by Travis Mateer
I got a good idea yesterday after visiting my alma mater to prepare them for THE TRASH ALCHEMIST making a campus appearance on April Fool’s day. I still need final clearance from UM police regarding my evolving marketing device (pictured above), but that shouldn’t be a problem, considering I actually ENJOY talking to cops and, last spring, I gave UM Police Chief, Brad Giffin, multiple updates about my removal of Todd Spence’s meth shack.
If you click that link you will find MORE links covering my work last spring, work I was hoping to recoup a modest $5,000 dollars for, but as of this writing, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) has only received $2,428 dollars. Compare that to the price tag being reported today of $138,000 dollars and you might begin to understand how fucking pissed a person can get (or, my preferred term, BUTTHURT) when you’re essentially a goddamn expert and your vast skillset is roundly ignored so THIS bullshit can occur (emphasis mine):
The Missoula city government has spent about $138,000 since the beginning of last summer on cleanups and code compliance related to unsheltered living and RVs in the public right-of-way, according to city records.
The city compiles “urban camping reports” for each month and posts the total cleanup costs associated with each event.
For example, in August of 2023, the city spent $13,729 for a “coordinated, all-day effort on the part of multiple departments to remove garbage, debris, needles, human waste, RVs and trailers” from Market Street. That included a vacuum truck, a backhoe, a police presence, a hired towing service for the removal of seven motor homes and dump fees.
Isn’t this “coordination” of local resources simply amazing when compared to the tons of trash I was able to remove at a fraction of the cost? Yes, amazing, but not as amazing as what I am attempting to pull off on April 8th when I ECLIPSE THEIR BULLSHIT with a trash removal and poetry reading event.
Later in the article, the Poverello program I coordinated since its inception in 2010 (I left my job in early 2016) is mentioned as doing work to address this issue. Really? Because, as I’ve said before, if I was still coordinating this program, the controversy with Ryan Tollefson would NEVER have happened.
Here’s more from the article, including some hilarious complaining from Ginny Merriam about narrative perception (emphasis mine):
Ginny Merriam, the city’s communications director, said in an email to the Missoulian that it seems like the “public narrative is that we’re not doing anything.”
“I think this illustrates that we relentlessly are doing a lot,” she said.
The money comes from various departments, including public works, parks and recreation and code compliance. Each department has its own budget, and the city council is responsible for passing a budget along with the mayor every year.
The city has a standard protocol when cleaning up places where people have been living without shelter. In an interview recently with the Missoulian, Mayor Andrea Davis said people are given four or five days’ advance notice. Also, the Poverello Center’s Homeless Outreach Team works with people to connect them with resources, and social workers from Partnership Health Center are available to work with people as well.
No, Ginny, the public narrative isn’t that you are NOT doing anything, it’s that anything you DO do is inefficient, expensive, and borderline retarded. Does that clarify the public’s stance for our “communications director” with the elitist provenance I’ve been harping on for years?
How was grandpa Merriam an early example of narrative control? Maybe this will illuminate readers about how long these narrative controllers have been trying to influence your perceptions about this world:
A century ago, H. G. Merriam, chair of the University of Montana English department, launched a journal he said would “serve as an outlet for the very living literary interest that is on the campus of The State University.” Its editorial board consisted of the students enrolled in his new undergraduate creative writing course.
By the 1930s, that journal, Frontier and Midland, had gained a national reputation for the quality of its contributions and intentional focus on regional writing. Now, UM’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library has made the entire run of Frontier and Midland available online.
The Frontier was one of the first journals to feature content from and about the Northwest. In a 1963 oral history, Merriam recalled, “I was conscious of the necessity, if possible, of getting the Northwest states – that is, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana – to realize their common culture … It seemed as if the region had no sense of being a unit, and if possible, I hoped that the Frontier might help establish some such unity.”
Do you see what’s happening here? It’s the same thing old Benny Franklin was up to when he wasn’t getting freaky with the Hellfire Club, and that’s the meta-project of social engineering. No one in the Northwest was screaming for some “common culture” because the only people who saw this as a necessity were elitists who want to CONTROL populations, not empower them with knowledge.
I’m going to have some serious FUN using my poetic skills to continue my exposure of the local cabal who have been way too comfortable for way too long with their tight grip on local narratives. They know that their grip is slipping, and they know that what I’ve been doing these last 4 years has been a big reason why. Why else would KGVO stop responding to my emails after my popular appearance criticizing the crisis mill levy, which ended up failing that year when voters JUST SAID NO?
I finished up poem number 22 yesterday, and it’s probably the most aggressive, zero-fuck-giving piece of writing I’ve ever produced, so get ready, Zoom Town, because the TRASH ALCHEMIST is ready to GET TO WORK!
Thanks for reading!