IDAHO WINDOW UPDATE

September 8 2013

Great to see the Peace Movement reviving so well and, in various ways, so broadly in this country.  Not surprised to see CNN and MSNBC stepping up their campaign on behalf of the DC chickenhawks and their schemes. Sociologist C. Wright Mills' apt characterization, "crackpot realism" -- almost an understatement in this surreal situation -- remains eternally apt.  The term comes from his Causes of World War Three which, as a paperback, I used along with his Listen Yankee (Cuban Revolution), as texts in some of the classes I taught -- my first year of college teaching -- at Wisconsin State, Superior, in 1960-61.  The authoritarian college president was retired National Guard general, Jim Dan Hill, essentially a Texas Bircher.  We stirred up a lot of student activism in that situation, had a good deal of community support, and put Hill on the skids.  I married Eldri in the latter stages of all of that -- and then we went to Mississippi.

Forest fire danger is virtually over in Idaho.  A couple of weeks or so ago, super heavy and record breaking rains struck the general Pocatello region.  We got two and a half inches in two hours; some nearby locales got four.  Lots of small hail and powerful winds.  None of that poses any heavy problems for us 'way up where we are -- water mostly just rushes downhill -- but flooding played Hell down in Pocatello proper.   Rain began to spread into the nearby Central Mountain region and commenced to quickly chill the huge fires there.  Then, a few days ago, another heavy round of rain came to both us and nearby areas. Pocatello was flooded yet again. We did have two prolonged power outages up here that lasted far into the respective nights.  Although a large fire still continues in the Nez Perce National Forest, on the other side of the Central Mountains, it's being contained.  Almost all fire control work now is mop-up along the many, many miles of fire lines.

The second rain especially revived the mini-mudslide problem in our back yard but a couple of days ago I pounded more steel fence posts into the ground to reinforce our rather battered protective fence.  That wasn't too tough a job since the earth was relatively soft for about seven inches down.  Things will quickly dry out down in there and the fence posts will be firmly set, hopefully for a long time to come.

Strange and suspicious things around our home have quieted.  I still keep my revolver handy and, hearing some things a few nights ago, went out once with it into the dark.  I could see nothing.  We do have every reason to believe that the special mail cover involving us remains in force. (And weird computer problems remain legion.) However there have been no more instances of the hole poked recently into the package from Syracuse University Press containing Brian Rice's fine book on Iroquois cosmology.  Here, again, is the post I made in July 2013 when a substitute mail person quite inadvertently revealed the mail hold for all mail at our address.  (I should add that our postal mail is really quite prosaic.)

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: JULY 4  2013

This latest revelation of emergent police state approaches in the Land of the 
Free comes, I'm sure, as no particular surprise to experienced social justice 
activists, civil libertarians, and dissenters of other genre.  However, the 
great scope of this will be shocking to some.  It's "Old Hat" for our family 
and has been for decades.  If interested in some lurid examples drawn from our 
years here in Idaho, see this link of mine:  Duel in the Shadows: 
 http://hunterbear.org/duel_in_the_shadows.htm

My notes in "Duel" record many of our Idaho surveillance experiences into 2009. 
 At that point, things were sounding increasingly redundant and I stopped 
posting the stuff on our website.  However, I continued to take appropriate 
notes from time to time.

One of those notes of mine, just a few weeks ago, indicates something very 
similar to the example given in this NYT piece.  A substitute mail person, very 
young, apparently misdelivered, with our mail, a printed notice on white 
cardboard the size of a business envelope -- indicating a mail hold for our 
current address here in Idaho. There were various numbers -- statutory or 
otherwise administrative.  We were looking at it, not at all surprised, when 
the young person returned, knocking hard on our door.  "She wants the damn 
thing back," I said to oldest daughter Maria. "Oh Hell -- give it to her."  
Maria politely handed it to the person who, rather flustered, took it and left 
quickly.  I notified other family members, here and far away.  None, of course, 
were surprised.  But we all agreed that our mail, here, is really not that 
exciting for the most part.

Keep Fighting,

Hunter Bear

And here is an interesting "historical piece" that goes back to 1999:

Early on, (after our arrival in Idaho in '97), it was clear there were weird things occurring with our mail.  In 1998, aware that I had no physically good copies of the Mainstream issues containing my work [The Destroyers, May '60 -- and the long Mine-Mill article, October '60], my oldest son, John, himself a top-flight writer -- and then an assistant U.S. Postmaster at Glyndon, Minnesota -- conducted a quiet computer search for those issues of the journal.  Although copies of Mainstream are rare indeed, he found the issues.  And, on January 5, 1999, he mailed them to me from "his" post office at Glyndon, doing so by Priority Mail.  As soon as they were mailed, he telephoned me and indicated they should be -- if all went conventionally -- in my hands within three days.

They took ten full days to reach me.  In the middle of that, I questioned our mail delivery man whose responses were evasive.  When the two copies of Mainstream finally arrived, in their secure and properly addressed and fully stamped Priority Mail package, holes had been poked into one corner of the container -- but had missed the journals.  The prolonged postal odyssey of those two issues of Mainstream, with my long ago work therein, served as the basis for the first of several formal letters of complaint to U.S. Postal Inspection authorities.  While those dubious worthies have never responded, this was the beginning of our very formal and very open and increasingly well-publicized  counter-attack -- which  has helped bring the existence of these shadowy and covert Federal/state/local creatures-of-repression into the public eye.   http://www.hunterbear.org/destroyers.htm

As I have been prone to note, absolutely no good purpose is served by remaining silent in these repressive situations.  I strongly believe that it's critical to speak out publicly.  And retreating, in any campaign of any kind, is extremely dangerous.  We strongly trust, and firmly expect, that in time meaningful and significant focus will be placed on the role of these Federal "task forces" at the grassroots level -- whether their targets are geographically isolated persons such as myself -- or urban activists -- or anyone.  Removing the obstacles placed on the Freedom of Information Act by Bush 2 following 9-11 and continued by Barack Obama, is definitely a necessary and critical step.

Meanwhile, the great Hopi Kachina (or Katsina, the Hopi term) -- epitomizing an important sprit -- recently given as a gift to us by an old family friend, Mr. Charles "Chuck" Saunders, late of Flagstaff's far ranging KCLS radio station, looks down at us in powerfully friendly and protective fashion -- a fine complement to our omnipresent Bear Medicine.  A foot high, and "old traditional," it's extremely detailed and complex.  It's also wearing a necklace of tiny turquoise pieces.  It's possible -- possible -- that it was created by a fine Hopi artisan, Jimmy Kewanwytewa (often known as Jimmy K.)

Here, attached, is a photo of the Indian Scholarship Committee at Arizona State College, Flagstaff, taken about 1956.  The caption:  
Indian Scholarship Committee. Seated: Jimmy Kewanwytewa; John Salter, Chairman; Raymond Naiki; George Kirk and Willie Coin. Standing are: M.T. Lewellen; Ellery Gibson; Dr. Garland Downum, Secretary-treasurer; Dr. William Tinsley; Melvin T. Hutchinson, publicity chairman; and Dr. Lewis J. McDonald. 

My father, John Salter, and associates.   Arizona State College, Flagstaff,  (later Northern Arizona University), ca. 1956.  This is the precise listing and name spelling of the Indian Scholarship Committee members as given by NAU.  However, it is Raymond Nakai -- not Naiki.  Mr. Nakai was to become Chairman of the vast Navajo Nation a few years later.

And, in case you missed it in my earlier post, here is, attached, a photo of our Kachina -- flanked by my father's molded sculpture, "Indian Man" and a 19th Century basket from the Colorado River Tribes.

Solidarity Forever,

Hunter Bear


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm
.
See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. And this book is also an activist's
how-to manual:  http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
and also "Fifty Years: Remembering Medgar Evers" :          
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876

See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)

Our very substantial page on effective community organizing
techniques: http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm