Bill Hurrle, my friend for over 30 years, died Saturday too young, too soon at home in the off-the grid solar house he with fellow craftsmen/engineers, and his wife Bev Watkins and children, completed last spring in New Franken, Wisconsin, a still-farming community near Green Bay. Bill was very outspoken, wrote and parlayed his own new-age speak, and will be recognized as truly a world leader in "solar electrical innovation for home applications" realm. Though I did not always agree with him or completely comprehend his pov, he always treated me like brother, welcoming me in to see what he was inventing, writing about, or researching.
I was privileged to learn much about life around the campfire with him. Lately these fires were at our favorite tribal gathering place, what I call Wisconsin's Kewaunee County High Grounds, on a mutual friend's property about 6 miles west of the Lake Michigan shore. Bill and I loved the outdoors. He was a bow-hunter-conservationist, avid camper, and prairie preservation gardener.
Politically I'd call him a far-left radical, or at least a radical realist Democrat. We agreed on most national/local social and policon issues. He challenged everyone to question dominant paradigms, see our world as a sharing community, and inspired me to environmental organizing. I was already on my way to community organizing and music promoting when I met Bill during my college years at UW-Oshkosh when he was a reporter and I was a communications major. And I may have been an urban tree-hugger before Bill Hurrle turned my head around so many times I became fanatical about resource conservation and consumer waste materials recycling: (http://www.madisonrah.org/). Bill told me and the world more about PEAK OIL, solar generation, and alternative energy than I'll ever remember. In case the fluctuating (now down, soon up) motor fuel prices have clouded your mind again, this planet is now at PEAK OIL -- the party this civilization has had on cheap oil is over. What happens now is: find an alt fuel you can live with, use fathoms less of it than you did of petrol, and cultivate a community in which you can stick to your principles.

He valued loyalty, family, hard work, and knowing ones way around power tools (he was an entreprenuer builder carpenter solar wizard), peace pipes, and computers. Bill shared my love of the run-on sentence, clever turns of phrase, two-wheeling, and music -- particularly 'da blues, jazz, and blue grass.

We had memorable adventures together not the least of which included meeting up by design with Bob Vila (This Old House)
one freezing winter in Medford, Wisconsin. More on this later.
After joining musicians John and Don Stiernberg's "Mandolin World News" quarterly string instrument enthusiasts magazine (Bill was Managing Editor; I was Media Consultant), he and I discovered Cape Twisco -- the Cape Cod of Wisconsin -- together in 1984 as an idea representing our NE Wisconsin community, then my home town, of politically savvy innovators able to compete head to head with Madison, now my home town.

Bill Hurrle will always be Cape Twisco's legendary native luminary, Chief Oh Ya Hey of The Bingo Indians.
If you are reading this, you are a Bingo!

We had a lot of fun together, speculating on life: "what it is? what it could be!"

Oh Yah Hey!

HIGH DIVING HORSE?

I put great stock in imagery, symbols, impressions gained at an early age. Just the sound of certain words and music have great power in my experience. Humor, powerful words, music, colorful designs, eccentric personalities and a wide array of people-types were present in my youth circa 1951 in Atlantic City, NJ. Film-maker/humorist Woody Allen's fictional Annie Hall counter -- Little Alfie - was born under Coney Island's roller coaster. The true life Little Paulie, was born near Atlantic City Steel Pier's High Diving Horse.

In my view, people who take great risks in life easily equate with high diving horses. I mean this as a compliment to both humans and horses.

The Steel Pier was literally a mile long steel and concrete supported entertainment structure extending into the Atlantic Ocean from Atlantic City's boardwalk. Beginning in the 1930s (in my 1950s & 60s youth it continued) Steel Pier was an amazing place for kids and families to have fun indoors and out with first run movies in 3 ornate theaters, an acre of pinball machines, skeeball and arcade games, plus exotic displays and deep water diving bell ride. Three-quarters of the way out a 5-story glass and black iron filegree ballroom glowed nightly with Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Anka, The Beach Boys, Sammy Davis and Joey Bishop. Walking past the outdoor diving bell you'd find yourself coming into sunlight from underneath a grandstand. This was the big deal, the ultimate in breathtaking wonder, the arena at sea for daily shows by a girl bathing beauty rider atop "The World Famous High Diving Horse." More on this later...

Faith in both subtle and obvious power from clear communication is the meaning of life in my book. However, given cultural differences, interpretation, "filters,"and an endless range of variables that which appears as clear to the communicator may be totally contextual, and may confuse as well as inform the receiver. Edward R. Murrow, CBS News' leading investigative broadcast journalist of his time is quoted "just because a man's voice can be heard from one end of the country to the other, is no reason to believe he is making more sense than when heard from one end of the bar to the other". Murrow cautions us to beware of what is being said regardless of the source, good advice in any context.

In 2009 boundaries between entertainment pap and what was once called "hard news" is so blurred there is rarely any distinction. When I worked as a P.R. (public relations, not Puerto Rico) flack for public TV years ago, I would attempt (often successfully) to titillate newspaper editors with the 'newsworthiness' of PBS and NPR program information, interviews with then-new-on-the-scene Bob Vila of This Old House, or classical music host Karl Haas to counter the crap of commercial network TV dominating entertainment pages. This era must be a professional publicist's heyday, as fewer filters placed between that which is old style News reportage and new of the famous, rude, or nearly nude.

More on this High Diving Horse....