Archive for January, 2007
January 16th, 2007
Good evening everybody! For those of you new to the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center, welcome to the Historical Society’s restoration of the Odd Fellows Hall. For those of you new to the South End, we’re the house band, or, to be honest, the shack band.
Down at the South End, about the only Cultural Center WE got is the Tyee Grocery and Jack Gunter’s Elephant Head Congo Gallery. I spoze we didn’t immigrate here for the O-Zi-Ya opera or the Mabana Symphonic, but some of the newcomers yearn for a cultural menu a tad deeper than the Grange Craft Show or the Rock ‘n Roll riots at the Tyee Ampitheather the County finally had to shut down with a police warrant, sadly, when WE were gonna play…..
Which is why we formed the South End Cultural Oxymorons, hopefully to fill a huge void. But as Stanwoodopolites well know, bringin hi-falutin culture to the electronically addicted masses takes time and money and more than a little elbow grease, two of which are lackin on the South End. Which is why we want to say thanks to the dedicated folks here at the Historical Society for restoring this cultural icon. I run into folks all the time who never heard of the Floyd, don’t know where it is, never been inside it, don’t know what is it or what it was.
A cultural CENTER, you’d think would say it all. Oh, I know, the Uff-Da Shoppe might contest the crown. Here in Stanwood, in the suburbs of the South End, the past has been preserved, the future has been reimagined and a lot of folks deserve a lot of credit. Here in the Land of the Free, most of the cultural yeoman’s work gets done for the same price, Free. I spoze we could pray for a Renaissance, we could hope for artistic socialism, or we could harbor a wish for cultural communism, but the Band’s too long in the tooth to hope for government assistance, especially now that the Treasury is drained. Maybe an artistic SURGE. Shovel some artists into the breach and hope for a miracle.
So tonight let’s celebrate an old South End tradition, an American tradition actually —- the one that sez Suck it Up and Do It Yourself. The Folks at the Floyd sure did and they should be proud. ……. And we should be proud of them too.
Keep up the Good Work and maybe we’ll consider annexation. Save us building our own Cultural Center…… and take some of the pressure off Tyee Store.
January 16th, 2007
What with all this global warming this year, the South End’s been inundated with snowstorms, monsoons, windstorms and bad craziness – all of it culminating in power outages that last for days. The neighbors who didn’t snowbird it to Phoenix or Baja are about half deranged breathin generator fumes and cursing the PUD, the government, God and the day they retired to a backwash like South Camano.
I try to reassure em, bein the Good Samaritan I am. I tell em about the good old days where we lost the Grid for even longer, even more often. I tell em how the missuz came to my love shack in ’81 in a ragin storm. Power out, trees down, tide lashin the beach, practically had to cut our way home to a dark shack she’d, fortunately, never set eyes on.
I tell em, think romantic. Think oil lamps and candlelight, quiet conversation, flickerin shadowplay and the haunting strains of a banjo gently weepin. Think, This is how it once was. The wind strumming the fir boughs and the world vibrant and pulsing in a way TV pretty much dulled. Think of that old lovelight rekindled and warmin like a cookstove, the dreams risin once again, yeasty and full of glutinous potential.
That’s how this old codger thinks of the South End. And if I have to be reminded of it every storm, every power outage, every candled memory, well, it’s a welcome few days. And Ma and Me, we think of em sort of as anniversaries. Course, after 3 or 4 days, we’re ready for TV. Or divorce. Or maybe just a generator of our own.
January 16th, 2007
A lot of folks nowadays are growin up believing Capitalism is a new religion. Heaven right here on earth. A mall is the new tabernacle and a credit card is the Key to the Kingdom. Right after 911 our leaders said the best way to defeat the Evil Doers was basically to go out and go shoppin. Better, really, to hop a plane and fly to the Mall of America. Keep the economy hummin……
I grew up believing I couldn’t have everything I wanted. Some folks would say I was deprived. My parents, my abusive parents, gave me a measley quarter allowance and encouraged me to save it. Now THERE’S an old fashioned word gone out of favor. SAVIN. Nowadays we’d get an allowance and spend it 10 times over, build a credit rating and do in debt leveraging it up to our collective eyeballs.
The banks and the credit card companies, the whole financial sector, they got one word for us now: BUY. Buy as much as you want. Money in the bank is a sucker’s game. Too low an interest. Every day is Xmas in America these days. Take a second mortgage. Cash in the 401-K’s. Liquidate, capitalize, maximize the investments, take out a loan, think leveraged investment, amortized depreciation, adjustable interest, junk bond. Think Vegas, proletariat probability, lottery fever. Think this: Chapter Eleven bankruptcy. Throw the dice. If you lose, bail out. That’s what the big boys do. Take a risk, go for broke, start over, new improved credit rating. New ball game.
What’s NOT to love here if you’re an American? The collective debt here in the USA is 3 times the Gross National Product and goin up. It’s one bazillion times the South End’s Gross Pathetic Product. But I’ll tell you this: on the giddy South End we don’t run a shell game for suckers. No sir! We got the Real Deal, old fashioned goods. I’m talking South End String Band CD”s. No snake oil here, mister, just an honest investment that’s cure what ails ya. Buy both of our CD’s. One of em’s got our greatest hit. Hell, buy a thousand and beat us at our own game! Low risk, hi profit. You’d be a fool to leave your money in a market fund when riches await the savvy investor. South End String Band CD’s: the Road to Riches. Talk to us after the seminar here, I mean after the concert. Our operators are standin by……
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