Livingston Weekly

Update: Wal-Mart Developmentin Livingston

As most of the community is aware, it is not the City Commission who will decide whether or not the land discussed in the recent Resolution 3937 is sold to any certain corporation. If and when the land is annexed to the city, the decision on what to build there, whether a Wal-Mart or a truck stop, will be up to the discretion of the landowners alone. However, public input in this matter could be of integral importance in this issue, and citizens of Livingston should be rightly informed of any meetings or hearings during which they might be able to voice opinions on the issue.

On Thursday morning April 24, City Commissioner Steve Caldwell contacted the editors of the Weekly to clarify certain points in the annexation issue that could lead to the annexation and development of commercial property west of Livingston. As the story has been developing over the past three days, the Weekly has been attempting to contact both the City of Livingston and the landowners, the Jessons, for a statement or clarification of points in the issue.

Caldwell emphasized that if the the property mentioned in Resolution 3937 goes through a process of annexation to the city, there will be many opportunities for public comment. At the discussions during the City Commission meeting on April 21, the commissioners amended the city growth policy to target the area for annexation. The continuing process, once the landowners submit an official petition for acquisition, will include defining the terms of such annexation, holding a public hearing to discuss the resolution to annex, a process of sending the resolution to the planning board, going through a platting and subdivision revision process and eventually discussing the matter once again or perhaps a number of times before a regular City Commission meeting, therefore allowing for a number of opportunities for public input.

"It's a long, orderly process," Commissioner Caldwell said, and indicated the process may even take up to a year, again stressing that during this process there would be many opportunities for public comment. Citizens interested in the city's annexation process may contact the City of Livingston offices at (406) 222-2005 for more information. Notices of meeting are also posted outside the city offices at the City/County building on Callender Street and posted in the local paper of record, the daily Enterprise, available around Livingston and Park County for 75¢.

While many citizens have expressed concern that there will not be ample time to protest this particular development in Livingston, according to Caldwell, there will be many opportunities to contribute opinion on the issue. Previous posts on this website have been edited to reflect this.

The Weekly will be presenting a special feature on preventing the encroachment of Wal-Mart into small towns in the Saturday, April 26 issue, and full investigative coverage of this issue will be presented in the Saturday, May 3 issue. Please comment on this website with further information or clarification or email news@livingstonweekly.com.

The editors at the Weekly are always open to fostering communication in the community, and rely upon our readers, city and county officials and citizens to contribute valuable information on issues of importance to this community. The editors at the Weekly feel compelled to look into any issue that will affect the community of Livingston, and attempt at all times to be fair and objective, and we welcome comments from the community on our attempts to do so.

Update: Annexation Key toWal-Mart Development

Recent information delivered to the Weekly offices notes the discussion of resolution 3937 at the recent City Commission meeting on April 21:

RESOLUTION NO. 3937 – A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY OF LIVINGSTON, MONTANA, AUTHORIZING CITY MANAGER TO ENTER INTO AN ANNEXATION AGREEMENT WITH MARGIE JESSON FOR PROPERTY LOCATED IN A PORTION OF SECTION 21 AND 22 OF TOWNSHIP 2 SOUTH, RANGE 9 EAST, M.P.M.

The above resolution refers to landowners Margie and John Jesson, currently in possession of 40 acres subject to the new zoning classification. According to Weekly sources, the Jessons have an informal contract with Wal-Mart for seven million dollars if the property is annexed by the city and zoned commercial. If an annexation agreement is reached between the City and the Jesson’s, the city will most likely have a a series of meetings to formally annex and zone the property.

These annexation and zoning meetings will be a chance for citizens to comment on the proposed development on a site near the 1-90 exit less than five miles west of Livingston. Citizens interested in the outcome of this development are encouraged to contact the City of Livingston offices at (406) 222-2005 for more information regarding the upcoming meeting.

The Weekly will continue to provide the community with updates regarding the developing story. The landowners in this issue, the Jessons, were unavailable for comment at the time of this posting.

Wal-Mart Coming to Livingston?

Editors at the Weekly learned today that a recent public hearing resolution discussed at the April 21, 2008 City Commission meeting may be a change in the yet-to-be-committed city/county growth policy to allow a Wal-Mart to be built within city limits:

Resolution No. 3936 — A resolution of the City Commission of the City of Livingston, Montana, amending its growth policy's future zoning map by including portions of sections 21 and 22, township 2 south, range 9 east lying northerly of Interstate 90 as light industrial/commercial.

The area noted above is located near the current offices of Printingforless.com at the Interstate 90 exit less than five miles west of the City of Livingston.

Although this information has yet to be confirmed, the staff of the Weekly encourages all citizens of Livingston to attend upcoming annexation meetings that may be held to discuss this Resolution 3936. Concerned citizens may contact the city offices at (406) 222-2005 or visit the city website at http://www.ci.livingston.mt.us/citycommissioners.shtml where phone numbers of each City Commissioner are listed.

As Livingston is a town of less than 10,000 year-round residents who rely much on local trade for subsistence, the addition of Wal-Mart in the community could cause a loss of jobs, the demise of many local small businesses and the desolation of Livingston's vibrant and historic downtown shopping district.

Wal-Mart is a large billion-dollar corporation, and it is often difficult for communities to prevent the encroachment of the superstore culture into their town. According to the Idaho Observer, the New York Times, and countless media outlets, Wal-Mart often works behind the scenes with planning and zoning fronts and real estate corporations in order to pass through enough local legislation to allow for proper zoning prior to actual building and construction approval.

By the time building approval is sought, it is frequently too late for the citizens of a community to do anything about the store opening. Wal-Mart has deep pockets for legal battles and even dedicated citizens' groups are sometimes outplayed and outlasted by the corporate giant's legal defense team.

Livingston's economy, after decades of slow to negative growth in the late 1980s through the 1990s, has rebounded and is poised to become a healthy and prosperous community. With three locally-owned hardware stores; a number of unique clothing boutiques for men, women and children; three local grocery stores, two of which are locally-owned; a new light department store, the Livingston Mercantile, which turned out to be a successful community-funded effort; many specialty stores with rich Livingston histories, including saddle and tack stores and stationary and book shops; a large discount store "Pamida" and scores of downtown shoppers there seems to be little need for a giant superstore to replace or supplement these options.

Citizens of Livingston, if they wish to retain the unique balance of economy in the town, will need to invest considerable time and effort into preventing the supposed arrival of Wal-Mart. For more information about preparations for preventing the building of Wal-Marts in small locally-based economies across America, visit http://www.sprawl-busters.com/.

Look for expanded reporting and follow-up of this story in the next issue of the Livingston Weekly due to hit the stands Saturday, April 26, 2008. We encourage residents to post comments here to voice their opinions regarding the addition of a Wal-Mart to the local economy.

—Reilly Neill

Earth Day 2008 Photo Contest"Last Best Places" Winner"ZION" BY KEN KAPINSKI

In September 1969 in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson first proposed a nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda. Nelson announced an environmental “teach-in” coordinated from his senatorial office in the late spring. On April 22, 1970, Arbor Day activities were modified to emphasize the critical importance of the environment and to make the American public aware of the destruction of the earth’s natural preserves. On that first “Earth Day” 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. The first Earth Day influenced the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

Over the past 38 years, Earth Day has been celebrated around the world by hundreds of millions of people committed to concern about the environment and preserving the natural world for generations to come.

The Livingston Weekly recently asked the community to participate in a digital photography contest to commemorate Earth Day 2008 here in Livingston. The theme of the contest, as in years past, was “Last Best Places,” a term often associated with Montana’s untouched wilderness. The Weekly encouraged photographers to go outside the state lines and look at the larger picture of the Earth, and submit photography that celebrated the many places on the globe still abundant with nature, or places which may have special significance in the photographer’s dialogue with the Earth.

As ecosystems across the planet are intrinsically linked, the wildness of Montana is only representative of many remaining places on Earth still significant to humans. We received submissions of animals, sunsets, forests, rivers and meadows in Montana and around the world, and each photograph portrayed a unique connection each artist had with their subject matter. Hopefully, these photographs and reflections lead to a greater appreciation of the Earth as well as a commitment to help preserve this very special place in the universe.

Photography is a powerful medium that can reflect the beauty of the natural world as well as the many critical issues facing the environment and our role in both the destruction and the preservation of the Earth’s forests, mountains, deserts, rivers and oceans.

We would like to thank the over 60 photographers who submitted their images and visions of the Earth for this issue. Through other’s eyes we can sometimes see our place and other places in a new light. We hope these images inspire and remind viewers just how precious our Earth is.
(First row from left: photos by Kristen Wester, Dan Shapiro, Mike Inman and John Blue Feather; second row: photos by Lauren Dalzell, Rocky McPherson and Sandra Sather-Westley.)

The Hottest Ticket in Montana

What a party. Anyone who made it through last Saturday (April 5) evening at the Butte Civic Centre without some seriously extended grinning is in need of Prozac. It was arguably the first and last time that the Montana Democratic Party’s Annual Metcalfe Mansfield Dinner was as hot a ticket as a backstage pass for the Rolling Stones. The headliners were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the tickets had sold out two weeks before, ten minutes after going on sale.

If there is such a thing as diversity in Montana, which is debatable, it was in evidence in the festive lineup snaking around the building two hours before the doors opened: senior citizens with peace signs; flocks of high school students with Hillary for President placards; clusters of middle aged biddies for Obama, native Americans from all over the state, the names of their tribes proudly sewn onto jackets and caps; groups of young gay boys giggling; state elected officials in ill-fitting suits and cowboy hats; and rich people in designer party clothes wearing the much coveted red arm bands that signified seating on the main floor where the hors d’ouvres and tables were, as opposed to the poorer progressives wearing shabby chic and the blue arm bands of the cheap seats way up high in the balcony. Placards were waved, songs were sung, buttons and T-shirts hawked. There was even a truck of surfers from Stevensville Montana with an “OBAMA” surfboard tied on top.

The admirable Carol Williams, our first female speaker of the State Senate, was standing patiently in line in the chaos of the bus station across the parking lot, waiting for someone to get to the W’s on the ticket list. “I’m for Hillary, all the way to the bitter end,” she said. Outside in the cold Monica Lindeen was chatting cheerfully with Jeanne Marie Souvigney, while waiting for her husband Bob Raney. Every hopeful Montana Democrat running for elected officed turned up with buttons and placards with their names on them, while ACLU volunteers moved through the crowd with petitions.

Easily the most moving moment of the evening happened before the official event even began, outside in full view of the chilly, patient crowds. An ignorant pig of a man held up a vile sign that read “America without N*****s” , and almost immediately two high school students from Bozeman moved in front of him and covered his sign with an even bigger one that said “HOPE”. The racist moved out from behind them, irritated, but the boys again scooted forward and covered up his sign with theirs. And again. And again. The new “HOPE” obliterating the old “HATE”.

Inside the arena the air was electric. Everybody who was anybody who wasn’t Republican was there: John Bollinger looking healthy and happy with his new wife; Big Jon Tester and his rock of serenity Sharla and a gaggle of boisterous grandchildren; Jonathan Windy Boy and his wife Sarah, easily the evening’s most beautiful couple, were wearing Barack Obama buttons; and Matt McKenna, the Bozeman boy who’s ambition is to be the Karl Rove of the Democratic party (and who for the last few months has been Bill Clinton’s spokesperson, with arguably dubious results) was standing conspicuously alone in the crowd frantically texting on his Blackberry so as not to look like a wallflower. Two flamboyantly fur-draped fashionistas swept in with great fanfare and no credentials to much whispering that they must be Clinton operatives from the East. In fact one was a gospel-singing black Baptist preacher from Philadelphia and the other the owner of a Butte piano bar but it was hard to tell under all that mink and raccoon.

Max Baucus was there, smiling, as usual. It is often difficult to tell what Max is smiling at, exactly, as the smile is often directed at no one in particular, but it is a pleasant smile. Governor Schweitzer”s entrance met with much clapping and cheering from the crowd, and within about seven minutes he had managed to work the entire room, missing no one. And of course there was Jag the dog, found standing in line at the bar. Actually there were a lot of people standing in line at the bar. This is Montana, after all.

“There are lesbians everywhere you look,” observed one elderly gentleman.

“How can you tell?” said his equally elderly friend.

“From their haircuts. And they all have Hillary signs.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know”

“I didn’t think we had a lot of lesbians in Montana. Well what the heck, as long as they’re good folk, who cares what they do at night?”

Then it was showtime. After a couple of short speeches and a hauntingly elegant Indian drumming prayer, the words most of the room had been waiting for were spoken. “And now, I am proud to introduce ….Senator Barack Obama!”

The place went nuts, completely nuts.

Only political neophytes take campaign promises seriously. There is a surfeit in American politics of candidates who make detailed laundry lists of campaign promises disguised as financially feasible plans, and they are generally applauded in the press for their attention to detail. Rarely is it mentioned that the groceries on the lists are rarely bought nor the promises realized because 1)the items first must be approved by Congress and 2) there is not enough money in the federal piggy bank to pay for them once the wasteful and fraud-ridden military budget is taken care of.

Yet there is a serious deficit of politicians who practice what can only be called “holistic” politics, a concept in which all of a candidate’s speculations and ideas are complementary and hang from a philosophically solid frame. Obama is such a politician. His laundry lists are more challenges to his listeners of things THEY must do to bring about change than they are promises of what HE will do. It is one of the reasons his supporters feel so personally invested in his campaign, and so passionate he ignites the basic goodness and idealism of his audience and again and again asks them to rise to the challenge of selfless action. His much talked about charisma is certainly a reality, but his brilliance lies in the way he has turned the conventional way of campaigning on its head.

According to several independent reports Obama received over 71 ovations during his 42 minute speech. These did not come from mindless “kool aid drinkers;” they came from serious political junkies who had never seen anything as thrilling in their lives. Many of them cried.

When the speech ended Brian Schweitzer was stunned. “How do I follow THAT?” he asked the person standing next to him. “Keep it short” they suggested. So he did. And for extra insurance he got Jag the dog up there on stage with him and Jag did the same old Jag tricks that always bring laughter and applause. Our Governor is ham of the first order.

Hillary Clinton in person is a hundred times more sympathetic than the harsh and often disingenuous persona we are subjected to on televison. It was impossible after hearing her speak not to conclude that her shambles of a campaign has done great disservice to this bright and accomplished human being. She was clear and concise and absent was her seemingly omnipresent anger.

Yet her speech was full of promises contradicted by many of her votes in the Senate and by the policies and laws implemented during her husband’s administration. Hillary as a populist is a sell only to audiences with no political memory. Carefully constructed phrases about the Clinton presidency like “What part of peace and prosperity didn’t you like?” brought predictable ovations that, although somewhat lacking in unrestrained conviction, were definitely bursting with respect and love. Hillary was family. And not only had she done well, she had reminded us of why we had often been so proud of her. One could only pray that when she finally realizes that it is time to throw in the towel, she goes out on a high note like the one she struck on Saturday.

Then it was over. The bar was running out of the popular brands of beer, words of the party goers had begun to slur, and the designated drivers were rounding up their charges. Even Jag had run out of steam. But the chattering cascade of excited voices continued out of the building into the cold Butte night as the last stragglers were seen getting into their cars, still grinning from ear to ear.

—Margot Kidder

A Return to Eden (Minus Adam and Eve)

Big box stores, middle schools, movie metroplexes, trailer parks, freeway overpasses, minivans, megamalls, and so much more: the Stuff of Humankind. These constructs all figure prominently in our very own Artificial World, created by us and for us, in order to facilitate living to our own satisfaction—often at the expense of most other living things on our planet.

Most times, our “artificial world” reassures us with its apparent solidity and timelessness. But sometimes the very existence of our constructs, the so many bad things humans have done, built, or inflicted on the planet, depresses the hell out of me.

Continually I affirm with silent anguish, “If only! If *only the Earth could ‘catch up’ somehow and deal with the defilement inflicted upon it without a let-up. If *only the Earth could stop and breathe for a moment and start regenerating itself, without humankind continuing to sully things. If only we humans weren’t around, the Earth could heal and return to the Eden it once was… before the human beings exploded like a cancer over the land.”

Two books—one of them new nonfiction, “The World Without Us”; the other a fiction classic from the late 50s, “Earth Abides” stunningly showcase what might happen to Planet Earth if humans suddenly vanished from the scene.

“The World Without U”s by Alan Weisman, associate professor of journalism at the University of Arizona and noted science writer, takes the reader on a wild yet sobering ride into an astonishing, unknown world: one without any people. The author invites us to “picture a world from which we all suddenly vanish,” whether due to a mutant killer virus, alien beings or the Final Rapture.

How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all of our engines? How soon would Nature rebound and in what ways? How long would human artifacts remain in any recognizable form? We are called to imagine what might happen to Planet Earth, to its terrestrial wildlife, landscapes with both natural and artificial constructs, atmosphere, marine life, bridges, skyscrapers, and all the toxic wastes we’ve accumulated if the human race were suddenly to disappear.

Weisman guides us through this often-wondrous/often-scary “Brave New World Without Us,” as he attempts to answer his own question, “How would the rest of Nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms?”

According to Weisman, the deterioration process would begin immediately. But how, exactly? And why so quickly? Weisman’s answer: “It all begins and ends with maintenance.”

Our civilization is far more precarious, Weisman cautions, than we assume it to be. Large parts of our infrastructure would begin to crumble almost immediately, city streets and freeways would crack and buckle in a matter of months. Houses and office buildings would collapse in a few short years. Only a few, select artifacts—stainless-steel pots, certain common plastics, ceramic items—will survive intact. “Ceramics are very hardy substances; they’ll outlast almost everything else that humans have made,” Weisman says.

Consider the New York City subway system. We know it to be monumental, tried and true, humming day and night. But without people to constantly maintain it, the subterranean passageways would start filling with water within 48 hours (yes, *hours.) Manhattan Island of the 1600s was a very hilly place, lush with some 40 different streams and many underground springs. All of this water has now been imprisoned under skyscrapers and cement. Some of it runs through the sewage system, but there’s still a lot of groundwater rushing about underneath, trying to get up and out. Even on a clear, sunny day, the folks who keep the subway on track have to pump out 13 million gallons of water, every *day. Otherwise the tunnels would flood.

If human beings disappeared tomorrow, one of the first things that would happen is that the power would go off. Much of our power now comes from nuclear or coal-fired plants that have automatic fail-safe switches to make sure that they don’t go out of control if humans aren’t around to monitor their systems. Once the power goes off, the pumps stop working. Once the pumps stop working, the subways start filling with water. Within 48 hours, there will be a lot of water in New York City, some of it above the surface. It would overwhelmingly flood in just a few days if its army of transit employees were not working constantly to keep water and sewage out. The sewers would also overflow. Below, the steel columns would start corroding, and eventually collapse. After awhile, the streets would start caving in, and some of the streets would revert to the surface rivers they used to be. Seeds from plants would blow into cracks in the pavement and into the leaf litter. The return to a forest would happen pretty quickly.

Residential homes would go pretty fast, too, what with water getting in and mold appearing with the moisture. The mortar turns to dust, the chimney topples, pipes burst, woodpeckers attack. In a few decades, the roof collapses.

While we are alive, we are constantly maintaining. As Weisman puts it, “If you stop, when something gets wet, more wetness will follow. Wet follows wet. The subtext is maintenance and the maintenance people. Civilization would crumble without these folks.”

In several places on earth, humans are *already removed from the scene and have been for many years. The changes there are astonishing and surprisingly heartening. Says Weisman, “To see how the world would look if humans were gone, I began going to abandoned places, places that people had left for different reasons.”

• Bialowieza Puszcza, now a half-million-acre national park on the border between Poland and Belarus. It’s the last remaining fragment of old-growth, lowland wilderness in Europe. All of Europe once looked like the Puszcza with ash, oaks and linden trees 150 feet tall and 10 feet in diameter “with bark furrows so deep that woodpeckers stuff pinecones in them….It’s like what you see in your mind’s eye when you’re a kid and someone is reading Grimm’s fairy tales to you: a dark brooding forest with…tons of moss hanging off the trees. And there is such a place,” according to Weisman. Even wisent (European bison) still are found there, as well as more varieties of wild flora and fauna than anywhere else in Europe.

• Korea’s demilitarized zone (DMZ), where North and South Korean troops face off over a little stretch of land, about 150 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. Between these two armies is an inadvertent wildlife preserve, home to species that might otherwise have vanished. Rare red-crowned cranes, Asiatic black bears, Eurasian lynx, musk deer, yellow-throated martens, the endangered mountain goat known as the goral, and the nearly vanished Amur leopard have all made themselves at home in the DMZ.

• Kingman Reef, a sunken atoll that was briefly a U.S. Navy base during WWII and largely unvisited since then; places like the ancient underground cities of Derinkuyu (near Cappadocia in Turkey) that go down 18 stories with enough room to hold 30,000 people; places like Varosha on the island of Cyprus, once a city of 20,000, deserted by Turks and Cypriots alike since 1974 after fierce fighting, now growing back thickly with foliage, reptiles, amphibians, and birds.

What about all that bad stuff out there, stuff we humans have created like plastics, heavy metals from discarded computers, and PCBs? Already, 95 percent of retrieved dead North Sea seabirds are found to have plastic pieces on their stomachs, with an average of 44 pieces per bird; even krill, jellyfish and plankton are consuming tiny bits of indigestible plastic invisible to our naked eye.

Some of these “crumbs from the human table” will persist for millennia, even longer. Without human beings around, all of our enriched plutonium is going to escape into the environment… sometime, somewhere, somehow where it will endanger life as we know it for another 250,000 years. Heavy metals, some of them toxic, hang around for a long time in the soil: zinc 3700 years; cadmium 7500 years; lead 35,000 years, chromium 70,000 years. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 704 million years, but Uranium-238 (the so-called “depleted uranium”) will be part of the earth for 4.5 billion years (and we have at least more than 500,000 tons of it lying around, particularly in armor-piercing weapons used in the Iraq War).

And what about our billions of plastic bags, old bleach bottles, and other flotsam? Out in the ocean, between California and Hawaii, there’s an immense area (officially termed the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but unofficially known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) where a Texas-sized rotating ‘galaxy’ of trash floats, consisting of 90 percent plastic. In the mid-1990s on the island of Cozumel, thousands of miles from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I was horrified to see an endless beach of plastic bottles and bags along the east side of the island. Plastic flotsam—it’s literally everywhere. Ocean-going vessels dump an estimated eight million pounds of plastic annually.

“I’m comforted by the fact that life is so resilient,” Weisman has been quoted as saying. “I didn’t write the book because I want people to go away. We’ve created so much beauty. My hope is that if people imagine the planet without us, then our longing would be to stick around and be a part of this and to find a better balance.”

Novelist Louise Erdich is calling this book “the most harrowing and, oddly, comforting book on the environment that I’ve read in many years.” To me, “The World Without Us” isn’t terrifying at all—it’s comforting, even inspiring. Because, even without us, the world won’t end. It has amazing, heartening powers of resiliency to heal itself if only allowed to do so. Weisman’s book guides us back to a sense of wonder about the Earth, as well as a clearer understanding of the human race whose amazing deeds have transformed it, and whose equally monstrous follies now threaten it.

Wouldn’t it be sad if we humans were no longer part of the scene? The George R. Stewart fiction classic “Earth Abides,” relates the tale of life in the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic. Only a very few, widely scattered individuals, like tiny atoms in the vastness of space, remain on earth. The book spans about 80 years, offering compelling descriptions of the changes in habitat, population fluctuations in plant and animal species, and a superb storyline about the resiliency of the human spirit and of the Earth itself. Definitely, it’s a book to cherish, and to read again and again. Copies of “Earth Abides” are still available on a variety of Internet and other outlets.

“The World Without Us” is a fascinating, comforting and ultimately reassuring read. It serves to remind us that Earth can survive without us, and not only survive, but flourish.

A brief Chinese poem begins “The World Without Us”. It also aptly sums it up its premise:

The firmament is blue forever,

and the Earth

Will long stand firm and

bloom in spring.

But, man, how long will you live?

—Li-Tai Po/Hans Bethge/Gustav Mahler, “The Chinese Flute: Drinking Song of the Sorrow of the Earth”

Veteran journalist and freelance writer Alan Weisman is the author of five books, including “The World Without Us”. His work has appeared in *Harpers, the *New York Times Magazine, the *Los Angeles Times Magazine, *Discover, the *Atlantic Monthly, *Conde Nast Traveler, *Orion and *Mother Jones. Weisman has been heard on National Public Radio and Public Radio International, and is a senior producer at Homelands Productions, a journalism collective that produces independent public radio documentary series. He teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona.

—Jane Susan MacCarter

Europe through the Back Door, Part TwoOktoberfest: One Stein at a Time

Oktoberfest is said to be the largest people’s fair in the world. Every year a dozen German breweries supply the event with six million liters of Germany’s finest Oktoberfest specialty beer, and every year roughly six million visitors come from all around the world to drink that beer. Oktoberfest takes place in Theresienwiese Park in Munich, Germany. Upon leaving Rothenberg, four backpackers traveling Europe just after high school found themselves hopping on a train to Munich for a festival they wouldn’t forget. Aside from being warned of the chaos by a hung-over man at the train station in Rothenberg, we had no idea what to expect from Oktoberfest, besides of course lots and lots of drinking.

The four backpacking Park High graduates Adam, Sarah, Koz and I arrived in Munich in the middle and peak of the three week long festival, and we could see Oktoberfest had taken over the city. People filled the train station to the doors. Some were ecstatic and just arriving to Oktoberfest. Others were haggard and franticly trying to catch the right train home. Walking out of the train station we saw hundreds of people, most dressed in old Bavarian-style clothes. Men wore lederhosen pants with suspenders and traditional German hats and women wore the old fashioned dresses that scrunched their breasts together and only covered about half of their chest. People wee yelling and singing, walking with arms around each other. Some were even standing on balconies overlooking the streets waving German flags, most of which were old men looking down all the ladies’ dresses.

Our first task was to find a place to stay for the night. We had been trying to book a hostel in Munich for weeks and failed to find anything available online so we knew we were in trouble unless by chance we found a place where someone left earlier than they reserved. Luckily, Sarah found an opening online for the night in a hotel across town so we booked it and hopped on a metro there as fast as we could. It was a pretty nice hotel, a little more expensive than we were used to but we were happy to have a place to sleep in instead of some crazy park downtown. We checked in, put our bags down and headed straight for Oktoberfest. We were unsure how to get there but it was easy to find. We just followed the huge crowd of people flocking towards the festivities.

On the way to the Oktoberfest grounds we saw people passed out on store doorsteps and benches from drinking too much. When we finally saw the gates to the park we could see huge lit-up letters that read “Willkommen zu Oktoberfest!” The world’s largest party was going on right before our eyes.

As far as we could see there were people with beer hats and other Oktoberfest memorabilia. Above them were roller coasters and other carnival rides. The lanes were lined with merchandise stands and hot dog and pretzel vendors and the place was one big drunken amusement park. Inside the park were 11 gigantic beer tents, each one featuring a different German beer. We went over to the first one we saw, but the doorman said it was full and we would half to wait ten or 15 minutes until he let some people out. We sat at the picnic tables outside and ordered our first stein from one of the beer maids. She carried out four huge glass mugs in just one hand. It was a hefty eight euros each but it was well worth it for a liter of a delicious Oktoberfest brew. We drank one while we waited for the doors to open. When they finally did, we ordered another to take inside.

I had never before in my life seen so many drunk people in one place at the same time. Everyone there seemed to be in good spirits, either singing or smiling. The tent was full of tables with four or five aisles running between them. There was no way we were going to find a place to sit so we just walked up and down the aisles, steins in hand, giving a “Prost” (German cheers) to everyone we saw, most of whom would put their arm around us and start singing in our ears.

Each tent had a traditional German band playing on a stage in the middle. They played national German songs as well as a few American classics like “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Take Me Home Country Roads” and “Hey Jude”. After a while we moved along to the next tent and after a few hours we were ready to hopefully make our way back to the hotel. Adam ended up losing us at the metro station and didn’t make it back until 4 in the morning.

For the next week we went wild at the beer fest, drinking, meeting people, and going on a ride or two. Our stomachs couldn’t handle any of the crazy rollercoasters, but we enjoyed a few calm amusement rides like the ferris wheel. However, after blowing our wad on beer steins and overpriced hotels we realized we were spending way too much money and needed to do things a little differently. We started buying our own beer and drinking before Oktoberfest and decided to find a campground instead of a hotel.

For the remainder of our time in Munich we stayed a campground called “The Tent.” Located in a park and less than a 15-minute metro ride from the Oktoberfest grounds, it was basically a large area where people could camp out on the grass in their own tent, stay in a large open tent on the floor, or stay in a bunk bed in another tent, each option getting a little more expensive. We went with the floor for only ten euros. They gave us a few blankets and mats and let us pick out a spot in the tent. The place was perfect and had pretty much everything we needed. There were bathrooms, showers, a bar, a café, hammocks and couches scattered around, a music hall, ping-pong tables and other recreational equipment for entertainment. Being that it was a park there was a lot of open space for things like football or frisbee. There was even a fire pit where everyone would hang out and have bonfires every night after Oktoberfest.

The tent we were sleeping in was pretty tight living quarters for sleeping side-by-side with people we didn’t know, but we made the best of it. There were lockers so we didn’t have to worry about getting anything stolen and the place was actually quite tasteful and homey, at least for young people and hippies. We met a lot of really cool and friendly people and had a lot of fun. Everybody there was a lot closer to our age, which we liked since the majority of people at Oktoberfest were much older.

For the next few days we made it to Oktoberfest early in the day so we could find a place to sit and eat, drink, and enjoy ourselves in a tent instead of just walking around. When Oktoberfest closed every night at 11 p.m., we would make our way back to the tent and hang out there. After a week in Munich, though we didn’t get to see much of the city, I’d say we had a pretty full Oktoberfest experience. On account of the large amount of beer we drank, we ran into a lot of unique encounters we probably would have never experienced without going to Oktoberfest. We finished off half-broken left-over beer steins we picked off tables. One night we even got stopped by the German police for yelling and making a racket, banging on the side of a van as we were walking home. When we told the police it was our first time at Oktoberfest they went from being angry with us to laughing with us. We met complete strangers that after 15 minutes of chatting with them were talking with us like we had known one another for months and giving us hugs.

By the end of the week I learned Oktoberfest was really all about getting out of your comfort zone. Oktoberfest was about doing things like getting on top of tables and singing and dancing with people you didn’t even know. It was about a couple dozen people helping each other find their way across town back to the campsite and sharing conversations, stories and perspectives while turning strangers into friends. Nearly every person we met was kind enough to either give us a prost, a pat on the back, or indulge in a friendly conversation. I am happy I can say I’ve had such an experience at 18 years old and have been to the best party in the world.

Considering the amount of money we spent and alcohol consumed, we needed to find somewhere cheap to relax. We decided that Prague would be our next destination. However, we did not know getting there would be a little harder than we expected, as we would soon find out there was a strike in the European train system and experienced the reality of spontaneous backpacking in foreign countries. Read on in the next installment of our European travels in the Livingston Weekly.

—Sean Reinhart

Now on the Stands: Special Print Edition of www.hoboeye.com

Local artist Brad Bunkers designs a unique printed edition of the online arts journal: http://hoboeye.com

Weekly Angle: National Security Letters

The USA Patriot Act contains a provision allowing government employees to draft “national security letters” and use them like search warrants. Federal agents are able to sign the National Security Letters (NSLs) themselves and then hand them to any third-party custodian of records, who must immediately turn over the records to the agents. Anyone “served” with an NSL is also given a gag order and told he or she faces up to five years in federal prison if he or she discloses the existence of the NSL to another person. Under the Patriot Act, an NSL does not require the approval or the signature of any judge. Nor does an NSL require the official who writes it to state any grounds for probable cause to believe a crime has been or will be committed. An agent needs only to write that the information he or she seeks is “relevant” to an investigation. An imaginative agent could probably think up a reason to demand almost any information from any anyone at any time.

The National Security Letter provision is a clear attempt to evade the plain language of the Fourth Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Thus far, three federal district judges (two in New York, one in Oregon) have declared the National-Security-Letter provision of the Patriot Act to be unconstitutional. However, the National-Security-Letter provisions still stand in all other jurisdictions (including Montana), and the feds are actively using the “Letters.” Some 34,000 law enforcement and intelligence agents now have unfettered, virtually limitless access to our phone and email records through NSLs.

The idea of national security letters certainly has nothing to do with any recalcitrance by judges to grant search warrants. Search warrant approvals have become a pointless ritual in some jurisdictions and it is hard to find a judge anywhere in the country who makes it a regular practice to turn down search warrant applications. In fact, the “search warrant success rate”—the rate of search warrants that lead to charges of any kind—has been declining for years as our nation has swarmed with police officers. Today, there are so many search warrants being executed in our country that fewer than half of search warrants in some jurisdictions result in any prosecutions.

When the Patriot Act was still young, its promoters claimed that the Act was needed to investigate and thwart terrorists. As the years have progressed, these claims have become more difficult to sell. Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI referred 43 criminal matters to prosecutors which had been developed through NSLs. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 19 were fraud cases, 17 were immigration-related and 17 were for money laundering. Only one case of “material support” of terrorism has been referred for prosecution out of at least 143,074 individuals who have been scrutinized through NSLs. “In other words,” writes Michael German of the ACLU, “NSLs, sold as anti-terrorism tools, are not producing convictions against suspected terrorists.” Instead they have allowed the federal government almost limitless access to our telephone, computer, credit and banking information.

Because NSLs do not need to be approved or monitored by any judge, abuses within the U.S. Justice Department have been rampant. In the only audit ever conducted of the use of NSLs, a random sample of 293 case files revealed that there were 17 percent more NSLs in the files than recorded in the Justice Department’s NSL database reported to Congress, meaning that the FBI has been misleading Congress and other overseers. More than half (60 percent) of the sampled FBI NSL files were deficient in required paperwork. Over all, a general circumvention of the NSL statutes (although those statutes impose few standards) has apparently been the rule rather than the exception.

—Roger Roots

A Golden Age Returns: Pete Rock and NY's Finest

Like most hip-hop heads, my first introduction to the iconic rapper and producer Pete Rock was CL Smooth's seminal '92 single (with Rock) "They Reminisce Over You(T.R.O.Y)". At the same time, like the majority of late pre-pubescent dudes of that era, my main concern in those formative years was mastering "Street Fighter II" and "Mortal Kombat" on the Super Nintendo. Nevertheless, I remembered CL Smooth's particular song for its jazzy horns and the effortless way in which hip-hop and jazz were melded together to create something unmistakably smooth, and I filed that sound away in my still unrefined musical subconscious.
Fast forward about four years to the genesis of my transformation to hip-hop aficionado. I purchased the High School High soundtrack on a gut feeling that there were some good tracks on it. After taking the CD home to my room I listened to it up to the seventh track. Immediately, I snapped to attention thinking to myself, "What the hell is this? That's a nice joint." I peep the tracklisting and who does it turn out to be but none other than the soul brother Pete Rock himself teamed up with the Large Professor on a track called "The Rap World". From then on, Pete Rock was filed away in my more discerning musical data bank.

A couple of years later in '98, Pete Rock released Soul Survivor, which is an album I not only played constantly my senior year of high school, but also in my freshman year at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Morehouse is a historically black college and hip-hop heads from all across the country attend this institute of higher learning. Many African Americans have widely different tastes in terms of hip-hop based on whatever region of the country they come from. In my tight knit clique of friends we had dudes from the west coast, the midwest, the mid-atlantic, and the tri-state New York area. And with all our different regional biases, there was one album nobody complained about when we were all kickin' it, Pete Rock's Soul Survivor. That album was the universal consensus when we couldn't agree on what to wild out to before we went out in the southern Chocolate City, Atlanta.

Pete Rock has produced a slew of solid releases since then, but his most recent offering, NY's Finest, is easily his best work to date. A release from his record label notes that Pete Rock pioneered a ground breaking technique known as filtering, "a tool that made Pete Rock's Recordings with former partner CL Smooth so sonically staggering." I'm no new jack, but I was clueless as to exactly what "filtering" was so I hit up a rapper/producer friend of mine, friend of Pete Rock and legend in his own right, J-zone or clarification. J-zone explained it to me like this, "filtering is the process of takin' a sample and 'filtering' out the high frequencies, leaving just the bass line, getting rid of all the music in the sample," J-zone said, "Most of Pete's early shit was like that (especially Mecca and the Soul Brother). Back in the day the sp-1200 had a filter but it wasn't that deep and it was created by putting samples in certain outputs and pulling the plug halfway out the machine (it was called a ring/tip function). That's gonna sound like Chinese if you never used an sp though." J-Zone's explanation may account for the "Snickers Blizzard" thickness of the sounds on Rock's NY's Finest.

NY's Finest is a 15-tracks deep album full of bangers with perfect samples and and boom-bap melodic jazzy joints that refuse to let up from beginning to end. Rock is not pushing the envelope like Kanye West, but he did all his groundbreaking 19 years ago and set a template enabling cats like Kanye West, Just Blaze, and The Alchemist to even exist. All the producers in the game owe Rock a huge debt. NY's Finest is straight up meat-and-potatoes hip-hop, and by meat-and-potatoes I mean filet mignon coupled with a loaded baked potato.

Pete Rock is unbelievably effective at his craft and all the emcees he featured on this album either completely rip the track or sound way nicer than they ever have by virtue of the canvas Rock gives them to shine. For example, Jim Jones is not everyone's cup of tea in terms of technical ability and lyrical content, but on the track "We Roll" one can't help but be impressed Rock brought the best out of him. Another highlight track is "914" featuring Styles P and Sheek Louch of D-Block trading grimy verses over a sick beat. "Ready Fe War" should also raise some eyebrows. Rock flips a dancehall reggae beat and former Fu Schnicken Chip Fu spits some polysyllabic patois heat that will leave heads shaking in admiration for the rhyme style, not to mention the semi-educational and humorous intro to the cut in which Rock breaks down the origins of some Jamaican slanguistics common to reggae and caribbean culture. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all was somehow Rock got 90s legends Lords of the Underground on the track "Best Kept Secret" and those cats prove without a shadow of a doubt they have still got it.

All in all, trying to pick a favorite joint on NY's Finest is like picking your favorite child—impossible. All the songs are well put together and thought out as only a musical craftsman like Pete Rock could do. NY's Finest is a pillar in a time of cheesy, singles-driven hip-hop records, and a potent reminder of the golden age in which Pete Rock was instrumental (pun intended). The album is a reminder of better days without seeming rehashed or stale, familiar and fresh at the same time.

—T. Love

t.love@livingstonweekly.com