simply removing TRAITOR Trump from the White House is not sufficient and could actually endanger the country and the world even more. He is surrounded and supported by a hand picked conglomearation of criminals, TRAITORS, and Russian Agents who are all equally as dangerous. There is no one in the current line of succession who is fit to serve in any position of public trust at any level all the way down to potentially becoming a local magistrate or constable. Several of them have already been convicted of crimes or accused of serous crimes including TRAITOR Trump himself who has been convicted of 34 of the 82 felonies for which he was indicted; held legally responsible for the rape of E. Jean Carroll in a monetary sense; held responsible for stealing money from a New York based "charity" and barred from being an officer of any corporation licensed in New York. For those 92 felony indictments, he was indiced in fur jurisdictions by five seperate grand juries. Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner's father, who is now the Ambassador to France has previously pled guilty to several counts of tax crimes. Peter Navarro who is not in the direct line of succession in a position which doesn't require senate confirmation was found guilty of contempt of a congressional sub poena. Kristi Noem has admitted in her autobiography to killing at least two animals, her hunting dog, and a goat which had done nothing at time she chose to shoot it after killing the dog did not fully satisfy her rage. She is in the line of succession. admittedly, Noem is in last place in the line of succession;but if everyone who is disqualified for legal, moral, or ethical reasons from succeeding an impeached TRAITOR Trump, she could be the last dog standing, if you will excuse that turn of phrase. The one person in the line of succession who is not directly under the thumb of TRAITOR Trump is Chuck Grasley who is President Pro Tempore of the Senate but also already 91 years old. If he is the only rational replacement for TRAITOR Trump, God Help Us All! Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been proven to have disclosed highly classified information to an unsuspecting journalist who had the patriotism and moral conviction to report the offense. First in the line of succession is J. D. Vance who has proven time after time that his entire life and career are built on lies, yet, if TRAITOR Trump should be impeacheed and removed after the 2026 congressional election theoretically gives the Democratic party a majority in both houses of congress, Vance would suddenly find himself in the position of power which he lusts after and proves on a daily basis he is tragically unfit to ever hold. Several years ago, he was summarily removed from the board of AppHarvest which has since failed, gone bankrupt, and been sold. There is only one remotely viable choice to succeed to the office TRAITOR Trump now holds, and that person is 91 year old Chuck Grasley. If and when the day comes, as it must, and TRAITOR Trump is impeached, removed, and criminally charged for at least part of his crimes, Grasley, must be the successor. To ensure that succession, Vance must also be impeached simultaneously with TRAITOR Trump. The Senate will find it necessary to hold the impeachment vote of Vance first, refuse to consider the possibility that the vice presidency could be filled instantly with another unfit subject, and vote to convict and remove TRAITOR Trump immediately after removing Vance. After the impeachment by a new House of Representatives majority in 2027, convicted by a new Senate majority, and removed from the White House which, based on the TREASON of January 6, will most likely require military intervention, we would be faced with the need to pray constantly that President Grasley be allowed to live and remain rational until January 20, 2029, when the new Democratic President, whomever that might be, could be sworn in.

Mass Population Movements And William Faulkner

I am in the process of reading "The Unvanquised" by William Faulkner. As I sometimes do, I found a quotation in the middle of the book which I am compelled to write about today. This is that quotation below:

"...he nor they could not have known what it was yet it was there--one of those impulses inexplicable yet invincible which appear among races of people at intervals and drive them to pick up and leave all security and familiarty of earth and home and start out, they don't know where, empty handed, blind to everything but a hope and a doom."

"The Unvanquised" the book from which I drew that quotation is a fairly well known book by William Faulkner which was published in 1934, minety-one years ago, long before anyone on earth imagined that Russia and Ukraine would now be more than three years engaged in a war of aggression which was started, perpetrated, and perpetuated by Vladimir Putin and Russia, no one else. As a result of that war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been forced to feel one of "those impules inexplicable yet invincible which appear among races of people". As a result, just as Faulkner in his book was describing the mass exodus of African American slaves from the defeated south after the Civil War had ended. But Ukraine is not now, and has never been defeated in the last three plus years of this war. Yes, many of their people have become refugess for a variety of reasons within the greater reason of having been faced with the possibility of death if they remained in Ukraine. They have picked up and left all security and familiarity they have ever known, started out empty handed and blind to everything except a hope of a safe future in some other peaceful country and the overwhelming and inexplicable doom they have known quite well ever since the day Putin declared his war of aggression and invaded their country. They have traveled to dozens of other countries around the globe, some simply to cross the borders of Ukraine into Poland or another much safer European nation. Others have traveled across the planet and hundreds of thousands of them have come to America over the years of war chasing that hope. From January 20, 2021, until January 20, 2025, those people who came to America had that hope while living in a country which was compassionate, welcoming, and rational in its approch to them and their forced exodus from home. Now, from January 20, 2025, their hope has been destroyed and, once again, all they can see is that doom which they fear so justifiably. America is now in the hands of the worst TRAITOR in the history of the world, TRAITOR Trump who is working daily to attempt to force Ukraine and its democratic government to surrender to their attacker and surrender much of their country, their land, and their hope to that attacker, that dictator Vladimir Putin and to his Russian Agent, the TRAITOR Trump.

I was stunned as I read that quotation above from William Faulkner and realized just how applicable it is to the treachery of TRAITOR Trump who has abandoned ever promise the United States made to the Ukrainian people and their democracy in order to support his Russian master. Just a few days ago in Alaska, the world watched as TRAITOR Trump kowtowed to Vladimir Putin and his design to destroy Ukraine and its democracy. We watched the world's worst dictator being welcomed to American soil by the world's worst TRAITOR and would be dictator, TRAITOR Trump. We watched as the two of them attempted to decide the fate of a sovereign nation and its people without a single representative of their interests in the room. We watched the attempted murder of the nation of Ukraine in order for TRAITOR Trump to appease and attempt to legitimize his Russian owner. Just yesterday, we watched the President of Ukraine being ignored by TRAITOR Trump as he disembarked from his plane at the airport in Washington, DC, after TRAITOR Trump had rolled out a red carpet for their would be destroyer and dictator in Alaska. But Ukraine does have allies across Europe in several countries, the European Union, and NATO. But can Ukraine and their supporters actually win this conference room war against them? We don't know. But what we do know that they cannot win it if the American people also surrender to Putin and TRAITOR Trump. We must not do that. We must support Ukraine and their fledgling democracy. We must be the nation our Founding Fathers intended us to be.

Let's Hold A Nationwide One Day Strike To Oppose TRAITOR Trump!

Ever since August 5, 1981, the date when Ronald Reagan was allowed by the AFL-CIO and the American people to fire 11,359 professional air traffic controllers, I have said the same thing when that subject comes up. What I said was this: "If the AFL-CIO and all the other components of the organized labor movement in America had stood up to Reagan, refused to allow the air traffic controllers to be fired, and staged a one day nationwide strike, he would have had no choice except to back down, reverse those firings, and negotiate with the air traffic controllers. His War Against The Working Class would have been dead in the water, and today America would be a very different and more successful nation. The same holds true for TRAITOR Trump and every crime he and the Criminal Syndicate which poses as a "cabinet" in support of his TREASON have committed and will commit in the future if they are not held responsible for their crimes. If they are not held responsible for those crimes, you can bet your sweet ass that worse is on the way, already being plotted, perpetrated, and dreamed of by the worst TRAITOR The world has ever seen and the other lesser TRAITORS who support him. On No Kings Day, June 14, 2025, roughly 5million people participated in more than 2,100 hundred separate protests from sea to shining sea. But what would it have looked like if, instead of peacefully standing out in public holding protest signs and chanting slogans, those 5million of us had just waited until the following week during regular working hours from 8am to 5pm from sea to shining sea for one day and stopped working. If 5million of us had gone on strike for one 8 hour day, stopped driving trucks, delivering products, making those products, mining or manufacturing the individual components of those products, never unloaded a single ship at a single of our international ports, stopped teaching in the nation's classrooms, stopped nursing patients in our hospitals, and stopped doing whatever it is that each of us does for a living. That would change the face of the battle against TRAITOR Trump, his Russian Owner Vladmir Putin, and their ultimate goal of destroying the United States. What we need to do now is to call that one day nationwide strike, carry it out on a weekday, preferably a Wednesday so the work week is clearly broken into two disparate halves,and the general public is clearly told that it is purely and solely in protest of the crime spree being perpetrated by TRAITOR Trump and his supporters. And it should also be made clear that unless he and his entire Criminal Syndicate are removed from the halls of government that such a strike will occur at least once a month until they are gone. If one day strikes don't work, then expand them to two days, three, four, or five until the truth is realized all over the world. I am not in a position to organize and coordinate such a strike. But I will always be in a position to support such a strike by doing everything I can to promote and defend it. This is just one grandiose, but realistic, idea for saving the America most of us love. This ideas is free for the taking by anyone with a network of support large enough to bring this strike to fruition. Let's schedule it! Let's make it happen! Let's make it absolutely clear that we are tired of TRAITOR Trump, his Fascism, his TREASON, and all his crimes against this country. Please share this post with everyone you know until someone steps up to take the ball in hand and carry out the planning, scheduling, and organization to make this Strike In Defense Of Democracy a reality!