Occupy Alaska... As Everything Old is New Again

An editorial by an individual, Barry Murray. Copyright 2011. So —as I am already 72-years old— what are you going to do about it?

The number of unique visitors to this website, as recorded on our stat software that records what readers are most interested in, over that of what NYC “street smart” financial advisors feel is most important — has exploded.

Why? Because of a cheechako family out of Oregon somehow caught the attention of a reality TV channel with a very popular series titled — Alaska Gold Rush. The refreshing aspect of the Porcupine Creek project is that a small non-foreign multinational corporation group of individuals risked everything by investing in the same dream as the stampeders of ‘98 who climbed the Chilkoot Pass of Klondike fame, packing a ton of supplies the NorthWest Mounted Police demanded —as backed up by Maxim machine gun— before being allowed to float the Yukon 500 miles in whipsawed green timber flat boats. See my experience of following the footsteps of my great uncle “Midas” MacAdam, who also was one of the first locators of a claim at Nome at www.alaskatravelmagazine.com/3yukonriver/yukon-river-adventure-1.html.

It is true the featured Hoffman family had some painful experiences learning how to placer mine without financial backing from the “silk stocking” Chairman Bernie Madoff of the NASDAQ stock exchange. It is also true the “News of the World” national financial press as the Wall Street Journal, has some very pointed “ha-ha” comments about Western miners (as in the way off-off-Wall Street www.WesternMiner.com) who wear “wool socks” so we don’t lose toes to frost-bite.

In the defense of these individuals who actually are trying to produce gold to support the unrealistic London Metals Exchange support of a Barclay’s Bank program of ETF gold derivative program originally designed to give British investors a way to avoid paying a twenty percent tax for owning a precious metal, such as the 16 ounces of sterling 92 and one forth percent purity silver which was the “Pound Sterling,” very misrepresented today on paper — let me state that, the truth, is the truth.

If I give the impression about digressing about things about things British, well perhaps it is because my genetic Scots-Irish-Native American has been battling the English since the Revolutionary War at Kings Mountain, and Cowpens, in the Carolinas ; and at New Orleans; and the Oregon Territory; and lately the “Princess Cruise Line” cartel in Alaska — thanks to a PAC controlled Congress support of the Jones Act— that takes 65¢ out of every Alaska travel dollar. My understanding of this is documented on my companion publication known as www.AlaskaTravelMagazine.com.

Please President Obama don’t let the Multinational mas’ers of BP, and a ‘American’ Deepwater Horizon out of Switzerland, and a ‘Nevada’ Halliburton that has merged into a big oil Dubai corporation, lead us back into the business of off-shore drilling with the same mentality that big-oil Exxon used to bankrupt small Alaskan businesses by denying the punitive damages of dealing with a drunken sailor.

Thank God we still have American’s strong enough to head North to Alaska, for the adventure of learning how to dig that “filthy lucre” known as gold from the ground with their bare and bleeding fingers. I am glad that people from a bankrupt California can follow an adaptation of the Mining Law of 1872, that came out of the 49’r mining camps, to show up as the rules governing State of Alaska Mining Claims — as we have the only government in the world that shares the “free” wealth of Creator (things grown as wheat and pork bellies, harvested as trees and fish, and revenues from oil and minerals) with people who vote. Know also we voters did not appreciate or “understand” our elected governor running off to be a star on Saturday Night Live.

So, back on point, as an old-time prospecting f-rt. What I thought of the Alaska Gold Rush Porcupine Creek project was:

1) How in the world could anyone survive being stuck in a remote mining camp so argumentative? Didn’t they have a camp cook who realized that personality differences were worked out at dinner — or else you didn’t eat, unless you washed dishes! Or was all the shouting just for TV drama?

2) How is it all the all the so-called experts when it came to separating a season’s worth of black sands came from Oregon? I was born and raised in an Oregon and worked the the Oregon King, the Powder River, and the Cornucopia out of Halfway Oregon when they were still producing gold. Having gone north in 1968 to become a half-baked Alaska miner, why was I so overlooked as a resource wanting to tell young-uns how it was supposed to be done?

Actually I have know about the Porcupine Creek property for 20 + years, and most likely would have suggested that instead of risking lives digging a big hole beyond the water table with an excavator, they use an old fashioned bucket on a drag-line. And that instead of importing a “outside” wash plant that really didn’t fit their operation, that the old way would have been to build it out with equipment proven to work on site.

I have never met Earl Foster, the “villain that pulled the rug out” from under the Hoffmans, nor Dakota, a relative newcomer to Alaska. I do know he and I had a six degree of separation connection through Foster's partnering with Les Risley, my “gifted” helicopter pilot, to high-grade the 300 ounce silver (at $2 per ounce) of what have become my Win Mining Claims. I have a friend who still claims they both are really “good guys.”

3) When it comes to things financial let me say that these Oregon individuals did the honorable thing in betting the farm, that had become an airstrip, against those who think they rule because “they have the gold,” when in fact all that is measured as wealth today is little more than paper certificates, as the saying goes controlled by a mere one percent. Sorry the Hoffmans spent a hard season for so little in return.

Those who grew up in Oregon at a time when hardworking lumberjacks on a “misery whip,” while Spotted Owls watched their labor in fascination; and buckeroos rounding up “organic” range fed beef (as opposed to the feed lot mad cows birthing calves in a foot of feed lot manure); and fishermen who risked all at sea in small boats competing with huge multi-national floating processing plants; and the resourceful Oregon miner of a very “green” natural resource, as NephelineSyenite.com, trying to compete with a European and Iranian powerhouse that seems to control the marketplace.

So, to all the homeless masses of bankrupt Californians bamboozled by banksters destroying the safe and sane saving and loan industry — whose ancestors may have survived the First Great Depression by being picked up off the streets of San Francisco, trucked in an open stateside vehicle to Weaverville, handed a wool blanket, a sack of beans, and a gold pan— know that mineral rich Alaska doesn't have District Attorney’s as mineral rich San Bernardino County, California to block America’s early lead in rare earths production at Mountain Pass.

As an elder of the tribe of WesternMiners.com, I totally challenge the whimsy, pimpled-faced, prospectors of today to head north to Alaska to defend America from an invasion of foreign investors who think we are so soft as not being able to met the challenge of the Klondike, and the Nome, and the Kobuck, Forty-Mile, and Chicken, placer mining stampedes.

I could whine to you about loosing my Innoko/ Ophir / Boob Creek claims through the vindictiveness of an ex-wife, that allowed an Asian investor to steal my noodle lunch, but I won’t. Truth is in retropect I had a lot of fun dragging her along into what she apparently thought was misery. Wonder what she thinks about loosing out on $65,000 for her share, through a vindictive spirit?

So, what are you waiting for? Rent the video, “Paint Your Wagon,” for the spirit of the life. And, head North to the State of Alaska Mining Law of the last frontier mining law of 1872. A freeby here is a first step is to join Steve Terills Alaska Miners Association. And see if you can find a copy of Handbook for the Alaskan Prospector by Ernest Wolff, 1969, http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Prospector-Industry-Research-Laboratory the wool stocking professor of the University of Alaska.

In honoring of the full disclosure that Wall Street keeps flapping their lips about —but ignore— let me say that the following banner ad has something to do with this article. As mentioned at the top, everything old is new again... and perhaps the old-fashioned idea of “working a miner’s lay” has almost become new again.

My name is Barry. You can talk to me, Pilgram, at 503-753-5868 —just do your homework before asking dumb questions.