Making a Mezz Out of the Blue Sky Ranch

The newly remodeled Blue Sky Ranch!

built like a brick... house

Well, the Witches of Ellsworth Street have their work cut out for them.  Actually, it's the crap mobile home they had us slave over at the Blue Sky Ranch in Bethel Island that's getting cut out.

The Witches built out an illegal second floor (a "mezzanine" technically) in the amazingly illegal main structure.  The second floor was finished with drywall, outfitted with a single shower and toilet and two dormitories that were intended to cram so many people in them, they would look like one of Tyson's chicken factories.  However, unlike Tyson's chickens you'd approach the bunk beds in your cramped sleeping quarters by way of an authentic hand-built oak staircase.

Any of us with the Academy for Psychic Studies Healing Retreat experience know there is less attention paid on attendee comfort and more attention paid to the Witches getting paid as much as possible.  Installing adequate facilities cuts into the Witches profits.  Why can't you twelve people learn to use that one shower and single toilet?  If you can't wait, you'll need to learn how to piss in the field and jump in the goose pond as the bathroom line could be as long as the line of convicts in the Witches Kangaroo Kourt.

Of course, the purpose of that mezzanine was to entrap as many people there as possible (one weekend at a time) so the Witches can collect $300 or so from each of them for the privilege of roasting in the hot sun, freezing in the winter's cold and being packed six at a time into rooms better suited for two.  That the windows were so small you could barely wave your hand out them in an emergency was a stroke of genius: when the people attending a retreat were caught in a flood, they would be easily eliminated and the bodies would be hidden until the surviving inmates returned to put them in the ground with the rest of the dead animals.  How about that!  No Witnesses!

So, I guess that's why the Blue Sky Ranch is still on the market for a still-outrageous price.  It's also still being touted as a luxurious corporate retreat.

I can tell you as a guy who's been on corporate retreats: this ain't no luxurious corporate retreat.  Well, it would be the first corporate retreat where I would have to dance around the goose shit and cow dung on my way to the outdoor shower and shit house (located next to the pig pen - I'm NOT kidding).  So, I guess it's got value there.  Why would we corporate types want to have a place where there are adequate facilities to feed us during the day, pour booze for us all night and allow us to nurse our hangovers in spacious meeting areas while we try to make our way through a presentation of quarterly objectives and market analysis?  The Blue Sky Ranch has a decrepit barn, Tuff Sheds smelling of horse turds and an abandoned chicken coop with a forgotten bird or two left behind.  The Witches of Ellsworth consider those to be more than adequate accommodations for those of us who know how to wear a suit as they usually consider cramming their followers in those facilities while the second floor mezzanine was under construction.

Eventually that second floor was completed but somewhat below the Witches high expectations.  To enhance the illegal second floor mezzanine to the high standards of the rest of this shithole, the Witches will be making a few minor amendments to their floor plan:

That the shower, toilet, sink, lighting, dormitories, parquet wood floor coverings, wall boards, wall studs, window trim, ceiling, insulation and white trash curtains from K Mart have to be permanently removed doesn't matter.  I mean, wouldn't the Blue Sky Ranch be still unbelievably valuable as a corporate retreat center even though there's no place to, you know, retreat?

No matter.  Such a uncomplicated and uncluttered space is completely in character for this bucolic rural retreat.  Why, plumbing, lights, ventilation, finished floors and safety from drowning and emergency exits would just plain spoil the pristine beauty of the Blue Sky Ranch and Bethel Island.  The corporate types will be glad to leave their complex world of creature comforts behind to sleep on a dirty, unfinished floor in a building that could kill them while they grope around for a light switch that isn't there.

So, when the Witches finally get to the point where they are demolishing that ground floor space, removing the cabinetry, appliances, furniture, wall boards, wall studs, ceiling, tile floor and more white trash curtains from K Mart, at least they'll still have that fucking oak staircase.  What a great thing to have in your storage space!  Imagine the value of a real, hand-built oak staircase situated in an area where you can't have lighting, plumbing, bedrooms or anyone who might see it.  I think I'll install an oak staircase in my own garage so I can show I can be as stupid, careless, and have the same disregard for safe building practices as Angela Silva and Robin Dumolin.  Oh, and wasteful too.

When Angela and Robin were able to use their cat 'o nine tales to whip the slaves into erecting this homage to exploitation, they cried of their poverty and that we of little faith and spiritual inferiority were doing all we can to take advantage of their generosity and renege on our commitment to sweat, bleed, empty our wallets, drain our savings and charge up our credit cards to create a community in the swamp.

We were always taunted with pleas to give to them so they can complete their monument.  The Witches would always be quick to take our money and slow to ever give it out.  Did they feed anyone who worked for them?  Did they pay any of the cult members who worked for them?  Were any of the cult members recognized or thanked for their hard work?

Well... no.

Instead, we were all berated for not giving all the Witches wanted us to give.  We were demeaned when slaving away on our free evenings and weekends was seen as inadequate.  We were driven to work harder than we had ever worked before to complete a demented and warped vision on a farm that (at least at the time) was the personal property of the Witches themselves.

That the Witches now have to remediate the Blue Sky Ranch at the point of the building inspector's pen is the one shining light in the dark cavern that is our experience with the Academy for Psychic Studies.

However satisfying it may be, I don't see it as comic and spiritual retribution.  It's more simple than that.  

It's just plain justice.