Transmitting from the Mojave Wilderness in Joshua Tree, California, now is the time for Desert Oracle Radio, the voice of the desert. Night has fallen on the desert.

Do you ever look around at the world and want to say to hell with it all?

And take a hole in the side of a desert mountain and just sort of wait it out.

Work on yourself, as they say, sometimes.

Become a monk. Monks were always pretty mysterious to me, growing up relatively godless and indifferently Protestant in a very Catholic city.

And then decades ago, as a young man, I went to Salzburg for the first time in the special Christmas beer season.

And spent so many romantic and joyful nights and the monasteries tavern on the cliffside beneath this castle.

That's how I remember it anyway.

Tromping through the snow crossing the pedestrian bridge over the Salzach River.

Goblins and ice sprites beneath us, the stern monks would direct us to the piersteins.

The brewery there opened for business four centuries ago in 16 and 21, owned and operated by the Augustinian monks.

A decade or so ago in Joshua Tree, Jay Babcock and I started a wandering monastery called the Green Friars.

Originally conceived as a stunt to draw attention to one of those dollar dealer, Yellow Delo,

predatory, rural chain marks.

Coming to town.

But I also dreamed of starting a brewery, giving the profits to the poor, etc.

But it wasn't the time.

These environmentalist people even turned us down when we offered to be sinister green-robed security for a fundraiser they were holding up in Pioneer Town.

All long time ago.

Water under the bridge.

A lot of other stuff, too.

If you've ever found yourself obsessed with the weird world of the John F. Kennedy

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