WEBVTT - Part Two: The War On Vagrants 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:07.680 Welcome back to the Dire Straits Cast, a podcast where 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:10.640 I know exactly one song by the band The dire 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:15.160 Straits money for Nothing, and Margaret, I understand you still 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.640 know two songs by the dire Straits. 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:18.799 I do. 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:20.560 Yeah, Sultan's is excellent. 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.000 So this is a news and culture podcast about all 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.799 of the things going on in the Dire Straits world. 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:31.560 Any any updates that you're aware of, Margaret, Well, they 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:35.080 don't need to make the guitar cry or sing. Okay, 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.800 I've learned that, Mukay. How do we feel are they 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:44.640 allowed to use that slur sing no no, no no 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:45.920 in Money for Nothing? 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:54.040 Oh? You know, there's no accountability that I could ask 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:55.080 from the Dire Straits. 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:56.160 I don't think there ever was. 0:00:57.920 --> 0:00:59.840 I don't think it's what I would recommend they did. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:01.600 That's That's where I'm going to go. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:05.080 My assumption is that everyone involved with that band died 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:10.400 in nineteen eighty nine, and yeah, they can't have lived 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:12.760 past that. They certainly can't have outlived in TV. 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:14.800 Why is this the thing you wanted to do? This 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:15.600 is this is. 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.039 This is Margaret and I's most beloved bit. The Dire 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.720 Straits Podcast by two people who know very little about 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.480 the Dire Straits, Margaret, can you because I only know 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.080 one song and Margaret knows two. 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.399 Yeah, well, we've done it before, so therefore it's our 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:30.440 most beloved I was. 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:32.880 I was. I've been waiting for weeks to talk about 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:37.319 the Dire Straits again, because, you know, after we did 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:39.440 it the first time, I listened to Money for Nothing 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.520 again because I mostly had listened to a cover of 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:45.479 it done by a bluegrass band, and it wound up 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:47.520 you know that thing YouTube does where they like stick 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:49.920 it in your like recently listened to thing. And so 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.520 for the last like several months, every time I hop 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:54.800 on YouTube to put on music, there's like a fifty 0:01:54.840 --> 0:01:57.720 percent chance I start playing that one song and then 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:00.800 it it quickly takes me away from that to other songs, 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:04.720 and then in thirty minutes, I'm singing Hotel California. But 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:08.840 you know, and it's four thirty in the morning. What else, 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.200 what are you gonna do? Anyway, this concludes the Dire 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.880 Straits cast. If they're not dead, don't tell us. You know, 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.959 we're We're both fine with that. I don't, I don't. 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.320 Unless you are listening and you are in dire Strain, 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.560 in which case you have permissions. 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.040 Especially if you will record us a custom version of 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.760 either one of those two songs, but themed about I 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.880 don't know whatever we do here podcasting. I guess that 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:40.120 probably wouldn't be a very interesting song. Actually, you know what, 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.680 I'm certain there is a deeply, deeply frustrating version of 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.520 money for Nothing that's about like podcasters making money as 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:48.920 opposed to rock stars, and I don't want to hear it. 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:53.000 So no, no, thank you, yeap. That is the exception. 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:56.080 Yeah, even if you're the Dire Straits people and you 0:02:56.160 --> 0:02:57.800 wrote that song, you don't want it. 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.440 Would be very funny if the Dire Straits people were 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.799 just like the Monster mash Guy, where they just kept 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:05.120 making as anytime there was like a new group of 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:06.960 people who like got a bunch of money, they do 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:09.360 another version of that. 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.200 Why are you still talking about this? 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:13.120 I don't know. 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:15.800 I don't know, Sophie, because the rest of the story 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.080 we're talking about today, which is the history of vagrancy 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.280 and how it intertwines with the history of Benjamin Darling's 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.080 descendants and Malaga Island, the rest of that story is 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.920 very sad. So that's why we're talking about the Dire Straan. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.000 Legally, we are only allowed to feel joy when we're 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.880 on cool people did cool stuff, bastards bad time. 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:41.360 We did sign that contract. Well great, I don't know, Sophie, 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.320 See if we can get a deal with MTV and 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.000 do a real music podcast. Are they still around? 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:52.320 I think so, But it's just like now they're m 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:53.080 pod for It. 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.480 Just seems to be like more like spinoff shows of 0:03:58.560 --> 0:03:59.520 Jersey Shore. 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:01.560 And over again. 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.680 Yeah, that's what a tragic state of affairs. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:09.480 That was a cultural moment. 0:04:10.080 --> 0:04:14.040 Yeah, because honestly, like the Jersey Shore people probably committed 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:17.000 fewer sex crimes than the musicians that were previously the 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:21.200 draw to that channel. So I don't know, it seems 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.880 probably pretty equal. Well, now I've made our fun bit 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:27.440 about the Dire Straits, just. 0:04:29.560 --> 0:04:32.800 The regular shift, So yeah, let's continue on. 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:39.799 So when we left our friends on Malaga Island, things 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.919 were still going pretty well there, but the twentieth century 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.480 was starting to turn and there were problems on the horizon. Right. 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.640 You know, this kind of anti vagrant hysteria had sort 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:53.680 of fed into you know, this kind of local culture 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:58.760 demonizing this this one. You know, dude, you know, squatting 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:00.640 alone on an island, and it was kind of like 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.360 a sign of things that are about to start becoming 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:05.680 a problem for more of the people who live on 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:10.400 these islands, because the kind of pleasant state of being 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.640 ignored that had benefited these people for so many generations 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:17.320 was going to come to an end because of the 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:22.880 development of Maine's first tourist industry. Suddenly Americans with disposable 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.760 income were flocking to the main coast every summer. These 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.160 isolated islands, you know, with the additional technology that existed, 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.120 were now less isolated. And you know, for a while, 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.080 about a century or so, affluent white maners had been 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.320 pretty happy to leave the people of the Casco Bay 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.120 Islands alone, especially since they were both an exit valve 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:45.800 for folks who didn't fit into like Portland society, and 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:48.440 they were a source of cheap labor. But now they 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.920 were starting to think, well, maybe there's more money if 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.960 we just kind of imminent domain those islands and put 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:57.400 up summer houses on them for you know, rich people, 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:04.000 and shit, yeah, what do we airbnb community? Yeah, yeah, 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.159 that's basically what's happening. So since there's money to be 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.359 made in the islands, now local businesses start leaning on 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:14.000 the local media to portray the Malagaites and their neighbors 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.200 as an iesore and a shame to the community. In 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.839 eighteen ninety nine, a columnist for the Bath Enterprise limited 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.680 that quote, few people of Pipsburg had faith that the 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.200 effort to get rid of Malaga with its burden of 0:06:26.279 --> 0:06:30.320 poor people, would be successful. A flurry of local news articles, 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:32.680 like this one from the Casco Bay Breeze in nineteen 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.240 oh five described Malaga as the home of southern Negro 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:40.679 blood and an incongruent scene on a spot of natural beauty. 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.599 In nineteen oh eight, the Popular Liberals standby Harper's magazine 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.320 cent a correspondent, Home and Day and a photographer out 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.080 to Malaga and several neighboring islands to do an article 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.800 on the communities that had caused such a sudden panic 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.200 to their longtime neighbors. The piece, titled The Queer Folk 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.960 of the Main Coast, is a fascinating historical document, and 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:05.640 it uses the word queer more than any other document 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.640 not about like queer people that I've ever seen. It 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:10.160 is every third word in this. 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.360 So well that just brings us back to money for nothing. 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.400 Yeah, exactly exactly. Does Holman Day get a pass? 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:18.720 No? 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:24.360 Yeah, I don't like this. I thought. I have such 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.560 a mixed feeling about this because Day comes across as 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.520 like a very like up his own ass like liberal 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.320 elite asshole, looking down on these people and kind of 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:38.520 like cheerfully condescending them. But also he is competent as 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:40.800 a reporter. He is going and talk and he's like 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:44.120 the only one who does and so a huge amount 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:46.320 of what we know about the culture of these islands 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:48.560 is just because he went and talked to people and 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:50.600 gave delivered their stories. So it is one of those 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:53.000 like kind of the way he does it is frustrating, 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.960 but he does provide us with an absolutely it's kind 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.280 of like you got that guy and like the White 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.800 House Press Corps, the one guy who can about aids 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.680 and like he's like dropping some you know, slurs and 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:08.400 laughing about it sometimes. But he also is pushing the 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.560 only guy pushing the Reagan administration about the fact that 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.840 people are dying and this is a serious problem. So 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:18.440 like you know, journalism, you get a lot of these 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.480 stories there where it's like this is fucked up, but 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:24.000 also this is the only reason we know about these people. 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.840 So I don't know, I don't know what to we're 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:29.800 morally to put that. It doesn't really matter. I guess 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:30.800 it happened. 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.239 Morally, it goes in the past. It's at a category 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:35.000 thing that happened. 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:40.200 So holand Day's article opens promisingly enough with the lines 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.280 of old muskets drove the Abnakis off the coast of Maine. 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.360 Today money is driving away another race, which could be 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.240 like a good opening if you're trying to be like, 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.920 you know, the cruelty of settlers against the indigenous people 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:59.160 is being replicated by capitalists against these folks who have 0:08:59.160 --> 0:09:02.439 found refuge here. That is a little bit of what 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:05.000 he means, but not not. I don't think he really 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:09.640 analyzes things in that context, you know, Okay. He continues 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.000 between Kittery Point and Quota Head. Resorters have acquired hundreds 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:17.239 of headlands and thousands of islands. A phalanx of cottages 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.960 fronts the sea. The queer squad are people who have 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.000 been dispossessed find little relish in being stared at as 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.000 human curiosities. So the queer folk live alone, and it 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:30.080 is said that isolation develops eccentricity. The ocean creeps to 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.760 the doors of their huts, and winter waves thunder in 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:34.880 their ears. And there are those who say that the 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.240 din of the sea boats beats curious ideas into their head. 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:40.520 So for one thing, this. 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.600 Rules they're just cool as they are so cool. Even 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.080 though this guy sounds like love he does. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.360 That's what he's about to say, is he sounds like 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:50.280 like the madness is creeping in from the ocean waves, 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:54.760 battering their their simple brains. It is interesting that he 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.600 like he starts with almost almost like actual class analysis here, 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:03.400 talking about like a real like the kind of like 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.080 longitudinal problems between the genocide of the native peoples of 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:11.079 this isle and kind of the relentless hunger that that, 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.360 you know, the quest for profit brings and how it 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.000 just inherently dispossesses and forces people out of their homes. 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.160 But he immediately moves to like, and these folks believe 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:23.959 weird shit, like that's the focus of the article, espe 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:27.840 silly they are. So he acknowledges that problem and then 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.280 drops it right away, like a paragraph into this fucking 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:36.760 article that said, Homan Day is a pretty textbook earnest 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.079 white liberal intellectual. That's at least the picture one gets it. 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.280 I haven't read his entire ouvra. That's the picture that 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:46.439 you get of this guy. In this article. He paints 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:50.440 a pretty desperate picture of the educational standards in general culture, which, 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.520 as we've already said, is not accurate. These people seem 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:55.920 to have been and this is something that like modern 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:58.880 day archaeologist will note, seem to have been pretty like 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.560 reasonably well educated by the standards of the day and 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:07.120 the area. Day uses a lot of noble savage imagery 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.520 here too, in lines like this quote. They are not envious, 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.200 they do not want to beg Where penury and pride 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:15.560 meet in the city, there are heart burnings. But the 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.120 man tossing in the battered dory in the swash of 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.720 a millionaire's yacht neither size nor glares, provided he be 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.040 one of the queer folk. For the queer folk are 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:27.839 queer in one respective. Especially, they dwell content in their 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.560 own world, which is often a world of illusion. For 0:11:30.679 --> 0:11:36.120 solitariness and the sea breeds strange thoughts. Kids, keeps going back. 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:40.560 To that, Uh, this guy is just as it is. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.000 He's like this reporters living some dog shit life back 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.480 in the city, watching all of his friends get collar 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:50.560 every season, and like, what do I have on these people? Well, 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.280 some of them believe silly stuff. Holman really wanted to 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:56.480 make sure people got the picture that these people were 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.839 sweet but deranged and thus not capable of taking care 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:03.760 of themselves and the ways that we modern Americans expect now. 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.640 To his credit, Holman travels pretty widely around the islands, 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:10.920 and he comes across people with legitimately fascinating stories that 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.480 I wish desperately had been investigated by a proper anthropologist, 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:19.000 although those didn't really exist back then. But yeah, it's 0:12:20.400 --> 0:12:23.000 enticing the bits that he gives us. One of the 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.000 stories he tells us is about a guy named Ossian Dustin. 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.720 Ossian lives on an island called Newcastle, not far away 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:33.040 from Malaga, and when Holman meets him, Ossian Dustin is 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.719 eighty years old. He survives mostly off of just kind 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:38.520 of like pulling what he can out of the ocean. 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:41.400 He makes about fifty dollars a year doing odd jobs 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.760 for people back on shore, mostly firewood sawing, and this 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.720 pittance is enough for him to remain alone and independent 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:51.640 on the island, engaging in his life's goal hunting for 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.320 Captain Kid's treasure. That is his entire This man has 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.960 spent hell y rad Dude, he spent his whole life 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.360 living alone on this eye and hunting for Captain Kid's 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:06.600 treasure quote the buried existence of which he implicitly believes. Now, 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:10.760 what this guy represents in actuality is a dude who 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.640 was born in around the early eighteen twenties and seems 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.200 to have decided, like, taken a look at American society 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.839 in the eighteen twenties and been like, nah, fuck that shit. 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:24.320 And he has this kind of comfortable fantasy about Captain 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:28.400 hood Kid's treasure that gives him like purpose and a 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.079 sense of meaning and seems to make him pretty happy. 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:34.600 As far as we can gather from Holman's reporting, he 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:37.280 came to believe that Kid's treasure was hidden in the 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.520 area due to a local legend he encountered as a 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:42.040 young man, and he just decided to spend his entire 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.160 life trying to find it. Holman describes this as quote 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.640 the type of content that relieves these hidden human tragedies 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.520 of some of that pitifulness. Right, Well, this guy's so 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:53.560 happy it makes it less sad that he lives this 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.080 depressing life. He is like, the life's only depressing to you, Holman. 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.880 Like this guy's doing fine. He is hunting for buried treasure. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.760 He is probably friends with seagulls. Like his life is great. 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.800 He is eighty years old. Nobody lives that long. Like 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:11.920 whatever he's doing is working well for him. Yeah, here's 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:14.800 Holman again. He has toiled nights for the most part, 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.360 believing that in the night a treasure seeker can best 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:21.320 circumvent the enchantments laid on buried pirate spoils. He searches 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:23.720 with the treasure rod made by his own hands. He 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:25.920 has the tip of a cow's horn, plugged with wood 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.680 and containing various metals. In the wooden plug are stuck 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:32.000 parallel strips of whalebone, and he clutches these strips, one 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:34.680 in each hand and walks along, balancing the tip of 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:37.520 the horn. When he passes over the famous iron pot, 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.040 the tip, thus is his belief, will turn down and 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.680 point at the buried treasure. He says his spade has 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.720 struck the iron pot several times, but that enchantment has 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:49.640 whisked away the treasure. He expects that eventually his own 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.720 charms will prevail over the power of evil. That's a 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.640 cool That's a fine life. I'm sorry, Like, that's a 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:58.240 perfectly fine existence. 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:01.520 He gets his steps in every day. 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.800 Like what has built a whole, like almost religious mythology 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.960 around this treasure that allows him to always be searching 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:11.280 for it but never quite finding it, while still getting 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.080 little victories along the way. What's wrong with this life? 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.000 In the grand scheme of things? How can you have 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.880 a problem with this? I bring this guy up both 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:23.080 because this is an amazing story and it made me 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.920 so happy to read, and also because as evidence of 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:28.560 what these islands were, they were a refuge, not just 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.600 for people like the Darlings and their descendants whose very 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.520 relationships are criminal, but for folks. I think it's fair 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:36.640 to say, whatever is going on with Ossian Dustin, He's 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.320 not what you'd call neurotypical, right. He is someone who 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.480 has built this kind of religious cosmology around the search 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:45.800 for this treasure. He has visions that he talks about 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:49.320 regularly of a figure in shining gold guiding him along, 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.120 and in most of the rest of the country, a 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.480 man who said these things and did these things would 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:57.840 have been forced into a sanitarium where he would have 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.240 fucking died of cholera. Right, that's this guy's story. Ninety 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:05.200 nine percent of the US is he is imprisoned and 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.440 left to die of disease, but instead he's eighty years old, 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:14.760 you know. And Holman is absolute like repeatedly mentions he's 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.960 the happiest, one of the happiest men that he's ever met. Right, Like, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.200 this guy has has built a life for himself, which 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.200 is a pretty awesome achievement. And Holman is human enough 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.280 to recognize that he's witnessing something remarkable. Well at the 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.440 same time rejecting this man's beliefs as worth any thought. Quote, 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:35.200 it can scarcely be said that Uncle Ossian's unfailing cheerfulness 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.960 springs from any philosophy of life that he has evolved. 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.040 But after our talk, I came out of his dingy 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.320 hut with the feeling that probably some of the proud 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.320 folk in the cottages down the bay needed pity more 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.680 than he. So he's like, Wow, this guy seems deeply 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.080 happy and has lived in an advanced age, but there's 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:55.920 probably nothing worth studying. And like his approach to life, 0:16:57.080 --> 0:16:58.760 I don't know if he's not Ray, he's not in 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.280 them money. I don't know, man. Maybe he figured something 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.800 out that most of us never do. Yeah, he seems firal. 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:06.960 Maybe he found a goal the year after him. 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:07.840 Maybe he did. 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:09.800 Maybe he did. 0:17:10.840 --> 0:17:13.440 So again. Holman here is kind of on the edge 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.840 of a revelation that his journey through these islands makes 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.520 crystal clear, which is that civilization is not an unalloyed good, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:22.800 and many marginalized people have always been able to take 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.040 care of themselves better by dropping out of it. That 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.280 has been a fact of history for as long as 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.600 people have been like building cities and making rules. Is 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:35.320 that some people, particularly those persecuted society, are better off 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:40.960 without them. Next, Holman visits Spruce Island, inhabited solely by 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.560 three elderly men, the Shanks brothers, William, Daniel, and Nehemiah. 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.320 They had lived all their lives and what he describes 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:51.879 as a tumble down shelter. William and Daniel never married, 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:55.359 but Neamiyah had what our writer Buddy patronizingly calls a 0:17:55.480 --> 0:18:00.399 poor little romance that broke his heart. Basically, Neamia and 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.360 their dad used to go to Portland to sell their 0:18:02.359 --> 0:18:04.960 fish catch, and at one point this lady married him 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:08.360 as a con to take his money family savings away, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.000 which is sad their father forgave Neemiyah by tasking him 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.679 to watch over his brothers for the rest of their lives. 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.960 It kind of seems again like his brothers at least 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:21.200 are it sounds like a myth that you're telling. Well, 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.960 I mean this is amazing. He meant these people basically 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.640 what you know? Yeah, no, no, no, no, I believe it. 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:31.040 It's just I think that it's like his actual life 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.679 has elements that are mythic storytelling. Yeah, like, ah, you 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.280 have done You've failed in this way by being tricked. 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:39.879 Now you have a new task. Yeah, and it does. 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:42.359 It does. That is kind of what's cool happening because 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.479 like William and Daniel, it seems like are again what 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.920 you would say, not neurotypical, right they are. They are 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.800 not people who can live. Neamiah probably could have, these 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.160 are not people who can exist in the regular society 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:58.120 of the time. Their dad realizes that and he's like, look, 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.120 you've got to take care of them because this is 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.280 the only place that they're ever going to have. And 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:05.159 so that's what Neami. These guys are all like, I 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:10.720 think in their sixties seventies when Holman meets them, and 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:14.560 it's an int remarkable stories you've noted, and it gets 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:19.280 kind of more fascinating to me. There's a paragraph in 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.679 here about William in particular that I have not been 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:24.240 able to get out of my head since I read 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.640 it for more than twenty years. William has never come 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.000 out of the hut into the sunshine. He told me 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:32.000 that he feared the sun might heat his brains and 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.280 interfere with his life work, which is the composition of poetry. 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:37.840 There is a brain blanket slung across one end of 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:40.760 the hut. William sits behind his blank this blanket and 0:19:40.800 --> 0:19:43.359 fixes his eyes on the sunlight that enters through Anthole 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.520 and composes. He states that he is now the author 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:51.720 of a thousand pieces, none of which he ever writes down. 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:55.320 He just his entire life is sitting in that chair, 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:58.639 filling his brain with his own poetry that no one 0:19:58.680 --> 0:19:59.480 else will ever hear. 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:08.240 That's yeah, that's cool, Yeah, that's like. Yeah, it's like 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:10.000 the anchor writes. The people who would like to go 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.320 and like wall themselves. 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.080 Up, Yeah, like yeah, And I honestly, you know, if 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:16.960 Holman was a better journalist. The thing to do would 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:19.280 be like, would you read me some poems, like so 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:21.800 I can write them down. I want to know what 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:22.439 this is like. 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.359 Yeah, of course, yeah, he's either like he's probably the 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:29.680 best or worst poets, never absolute trash verse. 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:36.480 Yeah either way, that's there's like a deep kind of 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:42.199 harrowing beauty and that that simple statement about this guy's life. Anyway, 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:44.919 when I started researching this, my thinking was again that 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:47.080 I would start with the tale of Benjamin Darling and 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.120 then Malaga and how it became a haven for these 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:52.080 kind of like these people who had who couldn't live 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:55.280 in regular society or chose not to and built this 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.399 resilient culture of their own, and how that culture was 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.280 destroyed in the name of progress. But for all my 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.600 issues with homans smugness and dismissal of the depth of 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.439 inner life lived by his subjects, I must admit that 0:21:06.440 --> 0:21:09.040 the substantial footwork he did is what keyed me into 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.960 the deeper story here, because the people he's describing, a 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:14.080 lot of these folks. You lead a guy like Ossian, right, 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:16.879 you look at people like these brothers. These are folks 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.080 who today would probably be living on the street, right, 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:22.639 you know, if they don't have family support, if they 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.359 don't have like some access to funding, a lot like 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:27.880