Deadwood, Montana: Geography anyone?

Whistle
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I made Music Trades Magazine in the Industry Briefings:

Musican Under Siege in Deadwood, Montana

Anna Martinez took up paying the tin whistle a few years ago as therapy for debilitating asthma. Last summer as she was waiting for the local trolley, she pulled out her whistle and began to play. An offical in a nearby information booth prompty called the police saying “We can’t have free music in Deadwood.” A police car pulled up and told her to stop. When Martinez approached the town council about playing in public, she was told that she would have to take out a liabiliy insurance policy so that "the town would not be held liable if someone was injusred during the course of her performance. Martinez has threatend civil disobedience if the town does not relent, “I don’t gather crowds, i just sit there and play. It is not about money or breaking the law, I play because I enjoy it.”


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Waiting for the Mothership…


edited for bad typing and spelling


[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2002-06-19 19:31 ]

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Hi Anna

It is good to see that someone has taken an interest in your plight. But I would arrest you for “paying a tin whintle,” in public.

What’s a whintle is that something like “arrow shirts?” Is that on the WHOA list?

Mark

“Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” Heraclitus.

[ This Message was edited by: MarkB on 2002-06-19 19:23 ]

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On 2002-06-19 19:22, MarkB wrote:
Hi Anna

It is good to see that someone has taken and interest in your plight. But I would arrest you for “paying a tin whintle,” in public.

What’s a whintle is that something like “arrow shirts?”

Mark

un, can you arrest me for just bad typing and spelling?

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The way you have describe Deadwood, if they were to check everybody for spelling maybe they could lock half the town or most of those on city council.

Mark

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Montana took the name and left SD with a new name: Deadbeat. My advise is to move to Montana, there where you’re appreciated! Colorado would appreciate you, too!(If you don’t try for mayor in one of those small towns.)

(I knew what a whintle is: a whistle with an entitlement)
Mack

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On 2002-06-19 19:46, Mack.Hoover wrote:
Montana took the name and left SD with a new name: Deadbeat. My advise is to move to Montana, there where you’re appreciated! Colorado would appreciate you, too!(If you don’t try for mayor in one of those small towns.)

Naw, Mayors are Road Kill in a year! I only want a place where there are no Californicators! They follow water, they really do! Those Californicators come to Deadwood, they don’t bring health food stores and vegitarian restaurants with them, they assimilate!

(I knew what a whintle is: a whistle with an entitlement)
Mack

Laughing so hard I’m crying!

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[quote]
Those Californicators come to Deadwood, they don’t bring health food stores and vegitarian restaurants with them, they assimilate!

Can you ellaborate on this comment a little more?

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On 2002-06-19 20:00, cerrabus wrote:

Those Californicators come to Deadwood, they don’t bring health food stores and vegitarian restaurants with them, they assimilate!

Can you ellaborate on this comment a little more?

When yuppies and Califonians come to this vast prairie state, unlike some places where they bring Wal-Marts and Home Depots to small towns, and invade and take over and build small ranchettes, they don’t don;t bring goodies like chain stores, or fresh veggies, or organic produce and hot botiques. When they come to live here, they
get assmilated, and we still can’t buy a pair of shoe strings here! So much for yuppie Californicators! Just ask anybody from Montana! Montana they stay Californians buying up Montana, hbere they become Deadheads and Deadbeats!

Waiting for the Mothership…

[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2002-06-19 21:49 ]

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Hah! You think South Dakota has an identity problem. Try being from North Dakota.

A popular vacation spot here is Medora where they have a really fantastic musical every night during the summer. People from New York will book tickets for the show and then ask how far the musical is from the faces, ya know the monument, ah… Rushmore? Wrong state.

They also want to know if the Passion Play is held in the same facility. Wrong state.

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All I know is that when poeple come here that are not from here, the Great Plains are mind-bogglingly vast, and tend to blow Eastern minds away! I didn’t think tney lowered the IQ, but I may be wrong! Quick, how many people do you know can point out Bosnia on a map?

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Yes, every Californian is just like you described. Give me a break. How dare they assimilate?

And I can find Bosnia on a map too, but only a newer map. It used to be part of Yugoslavia so I can understand why people might not know exactly where it is. I cut people slack for being wrong or different sometimes. Do you?

Using a group name like Californicator is a way of stripping them of individuality so you can be prejudiced against them. Garden-variety xenophobia. Why don;t you pretend we’re black and use another word to describe us? Publish it on a world-wide Forum. Wait a minute, is that HATE SPEECH??

Are you going to author an ordinance in Deadwood against Californians (who don’t behave the way you like) moving there?
Are we supposed to get worked up for that cause and sign petitions and hear blow-by-blow descriptions of the crusade?

Best wishes to all,
A seventh-generation Californian Weekender whose button gets pushed by name-calling.

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On 2002-06-20 03:13, The Weekenders wrote:
Yes, every Californian is just like you described. Give me a break. How dare they assimilate?

Best wishes to all,
A seventh-generation Californian Weekender whose button gets pushed by name-calling.

My apologies, I did not mean to offend anybody. Thank you for calling me on it. I tend to get a bit raw everytime I look at Mount Bald’N’Ugly, which was created by a California company. There used to be a town called “Terraville” under it. A broad sweep of that particular brush was not a fair thing for me to write at all. I was wrong. Sometimes I forget how narrow-minded I can be.

I realize that not all Californians come here with the intent of building strip malls on pristine ranching land. The ones that stay, the snow birds that head for Arizona in the winter, do not keep their identities as Californians.

Califorians are fine, when they are not buying up huge acreages of the Great Plains and turning them into corporate hog farms, and creating crises for the communites near them by so badly polluting the water that it’s unusable. I think that only other Great Plains 4th generation farmers and ranchers and a few old mining families are disconcerted and disoriented and angry when this happens. Even Kevin Costner wears a cowboy hat when he’s here. I’ve also got a friend, a sculptor, who’s spent over $15,000 and five years suing him to get the money he contracted to pay her for 12 pieces of bronze sculpture that cost her over 23,000 bucks to have cast. His business dresses up young women to look like old-fashioned residents of a bordello and pay 'em five bucks an hour. It gives me the creeps. Bad enough we’ve got this rep for a wild west tourist trap…To me this is exploitation, not economic development. He’s also left a huge unfinished mess here out by Boulder Canyon, and it’ll will probably stay there.

We actually did have pristine ground water and clean creeks until these people came in. One California mining company came in, got what they could, declared bankruptcy and left a mess of open mine shafts and poisonious leftovers, that will cost millions to clean up the damages. The creators of Mount Bald’N’Ugly have been trying to convince us it’s a raptor sanctuary. I guess it simply not economically feasable or profitable for these California companies to clean up their messes that leave us with poisonious water and piles of rubble.

Not all people of California are in this category of hated “go east and exploit” parade of people who have come from California and left mountains of rubble and poisonous gound water behind.

Californians who move here and assimilate here in Deadwood. They come here for one reason and that’s gaming, they’ve been through Las Vegas and left more than a few bad checks here and there. I’ve lost more money in one summer taking occasional checks from bikers from California who show up here for the Motorcyle Rally and I don’t like it. I don’t take checks anymore at all. I can’t afford it.

What is is that compells people to come to an econically depressed area like this and makes it all right for them leave a big mess behind? And we South Dakotans? We’re idiots when we treat them like Gods and let it happen, thinking there might be a piece of pie left over for us. I think I might like most Californians a lot more than I dislike the California companies who move here to scrape up what’s left of the Gold in these 'har hills. It’s not New Yorkers coming in to South Dakota and doing this.

Actually, I think there are a few towns and small cities that would love to pass a law keeping Californian economic developers out of the state. I know there’s an amendment that would not allow corporate farm development on the state ballot.

This used to be a quiet place to live, where you could actually hear the cicadas. Now there’s no place in the Black Hills where you an actually have an acre to yourself anymore. There’s no place left for us to escape the noise to.

Sorry you dislike the updates from Deadwood. Again, I apologize.

\

Waiting for the Mothership…

[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2002-06-20 06:50 ]

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I think if you did an actual survey, you’d find that those outsiders you dislike so much come from a great many places other than California. We Californians are no different from people anywhere…and yes, when we move to another state, we “assimilate” because that’s what you do when you change where you live.

You want to talk about exploitation, come here and see what “outsiders” have done to our state some time. In fact, come here and talk to us about Enron…you’re sure to get an earful from people who are tired of the “scr*w the Californians” attitude that prevails in other states.

As far as that barren hill goes, all I can say is, no one could have created it if someone hadn’t been willing to sell it…and the company who bought it could have just as easily come from Texas or New York…or North Dakota.

Bigotry has no place in this kind of forum.

Redwolf
California native and proud of it

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On 2002-06-20 10:55, Redwolf wrote:
Bigotry has no place in this kind of forum.

Well said, Redwolf.

Perhaps she doesn’t realize the similarity between her postings about “Californians” and her postings about how the “in crowd” of Deadwood treats her.

Greg

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Hi Anna:
Thanks for kind words and clarification. But I will go with Redwolf in insisting that just because a CaliforniaBASED company does something awful there means that its Californians behind it.

I had written a much longer note but try to control the wordflow when possible.

I am a very old Californian by our standards with my earliest ancestor being one of the Dons who founded San Francisco in 1776 on my mom’s side, and Gold Rush ancestors on my Dads.

Our family are still mostly cattle ranchers and a lot of the ruin you describe I have witnessed within my own state. Because I am an urban dweller and a college grad, I have had one foot in the city and one on the ranch for all of my life. I have pondered, argued and accepted the contradictions of who Californians are supposed to be, and believe me, with 30 million people, most recently-arrived, there is no clear answer.

People in washington and Oregon play the Californicator game, yet I can honestly say that its like a food chain, only its peace and natural beauty that people are seeking to greater or lesser degrees and generally, they just keep moving North to the distress of everyone along the way! i learned to temper my words on this very subject because of “LA PEOPLE” who kept moving up here and wreckin’ it. Come to find out that Norcal people are the LA people of Oregon and Washington. That shut me up with the name-calling. Heck, my cousin ended up in Alaska. If she goes any further north, she’ll be over the pole. Our kin like the peace and quiet that we USED to have here in Norcal. now we don’t fit here either. And to be hung with a label for that very characteristic is what clogged my spleen.

In Deadwoods case, apparently, you have gambling thrown in, which will always attract people for the wrong reasons. Having studied extensive Gold Rush history (in CA and the West) I have also considered what characters were drawn by instant riches and who was willing to stay home and be content with farming. Gambling communities usually have a bloody and nefarious history. Why should that be any different now? I am sure more than one thesis has been written about Nevada’s history and politics, where gambling mentality mixes with other Western ethos…

We do have a Gold Rush mentality in this state in many ways yet. People come here seeking radical upward adjustments in income and opportunity from all over the world and “become” Californians. And since so much has been exploited here now, covetous eyes are cast elsewhere.

I wish it was as easy as hanging it on a identifiable group but its “Progress” they say that is responsible. Look no farther than the Pacific Lumber Company, where several generations of a family owned company practiced reasonable forestry but was then bought out by Maxxam, which resulted in clear-cutting and the famous tree-sitters you read about.

I used to get in huge discussions with my Dad, who believed in a rancher’s right to occassionally sell off a piece of the land when times were hard. It worked for decades here, he argued, and it is a property owners right. But look who you ended up with for neighbors, I countered. People who don;t like the smell of meadow muffins! Then we’re all unhappy with the thought of govt stepping in and taking charge to save us from ourselves…

And as for movie stars, please do not identify me with them. I don’t know where Kevin Costner grew up, maybe he is from here but that threshold of riches and fame creates a whole new animal out of a person, it would seem. One thing about living in the Bay Area is that we are crawling with celebs and rich people.

I just ignore em. I know that you can’t when they buy up everything. But once again, it ain’t because they’re from here. Its because people everywhere buy the movie tickets and make em rich. I won’t pay a nickel to see Robert Redford because his politics infuriate me. And what happened to all the celebs who were going to move away because GWB got elected? I’m still waiting… They are probably in Montana or closeby you, wreckin things because they have too much damn money…

Whenever I want a laugh, I remember the picture of Sylvester stallone in his shearling coat up in Aspen. A real Coloradan, right? Even brought his mother up there.

Anyway, back to whistlin and :slight_smile:. Life is nicer that way.

All the best,
Lance aka Weekenders.

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Actually, I think California does have a higher-than-average exploitation culture, which dates back to the gold rush… all the people that got -really- rich were the people that sold overpriced necessities to the miners and would-be miners… (I believe that’s where Levi & Strauss got their first million… and they were among the most upright, providing quality product at least) … and then there’s the ‘ticky-tacky boxes’ and other spectacles of Californian real estate, and of course, Hollywood, not to mention ‘tourism’ in general, although I’ve never been sure who’s exploiting who there, but I suppose ultimately the tourists -and- the tourist-attractions conspire together to exploit the land and the people who have other jobs. (‘Tourists go home’ was a more
popular bathroom scrawl than the ‘f-word’ when I was living in San Diego… usually with the addendum ‘but leave your daughters’ …)

Of course, all of these people came -to- California -from- somewhere else to be exploitative, and as California grows increasingly expensive they’re likely to move away again (well, not the same -individuals- as moved there over a century ago, obviously, but their cultural descendants…) Or possibly not. California is a very comfortable place to live with a legislature firmly controlled by corporate interests (speaking of Enron…).

Anyway, all of this is to say, it is -not- true that the developers could have ‘just as easily’ come from anywhere else, because development companies, timber companies, and the money to start up ventures are not evenly distributed across the country; but also to point out, at the same time, that all these ‘Californian’ exploiters are either immigrants to California or only a couple generations down from it, and economic interest and opportunity will determine where the concentration of exploitational corporations is located in another twenty years.

I also utterly disagree that Californians are ‘the same as everyone else’, or rather, I disagree with the whole ‘people are the same’ idea; there is massive non-homogeniety of culture in this country, and people can be -very- different from one part to another. We’re all born homo sapiens, sure, but upbringing plays a huge factor in how we turn out. The ‘commuter culture’ of middle to upper-middle class people who move around the country with the educational and job opportunities has created a strata of culture that is geographically spread (and of which I’m a part, for that matter, which yes, makes me first cousin to the exploiters as well…) and television is doing its level best to erase all cultural diversity, but there are still parts of the U.S. that are as foreign to each other as the Catholic Missionary is to the South American Tribesman, albeit with a lower language barrier.

Eh. Which is all a really long way of saying that it’s both true that insults aren’t called for, and that it’s not quite as simple as ‘people are all people the same everywhere’.

(Does this have anything to do with whistles yet? :wink:)

–Chris

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On 2002-06-20 11:52, Wandering_Whistler wrote:

Well said, Redwolf.

Perhaps she doesn’t realize the similarity between her postings about “Californians” and her postings about how the “in crowd” of Deadwood treats her.

Greg

I again aplogize, and that’s a very good point, thanks to you, I can now see the similarity to my treatment by the in-crowd and my attitude about Californians. I am sorry, I was wrong. Now, if any one else really needs to get in another comment in about my blind spot when it comes to what is happening here in the Black Hills, that’s fine, I will apologize again, to any Californian who feels offended. I will not apologize for being human with a few glaring blind spot. If I feel like the beaten dead horse, I have a much harder time reconsidering my attitude when I feel on the defensive. I’ve learned something from all of you, Weekender, Redwolf and Wandering Whistler, and it would probably be pretty counter-productive to continue this discussion as I’m sure you can see the potential for a real bash fest, which I think nobody wants. Again, I was wrong I apologize.

Seems California and Deadwood do have that Gold Rush background, which probably is a irrational trigger for my resentment. Too much alike.

Waiting for the Mothership…



[ This Message was edited by: Anna Martinez on 2002-06-20 12:39 ]

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On 2002-06-20 11:57, The Weekenders wrote:
Hi Anna:
Thanks for kind words and clarification. But I will go with Redwolf in insisting that just because a CaliforniaBASED company does something awful there means that its Californians behind it.

Anyway, back to whistlin and > :slight_smile:> . Life is nicer that way.

All the best,
Lance aka Weekenders.

Thank you for your kind words. It seems we may come to an understanding and an accord. I appreciate it. It is hard to watch places like your father’s ranch and Spearfish Canyon fill up with people who have no attachment to the land.

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It turns out to be sort of an interesting topic as exploitable land diminishes. Guess Mr. Ed is terminal though.

Bottom line is that I still love she who dances with weasels and want her to know it !!! : )

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On 2002-06-20 12:13, The Weekenders wrote:
It turns out to be sort of an interesting topic as exploitable land diminishes. Guess Mr. Ed is terminal though.

Bottom line is that I still love she who dances with weasels and want her to know it !!! : )

Every time I see one of those “just one more won’t hurt deals,” I want to move to the Gobi desert! (South Dakotans, a new breed of Yuppie Expoliters?)

Even the idea of having to haul water in 55 gallon drums doesn’t daunt me much any more!

I miss the quiet and clean water.

Better yet, the Mother Ship…