All posts by jmp

Turtle Island Map © James Pagliasotti 1978/1996 All Rights Reserved The Onondaga people were part of the mighty Iroquois Confederacy, the Five Nations as they became known to the Colonialists in their initial push westward into the area of the Great Lakes. The Onondaga occupied a vast track of land on the eastern shore of Read More

Chuck E. Weiss (r) with Tom Waits – credit: Jeffrey Henson Scales/HSP Archive Some questions will never be resolved. Before he passed away, Chuck E. Weiss and I had one of those discussions. We had known each other since we were little kids. I’d watched him over the years become a legend in the neighborhood, Read More

photo credit: unknown My first encounter with Buckminster Fuller was a presentation he made at the Conference of World Affairs at the University of Colorado in the early Sixties. He was an astounding speaker for so many reasons, but what I took note of at the time among so much he had to say was Read More

Westward Ho! Currier-Ives 1866 – credit: legendsofamerica.com Money. Success. The free enterprise system. The rugged individualist. Tall in the saddle. Overcoming adversity. Conquering the wilderness. Establishing civilization. Making the land productive. Raising up wealth from the earth. Those themes have been on my mind in writing and lecturing about Mythologies of the Modern West, the Read More

I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, because of a class I’m teaching called Mythologies of the Modern West, and about mythomania, because of our current socio-political situation and this book my daughter, Kate, gifted me at Christmas about a liar of some relevance to the issues at hand in our world today. We are, Read More

Hohokam Era Petroglyphs – photo credit: unknown Well, to tell the truth, I woke up this morning to snow on the ground, a rather rare thing in this valley, and only while sweeping the sidewalk clear (haven’t owned a snow shovel since we left Colorado 20 years ago) with a beat up old broom did Read More

The Freeform Radio Archive at www.radicalradio.media – design: Hank Schmidt A little over a year ago, with the help of a whole lot of people and some cash from some of them, we launched the Freeform Radio Archive. It’s a place to gather examples of that brilliant time in broadcasting and pay homage to the Read More

The Plaza Ashland, Oregon – credit: bayberryinn.com There are certain subjects that cause us to glaze over at their mere mention. Our synapses disconnect, the brainpan fuzzes over, ears begin to buzz, a tick colonizes our cheekbone just below the glazed-over eyes. I can name a few: small town politics, universal basic income, homelessness. There Read More

Ashland Library – credit: kda-homes.com I walk most every day for exercise and meditation. Friday the choice was the Main Street route, up to the library, east to A Street, north to Helman, west back home. Main Street was really crowded. You could barely make your way. “What’s going on?” I asked a guy at Read More

KVNF-FM Radio a Listener-Supported Station in Paonia, Colorado Fifteen hundred people live in the country comfort town of Paonia, Colorado, and the population of Delta County, where it is located on the Western Slope, is slightly more than thirty thousand. Is that enough folks to sustain a successful listener-supported radio station, do you imagine? Well, Read More