NOSTALGIA AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE".....Yogi Berra, catcher, N Y Yankees.......
             I firmly feel, being the romantic that I am, and with a powerful imagination and memory, that nostalgia is a good thing and meditating on ancient memories can be fun and arouse deep emotions.  Who does not feel imminent tears, and wonder for hours what life was like in the old days.  There was one constant theme when I was a youngster fishing and wandering along the Mississippi River, and it was a reference by old guys about the greatness of outdoor situations in the "Old Days".  "You should have seen the duck hunting in the 40's in the Cannon bottoms, the sky was full of them. The walleyes and pike in Lake Pepin, west of Stockholm Wisconsin, were 10 pounds and more, and full limits were had every time old Morris Anderson, went out to fish, trolling in his 10 h p motor.  Oh, yes there were pheasants around way back in the 40's, now they have moved to South Dakota.  One thing about life and nature, it doesn't sit still, it constantly changes, mostly in a circle.  The American Indians had deep feelings about this, and made their teepees and ceremonial grounds in a circle.
              Right now I can remember sitting on a high bluff above Red Wing Minnesota, with a copy of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" in my pocket, watching a steam train  chug up the Mississippi River Valley, blasting its steam whistle as it entered the depot in the town.  What a sight that was and the sounds, feelings and memories it brings up, the deep soul of that experience, is part of American History.  The big steam engines were an amazing work of engineering and a few still exist in the Rocky mountains and take tourists on rides in high mountain towns over high passes.  People do not soon forget that experience.
                The cool thing about these old freight trains was, the bums and hobos who rode the rails from Chicago and points south, up to access the summer work in the oats, wheat, and barley fields of the farm country, between Wisconsin and North and South Dakota.  The Federal government recognized the need for these migrant workers and allowed the hobos to ride with no interference to provide for the workers needed to help the growers to turn their crops into a commodity that could be sold through the giant grain mills along the Mississippi River, to the Chicago Board of Trade in Commodities.  The large cities in the Mid West were produced by the need for grains in the nation for food and feed for cattle and bread for the people.  Massive railroad centers in Minneapolis, and Chicago, as well as Milwaukee and St Louis, were built to move this large supply of grain.
                  Cattle were moved from Texas by drovers to Dodge City Kansas, to be shipped by rail to Chicago where the giant stock yards were built.  The beef for food consumption in the U S rotated through this network of railroad centers to the food distribution centers.  This is all part of the expansion of America to the west that followed the construction of rail roads all the way, eventually, to the west coast.  The colorful history of cowboys, gunslingers, outlaws, mountain men and pioneering homesteaders was created by this same need for cattle and grains, which thrived in the new American west.  Legendary outlaws like Jesse James,  the Younger brothers, and Bonnie and Clyde, evolved from this colorful time, as a by product of law and order moving slowly to the towns being built by the rail road expansion.  Novels were written about these people, legends were created, and more will be written in the future.
                    "East are the remembered Kings and forgotten Sepulchers, West is the golden grass. "

GIANT, HAROLD HAMM, BLACK GOLD, HUGE OIL FIND, THE NEW HOPE FOR THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

     James Dean in the classic film Giant, from Edna Ferber's novel, standing under an oil well that had just exploded the black gold up into the sky and landed on his body and smeared his face, dramatized the future of a rich American economy, driven by the oil boom in Texas.  This oil boom, turned the US into the economic powerhouse tht it was from the early 20th century until the early 1990's when companies like Exxon ran out of new oil fields.
     The American dependence upon foreign, middle eastern oil was a result of what some called the end of the oil age.  It resulted in two wars in Kuwait, and Iraq, and over a trillion dollars spent, protecting the US right to buy oil in large quantities to keep the gas driven economy, the industrial behemoth functioning.  The US was a powerhouse in the world, for 90 years, largely because of the abundance of cheap oil, and that was coming to a close.
     Harold Hamm, the new James Dean, the Giant from Oklahoma, knew there was oil for years deep in the earth in places like northwest North Dakota, the Bakken, and central and southwest Texas, the Barnett shale.  There was also the Marcellus shale in four eastern states, indluding Michigan in the Midwest.  The problem was how to get the oil to the surface at a reasonable price, and preserve the environment.  Hamm invented and pioneered deep drilling, that sent several drill holes sideways to penetrate the sweet crude, high quality oil.  This new technology liberated the oil industry, and has set the US on a new prosperous course, possibly putting the country back as a powerhouse that it has been for a century. 
     The USGS in their recent paper, claims there could be over 500 billion or more barrels of oil deep under all the states that Hamm and other companies are now working.  This is 8 times the amount that Saudi Arabia claims to have.  That is enough oil to run the US economy for 2000 years.  Everyone knows that in the meantime, companies should be working on the green energy technology to make it more competitive with the cheap oil, but that could take years, and some costly experiments by the Washington Administration have already made the path a difficult one. 
     Hamm's first job as a young man was fixing flat tires and pumping gas at a truck stop in Oklahoma.  He was always fascinated by oil, and found oil buried in a meteor impact crater.  His original oil company made him a wealthy man.  He is friends with T Boone Pickens, they are both high risk takers in the oil business.  T Boone Pickens has invested a large amount of dollars in wind energy, and is trying to work out the problems.  Hamm now has a 73% stake in Continental Oil.  There are 208 rigs drilling in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, and Hamm is the top producer and lease holder. 
     With the US economy still staggering from the Wall Street Meltdown, very little new construction, and a massive credit problem for small business, as well as over 9% unemployment rate, Hamm's new technology is a fresh hope for a new era of prosperity in America.  His company will have to be closely watched by the Feds for any harm to the environment.  His operation has already contributed to employment gain in Nampa Idaho, where thousands of prefabricated homes are under construction at the Fleetwood Homes factory, as well as thousands of workers building pipelines. 
     The chaos at the Walmart parking lot in Williston North Dakota looks like Tombstone on a Saturday night in the old west.  People have been sleeping in their cars in below zero temperatures, now there is hope for housing coming from Nampa Idaho.  The unemployment rate of North Dakota is 3%.  The rate in Texas is dropping fast as well due to the drilling in southwest Texas in the Barnett formations. 
     There have been dozens of new books written and displayed in the economic section at Barnes and Noble, declaring the end  of Capitalism, including "Why Capitalism" by Meltzer.  These doom and gloom authors apparently have not met nor studied the amazing work of Harold Hamm. 

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THE NEW BIG WORDS, VANISH AND DISINTEGRATE, THE MELTDOWN, WHERE DID ALL THE MONEY AND PEOPLE GO, ASPEN? FRANCE?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by landinvestman

The estimate for the amount of $money that vanished from the Street of Shame meltdown, the largest bank robbery in world history, varies from 12 trillion$ to 20 trillion$. The new estimate for the amount that disintegrated, vanished from the MF Global, Jon Corzine disaster, is 1.6 billion$. The estimate for the collapse of real estate values from Telluride Colorado, to Aspen, to all counties in the US, varies from 30% loss to 80%, with the dollars disappearing into thin air. Where did it all go?
There are several hundred FBI agents and investigators trying to figure out that question at the offices of MF Global, one month later and nobody knows. That’s the new talking point for a majority of Americans, nobody knows anything, and nobody wants to know anything. We do know that during the collapse of MF Global, that Jon Corzine was allegedly searching for a chateau in France.
A child who was photographed in an Illinois wheat field, said his dad had $40,000 of their precious money vanish into the black hole of MF Global. French chateau home, children stripped of their parents livelihood, someone will figure this out.
Recently in Telluride Colorado, 25 million$ vanished into thin air, a district court judge ruled against the alleged culprits, a judgment of millions of $. Where is that money, that vanished from a real estate development deal? I would start with a check on offshore bank accounts, buried treasure on Specie Mesa, and European banks, where they are in bad need of foreign cash.
The Final Judge in the Sky knows where all this looted green has gone, who did it, and how much was stolen. Some day there will be a reckoning. It’s called Kharma. This oligarchy of thieves, the Streets of Shame, the dishonest real estate brokers, in ski towns, the thieves at investment banks on Wall Street, and the rest of the culprits who looted the public treasury during the past 10 years, will face the Big Accounting Firm, the Final Judge in the sky, god help them.
The American public, a great number of them, doesn’t know where the money went, doesn’t want to know and be sickened, when and if they think they know. As the famous astro physicist said about the Universe, "Nobody really knows anything."

SKIING, GIANTS OF AMERICAN SPORTSMAN, TELLURIDE TO ASPEN, SKI PATROL HIGH ADVENTURE

     Birdman was on an avalanche detail with Sully, the head of the avalanche program with the Telluride Ski Patrol.  Sully had made the first winter ascent of Mooses Tooth in Alaska, and the first winter ascent of Lizard Head Mountain and Needle Rock near Telluride Colorado.  He was the real deal, a true old time mountain adventurer, who taught everyone on the Telluride Ski Patrol, an amazing list of survival techniques and the art of control of high alpine avalanche chutes.
     Sully would bellow loudly in the morning and shouted, "After we bomb the Mammoth Slide, lets hit the narrow chutes to the left, they will have more powder snow."  Three bombs exploded, and Birdman got first tracks on the narrow chutes.  It was the largest rush of powder, and the adrenaline that results, Birdman had ever experienced from the Big Burn at Snowmass, Aspen, to the wild peaks of Telluride Mountain.  The first rush of powder,  felt like he had dropped out of an airplane into the clouds, the powder blasted over his head, and the powder joy continued even as he launched out of the trees, into the main part of the wide Mammoth Slide, the legendary powder run of the old timers who hiked up the mountain before the lifts went in.  What a day to remember, it will never be forgotten.
     The Big Burn, at Snowmass Colorado, was the first experience that Birdman had with powder skiing.  Sixteen inches of fresh snow on the Burn was known by locals and tourists to be powder heaven.  The small pine trees interspersed in a near perfect glade, kept the snow in fluffy piles of white, with no wind, and cruising through the glades was a delight for the ski patrol and tourists from all parts of the US.  Snowmass has opened up many new above timberline bowls since then, and the powder days are unusually skier free, of locals and tourists.  Everyone wants to ski Aspen Mountain, so they can brag about their adventure in saloons from Aspen to Boston. 
     The early days working on the Telluride Ski Patrol, keeping records for the US Forest Service, bombing the avalanche areas all around the top of Telluride Ski Mountain, was high adventure and a unique opportunity to ski the steep and the deep snow.  The first year in Telluride, on April 22, 1972, it snowed 66 inches in one night on the top of the mountain.  Birdman dropped into Apex Glade, after walking from the top of lift 4, with snow as high as his neck.  He felt a great rush of joy, then could not see due to the blinding blasts of unusually deep powder.  Later he put a bandana over his face, as a breathing technique.  Birdman will never forget his first ride up lift 6 to the top of the mountain, that day.  He saw a short stumpy patrolman, nichnamed "Stump" coming down the lift line doing jet turns in the powder over the moguls.  The snow was so deep all you could see occasionally, was his hat and gloves, and a snorkel sticking above, for breathing.  When Stump got to the patrol room at the top, everyone examined his snorkel.  It was declared an ingenious idea, and talked about in the saloons downtown for years.  Stump was the first person to hang glide off of Smuggler ski trail, on Telluride Mountain, which had never been seen before. He was one of the pioneers of hang gliding. 
     You have to be tough, daring, and have a tiny element of crazy in your soul to be a skier.  Birdman always admired the tourists who came to the mountains, to brave the Big Burn, and the Telluride Plunge, a drop of 3000 feet, non stop to the town of Telluride.  It takes guts and true grit, just to ride a lift to the top of the mountain.  The chairs sway in the wind over deep chasms, rock and roll, and skiers have fallen off in the most peculiar places, one dangling from the top of a tree until the ski patrol showed up with ropes to get them back to Mother Earth.  The Snow Gods from Norway watch over most skiers, in their constant test of gravity, balance, speed , control, and at times a crazy maneuver, best left to a gymnastics arena.  Birdman watched a crazed skier once, bounce off the tops of two moguls on a high ridge at Telluride, do a half flip, land on his back, shoot towards the trees, get up to brush off the snow and smile with joy.  Children from 4 to 15 sometimes look like pros on the circuit, with amazing balance, speed, and grace. 
     You have to admire the Ski Giants of American Sports, the every day common skier who has the guts to challenge the wild mountains.  Once in awhile the White Hawk from the sky, comes down and takes a skier to the Skiers Elysium, the Great Ski Area In The Sky, with no cost for a lift ticket.

KING OF SKI TOWNS, ASPEN AND TELLURIDE, FREE ACCESS TO NATIONAL FOREST LAND, JOY THAT IS FREE, COMPARED TO CITY LIFE

     Birdman recently visited Telluride Colorado on a gorgeous sunny day, with a stop at Orvis Hot Springs.  During his three day stay in the ski town of Telluride, an insight of massive proportions, struck Birdman as he rolled over Dallas Divide, looking at the wide expanse of the Sneffles Range.  The miles and miles of high country timber, creeks, valleys, wildlife, endless hiking and joy, above the Ralph Lauren Ranch is all totally free of charge to gain access.
     Ralph Lauren paid mega millions for his pasture land below, the best land is above all over the west, a great majority of it set aside by Teddy Roosevelt a long time ago.  Birdman knew this from 35 years of hiking the high country, but it came back with the impact of lightning striking close by.  An Austrian friend, who had spent time with Birdman, hunting and hiking the high country, said, "In Austria you would have to pay a few hundred thousand a year to do what eveyone living in Telluride can do for nothing, hike the majestic high country, with no permission and payment to anyone.  In Austria the descendants of the kings own all of the best land, nothing can be bought or hiked on.
     Three years living in Colorado Springs and Denver also has reaffirmed this fact.  No matter how wealthy you are in a city, you must still deal with the traffic gridlock, inferior air to breathe, lack of wildlife, the constant cacophony of sound generated by sirens and cars and  people exercising their right of freedom of speech, talking constant nonsense on cell phones.
     Even the libraries and book stores are noisy havens of crying babies, people on cell phones, and loud speakers announcing nonsense every five minutes.  A quiet spot in America has become priceless.
     The poorest worker living in a town on the Western Slope of Colorado, with quick access to the National Forest, can live like a King, and enjoy his birthright, free access to public land, 750 million acres of it.
     The Trust For Public Land is buying up millions of acres of mining claims and inholdings, and selling it back to the US Government.  At one time in the nation, almost 950 million acres of high country public land existed.  Now is the time to gain more, and buy it back from the old miners, inholdings, and developers with the wrong intentions.
     We must preserve this legacy for the children of the future.  The genius of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt allows us to enjoy some of the most pristine land in the world, the high country of the western US.  Leave the city for a day, take a long hike on National Forest Land and you will see what I mean.
     It is all free, and it is wild, and it is beautiful, and it allows for the experience of complete and total Joy.

ASPEN, TELLURIDE CELEBRITIES, GENERAL SCHWARZKOPF, MADONNA, STEIN ERIKSON, SKIER

     Birdman lived in Aspen and Telluride ski resorts for years, and worked on the ski patrol and in the land sales business.  During his time from 1970 to 2012 he had many revealing experiences with many famous people.
     Stein Erikson was the head of the ski school in Aspen for many years in the 70's before he moved to Deer Valley Utah, where he became director of skiing at the resort.  Birdman was standing by the Sams Knob lift at Snowmass during the winter of 1971.  There was two feet of fresh powder snow, and the Big Burn powder paradise, was calling him to the slopes.  All of a sudden he spotted Stein, flying and dancing down the mountain in a perfect powder form, with snow blowing over his head.  Birdman had never seen such an amazing display of perfection and grace before or since. Stein looked like he was dancing the mambo, at a very high speed.  Birdman thought that Stein was blessed by the Norwegian Gods of skiing, he had never seen anything like it, and never would again, until he saw Chongo on the Telluride Ski Patol, a few years later, in perfect powder form, dancing in rhythm over the moguls, with two feet of fresh snow, on the Mammoth Slide.
     Stein Erikson is currently married and has 5 children.  He is 85 years young, and still has that famous head of hair.  They say that he is a humble man.  He is quoted as saying "Be tough, be confident, but you will never be a whole and happy person if you aren't humble."  In 1997 Erikson was honored by the King of Norway. He was Knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his contribution to Norway, the highest honor that the Norwegian government can give to people living outside Norway.  It is said that Erikson was skiings "first superstar" since he was handsome, stylish, and charismatic.
     Norman Schwarzkopf walked on the treadmill in the summer at the Peaks Hotel, almost evey day, where Birdman worked out.  Birdman thought, I wonder how many miles the general walked while he was in the military.  Norman was a large man, but walked with a smooth motion, never losing his stride.
     Stormin Norman, "The Bear" was loved by the locals in Telluride and marched with the soldiers in the local Memorial Day parade each year.  Birdman recently heard that the vets in Telluride, came out of hiding, and proudly marched with Norman.  Before they were afraid to let people know they had fought in Vietnam, because of the anti-war sentiment in town, and the abundance of peaceniks.
     Norman loved to trout fish and hunt pheasants, and went to pheasant country with some local bird hunters.  He was a remarkable pheasant marksman, which is an upland game bird that often causes humiliation.  He fly fished the San Miguel river, and loved it.  One night he returned home, to discover a black bear in his kitchen, who had an arm load of ice cream, and a look of joy, like a child, caught with too much candy in his fists.  Norman got mad, chased the bear out into the Ski Ranch night, and fired several rounds of his shotgun into the sky.  Now he would have to drive 6 miles to Telluride to replenish his favorite ice cream.
     Norman has a series of medals for his duties as a soldier. The number of metals is astounding including three Silver Stars for Bravery.  He also was honored in France as an honorary First-Class Private in the French Foreign Legion. 
     Norman had crawled on his belly in a mine field in Vietnam, to rescue a wounded soldier, and led an entire group through his tracks out of danger.  He received a special medal, his third Silver Star for bravery for that brave action.  He has an Elementary School named after him in Lutz Florida.
     Stormin Norman brought the Kuwait ground war to a close in just four days, a record in the history of warfare.
     In Vietnam he implemented strict rules for his soldiers.  He told his men later, "When you get on that plane to go home, if the last thing you think about is "I hate that son of a bitch", then that is fine because you are going home alive."
     Madonna paid a special tribute to the General, during the 1990 Oscars ceremony.  When she performed the Academy Award winning song "Sooner or Later, I Always Get My Man" from the movie Dick Tracy, she added the line, "Talk to me General Schwarzkopf, tell me all about it."  Her performance was homage to Marilyn Monroe and saluting the general was reminiscent of the 1950's when Marilyn Monroe paid her respects to General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
     General Norman Schwarzkopf was an amazing soldier, and a true and real human being.  The folks in Telluride were lucky to have him there, chasing off ice cream eating bears and honoring the local vets.  He is truly and in real life "The Bear", the legend, the General.

THE JAZZ GODS, MILES DAVIS, JOHN COLTRANE, THELONIOUS MONK, SONNY ROLLINS, GONE, BUT STILL HERE, THEIR SOUND IS STILL HERE

Birdman was sitting in 1962 in the front row at the Village Vanguard, Greenwich Village, NYC.  A black cat slowly moved into the spot light, like a jaguar stalking a deer in British Honduras.  It was Miles Davis, dressed in an immaculate French suit, handsome, his golden horn sparkling in the blue and red light.  He turned around and started blowing Kind of Blue, a chill went through the body of Birdman, he was awed and overcome by the sound, the man, the rhythm, the music.  Later on in the decade of the 60's,  he again saw the legend, Miles Davis at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.  Davis played from his Sketches of Spain,  and the same feeling took over the soul of Birdman. The audience gasped with disbelief.   It was if a god of music had descended from the Elysium, to blow out the unbelievable sounds into the night of San Francisco,  and the Universe above. 
       "Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."  Walt Whitman, American Poet
       Miles Davis, sat in with his horn when he was 19, at a club in Kansas City with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.  He said in his book, "Miles" he knew at that moment, he had an epiphany of sound, with two of the greats of early bebop, and had to go to NYC, where he played as a young man on 52nd street, with Bird, and became the musician he was meant by the gods to be.
       Sonny Rollins was at his peak between 1956 and 1966.  He took two years off, playing as he strolled into the night from the Williamsburg Bridge, NYC.  He would trill at length, bark out phrases, slurs and distorted his line, harps on a couple of braying figures, and showed off a gloriously beating tone.  He would occasionally belch his horn, sounding like a lost mule.  He is the only survivor from the gods of jazz, and still plays at 85 years young.  He was recently interviewed on PBS, and asked if the great sounds of the legendary musicians were dead.  He answered, "No, they are still here, their sound is still here."  What a statement on the vision of immortality of the giants.  He said, "When I leave town, my sound will still be here."  He also played with Charlie Bird Parker, Davis and Coltrane in NYC.  Can you imagine the rush to the soul, hearing Rollins' horn from the Bridge, mixed with the night sounds of NYC.  Hopefully that music is still echoing in the Universe somewhere, maybe above Europa.  "All the bells that ever rang, still ringing in the dying rays of light," William Faulkner, novelist. 
       Birdman saw Thelonious Monk in 1962 at the Five Spot, NYC.   His eccentric dancing and walking around like a crazed Beat poet will never be forgotten.  He left a lot of space in his music, yet could be most effective when paired with busy-sounding saxophonists such as John Coltrane.  Opposites attract.  Birdman later on saw Monk play at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco.  These experiences were unique, most people today never saw these cool cats from the heyday of Bebop and Cool Jazz.  It was if Birdman had seen Bach play in person, in a previous life, in the old days of Europe.  After Monk finished at the club he spun around in a rhythmic, weird dance, and exclaimed, "All ways know, always know, always night."
       John Coltrane's briefer stay on the planet earth, showered people and the planet with sheets of sound.  He played with explosive improvisations, expressive energy, and once mesmerized an audience with his saxophone, playing "My Favorite Things" for 45 minutes, non stop, in a club.  Coltrane could blow seven notes squeezed into the space of a beat or two.  He played at the Five Spot Cafe,  East Village NYC, for 7 months with Monk.  Monk didn't mind Coltrane playing so many notes, as long as his improvisations developed out of or illuminated the source material.  He left town to play the big saxophone in the sky, at a young age.   John Coltrane was a beat poet, whose sheets of sound echoed around Greenwich Village for 6 years, playing with Monk and Miles Davis.  He favored cascading waterfalls of notes.  He created a musical revolution.  The major outgrowth of his free jazz tended to represent an outgrowth of the bohemians, and angry young men of the 50's, and the Beat poets and writers. 
       Jazz critic Frank Kofsky took this view further, asserting that the free jazz movement represented nothing less than a vote of "no confidence" in Western Civilization and the American Dream.  Kofsky wrote in John Coltrane for vice president in his ballot of 1964.  Coltrane studied music at a school for years in Philadelphia and also studied philosophy.  He was a quiet, serious musician who lived music 24 hours a day, according to his mother.
       If any single sound signifies jazz it is Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, with a Harmon mute.  Kind of Blue is the most famous and most analyzed jazz album in history.  It is listened to over and over again by students of jazz, and people who do not even listen to much jazz. It sold over 62 million albums and CD's, a record in the history of music.  His "Sketches of Spain" still echoes in the soul of most aficionados of jazz.  As Rollins said recently, his music is still here, even though Miles is gone, his music is here forever. 
       What is the future of jazz?  Nobody knows.  It had a breath of fresh air in the 70's at the Keystone Korner Club in North Beach San Francisco.  Today jazz is played at a few surviving clubs in NYC, Chicago, and New Orleans, and at festivals around the US, most notably the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival held each spring in the Big Easy.  It may take a young musician, sent by the Gods, with extraordinary feeling and talent, to walk the Williamsburg Bridge at night, and blow his horn amidst the sounds of the City. 
       Jazz sounds are still beaming and echoing out into the Universe.