The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

You can hang this over the Main Hall of Trump University: Ignorance is Bliss! Maybe you thought another term for the Chancellor would be tuition-free, why not enroll in advanced coursework in Economics from the professor who has declared bankruptcy six times? Of course, if you have been considering bankruptcy, this would definitely be required credits. If not, there’s plenty other advanced coursework for those who care to learn at the knee of a renowned businessman. Bible Studies 101, Tennis Shoe Sales for the Complete Novice, Baseball Cap Politics, Tax Evasion PhD, Legal Tips from the Roy Cohn Files, Emoluments for the Politician, Stock Market Manipulation and Inside Trading, Tariff Calculations and Deferred Tariffs — all in all, plenty of classes whether you signed up or not.

But tuition free? Better think again. If you thought the price of eggs would be going down or inflation would be tamed in the first week of the University reopening its doors, you missed last term’s featured study in Hyperbole, Prevarication and Doubling Down. Not to worry, that class will be offered this term as well. Nevertheless, the cost to you, the consumer, will be enormous. Price you pay for that Bliss poster over the entrance.

The Chancellor has offered us students a front row seat on the workings of a global economy. His required reading, Art of the Deal, should have made it abundantly clear that all negotiations must have a clear winner, a zero-sum gain. If we have a balance of trade deficit, we are losers. (This will definitely be a question on the final exam you are required to sit through.) There is no such thing as soft power. Aid to foreign countries in expectation of their appreciation is a fallacy and has been curtailed as of Immediately. Tariffs will be imposed on … well, every country on the planet, even those without import or export potential. The math is simplified, the balance is in our favor, foreign investments will flock to our shores, the future will be beautiful, more beautiful than it’s ever been before.

Don’t even think about asking for a return on your non-tuition. The semester runs four years and if you think the first few months were eye-popping, hang on to your seats, the best courses are coming up fast. Recession 101 will begin shortly. Advanced Trade War may have already begun. Tax Cuts for the 1% will be required coursework. Medicaid Roll Slashing, IRS Defunding, Social Security Fraud, so much to look forward to. Textbooks are not required, in case you were wondering, but you will be expected to pay for them.

When I ask my MAGA buddies what it is they like about the guy they voted for, they invariably say they want a biznessman in charge. They don’t care one pronoun about Woke stuff, DEI stuff, touch-feely B.S. — they want a capitalist, a captain of industry, a corporate magnate to steer the ship of state. They couldn’t care less if he’s been bankrupt a few times. They don’t give a damn if he left his contractors holding the bag. They don’t mind that he’s a chronic liar, a convicted felon, an egotistical womanizer or … well, much of anything, really, beyond the fact that he’s a billionaire. It goes without saying, without analysis, that if he’s filthy rich, he must be a savvy entrepreneur, exactly what this country needs.

The wealthy just want a fellow 1%’er to lower their taxes, get rid of burdensome regulations, cut the government down to size and protect their interests. The bizness of America, they will gladly tell you, is bizness, pure and simple. If they get richer, if more of us get rich, the money will trickle down to everyone. Sure, they’ll get more but fair is fair. Government needs to get out of their way!

A good biznessman, most folks will tell you, hires excellent people to surround him. Experts. Professionals. Trump gets rid of these people because they aren’t Yes Men. His people, sycophants all, are there to do his bidding and to flatter him endlessly. He is, he thinks, the smartest guy in any room. He listens to his gut. That right there is his genius.

This week he put blanket tariffs on nearly every country on earth, even some with no populations unless you count penguins or migrating birds. The price of nearly every imported product will be going up. Inflation will go up. A recession will be coming up too, more than likely now, if not, worse case, a full blown world Depression. The Dow and the S&P and the NASDAQ plunged, his advisors are calling each other morons and worse, the real bizness CEO’s are running around social media with hair-on-fire five alarm incredulity.

And my buddies are now desperate to get their retirement money out of the stock market which is a roller coaster ride every day. We’re going to find out soon if we elected a biznessman. Or just a tennis shoe salesman with dreams of grandeur.

The desert is a menacing place, I don’t care if you’re a native or a moss-backed tourist on safari to the dive taverns of Arizona with names like Jackass or Burro or Sidewinder. The boyz and me were hunting beer down in the flashflood washes and arroyos from Phoenix to Prescott. We’re old hands at this beerhunting, having gone every year for 30 years. We know the drill. Walk to the bars, do not drive. Drink, if not responsibly, at least semi-moderately. Eat. Even if it’s greasy bar food, put something in your belly to soak up alcohol. Try to maintain a modicum of control. Do not disturb the snakes or the natives, especially the venomous ones. The point is to hunt with passion, but also to bring ourselves back alive.

We made reservations in Bisbee a short walk from the historic Silver Dollar Hotel and other weathered historic taverns, but … our fellow slayer in Phoenix had asked his son and his son-in-law, confirmed golfers, along on the Hunt. These boys, nice guys in their 40’s with wives and two children each, decided to cancel our reservations and make them adjacent to the golf course in Prescott they intended to tame. None of the grizzled and seasoned Hunters had a say, but being get-along go-along yahoos, we acquiesced with subdued mutterings. In hindsight, we did not offer the sage counsel professional Hunters should have offered these tenderfeet.

The first warning sign was when they pulled their vehicles into a bar back in the hinterlands that had yet to open but did so in 5 minutes. While we sipped coffee, they threw down shots. Obviously the kids thought they were young and invulnerable. Beer? Not for them. They opted for the hard stuff. It took three or four roadhouses to wind our way up the canyon to our basecamp. By then they were feeling no pain and the day was young. Day two, they had tee times while we hiked the cacti lined trails nearby. They were throwing down shots for breakfast. Midafternoon we rendezvoused at the Palace Hotel, one of the ten best historic bars in America, downtown Prescott. Jerry was dragged in like a dead buck between the other two, blacked out from one and a half bottles of tequila. They laid him into a chair where he slumped from his wounds, unconscious but alive. We ordered another round of beers.

Hunting is not all that difficult if done correctly. Done with disrespect for the Rules, it is a nasty business and leads to all manner of vicious and unforeseen mayhem. By the end of the second night we had turned what should have been an exotic beer hunt into a morass of criminality, fear and abject self-loathing. The police finally intervened, pulling a carload of cocky amateurs onto the shoulder, hauling the intoxicated driver to jail and impounding the car. At three in the morning we went to retrieve our contrite fellow Hunter at the hoosegow. At eight we received a call that the Mex’s wife was in a Seattle hospital, under induced coma, intubated and possibly dying of what appeared to be opioid overdose. By noon we were driving him to the Phoenix airport. A definite chill had settled over the Hunters.

We’re back now and so far no lives have been lost. Next year, count on it, we’ll hunt in the Cascades once again, trespassing on the dam access patrolled by Homeland Security since Nine Eleven who threaten us or crossing the dangerously rotten old bridge high above the Cle Elum River to get back to our cabin. We won’t be inviting the kids. They can drink at home.

I guess I’ve been working in art for about 45 years. Some of it I’ve been doing okay at, even made a so-called Living at, and most of it, well, I’m not the poster child for Starving Artist, but maybe Anorexic Artist. We artists have a tough row to hoe in corporate America, that’s the truth, and so we try all sorts of strategies ranging from art fair booths to just giving up and getting a job, a real job. But probably too late for one that pays well or offers benefits and pensions. The money belongs to the Job Creators. Us creators, well, good luck.

I went up into the mountains this past weekend with a box of the Skeeter Daddle Blues, hoping to do a book reading and maybe sell a few copies. Ever since my old outlets for book sales dried up, I’ve been headscratching how to market these babies, get them out of my basement and into the hands of folks hungry for great literature. Tyee Store closed up and so did the Copy This Mail That office supply store that sold the first book Skeeter Daddle Diaries so well I ordered a second printing. The South End String Band CD’s sold like hotcakes too at those places, but when they closed shop, the only show in town was the Snow Goose Bookstore. And now they’ve shuttered their doors too. We probably sold two to three thousand CD’s before that. I sold maybe 1000 books. Not bad for a backwash.

This past year I haven’t sold more than ten books and the band is giving CD’s away at concerts for ‘the price we finally figured they were worth’. For free. One concert alone we handed out 150 CD’s.

A high tech, fast charging friend convinced me to try Amazon. Against my better judgement I signed on, figuring I’d be sending them a box of hot sellers they could pass out faster than candy on Halloween. But no, they wanted me to send one book at a time, priority mail, to their warehouse in Maryland or someplace far far away. I spent about $5 per book for mailing envelope and postage, losing a couple of bucks on each one. This went on for a couple of months, never enough sales apparently, to justify shipping them a full box. I might have continued this brilliant sales strategy right into bankruptcy but one day I noticed Amazon, love these guyz, had used copies of the Skeeter Diaries listed at 1.99 plus shipping. This was great. Me competing against me and the only winner was Amazon. It took me awhile to get out of this crummy cycle, the company not really responsive to any inquiries. In fact, they had no way to make inquiries.

I finally just kept sending them messages on the sales requests that the book was Out of Print. Which, finally, it was. Sadly, I buy my own book back from them occasionally just to have a few copies around. Cheaper than reprints by far. Bookstores competing against Bezos, like I mentioned at the last Snow Goose reading before they closed shop, are like Godzilla vs Bambi, it won’t be long before they’re toejam. Now I see where they’d like to be my printer too, print on demand. Probably ship them to me, then have me ship them back each sale. Lose even more money on every point of sale.

So I wish I had a tried and true strategy for you prospective artists out there looking for ways to sell your wares, I really do. It was always dog eat dog, but now we got Godzilla too. My only advice is to be like the little furry creatures during the Dinosaur Era, stay low, keep a close eye out, maybe move at night. I know, not much help, but the trick is to survive.

When Sheila’s husband got laid off a month ago from the outfit that supplies thingamajigs for Boeing, she hired on at the IGA up north as checkout clerk. “I haven’t rung up groceries,” she said, “since I was 17 and still in high school. Back then we didn’t have scanners, we had to ring every item up on the register. What a difference!”

The other difference, she says, is how much less friendly the shoppers are in our “Friendly Hometown Store”, not like the A&P back in her small Ohio town in 1966. “I guess everybody knew everybody. These days half the customers don’t say hello, they’re busy talking on their phones. I might as well be a robot.”

“You will be soon,” I offer over a cup of coffee while Earl watches TV in the livingroom, probably glad of an early retirement and a wife willing to go back to work. “Hon!” she yells, “can you turn that down a little?” From where I sit at the kitchen nook counter, Earl fiddles with the remote, but instead of turning his game show volume down, he changes channels. Sheila shakes her head and rolls her eyes. Earl takes a hit off his Budweiser and settles into a talk show.

It’s 9:30 in the morning. In a few minutes she’ll leave for her 10 o’clock shift, work until 6, then drive home to cook dinner for Mr. Wonderful. “I don’t mind going back to work,” she tells me. “Good to get out of the house.”

I bet. We used to drive school buses together, Sheila and me, back in the good old days when we were both single and poor and new to the South End. Sheila married Earl and that finished our friendship until recently when I met her, where else, in the checkout line. We have an occasional coffee, but pretty obviously this won’t work for long, not judging by the volume blaring from the livingroom, a loud hint.

“Good to see you, Skeeter,” she says at the door. The TV noise follows us outside. “Thanks for the coffee,” I say and she says, “No problem,” when we both know there is.