JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER INTERVIEWS RAY JASON ON HIS PODCAST

 

James Howard Kunstler featured me on his podcast this week. It was a very enjoyable and hopefully informative conversation. Since we both expend much of our ink discussing serious and culture-changing events, it was a welcome relief to leave such topics astern for an hour.

Jim and I have become cyber-pen-pals over the last couple of years, but this was literally the first time that we had communicated by voice. Fortunately, it was seamless from the very outset, almost as though we had been chattering across the back fence for decades.

I admire his work immensely because he is such a superb wordsmith, who sometimes even attains a lyrical and poetic dimension in his work. As you, my regular readers know, I always strive for what I call The Three Ps – Powerful, Provocative and Poetic. There are plenty of great commentators in the Blogosphere, but not many can make the words sing like Jim.

Also, we share a philosophical attitude towards the unraveling of Western Civilization. We try to alert people to it, but we retain enough optimism to encourage everyone to seek ways to live with Joy and Meaning amid the chaos and corruption.

Here is the link to the interview at Jim’s website.

Enjoy!

 

THE CIRCUS - A CHICKEN - AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

 

by Ray Jason

 

For several years I have been haunted by a simple photograph that I saw only one time. The image itself is not complicated, and yet its deeper meaning has eluded me and taunted me - like a riddle inside a dream.

In the photo we see a few children waiting in line at the ticket booth of a traveling circus. But instead of paying with money, each of the youngsters is offering something of real value. One has a basket of eggs, another a loaf of bread, and the third child is holding a live chicken.

The reason these kids are not buying their tickets with cash, is because they are trapped in the hyperinflation nightmare of Weimar Germany in the 1930s. We have all seen the black and white pictures of fathers pushing wheelbarrows full of Deutchmarks to the store with the hopes of feeding their families.

I just spent many hours on various search engines trying to locate that circus photo, but I failed. However, is it not the writer’s task to paint a word picture as vividly as real life? So here is what I saw in that sepia-frozen moment in time.