"Liberty: Living It" Workshop at LP Wisconsin Convention

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - FEBRUARY 24, 2011
CENTRAL OFFICE
V-MAIL SERVICE (715) 646-9933
EMAIL lpwicentral@gmail.com
WEBSITE www.lpwi.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

By Kevin Goins
Special Correspondent to
The CEPIA Club LLC


THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - PRACTICAL LIBERTY (LIVING IT!) WORKSHOP PLANNED FOR UPCOMING CONVENTION
The Libertarian Party of Wisconsin's annual convention will be held on April 1st & 2nd (Friday & Saturday) at the Olympia Resort & Spa, located at 1350 Royale Mile Road in Oconomowoc, WI. Discussion groups featuring candidates from the 2010 elections & a banquet featuring guest speaker Gene Cisewski (former political director) have been scheduled.
One workshop (of many) that has been planned will cover "Practical Liberty - Living It!", headed by guest speakers Terry Gray, Tom Ender & Barry Hammarback. The goal of this particular event is to help the public understand that the common principles of liberty & justice for all and those of the Libertarian Party are indeed one & the same.
"Ideas and philosophy within our ranks abound," says party spokesman Tim Krenz, "and indeed theory and principles contribute to the strength of the message of liberty & justice for all regardless of income, birth, race, gender, nationality, etc. With the current state of the Union as well as Wisconsin, the opportunity to appeal to more voters with this common message will equal future election victories for Libertarian Party candidates - all summing up to more individual liberty & less unreasonable government."

For more information regarding the convention, visit www.lpwi.org, contact Ben Olson III at (800) 236-9236 or Tim Krenz at (715) 646-9933.

Libertarian Party of Wisconsin Convention 2011--Details

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN - FEBRUARY 8, 2011
CENTRAL OFFICE
V-MAIL SERVICE (715) 646-9933
EMAIL lpwicentral@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF WISCONSIN MOVES "FORWARD" WITH CONVENTION PLANS.

On Friday, April 1st & Saturday, April 2nd, the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin will hold their annual convention at the Olympia Resort & Spa in Oconomowoc, WI.
Various workshops have been scheduled for this event with topics such as health care reform & practicing libertarian principles. In addition, party candidates from the 2010 elections will lead a discussion regarding their campaigns - which resulted in garnering thousands of votes from constituents within the state of Wisconsin. Also, Gene Cisewski - former political director of the Libertarian Party USA - will be the keynote speaker at Saturday evening's banquet. The theme of Mr. Cisewski's speech will be "Liberty: Going Forward From Here".
For more information regarding the convention, visit www.lpwi.org, contact Ben Olson III at (608) 381-6572 or Tim Krenz at (715) 646-9933.

Libertarian Party
of Wisconsin
2011 Annual Convention
“Forward”
Olympia Resort & Spa 1350 Royale Mile Road ~ Oconomowoc, WI 53066
www.olympiaresort.com
MUST Say“Libertarian Party!!” for Fri. and Sat. $92 room rates (per/nite+tax) before March 1st. 262-369-4960
April 1st Royal Cellar 7:00 PM to ?--Reception
(Donation-at-door; Cash Bar) with Live Music
April 2nd (Montreal/Monaco Room)
9:00 AM -11:45 AM
Workshop I: Practical Liberty: Living IT!
(Terry Grey, Tom Ender & Barry Hammarback)
Workshop II: Candidates & Campaigns (Ben Olson III, Anthony DeCebellis & Wil Losch
“The Who, What, How, When, Where & Why for
Serving as a Libertarian Candidate and Campaign Activists”

Noon to 12:45 PM--LPWI Execom Meeting (Lunch on your own)

1 PM to 2:45 PM—LPWI Membership Meeting (Delegate with Membership)
(Door prizes, 50/50 raffle & Auctions)
3 PM to 5:30—Afternoon Speakers--
Omar Semia--“Free-market Health Care Reform—Yes it is possible, & Cheaper!”
Jim Burns (Tentative)--2012 LPUSA Presidential Candidate
Dale Carson (Invited)--”How to 'Arrest Proof' Yourself”

6 PM to 8:30 (Crown Dining Room)
($40 full package all day, includes Banquet of an Italian Buffet w/ Wine)
Key Note Speaker (Banquet Guests Only)—
Gene Cisewski (Former LPUSA Political Director “Liberty: Going Forward from Here”
(Open Reception to Follow in Royal Cellar until ?)
----------------(Cut Below this Line and Mail with Check or Money Order---------------
Convention Prices/per person--$15 Morning/Afternoon Program-only
$40 Full Package, includes Free T-Shirt (for first 60, Banquet & Key Note Speaker
For more info, visit www.lpwi.org .Send Check or Money Order with Name(s) & Address to:
LPWI P.O. 20815 Greenfield, WI 53220 Or Call Tim Krenz at 715-646-9933
Name: _______________________ Address: _______________________________________
Telephone#__________________________#Attending_____

The Sold Outs: Not Holding on the Great “Holly Rock” Tributes

Sub Terra Vita
By Scipio Cepiacanus
November 30, 2010


The Sold Outs: Not Holding on the Great “Holly Rock” Tributes

In late July 2010, a warm day above 80 degrees relented to the sun-settled evening on a rainless, though wet air-humid and damp Saturday night. Near my last tour to Den Haus, in Acqua City, in a year-long effort to chronicle our “life underground,” I arrived to see the “polka rockers,” my friends, and I found a heat up band just starting to set up for their own show. The time ticked its piqued way to 10 PM, and I sat around the lollygagging crowd on the outdoor patio sucking razor blade tubes enduring our first month of smokeless taverns in our State of “Defiled.”

I sat quiet most of the moments before The Sold Outs took the stage proper to playing. Wearing well-fitted lounge tuxedos, gone fab Three, the white coats flared bird-wing lapels, trimmed all by powder-blue twined edges, baby satin in the stage lights, all-out outlined against the black stage wall. These guys from Mankato looked fun. I anticipated forward several minutes to this band, waiting to hear their opening for my friends in the “polka rockers.”

The Sold Outs played an oldie, punkified, which instantly knew as “This magic moment.” What magic summer's scene presented to me, the narrator of these notes, then began filling me with a warm thought at some of the miracles that one can see whenever we remember to look for them. Miracles exist as only the normal things in life. Such it is. I looked and I saw a bridge between a time's music past, updated and rollick-ey for now-today. The next song, “oldick” like the last, remained punksted, yet led out from the vocal lead of the five-string bass player. “My little Runaway.” Oh, how everyone runs away at some point. Reflecting more of how I run than others, the lead electric guitar player and the drummer supported a tinge of Buddy-Rock, vocalized “ahhhh,” in back up.

“I wanna hold your hand,” The Beatles covered, swirled like the old Liverpool place in this caverned crowd of Den Haus. The Sold Outs played this classic a little better than pretty good, and tempo-ed to the punky beat in half the time, it seemed. Time, it seems, goes faster, sometimes, but especially when a skippy-tappy foot dance takes one by the song.

The crowd built. Fun filled into the dark spaces of the room. Back into another goldie, from decades far, far away in a galaxy-wide space of star-studded songs, “Happy together.” The Sold Outs had me selling out to them. “Will you still love me tomorrow?” Falsetto. Dulce. The frenzy in Living a memory. The refrain. The Bridge. Forte. Fugue-ish, of a sort. Paunk-up, dance on down.

The Sold Outs might just sound to me what the radical sounds of the Fifties and Sixties might have sounded to my parents. Then, Buddy Holly was an extremist, but over 50 years we had largely forgotten why what he did was so good to the past, and great for all of us today, and so important for tomorrows. That was why his music was so enjoyable, then. Now, a band like The Sold Outs, good at what they play, and playing extra pretty special well to each other, give a little spin on that one-time legacy of great music by great artists. We cannot forget our roots. They've just updated the songs, and have fun in back-dated jackets.

Music & the Lyre of Life: The Winter Dance Airplane Crash & Our Mortal Coils

Music & the Lyre of Life: The Winter Dance Airplane Crash & Our Mortal Coils

The time of the Winter Dance. The airplane crash on February 3, 1959 killed the party. Songwriter & singer Don McLean posed the immortal question for all mortal beings in “American Pie,” his tribute to the extinguished out stars who perished in the crash: Can music save your mortal soul? The engine of optimism plowed a tragic furrow in an Iowa field, the world turned upside down for the future greatness that lasted no more. Backwards in what we call history, a freak-age of enduring disillusionment came upon our generations, since memorialized like McLean's “American Pie,” by an age of defiant art in song that tried to bring a little sanity back to overwhelm the madness of it all.
Those poets believed music could save not only a mortal soul, but a dying ideal of justice in liberty.

The 1960s, '70s, and '80s experienced multiple horrors of tragic deaths, assassinations, attempted ones, and war, not just the cold ones. In that time, never did people so accessible to each other need to throw some cold water on leaders and led alike, calm down, and patiently work out some sort of providential solution for the larger, inner gap between optimism and malaise, between hope and the despair. In those thirty years between the air crash in Iowa and the “end of history” in the early '90s, I witnessed twenty of them. I recall, with much fear, how the jaws of a fateful destiny with peace or nuclear winter—whichever way it would go was uncertain—pervaded shadows on skylines like specters waiting to snatch us with radiation

These last twenty years, to winter 2010-11, the pessimism that blighted the dull gray of history in our black and white photos of the 1960s and '70s now show up as sharp tuck lines and dyed hair in vivid digital television clarity. It pervades. It invades, and it make us restless. How other starving and mutilated generations might hold the present bling-junk civilization in contempt. We're not starving yet, nor does plague reign like the horrid angel it once did. We need to lighten up, take a cold philosophical shower in the stream of thought, and reason past why we arrived at this point, and how to get beyond it.

In the dates of greed, there were the attempts on the lives of Reagan, Pope John Paul II.. One spirit crushing assassination did succeed, the one we could never Imagine, that of John Lennon. If, earlier in the age of war and worry, those February 3, 1959 deaths of musicians Holly, Valens, and the Bopper on their way to the fateful Winter Dance in Iowa, did ignite the dark spirit, that death of music, there followed in 9 years the murders of JFK, MLK2, and RFK. These men of vision, though flawed, genuinely spoke of visions of peace on earth, brotherhood,, and the end of the war which dispel innocence (Vietnam), we also got the sharp noted hopes from the lyre of minstrels, rockers, hipsters, and different, diffident shades of libertarians, in song. All need is love; peace on earth; great days of sunshine, even in a hazy, cloudy mind-fogging dope of moral depression.

So, if asked, can music save a mortal soul? Or, even can it capture the spirit of an age, creating a mass appeal for the world rather than murder of our hope, the answer had better be, “Hell, yes, music can bring us back from the coil of the rope!” Even lyric sad poems of the death of rock and roll kings, and of the giant leaders of our history, we cannot fault the attempt to right the wrongs we see, without corrupting with violence. Te rabbits in the hole of time forty years ago played chess, before mad queens, and characters in drug tripping debauchery lived the high life. But those legends at least rebelled against the anti-conformism, called the status quo suckage, and fought against tyranny.

Where have the poets gone who speak the truth about the need for optimism, if not for plain old faith? We need them now more than ever. In our case, they're here, not elsewhere. We must hear them, and not censure, those calling for a new age of truth in art. We need our legends back.

Wages for Sin: Immoral Heroism in A Western Film Epic Review of: Unforgiven. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

Wages for Sin: Immoral Heroism in A Western Film Epic
Review of: Unforgiven. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Malpaso Producutions & Presented by Warner Bros. 1992.
Reviewed by Tim Krenz

In the continuing reviews of heroes and heroism in the American Western film genre, Unforgiven, directed by its star, Clint Eastwood, is an example of “immoral heroism.” Unforgiven, written as a screenplay by David Webb Peoples, borderlines an existential paradox with an evil, that is injustice, losing in a struggle with a greater evil, wrath.

Released in 1992, Unforgiven won Eastwood Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Film, and also won for Gene Hackman Best Actor in a Supporting Role (and for Joel Cox, Best Film Editing, an award for a skill far, far underestimated by casual movie fans). In all of these technical and artistic achievements, and numerous others as well, Unforgiven really has the look, feel, and even a disturbing enjoyment of an outstanding film, perhaps even to be remembered as a classic on par with Schindler's List (Spielberg), Lawrence of Arabia (Lean), Rear Window (Hitchcock), and The Godfather (Coppola). At present, Unforgiven ranks a measly 68th on the American Film Institute's Top 100 films of all time (one ahead of Tootsie). That rank is injustice, but one can expect that it should make its way closer to the Top 20 over time, as its existential message reveals so much to ponder on humanity's great questions.

As a drama on screen, Unforgiven turns the idea of epic upside down. No valor, nor courage, invades this realm of story telling. It shows in the script, the acting, the settings, the plot, the art direction, and in the unifying theme of both the overall direction and the cinematography (the combination of camera, lighting, and placements on the set in view of the audience) a sad, sorry lesson for humanity to remember. That lesson, perhaps: On the level of existence, and existential philosophy, without the choice of good or some unseen or providential hand believed to be guiding our actions, in a contest between evils, the lesser evil never wins.

Transpose this to something where people have a choice in real life, such as casting a vote. Even if a person firmly believes they choose the lesser evil, the greater evil wins and, therefore, always grows stronger. Why? May be it corrupts the purity of the whole, the unity of “The One” in Emerson's Transcendental thought? Could the lesser evil be deceptive, enticing, or promise fame or riches that appeal to more to the vanity and the greed of people, rewards that humility and hard work deny except for their own sake? Do humans fear the consequences of actions so much, that involving themselves in conflict poses a danger of being wrong, especially when a right and reasonable, defiant, stand can stop the bad (or evil) from happening?

In a Western movie, a man on a horse from nowhere, like in Eastwood's Pale Rider, or Alan Ladd's title character in Shane, is required to dispense the justice so that in exacting or enforcing a higher moral principle, the virtue of good will not become corrupted. If so, Eastwood's avenging angel in Pale Rider, or Shane redeeming his past wrongs by following his usual path of immorality, both done for the benefit of good and on behalf of good people, are akin in literature to a Greek god in a tragedy saving the world (“deus ex machina”) or the tragic hero sacrificing himself and his happiness for others.

Unforgiven has no such good people, no good intentions by anyone, no good to be redeemed from a past of corruption, and no “god-like engineered solution” to save anything of a moral or a virtue. If this story has no good guys, no “win-win” solutions, where does Eastwood's character of “William Munny” fit as an example of “immoral heroism?” As a killer-now pig-farmer who comes out of retirement, Munny seeks to collect a bounty on two cowboys who abused a prostitute in a frontier town's saloon. Munny goes in pursuit of his goal: To kill for the easy money, which he knows well how to do. He even brings along a friend, played by Morgan Freeman. Yet, the lawman “Little Bill,” (Hackman) has his own agenda. From the time Hackman lets the two cowboys go free with a fine, paid to the saloon keeper, the moral ambiguity not only clarifies: It clears toward the movie finale into an endless pool of fire and brimstone for the offer and acceptance of wages to sin, to murder.

The idea of an immoral hero means, simply, not heroic at all, but rather a false image of one; a person worshiped and revered but one that ultimately fails the test of any standard of virtue; a person who owns nothing but vice. He or she is, as historian John Keegan describes in his book, Mask of Command, IS the “false hero.” In Unforgiven, the existential conflict reduces an audience to only two options: Hope the protagonist Munny prevails to be the fitting end of a great, and important film; or, hope that somehow real people, real life, and real situations cannot or would not be like those in the movie: They are unforgivable. We could be, if we did not have hope and humanity at all.