The above audio is me reading an excerpt from the second Montauk book, Adventures In Synchronicity, with some music I recorded in the background. I’m also reading The Invisibles by Grant Morrison.
I don’t discuss the metaphysical research I’m engaged in all that much on this blog, but I was at a wedding reception the other day when the topic of déjà vu came up. The person I was talking with described having so many experiences with it that she thought she might be going crazy.
Acting as a metaphysical physician, I prescribed a viewing of the movie Donnie Darko, then later suggested she check out Eric Wargo’s amazing work on dreams, precognition and the “long self”.
The people I’m reading and listening to posit patterns in the universe that we haven’t been taught to identify, or recognize as significant, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Researching these topics challenges my assumptions of the world and expands my sense of what is possible for us, as humans in this material realm, to experience.
If you think we only have this one life and that death is the end of it, end-stop, fade-to-black, then you will be a MUCH EASIER creature to control because death, in that limiting scenario, is a tremendously fear-inducing concept.
I have left that fear-inducing concept behind because I don’t believe it is accurate from all I have read and listened to.
And, the other day, I wrote something down in my journal that feels, to me, more accurate. And it comes from watching Donnie Darko a few dozen times.
My name is Maggie Bornstein and I am currently in my sophomore year at the University of Montana, where I study African-American studies. Originally from Massachusetts, the first time I registered to vote in Montana was with FMF, and it wasn’t long after that I became an intern, then a fellow, and now and ambassador for the 6-Mill Levy on the campus that is my second home. In my current position, my love for education, youth power, and Montana have collided, and to put it simply, I am living the damn dream.
For Bornstein, living the damn Montana dream entailed a meteoric rise in the liberal activist world. Just two years after her work at Forward Montana, Bornstein’s political pedigree and accolades saw her up for some recognition with the 25 Under 25 awards as Bornstein prepared to graduate and enter THE REAL WORLD. From the link:
This spring, she will graduate with majors in African-American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Sociology and a certificate in Global Migration Studies. After working with Forward Montana during the 2018 cycle, she began her work with UM’s Women’s Resource Center, and began her directorship in the fall of 2019. Presently, Maggie serves as an intern with the Montana Human Rights Network, an ASUM senator, and a facilitator with the YWCA GUTS! program.
I didn’t know or care about any of this until a letter to the editor popped up from Maggie Bornstein claiming Mayoral candidate Jacob Elder had right-wing funders who were militia supporting homophobes. I wanted to know more about where Borstein was getting this idea, so I looked up her contact info and called her.
After leaving a message, Maggie Bornstein called me back and we discussed our mutual concern about Jacob Elder. Bornstein indicated she couldn’t specify the sources of the claims she made in her public letter because it was based on information she learned about while interning for the Montana Human Rights Network, a fact I later confirmed in an email exchange with Travis McAdam.
That email exchange occurred on a Friday, which must have made for a LONG weekend for Maggie Bornstein. Why am I making the claim that Maggie Bornstein had a long weekend? Unlike Bornstein, I provide something called EVIDENCE of my claims.
The evidence that Maggie Bornstein had a long weekend waiting to communicate with me is this text message I received on Monday, May 10th, and 5:49am (I have cropped the image to omit the phone number):
I never responded to this text message because I felt doing so would be like walking into a trap. I figured this was just a bit of damage control (mixed with some projection) after probably getting a talking to by her non-profit employer regarding the needed boundaries between non-profit work and political activism.
But I’m not writing this post and sharing screen shots of text messages because of interactions from all the way back in May.
No, I’m writing this post because Maggie Bornstein has apparently learned NOTHING from the last few months of her activism, so it’s time for a more direct effort at providing an educational opportunity. If not for Maggie Bornstein, then for any young people out there who might be more receptive to listening to your elders (even if we are white and packing penises).
After writing this post about a politically connected couple benefiting from their access to subsidized housing (which draws heavily from the research of Mayoral candidate Greg Strandberg), City Council candidate J. Kevin Hunt brought attention to Strandberg’s research on Facebook.
This was Maggie Bornstein’s immediate reaction and my response:
I was not the only one who wanted evidence. After candidate Hunt made a similar request, this is how Bornstein responded:
I’m not going to counter Maggie Bornstein’s self-assessment that she is capable and intelligent. Instead, I’m going to opine on what I think Maggie Bornstein’s political activism is reflective of, and it’s not good.
Across many different kinds of demographic groups and institutions there seems to be a sense that the ends justify the means.
What is emboldening this, I would argue, is asymmetric encouragement by the predator class in order to keep us fighting each other over black/white, Democrat/Republican binaries instead of unifying the masses against the sociopath .000001%.
If Maggie Bornstein had been paying attention to the activism surrounding the abuse of Tax Increment Financing, she might have noticed how threatened our local oligarchs were at the sight of a VERY intelligent progressive like J. Kevin Hunt finding common cause with a conservative like Jesse Ramos.
THAT is the kind of collaboration that keeps the tippy-top investing in divide and conquer tactics so we, the peon serfs, will continue doing the dirty work for them while they spend time turning space into a tourist attraction for billionaires.
People who are aware of these dynamics are my allies, regardless of how they politically self-identify.
And the people who are NOT aware of these dynamics are, at best, providing comfort to sinister forces.
Please don’t help the entities that see us as herd animals to be culled. They are getting enough assistance already.
It took a conversation with Adriane Beck, the point person for Missoula’s Incident Command Team, for me to finally understand the very limited scope of their mandate, which is essentially over now.
The task of the ICT was to use specific criteria to assess over 20 possible locations for managing Missoula’s diverse homeless population. After 4 weeks, that work is wrapping up, and the recommendations are in:
The first is the former Sleepy Inn Motel, serving as a temporary Transitional housing for those needing a place to live for a short period of time.
“I think the importance is pretty paramount to create spaces to address those basic human needs,” Beck said.
The second site, known as the Clark Fork Land, would serve as legal and safe campground.
The third site, near the Missoula Cemetery, would be a ‘safe outdoor space’ equipped with hard-sided shelters.
The reason why Missoula’s current capacity to deal with homelessness–a capacity which includes a main homeless shelter, a new family homeless shelter, winter overflow on Johnson Street, a transitional Veterans shelter, and a transitional outdoor camp–isn’t enough is of course because COVID.
Please remember that and forget EVERYTHING else that was happening with homelessness in Missoula before the pandemic.
Here is our Mayor continuing to exploit the health emergency in order to justify using the Office of Emergency Management to spend time before the west explodes in flame for picking the next place to sprawl and disperse his 16 years of failure on this critical issue:
Mayor Engen said there’s an urgent need for the project, while the pandemic has local homeless shelters operation at 50% capacity, and Missoula’s homeless population continues to grow.
“Doing nothing is not an option and doing nothing will further exacerbate an already really difficult situation,” Engen said.
That’s why the Director of Missoula’s Incident Command Team, Adriane Beck, was tasked with finding a solution.
If you want to believe how Engen is framing this, fine. My interpretation is a little different. I think Beck and the ICT have been used to provide political cover after Engen and his new California police chief cleared out the West Broadway Island and then shut it down for six weeks (it’s now been seven weeks since that action was taken around May 26th).
Maybe there’s some benefit to having the ICT assess different sites for homeless overflow. Since they don’t have expertise in the area of homelessness, and weren’t really provided with any experts to provide insight, then they weren’t bogged down by the social complications and NIMBY considerations that could have mired the effort.
While that could be a benefit, there are larger concerns to consider, concerns I shared with Beck in my conversation with her, and which I touched on in this post. Is a military-structured Incident Command Team normally used for natural disasters really appropriate to be using for this? In that post I referenced the ICT approach in San Diego which put a library director and city manager in charge.
While it would be nice to have a public conversation about this, the peak of summer is when everyone gets out to enjoy the place they sacrifice so much in order to live in, so we’ll have to wait until next month, I’m guessing, to hear more about what the next steps are for OPERATION SHELTER.
The most recent problem being reported about a bridge in Missoula is the weight limit of the renamed Higgins bridge (now called Beartracks bridge). The Montana Department of Transportation just issued the limit of ONLY 10 tons, which means school buses and city buses won’t be able to use this new bridge.
From the link:
Most buses and big loads won’t be able to drive over the new Beartracks Bridge on Higgins Avenue in downtown Missoula. That’s because the Montana Department of Transportation just put in a 10-ton weight limit.
It sounds like a lot. But we checked the average weight of a school bus full of kids. That’s about 17 tons. We found estimates that the average city bus weighs between 25,000 and 40,000 pounds.
Officials say Mountain Line, Missoula’s public bus service, adjusted its routes to accommodate existing stops.
Is this going to be the permanent weight limit? If so, this seems like a VERY BIG problem for our infrastructure capacity. I’ll also point out this is the SECOND problem with this new bridge. Earlier this summer, before the heat dome descended, portions of the bridge’s surface were getting so hot (over 140 degrees) that signs had to be put up warning people about the risk of injury, especially for canine companions.
While Beartracks bridge has issues with the heat, Missoula’s pedestrian bridge over Reserve Street had issues with cold. Specifically, when temperatures dipped below 20 degrees, the bridge would become slick and dangerous. This required a $30,000 dollar fix:
The South Reserve Street pedestrian bridge in Missoula has an issue — it gets too icy in the winter for people to walk safely across it.
From September to May the bridge is subjected to frost, and the deck’s current heating and sensor system can’t keep up when temperatures dip below 20 degrees.
On Wednesday, Missoula’s Parks and Recreation Department approved fixing the bridge’s defrosting system.
It will cost the city $30,000 but is expected to help lower the electric cost to run the system and will not need as much maintenance from staff.
The bridge to nowhere I mentioned above was initially built to create more use of the West Broadway Island by community members. The hope was that community use would drive out the drug abusers and homeless residents of the area. Instead, when the bridge made it easier to establish a homeless encampment, the whole area was shut down for six weeks.
Well, it’s been over six weeks, and the bridge providing access is still closed to the general public.
Another bridge with a strong homeless interface is the Reserve Street bridge. One idea that is moving forward is building a more significant fence to keep people from hopping over. I fail to see how this will prevent people from accessing this area, but I doubt a high probability of failure will stop money from being spent on this effort:
Nearly two decades after tents began popping up under the Reserve Street Bridge, the Montana Department of Transportation is beginning to survey boundaries for a fence.
“We will be installing a fence along the Reserve Street corridor through there,” said Bob Vosen, MDT’s Missoula District administrator. “We’re not sure what the time frame is yet, but we’re trying to get some stakes in the ground.”
So, in summary, Missoula is building bridges that can’t handle heat and cold, or accommodate heavy loads, like school buses, but they can provide easier access for addicts and homeless people to congregate, defecate and die outside.
