Mark Twain declared several times in his writings that the real religion in America was the worship of money, gold and stocks, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It remains the same today, take a look at the history of Wall Street for the past 50 years, the easy money from banks to buy a ski town home for anyone with a heartbeat, the Madison Avenue vision of success, that has brainwashed Americans for 50 years, and resulted in the Theftocracy form of business from ski towns real estate to the banks of New York. A new lifestyle, new values may become the dominant theme over the next 10 years, and professionals may win back the public dialogue that has been taken over by amateurs. The worship of the greenback, gold and stocks as a constant, daily religion is not working anymore, even for the thieves in orange suits that are being arrested by the day on Wall Street. College youth have been seen reading and writing poetry and reading F Scott Fitzgerald novels in coffee houses near campuses. American youth should do like many young did in the early 60″s. If they are lucky and smart, they will read “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway, “The Drifters” by James Michener, and “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. These novels are three amazing stories of romantic youth who are moved by stories of Spain and the Beat rhythm to the tunes of Jazz, to buy a rucksack and hit the road. The process takes courage and is simple. Find a buddy, put some green together, buy a rucksack in an army surplus store, and army sleeping bag, hop a cheap freighter to a port of Spain on the Mediterranean coast, pick up a used Vespa scooter, and head to the town of Pamplona in July, in the northeast corner of Spain. Michener said “Everybody in Pamplona woke up, for at that hour bands of txistularis began circulating through the city, blowing their pipes and thumping their drums, so that sleep became impossible, and within a matter of minutes we were dressed in white with red scarves, and headed at a brisk clip for the bullring, as were thousands of others, converging from all directions. There were twenty thousand inside the bull arena, fifteen thousand on the plaza outside, where some had even climbed onto the head of the Hemingway statue. Suddenly, from across the city, a rocket exploded with a roar that could be heard in all parts of Pamplona”. Birdman ran with the bulls in Pamplona in 1963, for 9 days, drank red wine, danced after the bullfights for hours in the streets with the local peasants from the countryside. He remembers the passionate music at the bull ring, the blood on the matador, the passion of the Spanish crowd, the leather bags of wine spilled on the crowd and dancers faces, the red scarves on the necks of the young peasants, staining their white outfits, the loud cries of Ole in the midst of bugles and drums. Hemingway said in “The Sun Also Rises”, “When the fiesta boiled over and toward the bull-ring we went with the crowd. Brett sat at the ringside. The sword-handlers and bull-ring servants came down the callejon carrying on their shoulders the wicker baskets of fighting capes and muletas. They were bloodstained. I looked through the glasses and saw the three matadors. Romero was in the centre, Belmonte on his left, Marcial on his right”. Pamplona is a great way to start a young life. The final sentence of “The Drifters”: “I said so then,” Britta confessed, “but now I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams, and know them for what they are”. Dreams of the Greenback? maybe later. How about finding new dreams, a new renaissance of art, poetry, literature, new American writers. Birdman said while hunting elk with Wacko Wally and $Bill, “There are more things in Nature than gold”. “In heaven and earth, Horatio, there are more things than in your philosophy”. William Shakespeare.
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