Cowboy Confessional

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

– Thomas Jefferson

One can praise Mister Jefferson for a great many things. His insights into the mechanics of government and the evils therein should guide us in our modern age, especially where government and banking intersect. Establishing public schools as a mechanism for deflecting despotism has its value. Thomas’ architectural legacy as well as his push to educate and free slaves is admirable.

But he was a financial dolt.

Mister Jefferson died in poverty, owing great sums of money to a great many people and institutions. Many of his slaves could not be emancipated upon his death because they had been used as collateral. His estate left relatively little to his children, mulatto bastards or otherwise. He sold his vast library not only to make his collection available to the nation but also to keep his fiscal ass from scrapping the cobblestones.

From the quote above he appears to blame the banks and not himself. Jefferson sounds like any number of current politicians or sub-prime home owners who took on more debt than they could manage and sought to shift the shame of their failures upon others. Nobody views themselves as the devil, not even Satan when he shaves. It is difficult to accept much less profess ones own stupidity and doubly so when your peers have been lauding your genius.

Thus in today’s America few people want to accept the cost of their own failure. Buying a house at the peak of an obvious real estate bubble and financing the purchase with highly destructive variable rate mortgages in hindsight appears to be the act of fools even to the fools themselves. Thus they borrow Mister Jefferson’s model and lay blame on the lenders.

Call it enslaved intellectualism.

Nastier though is the lack of paternal restraint shown by government. Instead of telling the foolish to suffer the consequences of their poor decisions they offer financial relief at the expense of either their non-foolish neighbors (i.e., the taxpayers) or inflation ravaged future generations (your children). With the money supply growing 271% in the past five months, Zimbabwe style inflation is soon to follow. The only persons not suffering through this elaborate Federal pocket picking exercise are the politicians, the foolish home buyers and the banks.

Mister Jefferson missed the mark. Banking institutions are not inherently dangerous because borrowing is a voluntary process. Taxation is typically involuntary and infinitely more dangerous to infinitely more people. Banks are benign. Standing armies are controllable. Congress is neither.

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Can’t say I wowed the crowd at Jekyll and Hyde’s last night in Edinburgh (a pub near Hanover and Queen Streets for people navigating the town). But open mic audiences late on a Tuesday night are hard to please, and belting out Texas blues/country fusion in Scotland might have been a miscalculation on my part.

Not that Nate seemed to mind. Nate (I think I got his name right – hard to tell when the room acoustics are slightly worse that an echo chamber in a dungeon, which incidentally is the décor in Jekyll and Hyde) is an interesting world man. Born in South Africa and looking mulatto, he is an Australian now residing in Edinburgh. This means Nate has the most eclectic English speaking tongue known to man, blending the staccato cadence of SA, the relaxed drawl of the Aussies and the round, near-belch bubble tones of the Scotts.

I asked Nate if my song selection would offend the locals, and he nearly erupted in comic release, saying that not only was every song style good at his open mic, but Americana was popular. So I had high hopes despite being in a strange venue, using a borrowed guitar and before an audience that could not be anticipated.

The audience may not have been blown away, but the other musicians seemed to like some sounds they had not heard before. I had shared a table with a chap (Allie by nickname and one of two Allie performers that night) who I mentioned Ray Wylie Hubbard to, then opened my set with Hubbard’s “The Way of the Fallen”. After my set Allie said he would go out of his way to buy Hubbard’s “Growl” CD.

Ray, you owe me a buck.

Just a note or two about Jykell and Hyde. It is an amusing bar in as much as they have played up the old Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde story for their motif, lapsing only into insane excess occasionally. Chains and medieval restraining devices adorn the walls, which should be a draw to my buddy Reverend Chuck and other practicing sadists. The place is riddled with niches to hide from jealous lovers and a walk down bar called the Crypt. Be warned that doors to the bathrooms are hidden in the bookcase of the “library” and there are annoying recordings of spooky sounding people played once you are taking a wiz.

Nightlife aside, I had to do a random walk-about of Edi today. I’ve been through Old Town before, which wraps neatly about the Royal Mile (the road between the Castle and Holyrood Palace). None the less I used this as the launching point this morning as the strip is still sleepy before tourist mobs descend around 11AM. Breezy and a bit bitter, still it was an interesting excursion into a rare region preserved for the tourist trade and yet loving held dear by the locals. If you find yourself on The Mile, bank south to some of the evolutionary terraces that sit upon the roofs of old houses that line the road. One charm of ancient cities is the perpetual reuse and reinvention of buildings designed to last centuries.

I also hiked throughout New Town, with its stunning modern architecture of the 19th century. It is tough for other Americans to make such comparisons – that the “new” part of Edinburgh was being built-out while we were busy killing one another during our civil war. Time is the ultimate perspective — I write this missive in a café in a building that existed before the American Revolution.

Speaking of Revolutions, I think Scotland is ripe for a quite secession, which for historic purposes I suggest scheduling for 2045 (if this reference is too obscure seek out information on the last of the Jacobite revolts). Scottish independence is inevitability. As such they simply need to pick a due date and backward plan the steps to get there. Thirty six years should be plenty of time to plan and execute.

My larger curiosity is if the Scotts will have the wisdom to secede from the EU and the UK in one grand step. Reentry into the EU can be accomplished later if for some reason being an outside nation doesn’t fulfill their interest. Having some Scottish blood in my own veins I suspect it will be considered as the Scotts have a generalized dislike for being controlled.

Alas, it is time to board a plane and head home to San Francisco. If God be merciful I will return dearest Edi.

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There is a sturdy yet delicate essence to Edinburgh. Like much of Western Europe, there is exists the stability of ancient surroundings. One can sit in a cafe that occupies a sidewalk storefront in a building twice as old as America and across the street from a kilt vendor who has been in business for seven generations.

Yet Edi is delicate in the way as a new rose. What makes the town wonderful can also be stripped petal by petal, showing that underneath it all people are but people and across the globe we are more alike than different.

I walked into the Jekyll and Hyde bar last night and inquired about their open mic night, figuring I might abuse the locals with my songs. I was somewhat shocked that the music there was openly friendly to the Texas blues/country fusion I so love. Barring unseen events I may cover a Ray Hubbard tune or two tonight.

Otherwise Edinburgh is unique for a half-million population city in two ways. First, the place is spotless. People take pride in the city because unlike other metropolitan regions the people love their town. This alone makes Edi more livable than most places in the inhabitable world and Canada.

However, I am praying for global warming. Even in late March Edinburgh is slightly colder than a meat locker in Antarctica.

What I have not deciphered is the Edi or Scottish attitude toward life. It is not the glorious eat-it-in-one-bite excessiveness of us Americans, nor is it the dower, fatalistic hell Russians exude. The Scotts seem to be in a mode of endurance punctuated with joy over common occurrences. Several centuries of “occupation” might shape that attitude, one of hope surrounded by hopelessness.

If Parliament is in session tomorrow I may stop in to see if the times are ripe for change. I sense they are and that the current economic downturn might provide the means.

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T’is good to be back in Edinburgh.

Not enough can be said of this rather magical city. For those unfortunate enough not to have traveled through Scotland, it is hard not to understand why various Roberts and Bruce’s fought so hard to keep Scotland, why Jacobites rebelled and why ancient kings chose Edi as a place to center their nation.

There are a couple of extinct volcanoes in Edinburgh, and the train tracks pass by one. Atop the shear black cliff sits the castle. Nothing like having a view of the surrounding fields and steep climb to keep English soldiers from attacking (though my Scott ancestors seemed to be woefully inept at the task). I had not planned on staying in Edinburgh my first time through, but once the train rolled in under the castle I got off, found the first B&B I could, and hung out for a spell.

Edinburgh has a vibe that instantly made me feel at home when I first accidentally landed there mumble-mumble-mumble years ago. A city seemingly at peace with itself if not its often bloody past, it has the quiet steely charm that most cowboys possess. Part cosmopolitan, part sedate and part sheer lunacy (at least during the Festival), there are few other places as worthy of meandering through.

And once over my jet lag I’ll be wandering about. Buy me a pint if you see black cowboy boots clicking down the cobblestones.

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I have found validation of the old joke that San Francisco is Hollywood pretending to be Paris (or perhaps Paris Hilton).

The exhibit at right is certainly pleasing to the eye. Well, at least male eyes and the eyes of lesbians that prefer lipstick lez mates.

The caption and the girl’s outfit itself summarize San Francisco’s low rent self image, that of counter culture and libertine lifestyles. The very caption — Be a Bohemian — is verily an echo of the Summer of Love and the Beatnik generation before that. Her ensemble is vintage 1968, with fringe vest, peasant shirt and cut-off denim shorts (despite the venial sin of donning shorts an atypical saintly white and not mandatory faded indigo).

The set can be bought at Bloomingdales.

For my overseas readers, Bloomingdales is upscale in the same sense that politicians are sleazy. People earning under six figures a year are barred from the building. Valet parking is difficult as the lot if plagued with limousines and their drivers. Bloomingdales biggest blunder was running out of caviar for customer snacking during the Christmas shopping season.

Just the place to find non-conformists.

Thus the Bloomingdale bohemian blouse is a mere $228. The suede vest slightly more at $258. The factory cut-off sorts $178.

In other words, upper-class San Franciscans can feign flower child iconoclasms for a paltry $664 … plus 8.75% sales tax.

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