Notes from and Interview (for Lasso the Wind)
Notes from an interview: “These rural people are pretty simple and unsophisticated,” the local
rouser of rabble said, leading a mob of eighty
so-called friends and neighbors to hang in effigy
two folks on the other side of an idea. Not that
this is new. “Joseph didn’t sell” notes Tim Eagan,
lucky enough to be through here but not on
the business end of an imaginary lynch mob.
Meanwhile, life goes on. “Vote for me!” pleads
this one and that. "I'm of this place - and here
just for you is a bumper sticker equal in
intellectual weight to my estimate
of your intelligence.” And with that, we'll all
operate according to our morals (all secretly
thinking prophylactically - I don’t want my laws
enforced with someone else's morals - as
you never know where they’ve been.) Oh, it’s
beautiful here in Wallowa County - poor stolen,
beat-up landscape. And all of us are complacent
beneficiaries - whatever side we're on, no matter
how righteous or not, we occupy the Wallowa Country.
