Now that my knee is functional again (although I don't think I'm safe to drive in a place with traffic because the knee can buckle just when I want to use that leg), I can go back to my original project of throwing things out. I won't be too careful about it, since if I get pulled aside into reading and reflecting, NOTHING will go out.
But I will glance at the sermon titles from 1978-1988, even if they are old. Some of the ideas have persisted and others have perished. It's hard to throw out weddings and memorials, so maybe I won't. The UUA, even the history organization, has little interest in the Montana circuit-riding experiment of 1982-85, but it occurs to me that the state historical society might be interested. I'm told I already have a "box" there.
The ironic trouble is that what historical societies want to preserve in most cases is the story of the winners from whom they fancy themselves to be descended, but this circuit-riding was meant to take a good look at the small fellowships and how to get them to grow. ("Losers" in terms of the big congregations in cities.) The principal reason they don't grow is lack of people. We already knew that.
The UUA is an Enlightenment denomination of middle class people with enough education to have gotten to that point of view. One CAN make the Enlightenment work with Xianity, with a bit of ingenuity and denial. In the beginning the school of thought tried to hold onto Xianity by including the two sibs, Islam and Judaism, but by now it's all gotten stretched too far. Historical societies have not yet grasped that we're beyond those terms and have not quite framed the next point of view. Thus many of my sermons are outdated and others aren't there yet. Out.
Another whole drawer comes from email conversation with Bob Scriver's second wife. She had settled in Los Angeles, was widowed (a second husband), and had a very nice retirement community house. She fell, much as I did, but with far more grievous injuries that put her in a nursing home for a long time. When she came home, she discovered that her house had been emptied and auctioned to pay for her care. Now she had a bed, a built-in dinette, a computer and empty but carpeted rooms. She was about the age I am now.
The content of the exchange was questions I had about Bob plus her own case against him. She was the wife who took him across from being a musician/teacher to being a taxidermist and sculptor, though the art product of those times (the Fifties) were almost entirely "cute" little animals, which they sold for tourist trinkets. An exception was that at the time of divorce (1959), Bob made a nude portrait of her, called "Jay" but often mistaken for "Joy." It's realistic and appealing. She also was keeping the bust of her brother Maurice but it was auctioned and no record kept. She was a bossy French-Canadian used to managing everything and Bob liked that. It was as though he had a mother again. The complete works of Bob Scriver are at the Montana Historical Society already. OUT.
Many files are things I saved because when I first moved back here and had time to write, I thought I would pursue them. Some were ideas, most of which are completely re-framed and expanded because they were before the genome was developed and the incredibly eloquent analysis of stones so that their molecular orientation and composition tell us so much. We discovered that in organizing life, we had gone by appearances as misleadingly as the Euros did when they tried to identify American plants and animals by thinking they were different versions of Euro beings. Nothing was as it had been. File after file is outdated.
Another category of files were about things to do, like papermaking or making soap or using "Sculpey" plastic clay to create jewelry and small figurines. I did a little, but usually stalled out and lost interest. At least I kept the polymer clay long enough to read that I can revive the stuff by working baby oil into it. I also kept paints and pastels and might get back to them, so I kept them.
Many books are ready to discard, but no one else wants them either. Why mess with a giant unabridged dictionary when Google will tell you the same thing, plus all the words that have been invented or imported from another language? These words aren't in the old dictionaries, so the reference books are no longer unabridged. They're only doorstops or flower presses. Out.
All this will make space in the garage which I had hoped to make into a studio before the first rain revealed that the roof leaked badly. Many tarps later, it still leaks but not so much. My files are there because in the house they make the floor sink. All floors in Valier sink because the foundations rest on gumbo, which is like cement when dry but soft glue when wet. When the file cabinets are empty, they will go out.
The underlying factor of the whole enterprise is, of course, money. I had had the idea that I could make and sell things -- even books -- but the money has gone out of it all. We were aware that the economy of the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife was based on the traffic that went by. We went so far as to sit out front with a clicker and count the cars that were from elsewhere. Then we'd figure the percentage that would stop and the percentage of the stopped people who paid to see the animals. We had a lot of local repeaters. But the "permanent" population of the whole HighLine of Montana has been radically thinned, partly by consolidation into corporate ranch operations and therefore the shrinking of towns and their businesses.
Yesterday I had a phone call from Rex Rieke, a very fine artist, musician, and good friend from the Sixties when we thought our lives were the best of all possible ways to live and our location was ideal. http://www.rexrieke.com He was asking me about establishments for which he had particular fondness. The Lighthouse dinner club is ended. Medicine River Trading Post, run by Lame Bear, has been closed a long time, due to Lame Bear's medical problems, but persists on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/Medicine-River-Trading-Company-58339637152/ (Counter to that trend, the library is thriving.)
Rex thought of me in part because he'd been called up by Ned Jacob, another very fine artist who moved to the SE rather than the SW. He lived in Browning for a while. We're all about eighty years old, asking "Why Gone Those Times?" http://www.nedjacob.com/artist1.html Most of the rest of the group are dead. Their work has even faded from the Great Falls auctions. The predator wheeler/dealer died of old age.
It may be that I'm only making space for something new. Maybe I'm just clearing out the house so it can be demolished. The Blackfeet are expanding, getting more professional and skilled. Their numbers have increased until Valier is 30% tribal, though the town refuses to admit it. Now the several big businesses that support this town are beginning to move away, partly because their people are aging. Even the people go.
The next person who uses the trivial and blind phrase "a trip down memory lane" is going to be smacked in the nose. This is serious -- sometimes painful -- work, but necessary.
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