This Land Is Our Land – Scenic Biways
Motorcycle Vapors . Mutterings And Murmurs . Poly Tics . Social Studies
Woody remains an icon of folk music history. In addition to the national anthem of “This Land,” Woody’s songs—like “Reuben James,” “Roll on Columbia,” “Union Maid” and “Pastures of Plenty”—have been some of the most significant contributions to American folk music of this century. To some, he was the father of the American folk song in its modern form. In addition to radio play and the long playing record, Woody was fortunate to be a singer of folk songs at a time when the struggling blue collar workers, farmers and day laborers who had stoically persevered through the Great Depression and gained a new respect and romanticized place in American culture.
It can be said that, Woody, like most geetar plucking plyers and warblers of popular culture, was an imperfect troubadour. Though a prolific and clever songwriter, his technical music skills were limited. He was a womanizer and absentee father. He had a legendary aversion to bathing and a penchant for borderline illegal erotic letters. It’s no surprise that he was a communist who sought to fundamentally challenge the American economic and political system with every verse of his lyrics. The seemingly bucolic anthem ‘This Land’ originally carried far more cogent verses questioning the capitalist system that had relentlessly and unequally divided up the land Woody sang of so adoringly. A closer look at Woody Guthrie’s story, and the molding of his legacy, sheds light not only on a commonly misperceived American icon, but how historical memory can sometimes be subject to lapses of memory. He is the Che’ Guevera, the romantic shooter of pregnant women, of the Socialist protest song.
He twanged, droned and bleated on the plight of the common man and the poor, the farmer crushed by dust and drought and pestilence and plague. His songs have been replaced by the cries and yelps of climate change fear, racial inequity rap battles, the shrieking of unhinged Cultural Marxists, twerking S&M transgender story times for kids and the audible gasps of the Globalist’s dry micro orgasms as they think of ways to kill farms and farmers and useless food eaters – to capitalize on the vast swarms of grasshoppers and crickets and GMO mosquitos that they have hatched and launched to feed the surviving masses when traditional organic agriculture collapses.
This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
SCENIC BI-WAY – Another 4018 Kilometers Travelled
As the discomfort starts to set in, the wrists start to ache, the right shin and knee as with the growing mass in my calf start to burn with the fire of a Lahaina or Tenerife’ climate fire emergency, the brain chimes in. It whispers, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the engine and wind, “Just a little more, a little longer, a little farther, and before you know it – the whisper fades and a last little bit continues – you won’t be there yet”.
You’ve been riding all day, the planned four hour leg turning into six with stops.
Past the symbolic, highly subsidized wind and solar farms that will never produce enough energy or save the planet from the destruction and misery caused by their manufacture and deployment and un-recyclable retirement.
Past and through the sad, sad, failed Socialist settlements of First Nation or Indian encampments.
Past their failed and shuttered casinos and the new ones being built to replace them.
And down to and through the stunning Black Hills of South Dakota and a recovered Sturgis after the drunken debauchery and mess.
Lovely town Sturgis.
Past the abandoned homestead farms taken over by corporate agribusiness. These crumbling symbols of once productive lives are returning to the earth, wildlife and insects. The wooden structures are turning grey and then to dust. The metal sheds, roofs, silos and rusting skeletons of farm implements will take much longer to decay. The sway backed barns and outbuildings have become havens and refuge for swallows, pigeons, quail and ground dwelling rodents as well as the scavengers and predators that need them for their survival.
Past monster ranch houses built on the bones and hides and meat of cattle. Passed immaculate stables, barns and yards perfect machines that use oil. Past vast, living herds of grazing cattle and free range buffalo and bison all with their own scent and tang and sound.
Under Wilco’s ‘Sky Blue Sky’, past ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ while hearing Explosions In The Sky’s, ‘Moving On’, from their upcoming new release due out in September, 2023…or ‘Under The Sky’ by That Petrol Emotion. Under Joni Mitchell’s ‘Clouds’ and through Ryan Adam’s ‘Dirty Rain’.
Riding the Chief Joseph Highway or The Beartooth up their thrilling, tight winding turns, up to breathtaking vistas and then down again, yet more into the similar views and on though to Cooke City, Montana, into Yellowstone National Park, to see some of it again, before the big, big, world shattering geothermal event.
Low grade, periodic and fleeting agorophobia sets in, a feeling of smallness in a vast and varied space. The feeling passes at brief stops and overnight stays when small matters are tended to.
Past and through endless hours of ‘crosswindshear’ and the leaning, wobbling, anxious excitement and fatigue they bring.
‘ALERT – EXTREME CROSSWIND WARNING – USE CAUTION – USE ALTERNATE ROUTE’
Riding alternate routes west to avoid riding north to enjoy a tailwind with gratitude, passing yet more range and farm lands, mass harvesting and vast fields of hay and straw bales and obvious signs of drought tempered by flowing and full rivers.
Riding into sunsets and sunrises and darkness and light, catching glimpses of my riding shadow, I am still in awe that this is me – that I am doing this.
Resisting the urge to stop and image capture the sunrise and sunset…and ruin the moment.
Any road with few cars and fewer people on it is a scenic highway. The fewer billboards, roadsigns and power lines and resource installations, the better. Perhaps there is something to the ‘The Great Reset Depopulation Agenda’. Something sinister but necessary.
The great questions are :
‘Why should the great beauty and bounty of this earth only be enjoyed by an elite self chosen class and appointed few?’
‘Who will decide who suffers and dies and who will live?’
Riding on, up, up from Roundup, Montana, back into what remains of Canada through Wildhorse to Aidrie, Alberta on a last day frenzy for fourteen hours or so, fueled by gasoline, beef jerky, adrenaline, Red Bull and Lara bars.
Performing Modified Mounted Moto Asanas to overcome the discomfort and cramping of hours behind the bars, on the road.
Squirming, shifting and alternating riding positions.
Squinting into the oncoming headlights light and darkness.
Taking it all in.
Flipping up my visor visor to let the winds rush in to dry my tears and wash away the harvest dust, blowing out the bad thoughts and dread of what is surely to come.
This is preparation.
Meditation of determination to live through this – like everything else that has gone before.
Ride on while you can.
Ride on and live and feel as if each day is your last.
One day soon you will be correct.
All the best to you and yours – the few remaining good people.
