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Returning Honor to His Name
A lot of you know I was offline last weekend because I had a great chance to go visit the American Native Museum the Smithsonian has located on the Mall in Washington, DC. Most of you also know I’m an archaeology nut/addict/enthusiast. My heritage is fascinating to me, and I adopt all the heritage I can dig up, or that has been dug up for me.
On my first visit to the exhibits there, on the native tribal cultures we found on this continent, I was struck particularly by description of the collections that did not pretend they were come by honestly. On labels to exhibits of potlatch gifts, the admissions that they had been confiscated from the tribes because of objections to their religions and practices were a pleasant surprise. Being honest about our errors is not a common human tendency, and I am delighted curators were up to that information being given to the public.
On this visit, I really was impressed to find an admission that a chief’s name had been mistranslated. For years our histories talked about “Young Man Afraid of His Horses,” the name that should have given him honor used instead to demean a tribal leader. Tosunka Kokipapi (Tȟašúŋke Kȟokípȟapi) means that his horses struck fear in others’ hearts instead.
What sort of history did you learn in school and from the things you studied that you’ve been able to correct and learn right when you came across the true story? Have you learned something from research or from things you came across that showed you a completely different story or background than what you believed previously?
It’s easy to think of something we were taught as being the whole story. I went to high school in Virginia and remember being taught that the Civil War was fought because of economic abuse by the north, and I was made indignant at our southern sufferings.
Yesterday I read a letter written home in 1851 to the family I’m visiting, about an experience by a young woman who’d traveled to Bonham, Texas, about half an hour away from where I now live. She had seen a beating of an older black man by a woman who owned him, who she made furious by telling her that her behavior was not Christian. Her handwritten letter talked about facts, and belied what I was taught as a student. I’m incredibly glad to find true experiences that give me insight from all directions, but this is so close a revelation in my own immediate family and friends that it’s earthshaking in ways.
Have you learned from surprising coincidences, from close family and friends’ sharing their stories with you, something valuable in your own life and experience?
175 Comments
Good morning Ruth. Another drive-by this morning. Very interesting post!
We were only a few blocks apart, Ruth. Thought I felt a rumbling that day. LOLOL
Good Morning, Ruth
You’ve posed some questions that are a real challenge. Gonna have to do some brain work this morning.
I’ll get some coffee and come back.
Thanks. Have a good morning, too.
We could have said Hi, do you work or live in the area?
Hope its fun anyway. I had lots of interesting experiences this last week.
Both.
will the smithsonian be correcting their error, will you get credit for this?
We said the pledge of allegiance every morning in school. I used to believe the last line, with liberty and justice for all. I’ve since learned that it’s not true.
The Smithsonian sign in the illustration to this post is the source of the correction. Sorry if I was unclear.
Studying the revolutionary war, I was led to believe that all the colonists were in favor of breaking away from England. I’ve since learned that in fact that was not the case.
not a history lesson but probably the greatest lesson I learned in school, right about or soon after we first learned how to read
there was a true story about an “umbrella”, it’s escapades, challenges and victories, it’s emotion as it was taken through the air by the wind
anyway, the story began with “this is a true story” and then in went into fantasy
I have to say, I was the only person disturbed by the story, everyone else was enjoying away
when it came time to discuss I held my tongue for one or two responses from classmates, till I could handle no more, raised hand, when recognized said;
“this isn’t a true story”
to which the teacher looked with pride and said;
“that is the lesson for today”
from that time forward, whenever I read “true story” I challenge authenticity immdediatly
Nice topic Ruth. I’ve long been a fan of American History. Like any child, I was told some very tall tales about the Civil War when I was in school. Having grown up in southeast Texas, some of it was very pro south but most of it was from a distinctly winner’s point of view. One of my pet peeves when discussing the war is that invariably somebody will pull out the old Battle of Hampton Roads Monitor vs Merrimack. This is one of the most obvious re-writes. USS Merrimack did not fight the USS Monitor. USS Merrimack was burned away completely down to the waterline by the retreating Unionists the day after Virginia seceded from the Union. The keel of the vessel was then raised up and used as the base for the ironclad CSS Virginia. I don’t know why textbooks insist on calling it the “Merrimack” especially in light of the fact that it was decommissioned and struck from the registry before the Civil War. For any history buffs I recommend Shelby Foote’s Civil War series. It is engaging and understandable and it’s the books that Ken Burn’s Civil War PBS series was based on. Foote didn’t shy away from the ugliness that was common in both the North and the South but tells it with a lot of passion.
Good morning!
that was my poor reading comprehension, it was typed very clear, by bad
His appearances were terrific in the series.
ll
that is great stuff to which I knew none of it until your post
Those are in part what interested me enough to pick up the books.
It’s wishful thinking, like our concepts of democracy. Harder and harder to see it working, when we depend on people for votes to make our country work – people who are happy to entertain the thought that everyone but themselves deserves to suffer.
even before I became a progressive, I had trouble not with the “under god” part but the pledging allegiance to the flag”
I always thought that was bizarre, a pledge to the country and it’s principles would be fine but hardly it’s flag
Interesting. I love teachers and guidance that keeps students thinking, not accepting.
off to work all, will see you later in the day
today a compliment of military are going to be landing in eisenhower park and I believe there is an air show at jones beach, if you live in the area should be good stuff
…and to the republic, for which it stands.
In my senior year of high school, a friend and I stopped standing for the Pledge. We were not popular. Students gave us the Evil Eye.
Thanks! I had never heard that before, and am really glad to know about the ‘Merrimack’. And I should read Foote on the Civil War, but never have.
Foote:
What troubles me most today is losing the narrative.
Isn’t that bizarre? but I do think it’s just derived from other countries’ practices.
but it’s “and” to the republic for which it stands, I have my allegiance to the republic for which our flag stands, however the flag ?
anyway as written by the author it is a much nicer poem then as changed, however even in original form bellamy had pledging allegiance to a flag and what it stands for
maybe so however the author was quite the socialist
Did you know that there was a second confederate ironclad called the CSS Mississippi? It was to patrol the Mississippi river but was lost when New Orleans fell. Ft. Crockett on Galveston Island was taken from the Union by two barges that were piled and covered in bales of cotton. These so called “cotton clads”, were both cheap and effective. Heck, I’m from the area and I never heard that until I read a book by a Tennessee author!
man this thread is so interesting it has made me late, my hats of to ruth and special commendation to margarrette for information I had never known but will know from now on
Yikes! Don’t be late and have a good day!
A friend of mine has a funny habit. Just as someone is about to tell him something, he says “Is this a true story?” You can almost see people recalibrating what they were about to say. Really hilarious.
I’d like to learn more about Native Americans and Meso Americans. That’s a branch of history that’s long been mostly ignored and a lack of written history doesn’t help matters. And there are so many very diverse peoples in that group with sdo many traditions that I can’t believe anybody knows it all.
Funny, facts getting treated as a ‘narrative’ makes me a little uneasy. But having to get people interested is part of history, too.
I wonder what the special ingredient in human nature that causes some people to question authority and others to just accept what they are told and never wonder about it.
I don’t mind as long as the history isn’t changed to support a narrative but when narrative is used to relate (accurate) history, I’m all for it. I was always interested in history as a child but I know most people are not. I know PBS got an enormous bump in fund raising when that series came out and that tells me that people are interested in history but a dry recitation of facts and events not so much.
The facts themselves aren’t treated as narrative. Facts are facts — to most of us anyway. Facts keep their identity but are woven together into the narrative.
I’ve always attributed that to insecurity. Conservatives for example want somebody to make them “safe”. They need the world to be orderly and to be governed by a simple set of rules they can comprehend and support.
I’ve always been very into archeology as well, but maybe much earlier archeology….like Egypt.
I also liked the archeology of the Fertile Crescent and paleo-archelogy, wondering where we all came from….out of Africa, according to the Leakey’s
I guess what I’ve learned throughout my life time of study is how very much has been OBLITERATED from the records, or, at least not talked about in the textbooks. No wonder I didn’t like His-Story in school……just wars and dates and names.
Finding out the bible is a pack of lies was very enlightening for me. Too bad they’re still looking for Noah’s Ark.
Now that we’ve pretty much wiped Iraq off the map, I wonder how the digs that were proving Matriarchal civilization have fared?
I was horrified, at an early age, to find that the zealot Byzantine Pope Justinian burned down the Library at Alexandria, the repository of most ancient knowledge and proof that much/most of the myth of Jesus was cobbled together from older myths.
No wonder western civilization spent 7+ centuries in The Dark Ages after THAT one!
For the lazy researchers, nothing beat Occidental Mythology by Joseph Campbell. What a book!
Then, of course was the more recent Inquisition by the Catholic Church which barely ANYBODY mentions.
Nothing like a few pyre watching to get folks to doff their hats as the priest/bishop rides by, is there?
Oh well. enough fond reminiscences!
Wonder how many people have the self-awareness to be able to say Nope, it isn’t true. ‘That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,’ is a version of that.
Preferably black and white ones
Boy-oh, Ruth, did you open a can of worms with your question.
Here’s a start. Progressive democratic governors (i.e. good roads, good schools governors) sent out the state national guard to crush the textile workers strike of 1938. National union leaders let them hang out to dry because they were a desegregated union.
The Reconstruction period was when the South first got extensive public schools programs and the militia system of organizing counties was replaced with an attempt at a New England style township system (it didn’t take).
The origin of American imperialism (Manifest Destiny) was with the Virginian founding fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Madison), who looked to western lands for profit and as the matrix on which they could impose a system of democratic “yeoman farmers” (led by aristocratic planters btw).
Rich Southerners paid poor Southerners to serve their conscriptions. My great-grandfather’s uncle reportedly “went to Missouri” rather than go to war in the stead of the scion of a rich neighbor. (Ah the joys of genealogy and family history!)
I kinda always suspected that. For me it was the contradiction of being told that monsters and ghosts and miracles didn’t exist, except for the ones in the Bible. I stopped believing those stories fairly early on.
Lots of studies, but it goes back to the Milgram study about inflicting pain because an authority figure told you to, imho.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Hmmmm. Yes. And, also I think our religious convictions limit or expand how we view information and how we make choices. A linear view is so limiting, to me anyway. Speaking of Natives, their spiritual views seem so much more comforting to me than the Western beliefs.
How can eternity start here and only go forward. Doesn’t eternity go both ways, or all ways?
(I might need more coffee.)
I think one of the biggest stories that I learned about that was totally different from the way it is taught in school is story of the Boston Tea Party…Everyone knows the official line…”No taxation without representation” and then the tea went into Boston harbor. Did anyone ever ask WHY England taxed the tea??? Well, from the time the colonists got here, they could not get along with the Native people living here. The crown would come over here, sign treaties and agreements and the colonists would break those agreements. The crown in turn would send over military troops to straighten things out again. Time after time, the English Crown would try to fix things and the colonists would start wars. The most costly was King Phillips War.(Around 600 colonists and several thousand Natives died) By the time the Revolution came around the colonists had run up quite a bill for defense. That tea was taxed to pay for the expensive wars that colonists started with the Native tribes. To show the crown how much defense they needed, they dressed up as Indians and threw that shipload of tea into Boston Harbor. They don’t teach that in school.
So…Every time I hear about people parading around using the Tea Party as a platform, I want to throw up.
Faith, the final frontier.
When the same facts are woven into competing narratives, they become much more powerful. Your post asks, “have you learned something from research or from things you came across that showed you a completely different story or background than what you believed previously?”
An important thing one learns in statistics is that a given set of data (facts) is consistent with an infinite set of theories or hypotheses that purport to tie them together. The more compelling the theory — the more it conforms to peoples’ beliefs about how the things under examination actually work — the more likely it is to be adopted. Of course, that doesn’t make it true.
Because much of what interests us as human beings is not subject to experimentation (controlled random trials) to establish the truth, what we have our competing narratives that tie the same facts together.
I’ll shut up now. LOLOL
Yes, the Milgram experiment was super eye opening. The Stanford Prison experiment too.
How about the fact that all of the racism in WWII was whitewashed out? The Nazis were the only racists that history points out and ridicules but the Japanese had decided that we were too “decadent” to have a stomach for fighting back, Hitler believed American women were far too soft and pampered to go to work in the factories, and the United States vastly underestimated Japanese capabilities because they had decided that they were pretty much sub human and “couldn’t shoot straight” due to their eyes being different, (they’re not). That’s not all: Russia, France, Great Britain and it’s colonies and commonwealth states all underestimated the axis powers based on scorn for their cultures and “races”. “Aryan” for example, isn’t a “race” at all and in fact all of humanity is the same very closely related species. “Race” is misused to indicate very superficial differences in an identical genome. A great many people died essentially to disprove a myth about racial superiority and yet we’re still plagued by that very same belief structure to this day?
I was probably in my 40′s before I discovered Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” That was a real eye opener. Recently I was pleased to hear that a niece in a South Dakota high school had it on her required reading list.
In my high school, an ignorant christian brother told us that when Europeans came there were no more that 100,000 natives here. Dunno why I remember that, I guess is seemed odd, but we were never encouraged, to put it lightly, to look outside the classroom for evidence, so I didn’t.
The Boston Tea Party was about a tax cut, not a tax increase. When I told my job’s resident ‘bagger that, I thought his head was going to explode.
Somehow I don’t think, since they knew more about the truth, that readers of the original books of the bible were supposed to believe them. More like modern day political ads, to me it seems they were meant to support a particular talking point, not be mistaken for actual facts.
Edit; sorry that’s Ruth, I had signed out for a few.
Wow, you threw out a few I never heard before, but am not surprised by. The south was all about ‘Fergit, Hell’ when I was growing up.
Edit; also Ruth. oooops
Just checked. Hah, the reason I didn’t see it earlier was because it was published when I was 45.
Really? Just 100,000? I guess that was designed to ameliorate the guilt of the slaughter that was done in the name of expansion, though I have no doubt that your instructor fully believed it.
Are you having fun yet?
Well insisting that Leviticus be selectively enforced is what passes for “Christianity” these days. I remember when Christians cared about poverty and suffering of others but these days it’s all about tribalism, money and power. I hope there is a god to be honest, just so those people who have so perverted it will roast for eternity.
If one hasn’t, they have stopped learning.
He is. We are. Heehee, obviously a little too much.
Someone mentioned Joseph Campbell. Coincidently, this week I got my dvd series of Campbell and Moyer’s Power of Myth back from a friend I had loaned it to. Gonna watch it again, for the third time. Great stuff.
Probably the biggest myth I bought into for most of my life is that the entire human clownshow is worthwhile, meaningful, noble, or interesting.
:)
There is no such thing as too much fun. I’m pretty sure.
Other than a few conservative trolls, I think it’s pretty safe to say that everybody here would answer that question with a “yes”.
Have been enjoying recent religious commenters pointing out that using the biblical injunction that gays should be killed is right next to disobedient children ought to be killed, another biblical rule but mostly ignored.
Jesus was white.
.
.
.
My mom told me, many many years after our parochial education (she gets more progressive the older she gets), “he couldn’t have been given his birthplace.”
I grew up thinking the Black Panthers were 100% bad, same goes for Malcolm X….not true.
Yer making me crave bacon, Peggy.
If we get beyond that, we have to start thinking and evaluating for ourselves, a step too far for all too many.
(Get in touch with Ellie, please. About a post she wants.)
I still remember the day my brother told my mother that Jesus was a Jew. Epiphany doesn’t fully describe the reaction. More like a near death experience.
Seeing the billboards in the South, also blonde with blue eyes.
from Spudtruckowner (since I’m at the computer now)
Nordic Jesus is the latest craze.
Joseph Campbell was a ton of fun. Yet another great thing about Bill Moyers, bringing Campbell to a wider audience.
I’ve been trying to point out that by their “logic”, everybody coming out of Red Lobster or Joe’s Crab Shack ought to be machine gunned.
This is a wonderful post, Ruth. And, it took more than a cut and a paste of someone else’s work.
Kudos to you and all the smartypants thinkers here.
You make me proud.
Got the stove warming up right now demi. BLT?
Remember this?
Yes, please. :)
Who’s Ellie?
I think there are signs that the current over reaching by the fundies is stimulating backlash, whoopeee!! We atheists are waking up, coming out, organizing, raising money, putting up bill boards, producing big conventions, meetups etc. engaging the innertubes big time. Guess what, we are not alone. Some are even out while campaigning for office. See new book “99 Reasons Atheists are Angry” –Greta Christina
Humanity is nothing more or less than the universe becoming aware and learning to contemplate itself. I don’t know about “noble” but I consider it worthwhile and in many cases interesting.
I’m thinking of having a few friends over to have a study group on that.
Mr. Moyers was a Baptist preacher at one time, wasn’t he?
Spud thinks he loves you.
And definitely preferable to the alternative.
Awwww. We’re a good group, that’s why this place works. imho.
We need a miracle now, please.
The delegitimization of a lot of those assumptions is what created the space for the civil rights movement to overturn Jim Crow laws even within the McCarthyist period of American history.
Of course, now we are going back to Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws.
Ellie
Get some of his books. The documentary is just a teaser
Hey, Toots. I’ve been thinking a lot lately that we are all part of the universe experiencing itself. Not just the people and animals, the stars and the seas and mountains and everything.
I’m comfortable with that.
Late to the party, good morning everyone. Tried catching up on the comments. Not a lot to add, sorry.
Margaret’s “resident bagger,” I had not heard that wonderful description before.
Sounds like Bob Dylan’s:
That isn’t where I ran into the real appearance Jesus should have had, but it sure looks right.
LMAO!
Which one would you suggest I read first, or does it matter.
Well, they shouldn’t be taken for actual fact, but many people do and it gets worse when they cherry pick
Of course! They are all expressions of the universe. Not sure that mountains are “aware” but I’m reasonably sure that my Kuroneko is. ;)
Oh, definitely Occidental Mythology.
Campbell sure doesn’t think much of monotheistic religions. He likes the older ones, even patriarchal which held that the Mystery is immanent, not stuck off in the sky somewhere.
Hey, Nonny-non.
I pledge allegiance to my asparagus, and to the garden in which it grows. That’ll work.
I’m reading that Barret did a fine job debating Walker. Is that how you see it?
Oops. Sorry, I broke the no politics rule.
Nevermind.
Much more likely than most of the pics of Jesus I used to see in church/Sunday school.
(((Neko))
The tribes thought that they were part of a material universe as well as spiritual, and were sure they heard back from those rocks.
Well, you just can’t have more than ten gods if you tithe 10% to each. One is cheaper, none is free.
Nothing like ‘hearing god’s voice’ – which a friend who happened to be a pastor usually sounded exactly like what they wanted to hear.
Thanks for this post and comments. Fer once I wasn’t in EPUland. I’ve learned a lot and will come back later to see more but gotta go now. Have fun!
Weren’t there native American people who believed that the dream world was as “real” as the one we inhabit during waking hours? As the idea of an unlimited multiverse is becoming more and more mainstream, it’s starting to look like they were right on.
The more syllables a preacher can pack into the word god, the more money goes into the collection plate.
Hi demi,
All this de-mythologizing going on around here is pretty darned political. Walker proved once again that you can tell he isn’t lying only when he is talking with billionaires.
Hi All. A blessing of my life was being educated in the Tulsa School system. Among other good things was an Oklahoma history course that was heavy on the Native American experience. Honest as far as I can tell. As so many of my classmates and some family inlaws were native American I had some difficulty getting my arms around the so called cultural difference.
A surprise in later years has to do with family history. My great grandmother was born before the Civil War on her parents ranch in the vicinity of Waco. Her father died serving the Confederacy and mother shortly after. She went to live with Union Col. uncle and was brought up believing her father was forced against his beliefs into the Confederate army.– and that is what I was brought up believing. Letters by her father that I have now paint a very different story. He and her mother were deeply and overtly racist and clearly he was not “impressed” to fight for the cause of slavery…….. I have wondered since about the lie, whether it was good to believe it or unfair to not be confronted with dealing. I do believe we are influenced by who we think our ancestors were.
Or when is pawned by a fake caller. Dunno the link but it was hilarious.
In my early twenties, I took acid with some friends on a camping trip. I could have sworn that I felt that rock move, and one of the guys said, well, yeah, what’s it made of, think about it. So, I did and then it made sense.
But, yeah, I was on acid.
Let’s take Schrödinger’s cat for example: Quantum mechanics tells us that the cat is both alive and dead until we observe it. I’m coming around to the belief that this also applies on the macro scale and that the universe(s) we individually inhabit only become “real” because we are here to observe it/them. Since we are all in such close proximity, the universes we observe are very similar and recognizable. Mind bent yet?
It also tells me that Erwin Schrödinger hated cats.
Demi, we’ll need more of your life story, and some more context please.
There were as many beliefs as there were peoples, and that’s a lot. Yes, some of them thought their spiritual/dream/elevated state lives were where they ought to be, or were better off, or at least felt real.
What you mean we? Neuro folks are now saying ‘me’ is an illusion.
‘he isn’t lying only when he is talking with billionaires’
then, he’s exagerrating.
Too bad for them only the pure of heart get to have THAT experience. Although we sure know a lot of guys who SAY they’ve heard it….usually while asking for money
Can you recommend any books which I can read for more information?
It also shows that when physicists look for light to be a particle, it IS a particle, when they look for it to be a wave, it IS a wave. The Universe is incredibly user friendly, isn’t it…at least at the atomic level.
This also proves to me that we don’t even know the questions to ask it.
I’m not sure what you want to know about me. But, I’ll gladly share. Anything specific?
Thanks, you were lucky. Also, finding out the real story was a good experience, but I do wish myself I hadn’t grown up burdened with family attitudes I really despise, and had to overcome. Don’t know if I’d be better, worse, or even different with another experience.
Margaret @ 79: wow! that is a mind-stretcher!
thanks, Ruth, for an extremely interesting post.
That actually dovetails with what I’m saying because “we” are the universe, as I’ve pointed out. Only “the universe” is ironically too small a word to describe it’s true nature.
Okay, bent, yes.
After reading your 110 out loud to the mister, he says
What is the sound of one cat clapping?
When we’re talking about my cat, it’s me going “Ouch!”
I think it’s all meaningless pointless narcissistic tosh, really. Even the vast pitiless universe itself. But since I’m stuck here, what else is there to do but chase one’s own intellectual and emotional curiosity. I suppose it’s baked into my entertainment DNA.
Most of my knowledge about tribal beliefs is derived from visiting sites where collections are kept, and learning from many sources. It’s a lot of oral tradition.
I have some 300 family letters from that time period. They are truly a gift of my family for preserving them. I know you must enjoy your collection equally. They are the only true defense of the history as — at least in my case — the ordinary people lived.
Thanks, glad you’re visiting.
A horrific racial incident, the Tulsa Race Riot, has often been cited of an example of America’s racial history that until recently has been swept under the rug.
Was it covered in your history classes in Tulsa?
Good Morning Ruth,
Another splendid diary, thank you and everyone who have contributed.
Got distracted following Margaret’s link and then started reading about the Uncertainty Principle (wondering if it had anything to do with the uncertainty that the, “job creators,” keep harping about so we keep paying them more money that certainly stays in their private cash reserves).
Oops,not serious, I was just enjoying the notion of being out camping and playing with acid. Guess I’ll never do that. I was always scared of going on that kind of trip and not being able to come all they way back.
Hardy har har. That unbends my mind a little bit. Thanks.
Yeah, as I’ve observed, that kinda makes research difficult and then there’s translation and cultural bias into the mix, (as always).
Wow! What an incredible treasure that must be!
Ha! I think my first balk was the parable of the mustard seed. I knew damn well that the mustard seed was not the smallest of seeds, and, though I wasn’t sure what sort of a plant it produced, if it was mightier than a giant redwood, certainly we would have heard of it.
Later I wanted to know why it was easier to imagine a First Cause than an infinite chain of causes. And pointed out that Faith was not a real reason.
I don’t know how I got through (Catholic) high school.
I was young. I wouldn’t do it today.
We had hiked up a stream to where there was a pool and a small waterfall. Of the guys, Abraham was under the waterfall, dancing and singing, and the other guy told me that A was talking to God.
I did come all the way back, but the world has felt and looked a little different ever since. I’m glad I did it.
Wow, Sharkbabe. Sounds like a long way of saying Circle Jerk, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I guess.
You are a trip.
I’d forgotten about that one! Right? You couldn’t exactly miss something that’s “mightier than a redwood”, though I submit there are fungus colonies that would rival redwoods. Of course those aren’t plants, spores aren’t seeds and none of them are mustard.
Good Morning, Karen.
Mind-stretcher. I like that. May I borrow that term?
I gotta agree with buzz. Being “stuck here” is preferable to the alternative.
“, but the world has felt and looked a little different ever since. I’m glad I did it.” In a good way?
Can you say more about ‘a little different’? I could use ‘a little different’ sometimes. Save me the trip a bit?
I gotta get started on my Saturday! Thanks for the wonderful topic Ruth and the lively discussion pups. Remember:
…..If I hang ’round here much longer,
I’ll go crazy with the wonder of it all….
Bill Nelson
When I was tripping, everything seemed Alive. The sun was brighter. The air seemed to Shimmer. I wasn’t afraid of the water snake. There are autumn and spring days now when the sky is so clear, I remember that shimmering.
It might be sacralegious to quote a bible verse here, but I’m thinking of…Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Or something like that.
Thanks, and your contributions are a big part of the good times.
Have an existential day, Peggy.
And, Spud is not along. I love you too.
Not alone. Sheesh.
Dang, Ruth. I think this PUAC raises the bar.
i think our commenters are enjoying a challenge, and coming up for the fun.
and you’re lucky spuds isn’t uncontrolled here today (filter is Ruth)
They really are a treasure. They had been lying in a box moved down the chain from one closet floor to another for a 100 years when I found them. As one with no close family now, just the reading made me feel less lonely and certainly more connected with the real people. I think we could all benefit from more of that kind of history and less of the worship of the exceptional and the war makers.
Thanks, that resonates. The wilderness can give me a bit of that. I don’t think i’m mystical but I can go with the possibility of some kind of genetic memory that make the natural world the genuine article and my walls and floors trash in comparison.
The family’s history he found in letters saved over many years, made spuds’ feeling for his family much stronger.
Ah, let ‘im loose. What’s the worse that could happen?
demi @ 138: hi! sure, you can use the expression: “mind-stretcher.” it’s one of those old timers, not my invention.
He shuts me up?
Amen.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Falling on the floor…ha.
Ain’t I a stinker?
(T)Ruthie, I have to get going. That friend I saw yesterday asked for her desk back. It’s a hand carved pine writing table. Talk about love. But, since she’s gotten her own apartment, she wants it back. She’s coming over later to pick it up, so I have to go figure out what I’m going to use for a desk now.
Thank you so much for this morning. You’re a doll.
This PUAC is a nice warm place to sit a spell on an early Saturday morning. Got to get after the weeds now. thanks all.
Thanks for being here, you always add a lot, high good spirits and thoughts as well.
Joelmael means Man Whose House Is On Sticks, right?
Take care.
Thanks, you mean this doesn’t count as weeding? hmm.
Last year I called them wildflowers, but after a year here (this month)I have become domesticated. Is there a going back?
Anyone interested in art high points? Balzac from Rodin is one of the highest.
http://my.firedoglake.com/ruthcalvo/2012/05/26/saturday-art-rodins-balzac/
Pardon my stepping on myself.
Please inform the University of Montana Native American Studies Department that they have been teaching the background story concerning the Tea Party all wrong.
I don’t participate much anymore, but you’ve hit upon my favorite subject. I majored in history and my favorite definitition has always been that history is to a society what memory is to the individual. It includes all of the facts, perceptions, fallacies, prejudices, and rationalizations that our own memories do. But without it, we are doomed to “wake up in a new world every morning”.
In my view, the greatest current distortions of history involve the public amnesia regarding what the Progressive Movement, the New Deal, and subsequent liberal policies did to improve the life and hopes of most citizens. As a result, pensions are gone, Social Security, Medicare, public education, and the entire concept of commonwealth are under attack and are opposed by voters whose entire success in life has resulted from those programs.
Ruth, I honestly think that some of the Native American name translations, as you mention, were simply based on the difficulties of translating from unwritten language and culture, rather than malicious intent. James Haley, in The Buffalo Wars, includes a discussion of Kiowa and Comanche names. He explains that the Kiowa name for the chief usually called “Kicking Bird” actually is meant to express the claws of a preditory bird as they strike prey. We don’t have a simple English phrase for that. Sometimes this difficulty actually works to the benefit of the subject. Haley says that the actual translation of Isa-tai, the name of the Kiowa medicine man who inspired the attack on Adobe Walls, is not the usually cited “Coyote Droppings”, but rather “Wolf Shit.” Anyway, thanks for the topic and have a good day.
Thanks, I appreciate your views. Since I’ve grown up in a society that condemned native practices by describing them as dishonest, “Indian giving” in particular, I tend to see mistakes as intentional when they demean. This may be inaccurate, but as you see, and relate, individual history is a combination of experience and learned facts – and learned fictions. What has worked for me may not be true in itself, but at least is closer to true than its opposite.
Isn’t that sort of a matter of perspective?
Sure, they cut taxes for East India Tea Company and tea drinkers in England. But they simultaneously offset the revenue losses with the Townshend Acts which added a bunch of new taxes to the American Colonies – including one on tea.
Doesn’t that sort of play exactly in to the Tea Party narrative … An unaccountable aloof government giving a bunch of tax breaks to wealthy corporate monopolies and offsetting revenue losses by taking it out of the pockets of the American citizenry?
It’s kind of funny the guy was gullible enough to believe you, but it stretches history to the point of distortion saying the Boston Tea Party was over the tax cut for East India, ignoring the highly politically-charged taxes being demanded of American colonists at the same time.
Odd interpretation of the ‘Tea Party narrative’, when constantly that element represents their view as “Taxed Enough Already’ – not exactly objecting to taxes lowered on corporate entities by any aloof government.
One thing I never knew until recently about the Civil War is that Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas refused to succeed over the issue of slavery. Apparently they stayed in the union until Lincoln demanded an army be raised to attack the confederate states and finally succeeded rather than participate (at least for Virginia).
You can find vivid instances of racial brutality across the arc of American (and world) history … reaching to the present day. I’m not trying to minimize that, nor slavery. But I think there are a lot of nuances to the Civil War that are pretty important to the nature of the problems we are facing today that get erased when we let a tragic fact from history reduce a raft of very complicated historic debates and issues into almost comically stark black-and-white terms.
There has always been a bit of a paradox on that bit of the narrative. I disagree with your implication though.
If you look at polling, the conservative-aligned movement – which totally identifies with the Tea Party – consistently poll as wanting to raise taxes on the top-tier and corporations. It’s kind of a common theme to articles here.
I think you are getting the message Fox News is trying to SELL to the Tea Party confused with what the Tea Party actually ends up being when the mess of humanity is applied.
But as for the Boston Tea Party itself, I don’t think there is much conflict to their world view. In that case, the “corporation” wasn’t American. As such, it was a government taking hard-earned American dollars, handing them to foreigners and killing off American enterprise (which, was pretty much the stated purpose of the acts). Remember, the TP folks are protectionist by nature.
The only debate in those states you mention was whether to preserve the union and try to resolve the slavery issue without seceding. They were decidedly slave states and determined to keep the practice alive. A lot of CW revisionists try to use this as a denial of slavery as the seminal issue — claiming instead states rights. Sound familiar?
These Tea Party fundamentalists are so stupid they don’t have any idea of what they are really advocating, much less the causes of their grievances. My advice: don’t try to make sense of their notions. It only gives them credence. Like accepting a delusion in a mentally ill person only strengthens its hold on him/her.
‘get erased’
Odd interpretation of countering selective teaching with other experiences that actually happened, but perhaps learning any fact is your idea of erasure?
As to tracing ones history – it should be required – back at least 10 generations if possible – if no detail back 10 generations then via the DNA geographic analysis that is part of getting your DNA done.
Then folks would learn how unlikely it is that do not have “black blood” or “native blood” or “pick your group” blood.
I was surprised to learn in college that “black” disease when found in a pasty white skin patient is called a “Mediterranean” disease (look up Mediterranean anemia – its sickle cell for whites).
I doubt that folks once they learn this will be less tribal – heck, we go to “war” in parking lots over sports teams. But it would still be useful if folks realized their ancestry.
Way late to this but the “what did you learn in scholl reminded me of a couple of songs:
Kodachrome by Simon:
“When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall”
Pete Seeger
What did I learn in school
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VucczIg98Gw
ubetchaiam, that puts a bonus spin on my love for photography, and Paul Simon.