Viroqua the Movie

Tam Chi Le

The Buddhist Evangelical Visitor

Over-riding thematic motivation for this documentary: Find the Soul Of Viroqua, before she is murdered.... and through just the attempt of seeking this ancient soul.... by God, she will be saved.

SEGMENT DAILY: We were guided to a Vietnamese-American man traveling the county on bicycle enraptured by love. Sandra heard about him at the laundromat. Apparently, he found his way into Viroqua preaching a sort of Christianity-Buddhism. The attendant said he was headed to the city park to rest for the night. Our crew grabbed camera and lights and dashed over to near Broadway & Main.

Sadly, he was nowhere to be found in the dark park spaces... not encamped by the time capsule, nor the shelter.... Sandra Be. even called into the blackness... in hope her gentle song might evoke his response, but alas there was none.

Christine R-J. has a wave of intuition that he is somewhere near Kwik Trip North, though I still feel he is in the park.... Paul L and I decided to take the light-less path deeper into the forest, while the girls zip off to following their gut.

Chris and Sandra scan the mostly quiet streets, and out of the corner of her eye Chris sees a thin man with a bike, she turns away for a second, looks back... and he is gone.

A few minutes later, just as I realize we will not find this enigmatic voyager, Paul and I are interrupted by my cell ringing. The frogs stop chirping, and I answer. It is Tam Chi Le saying hello.

He is behind the old County Kitchen when I pull up on my bike. The Viroqua police are there too and I wonder if I should hold back.... I see it is a cop I used to be a medic with and proceed in slowly...

Tam Chi Le began his 48 State trek eight years ago, after being shot in the face with a shotgun during a robbery of his business. He makes about thirty miles per day, spreading his inner light, as he calls it, wherever they will listen. Wisconsin is number thirty en route to California which will be forty-eight. He has no possessions (not even a flashlight!), consumes only what nourishment is given him by strangers... and is overflowing with bliss.

Tea & Bagels in the Public Market

Tam Le told us Viroqua has a special warmth to it, unique in its feeling. We tape about four hours of Tam. He is a bit overly religious but ultimate giveths universal truths, which we absorb into our parched souls.

He says give love to thine brothers and sisters, let not material possessions and desire dominate your thoughts, empty the "dumpster", lol.... our minds filled with lust and want (one of my greatest distractions), meditate/pray everyday and...

live without fear.

Thoughtful light

He glows as he enlightens... his passion and joy alone inspire us to live more spiritually. We are left more aware, more humble and more present. And, of course, more loved.

We share tea and grapefruit on my porch, with the gurgling of a dragonfly fountain and tapping of bamboo shades in the soft breeze.... and he shows us how to meditate... empty your mind and you will see a light rotating like a beacon, he says, follow the light and it will lead you to divine guidance and love.

We give him dried fruits and nuts from my pantry, some clean shirts from the "not-cool-enough" pile in my closet (yah, I know).... He gladly accepts them into his world, because they have been given and not requested.

Surprisingly, Tam refuses the flashlight Sandra offers.... though, again, he has none to illuminate his way.... he says, as he taps his chest... this is all the light I need.

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The Last Farmer in Viroqua

Viroqua, The Movie

Test and Principle Photography

Our Lives, as a Movie

In search of the soul of Viroqua

It's about love, joy, truth... and organic encounter at a crossroads of time and space, a place in accelerated evolution.

Come and join me.

:::

to the poet Bubba Bruce, who interviewed The last Farmer....

Everyday it is not

That my heart

Meets a brother

Lost to me but onto this beat

Again, and "filled"

With knowledge and bliss

That says

Let me kiss

Kiss 'em on the mind

The Ego grind

No longer blind

We shall seek

Light flux into lens

The Last Farmer's rind

My favorite sequence, so far is an ongoing interview with the last farmer in the city of Viroqua. His farm is right across the street from the walmart supercenter.

The Last Farmer in Viroqua

{Photo by Sandra Be.}

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The Grandstaff Murder of 1888

Will I emerge from the forest

different than I am now?

or will I be

exactly as I am now

a few minutes older

Flock of Billions of Billions

Someone said, that old tree must be lonely

Lonely? she is surrounded by her flock of billions of billions.

Wisdom flux

3rd Eye Follow Photograph

Shortly after moving to Viroqua, while encased in minor pensive solitude, I cycled past the old Vernon County courthouse around midnight. I felt something brush me as I rode by an old tree in the courtyard. I paused there and looked down.

"JUNE 1, 1888", the small, distressed stone marker at the base of the tree declared enigmatically.

I looked at my Handheld. As I lit the screen it turned... the first seconds of June 1, 2006.

I racked my brain attempting to recall the stories I'd heard about this engraved stone. What did it commemorate? Ah, just couldn't recall. I went home to bed.

Then, a couple of days later in the ED where I work... I was chatting to a nurse about this documentary... the ED clerk overheard and asked, "have you shot anything about the Grandstaff Massacre?". Grandstaff Massacre? What?

She continued... in May of 1888 her great-great grand parents and two of their grand-kids were murdered by Mr. Grandstaff in their Viroqua-area home, in Sugar Grove at the end of Drake Road. The scene was grizzly and mccabe. Grandpa and two children!

My co-worker in the ED, a direct descendant of the slain, said her grandmother, the wife of the deceased.. would tell the story, emphasizing that she was supposed to be in the home too. Gasp! ... She survived because of a simple errand.

And for all the killing, Grandstaff's only loot? A solitary rifle... The Stolen booty, he stated to authorities, was stashed somewhere between Sugar Grove and Viroqua inside a hollow tree. It was never recovered.... for all we know... it is still there. [We plan a location shoot in search of the shotgun].

The perpetrator was quickly caught and brought to the very courthouse jail where I paused on June 1 2006. back in 1888, as the days past and the news spread, a sulfurous crowd milled about in the courtyard. They were impatient. The heat rose, and the hours ticked by, and the townspeople increasingly demanded blood for this heinous massacre.

Suddenly, the crowd boiled over and they rushed the jail, seizing Mr. Grandstaff. He was promptly strung up and hanged from the same courtyard Oak, where I felt something brush me. He was lynched on June 1, 1888.

1888 Grandstaff Murder Abstract

The light source in the upper right is from an approaching police light.

As we shot this photo, the throttle of a patrol car disturbed the quiet streets around the courthouse. We figured he must be there because of us....

The five of use stepped from behind the tree, admittedly looking suspicious, I'm sure. The young cop's new flashlight burned orange spots into our retinas.

Two more units screeched up from different directions...

po po

photo by Sandra Be.

One of the cops said into the radio, "why does he have his hands up?" The radio crackled back, "cause he has my light in his eyes!

Someone said, "it's ok officer, we're just doing an art project". I said, yes, it's about the Grandstaff massacre, figuring the case might be interesting to a lawman.

He soon realized we were no lawbreakers and lost interest.

The first cop said, "sorry, we have to check everything out with all that's happened"....

All that happened? I wondered what monstrous crime had gone down. He informed us that kid's had been knocking over lawn ornaments and paint-balling things.

After a few seconds he said, "Hey, I know you", gesturing my way... I was in your brother David's high school class. '92 that is.

We proclaimed as they left that we'd be on the lookout for the offenders... on our quest for more apparitions of Viroqua's past.

squad meeting

lighting tactics

[photo: Sandra Be.]

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Localism & Collective, Conscious Capitalism

On the morosity of meaning

there always comes

misted sun

replies to unaverted eyes

each turn

cues to commence

now living thence

We aim to change the world… start a revolution!

With a plan for universal health care, education and ownership of a business we yearn to launch…

Collective conscious capitalism…. all based in localism

a five-fold ideology::

1) democratic… one person, one share, one vote

2) capital dependent

3) collectively owned [that is, we all own… the keeper of the capital… the coop of coops… we own our own bank]

4) Our venture operates favoring local trade… e.g. get eggs from the local egg lady… half the price, 1/1000 the fuel

5) Finally, we head the will of the collective consciousness

[centered around public markets, linked into a network, created in impoverished areas first]

…..organic, sustainable, and passionate about survival of the tribe.

It's about me

It's about you

It's about us

How can this fail?

It's like trying to kill the Borg individual… killing one or even a few is irrelevant and futile. We are a collective of humanity, an organic machine built to last, endure and overcome.

Fragrant Orchid Perfumes my Porch

bliss is the absence of fear

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Yuba

More cinema-quest for our documentary film, Viroqua

A few days ago, we traveled East to check out the new trails at the "Lost Creek Forest". Blue skies, camaraderie and lots of agua.

I pricked my finger picking wild raspberries...

After, we drove a few miles to the tiny village of Yuba, Wisconsin's smallest incorporated town.

Population: 77

Taverns: 3

[photo: Sandra B.]

Giants Invade Yuba

[photo: Sandra B.]

Sibby Sue, my friend and the organic ice cream maker, used to deliver for UPS, and Yuba was on her route. So, many of the old-timers consider her like family. We we warmly welcomed as we visited each of the three watering holes (politically unacceptable to visit just one, lol).

At Sog's we were invited to see the grand-ole opera house, upstairs of the bar. Old and grand indeed. After, we had crisp root beer at the bar, served in frosty mugs.

Sog's

Yuba Opera House

Door

[photo: Sandra B.]

Frosty Mugs

[photo: Sandra B.]

At Tiny's bar, we met Art, a cool Hindu hippie... he eventually led us to his embattled earth-block dome home... the only structure to survive a direct hit from an angry tornado last Summer. You could still see the path the vortex took. How fragile our physical existence can be.

Art's Tornado Earth Block Dome

Slow Repairs

Mudlogged

On to the next unknown

[photo: Kathleen L.]

Oh, these sad, beautiful lives, lived as adventures... and film.

Filming at "The Kettle"...

Interview with the Wizard

Dahl's Pharmacy Out of Business

Metal Attack

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Viroqua

A Woman in Peril

I'd like to say here, as I emotionally relate to my own home town as part of this series, that our energy, compassion and love, instantly traverse the land ... offered like an outstretched hand... to those whose hometowns need the kindness of strangers...

Let us think of this entire Country now, as we do our hometowns...

Actual Map showing the land contours around Viroqua, which is in the center of the image.

::: :::

I grew up in a small town in Southwest Wisconsin... the unique town of Viroqua, WI population about 5000 humans (plus a small unknown number of humanoids of unclear

origin). There is a growing mystique to this quirky place. Even the name comes from Legend. Google Viroqua, sometime... there is no other place, object, or person with such a name. Well, there is one person, according to this legend.

The princess was called Viroqua... her father and mother were tribal sages. A young maiden whose beauty transcends 10,000 years. One myth surrounding the derivation of the city name says this mystical woman... Viroqua, came to love another, probably a boy from another clan. Their passion churned and shimmered... a want like no other... Tragically, the boy she loved was not deemed worthy by elders. Viroqua's fate was bound.

Her misery and loss latched her wrists like irons... they pulled her down the sheer face of a rock shelter, at the center of her village. Her spirit would now be

indelibly woven into every society to come, and every love conjured and each one denied... like a nymph-goddess... The later settlers, of her lands, naturally, named the town I grew up after her.

Viroqua Fell, a few feet from this point, in the Viroqua City Park....

The exact point of departure is easy to find...

I can show you.

Epic adventure, Mayhem, massacre, and majesty. Viroqua, the town and the princess' ancestry (as well as all of ours) have an utterly fascinating history.

Around 10,000 years ago the Forefathers of Viroqua crossed a new land bridge

between the East and Alaska. They ventured into a land, probably never seen through homo sapien eyes. Among these adventurous first Americans, Viroqua's genetic material traveled... but a few millennia upstream on the River of Time.

It's fascinating to me, that at the time of these early explorers, massive sheets of ice covered much of North America, including Wisconsin. The continent was in an ice age!. Like an alien invader, the ice blanketed a vast land mass... tilling, grinding, tilling, grinding. Blue death everywhere, except a tiny portion of land, surrounding Viroqua.

It is in these enchanting lands Viroqua's distant relatives played, loved, prayed and died. The landscape around them must have been magnificent... walls of steaming ice, guarding misty forests, the gentle Kickapoo River, and Viroqua's people... and, not to be forgotten, the occasional passing mastodon (who always managed to disrupt daily life considerably when they approached).

Now, fortunately for us humans of 2005, what this absence of ice preserved was nothing less than amazing... The question arises... what exactly was here? What has this place in the unknown corner of the State been?? Because the area has for some reason been spared glacial flattening... we behold a foreign landscape...

the current manifestation of a 100 million year old prehistory seabed.... actually, a seafloor mountain range.

Viroqua... a sanctuary amidst an ice age and now, an age of iceless dreams...

The photograph the right, shows the tree covered former seabed.

Look, again now, at the topographical map... allow your eyes to relax, breath deeply.. let your eyes cross a bit. Can you imagine the massive, weathered mountain that loomed and dominated here, 100 million years ago, under endless seas... it's highest levels, eroded and crushed... forming the plateau, where Viroqua lived, died, and now... like us... searches.

The pitifully seekers, the loved... all spared... an ice age.

Ol' Mount Viroqua

Thus, when you wade through the Kickapoo River, an ancient glacier waterway near Viroqua, you traverse aqueous flowing like ocean currents did in the exact same space, millions of years ago. Layers upon layers of death... decomposition, pressure cooking, calcification, cementing... the remains of 200 million years of dead bodies. A fifty-foot layer-cake of life. How can there be so much death, while life keeps chugging along? The life must be recycled... Like all of the universe and its outerspace and innerspace... we are in constant flux, within perpetual rotation, enlarging our orbit with each go-round.

All we can do, really, is go with the water, live with what we cannot alter... buoyant upon passion, spiritedness, compassion, and our intense shared bless, spirit inside all of us.

Viroqua is a cool place, because her flux is perceivable... the exact moment of transformation is before us... Viroqua is evolving in real-time. Her faces, mind and spirit grow more glorious...

has this princess a love revivification. God, I hope so... cause it's all about the love.

Come... perpetuate the love revival.

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tony@macaSTAT.com