tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-118384652024-03-13T11:50:24.543-06:00prairiemaryAn eclectic blog on which appears daily one-thousand word essays on somethingorother.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5532125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-73217189179364334012020-12-07T12:22:00.001-07:002020-12-07T12:22:17.651-07:00TWO DANGEROUS AUTHORS<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">The childhood books of both my parents were still around in my own childhood and I was gifted with those stories about girls who are so plucky that they cheerfully overcome every hardship which have become vid series on Netflix about Nancy Drew types with four-inch heels.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Alongside them I read stories for boys because I had no problem identifying with the “other”, even animals.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Among the key authors who have influenced me ever since were </span><b style="color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Ernest Thompson Seton</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> and his daughter, </span><b style="color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Anya Seton</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">, though they were totally different.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Anya wrote historical novels, quite sexy for the times.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Seton <i>Pere</i> loved Indians and wild animals.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Somehow Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were okay, but the book I preferred was ETS’s <i>“Two Little Savages.” </i> I still have it. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.”</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> <b>Booth Tarkington</b>’s “<i>Penrod and Sam</i>” never reached this level, but it tried. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1282886.Two_Little_Savages </b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Grown men pairs have always been staples of adventure.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Today I have four first editions of books by Seton and tomorrow I will have only two, because I’m sending two of them to my niece who has two sons, 8 and 11. The books I’m wrapping this morning are <i>“Wild Animals I Have Known”</i> and <i>“The Lives of the Hunted.</i>” They’re very good for reading out loud, but I’m not sending <i>“Two Little Savages.” </i>I’m not nearly finished with it.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueqHMErPzsVY-bU_yg7q3mpJk6GZUKhlMmufZdJgXTMq9PpE1tD0V5-xZC8hAyaVR2a7vImnkBChxTzWJYcEom4cs2jRjOCj5xRb3s46qBc4qPSAY9ZFhv8yRhcLr3qE2U2Wx/s251/USeton.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="251" height="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjueqHMErPzsVY-bU_yg7q3mpJk6GZUKhlMmufZdJgXTMq9PpE1tD0V5-xZC8hAyaVR2a7vImnkBChxTzWJYcEom4cs2jRjOCj5xRb3s46qBc4qPSAY9ZFhv8yRhcLr3qE2U2Wx/w640-h512/USeton.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>Seton teaching woodcraft to a group of boys at his place in Santa Fe<br /><p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s no secret that I’ve written with and about <b>Tim Barrus</b> in this blog. Never in the past did I think of comparing him to Ernest Thompson Seton in spite of him having far more similarities with Seton than with me. (I’m a straight, once-married, once-clergy, over-educated old woman. He’s none of those things.) Both Barrus and Seton had abusive fathers, both of them claimed a demographic of people regarded with fear and hatred mixed with an almost mystical belief in their exceptionalism (Indians and Gays), and both suffered through accusations of being untrue writers. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Barrus was said to be pretending to be a Navajo and Seton was assailed for anthropomorphizing animals. Both were seen as people deliberately deceiving their readers and leaving out rational science for the sake of sales. But there were other issues, hidden.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Baden-Powell</b>, a founder of the<i> Boy Scouts</i>, accepted Seton as a co-founder and used many of his ideas about Indians and “woodcraft.” Today the Boy Scouts — the Boy Squats, as I derisively call them — are discredited because of the many cases of the leaders taking sexual advantage of the boys, esp. the “cubs.” My brothers were both cub scouts and I got dragged along to many Weeblos ceremonies. Then they suddenly lost interest and never became Boy Scouts. Now I wonder why.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Baden-Powell comes out of the elitist system of boy boarding schools in Britain. This pattern of removing boys from families and housing them where they slept in dormitories was a seed-bed for the pattern of sexuality-as-control made real when older boys dominated younger or weaker boys. The fact that it was a shared secret has come out in many books. The pattern recurs in many mono-sex settings with rigid hierarchies, permission for the top to exploit the bottom: military, athletics, politics, convents.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In Gay parlance this style of sexuality is called SM Sadistic/Masochistic — couples where one is powerful and the other accepts it. It has been enforced in the broader heterosexual world through the social paradigm of economics of marriage: one party legally entitled to use money to dominate the other who is obliged to accept it for the sake of the children. The rest of the pattern is realizing that women learned many ways to undermine and control men and that same sex relationships can also be that way.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I suspect that both Seton and Barrus broke free from this pattern and attacks on them were partly meant to bring them into line (bondage) with everyone else. Their defiance invited the accusations of would-be power mongers. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I have an idea that part of our progressive idea that committed attached pairs should be equal comes from the ethics developed by Gay men though mostly it comes from economic necessity and the invention of the pill. There is also a body of theory about a stage of human development when the emphasis is on community and buddies before puberty kicks in. Thus “<i>Two Little Savages</i>” is set in a rural context. Barrus' much darker tales are often in the ruins of industrial cities. Losing this freedom is seen as part of the curse of growing up, which was often explicit among the kids on the rez when I was teaching.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">“Savages” is a problematic term that in Europe connotes the natural, the wild, and even the free. It can also be used as a pejorative, so it has the kind of attraction/danger that is in writing called pornographic. Maybe it’s not a stretch to say that <i>“Two Little Savages”</i> (which is entirely innocent in sexual terms} is a precursor of “<i>Genocide”. </i>Barrus’ novel about astronaut lovers does not use the trope of the knowing savages, but rather space travelers that are our versions of ordinary things made strange. (Isn’t a spaceship just a motorcycle crossing the cosmos? Isn’t the Montana snowmobile that was just coming into common use in the Sixties another version of a motorcycle? There are many ways of “<i>Going Rogue.</i>”)</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">If I were a French/Algerian philosopher (Algerians being a trope for the revolt of the dominated) I could go through <i>“Two Little Savages”</i> and make a literary case for this rather off-the-wall suggestion that might keep you from ever reading the book — or the opposite. My comparison of the two authors could also address authors who are a little dangerous, who embody ideas we try to keep unconscious. A boy’s struggle to be somebody known and significant as a grown person is universal, not even gender-assigned.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I suppose the basic pattern of both authors is in those stereotypical vampire-killing pretty girls. My niece loved a previous Christmas book about a girl who crossed the desert with only a camel. It’s a pattern that drives a need for justification and explanation in stories. The backside of it is always fear of capture, of being made as toothless and obedient as a child. This is part of my own character. They say it comes from real experience with dominators and from many small disappointments and betrayals by people who could intervene but didn’t. But these stories also offer visions of escape to a safe setting where trusting intimate equality is possible.</span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #131313; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This stab at understanding is written in a pandemic, with old-age, solitude and prairie wind. It won’t make sense to a lot of people. But it is my safe place — as is the internet.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-47701732924027831452020-12-06T00:04:00.001-07:002020-12-06T00:04:32.945-07:00THE OLD LADY AND THE CATS ARE SLEEPING<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Because my aging is alongside this pandemic, I’m having to rethink some strategies.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">For instance, I had not thought in terms of a long preceding time of suffering before death and I had not understood how many people would dedicate themselves to saving me.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> IF there were beds open. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">I’ve thought a lot about “do not resuscitate” orders, including the one I endorsed for the nurse by phone for my dying brother which made my other brother believe I killed him.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">She had used the shock paddles to revive his heart several times, but it didn’t stick. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">The older brother had seen it work on television shows and believed them infallible.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">As a hospital chaplain I had helped people make the decision. I also knew the ailing brother had considered suicide.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Suicide today does not require guns and poisons. The people in my congregations who killed themselves, mostly educated people, used plastic sacks and duct tape. An empty champagne bottle might be alongside their body. They died alone on purpose. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">It is a continuing grief that Covid victims die without family and friends attending them. My two brothers and I sat with my mother until she went into the kind of arched back breathing typical of dying. It looks like the movie depiction of female orgasm. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“Agonal </i><b><i>breathing</i></b><i> or agonal gasps are the </i><b><i>last</i></b><i> reflexes of the </i><b><i>dying</i></b><i> brain. They are generally viewed as a sign of </i><b><i>death</i></b><i>, and can happen after the heart has stopped beating.”</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I said a prayer for her just after she was gone, basing it on the Catholic blessing of body parts. My brothers did not object: they were stunned. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I would not want others with me when I die. I have no children and my birth family, both brothers, is dead except for estranged cousins who are as old as I am. I consider death as private as sex and I don’t want interference.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Years ago I dreamt of a coming apocalypse and thought it would happen about now, about twenty years after the dream. But I never thought so much would be involved. The pandemic, the global climate, the politics, my diminishment — it’s been hard to assimilate. I may have ten years of life left -- my mother was 89; I'm 81. But I only made plans for twenty — not thirty.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When I moved here, twenty years ago, I explained to someone that I just wanted to be left alone -- including when I die. She said, “Okay. A woman who felt that way came here some time ago. We just let her die.” I hope she simply fell over dead. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I came to a new truth when I dislocated my shoulder and had to be driven to the hospital thirty miles away. I called the sheriff’s dispatcher and she said, “Oh, it’s SO expensive to have an ambulance. It would be better to have a friend drive you.” But how can you do that in a pandemic? Ask them to risk their lives?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The “doctor” was a former military medic who strapped me tightly into a velcro contraption that took me a half-hour to get off. I suppose I could have used a knife to just cut it off. He couldn’t cope with old lady boobs. He also didn’t know any cowboys who took a hammer to their plaster casts. I do. He “prescribed” therapy in GF which I ignored. I'm going to drive 80 miles with a hurt shoulder? People told me how to do “therapy” with a can of soup for a weight. I ignored them, too. Being “saved” doesn’t appeal to me. The shoulder is okay now.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When I watched <i>“The Crown”</i> it was a tunnel into memory because on early TV sets I watched Elizabeth II be married and crowned. I’m aware that either or both Queen and Consort are close to the end. I didn’t remember that Princess Margaret was already gone. My favorite episode, and one relevant to this “what is truth” wrestling that is on Twitter, was about the painting of <b>Winston Churchill</b> that he burned in the garden. He rejected that reality.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I used to give a sermon this time of year that was called “<i>Stingy Receivers.</i>” It was a bit of a rebuke to people who resisted gifts from others but also it was a defense of those who saw through the attempt to get inside their boundaries by “helping” them, to bribe their emotions, to put the emphasis on the act of giving as a virtue when it was not based on knowing the person well enough to give something really needed — maybe because it was too expensive though not in terms of money. Some people in those congregations had everything they needed but gave as little as possible, mostly by shutting out need. Unless they could frame themselves as heroically saving others -- when they were only writing a check.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The worst threat I wrestle with is diminished mental ability. I can rely on body memory and habit for a while, but if it gets to the point past beyond being able to decide on suicide, then I’ll likely be carted off to a nursing home where I’ll become something like an insect larva who will never leave the pupa.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlRhimmO02KkGtTag5YaQwJRxkWeeu4V98kCvTBqw4_SvZjGtz75fZKh0zhVHPqNAmblZzTYTeF_GztxmjzzvP1AnkgLZH7vNN6-CtAhpaRQwHzeOkSUn-6RgBm5tGhM0a_qf/s283/images-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="283" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlRhimmO02KkGtTag5YaQwJRxkWeeu4V98kCvTBqw4_SvZjGtz75fZKh0zhVHPqNAmblZzTYTeF_GztxmjzzvP1AnkgLZH7vNN6-CtAhpaRQwHzeOkSUn-6RgBm5tGhM0a_qf/w640-h404/images-2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A </i><b><i>pupa</i></b><i> (Latin: </i><b><i>pupa</i></b><i>, "doll"; plural: </i><b><i>pupae</i></b><i>) is the life stage of some </i><b><i>insects</i></b><i> undergoing transformation between immature and mature stages. The </i><b><i>pupal</i></b><i> stage is found only in holometabolous </i><b><i>insects</i></b><i>, those that undergo a complete metamorphosis, with four life stages: egg, </i><b><i>larva</i></b><i>, </i><b><i>pupa</i></b><i>, and imago. </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> (Is an angel possibly an imago? Holometabolous? Look ‘em up.)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Some of my life has been in big cities but this is a better place to be old. Still, there are city features that I miss. "From the inside", you could say, since it was 6 years on the streets of SE Portland and another 6 years in the Portlandia Building. (Being born in Portland doesn’t count. I was more real in Roseburg on South Deer Creek.)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Then there were the academic "cities": NU and U of C. Despite the libraries, I didn’t want to stay. I just took books with me. I like seeing cities from a distance, a height, esp. at night with the lights. All the crime shows include them, even the ones made in the far north. But now I know people planet-wide in spite of never really leaving the NW except Hartford, Connecticut, for clergy internship. (Chicago was the OLD NW.) Now cities themselves — their characteristics — have become diaspora. Good enough for me. I don’t want to really be there. I just think about it.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWaIO7MHBylXRRsMz08TS4lG9gYPBNgBgON4ZLlROZDK44fBaY052ERal6JpFBLshaexoO5pG3dM9WTv3jK5nA5KpewWklEanKLZLkNcThJ_rtKUzdl3rP-vtc5TA76wTx51D8/s360/PDX.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="140" data-original-width="360" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWaIO7MHBylXRRsMz08TS4lG9gYPBNgBgON4ZLlROZDK44fBaY052ERal6JpFBLshaexoO5pG3dM9WTv3jK5nA5KpewWklEanKLZLkNcThJ_rtKUzdl3rP-vtc5TA76wTx51D8/w640-h248/PDX.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-798202182562259382020-12-05T13:01:00.000-07:002020-12-05T13:01:08.749-07:00POPULATION LOCATION IS STRUCTURAL<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When seen from the air at night the border between the US and Canada just north of where I am is very clear, as clear as the border between land and sea. The Canadians build as close to the 49th parallel as they can — most of their population is hours’ driving distance from the US. Yet the land and most of the weather is continuous on both sides. The difference is government, something that does not actually exist because it is only created by the agreement of the people. You can't see it or hold it.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The actual distribution of people across the landscape is governed at base by the resources for existence like food or ways to make a living. But then it is scrambled and re-distributed by ideas and organization in minds. I used to remark in Missoula on the post-divorce, middle-aged women who came with their alimony to start life over in a place when they only knew a media impression. They often joined our little UU group because they had belonged to big UU churches in cities. Most only lasted until their money was gone. Some stayed by inventing a new business or service, like a boutique bakery.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Most concentrations of people are similar to each other and maybe grew up together, which accounts for why so much of business and service in small towns here are based on high school relationships. Those who get to college are sorted again according to whether they attend state schools or somehow get into the elite universities where they form new relationships, often in professions that are based on concentrated populations, big cities or other universities. They stay in the new system by formal interaction like the law in courts or occasional gatherings for study or setting parameters for their vocation.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When I said to my original UU minister that I wanted to become one of them so I'd be with them, he remarked that I would rarely see the other ministers. I would be with the parishioners. The steady shrinkage of small towns and their mainstream churches has meant that they must either combine or close. Some ministers here preach in three or four places, something like I did when I was circuit-riding. This creates new relationships that are stretched.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">But a new diaspora is forming. Diasporas are populations who share values and behaviors, but are scattered. Originally discussed in terms of the Jewish dispersal over the world because of persecution, the phenomenon interests me because of my several favorite groups. One is the Blackfeet — once forcibly confined to a small area but then later separated in attempts to break up reservations, to draw on a labor pool during wartime, or as natural migrations to where there are more jobs. Today about half of the provenance-based enrolled members of the tribe live away from the reservation.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Another that I just started to think about is the diaspora of gay men (not women) that was always covertly present everywhere but separated by the need to fit in where they were; then gathered into a movement with a center in SF but always inclined to travel for anonymity, particularly to secluded places accessed by air like tropical beaches; and then scattered by the horrors of the HIV plague. Somehow the expansion, the disclosing and the resulting experiences have affected the larger population in many quiet ways. It’s not just the flamboyant defiance that woke us up, but the experience of men nursing dying friends and lovers has allowed men to be nurses and therapists, people who are not afraid to come close. The ethics of sex are no longer based on fertility.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Another effect that hits me and others at Christmas is the exaltation of the biological family unit as the basic and most valuable unit of civilization, which is emphasized by the glorification (literally) of the Holy Family, though the genetics are a little confused by artificial insemination. Or should I say transcendent insemination.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">For a person who is solitary, like myself, and in a rural town like this place, one has a choice between treating the event as a festival, joining a crowd, or relating to an entirely new kind of diaspora, one based on internet sympathies and communication but never present physically, never having been a physical community. I’m talking about internet relationships of several kinds, but potentially of deep affinity that has nothing to do with screwing in the way the city has supported an alternative to family, pretending that encounters are about love.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m not scholarly enough to look it up now, but in the days when "America" was just a coast and the people who were from the northern part of Europe brought a tough, dark, ascetic kind of religion with them, the solstice (Dec 21 this year) was met with fasting, meditation, and pleas for survival. Think<b> Ingmar Bergman</b>. The jolly mercantilizing festivals that people are persisting in without masks, without staying apart, are more Victorian than Christian, more southern Europe than Scandinavian, and have replaced true religion with media brain washing called advertising.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">There is a psych phenomenon called a “leap to sanity.” It’s about things like a fire in a mental hospital that causes even the most addled to fight effectively. But it can apply to a mentally compromised person who simply decides to be “cured” and sustains an imitation of health for a while. This has got to be related to the “leap to freedom” that the Africans crossing the Mediterranean or the South Americans walking to North America are taking in great numbers, knowing that the chances that they will die are as high as for the guy in a crowded bar without a mask. Maybe he’s trying to make a leap to normality, HIS normality — not mine.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">But he or she is also making a set of alcohol-enabled relationships that are not based on biological family. Whether they would endure, is variable. My birth family, because of past generations who were alcoholic, refused bars. But my brother with the concussion participated by watching a television series, “Seinfield”, that was based on a bar and it worked almost as well. One branch of my family stumbled in the restaurant trade and recovered by owning “titty bars” where drinking makes the money and naked girls keep them coming. This has not sustained lasting relationships. In fact, it fractured the family system.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This post is really throat-clearing while I wait for some kind of principle to form. It’s about the invisible, sometimes intentional, lines and nodes that form across the continents. It is a big part of culture. I think the idea is something like “the economy is the ecology of culture.”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In an interview yesterday an economist said that the people living by the salary system will be destitute and starving without governmental action. But the minority living by the capitalist stock market will be all right so long as the price of shares in multi-national corporations stay up. Somehow they believe that the Repubs and even Trump are what keep the stock market high. The lady who manages our trash roll-off system told me the same. Her salary alone is not enough. Our very structure of survival is changing.</span></p><p> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-1140444622129287722020-12-04T11:29:00.003-07:002020-12-04T16:23:12.858-07:00WANNA SEE A MOVIE ABOUT INDIANS?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">These photos were meant to be on yesterday's post, but the action wouldn't work on Blogger. Today it does, so I'll post them here.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzE31mJmXS5aOQKKOSIn52sL1V-qVoOY8EBimXnUe8qcKUSozgMQm2BblvndplWVBGiLRxoTUg_UHvO13Nt2U408dTxbot8kSVIzyX9OwFAqwTfFIiNt4RFQ5HtnyDANbCrN0H/s367/jess+in+marines.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="300" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzE31mJmXS5aOQKKOSIn52sL1V-qVoOY8EBimXnUe8qcKUSozgMQm2BblvndplWVBGiLRxoTUg_UHvO13Nt2U408dTxbot8kSVIzyX9OwFAqwTfFIiNt4RFQ5HtnyDANbCrN0H/w524-h640/jess+in+marines.jpg" width="524" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Jesse DesRosier, peaceful warrior</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrCskfYRcAtVqWRU_9v5N7DkdlWaG3sBWhuZAKudQ-cg2cWfs1iuwPaqqf5-DHpqYvlcXX2XUAQ3SlGXtJlV3aiM2Fq2RT4KxXgHB_YIR8bV7cx5HJIWaUcrVrQ3KzylDwdDQo/s900/JesseDRK.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="900" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrCskfYRcAtVqWRU_9v5N7DkdlWaG3sBWhuZAKudQ-cg2cWfs1iuwPaqqf5-DHpqYvlcXX2XUAQ3SlGXtJlV3aiM2Fq2RT4KxXgHB_YIR8bV7cx5HJIWaUcrVrQ3KzylDwdDQo/w640-h426/JesseDRK.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Jesse DesRosier and Darrell Robes Kipp</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Generational rewewal</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">Yesterday I renewed my membership to Vimeo and asked for "Blackfeet" vids. I was delighted to find myself as a conference of Blackfeet speakers at St. Mary's Lodge some years ago. It appears to be led by Dorothy Still Smoking, who was too bashful to talk in my first year of teaching in 1961 but since there has earned a D.Ed. and presented her thesis in London, England. Darrell always said he was sitting on his porch by St. Marys Lake when Dorothy came along and she told him, "Get off that porch! We have work to do!" In the end she meant the Piegan Institute since the public school was wary of teaching Blackfeet language.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">I can spot Shirlee Crowshoe who was vital to the scholarly work that is also a part of Piegan Institute. I see Molly Bullshoe who was the Blackfeet language expert in Heart Butte. And I notice that this was a generation of women who grew accustomed to permed hair and now need bifocals!</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: large;">It will take me days to work through the rest of the vids. We've come a long way from the first experiments by Miss LoPiccolo and her students in Heart Butte about 1991. Some of these vids are historical, reformatted films, and some are creative by individuals. </span></div><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-65176934872796354072020-12-04T10:19:00.000-07:002020-12-04T10:19:19.143-07:00INTENSE FELT MEANING<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Working on these materials I keep running into problems that send me scurrying to find more facts and thoughts and there are always a LOT of them.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Many people are considering the reframing that comes from the amazing insights that keep appearing.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Here’s a quick list.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">What is real? We know now that our brains form a frame in the earliest years and everything after that must fit the frame or we just don’t know it exists. But a powerful event or new evidence can break through that, so that suddenly we see the same things in a new way. It can change our morality, our confidence, and even our safety. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Some people have retreated from the old-fashioned religions that were developed in other places and times by taking science as a source of what is TRUE in some ultimate sense, but now even science as it morphs to fit new facts and understandings is not permanent. In fact, two contrasting understandings of the same thing may make them seem contradictory, possibly allowing toggling back and forth, so one Monday we all agree on one thing and by Wednesday have doubts, on Friday change our minds entirely.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One of the hardest to grasp and yet most explanatory contexts of science is<i> quantum mechanics</i>, a deep and scary coherence that insists there is a submicrolevel of existence where all things are merely energy in whirling patterns, escaping Newtonian understanding of our world. We know we can still sit on chairs and eat scrambled eggs, but can we be sure that love is possible or that our plans for progress can succeed at all?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">If our understanding of the world is not made dependable by <i>intense felt meaning</i>, aren’t we just robots staggering around doing whatever is in front of us? Some people are strongly conviced that there is some REAL reality behind what we think is reality, even if we admit it is only the illusions built in us from our infancy and reinforced by those close to us. This is the basis of talk therapy, which is basically meant to persuade us that life is better than we thought.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It turns out there is no big humanoid somewhere who parents the planet and occasionally rescues us. No ship of little green men who know more than we do. Not even <b>Tolstoy</b>'s fantasy of a green branch somewhere with the secret of life written on it. A new but difficult understanding is that we are merely nodes in an infinitely complex webwork of systems and relationships and that our best morality is acting in ways that sustain all those connections, make them richer, and treat our actions as a form of music seeking harmony.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But occasionally something like the planetary disasters of geological or climatic shifts or viral waves from animals knock all our built infrastructure and ability to stay alive into a black hole. In the tension between what is personal and what is community — let alone what is universal like whatever it was that has eliminated so many species of hominins, leaving only remnants of code in fossils or our own bodies — force us to admit we don’t have much power. Our bodies are frail. Our cooperations are temporary.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">“Embodiment” has finally rolled back our valuing of steely rationality and logic. Our instrument of participation in the world is our bodies. But our WHOLE bodies so that within our skin we have gut wisdom and muscle knowledge. Next we have the ability to participate in the world beyond our skin, whether or not trees and dogs are “real”. Our basic ability is to accept the impact of the world that comes in code based on electrochemical information and to transform it into concepts of color or sound which are refined and organized in something like aesthetics, far more commanding than ten commandments. It records our actions and their “value”.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This is the material of the <i>intense felt meaning </i>that guides us as we go. Most of the time we don’t think about it, unless it gets out of whack and doesn’t work. Or if somehow, for some quantum mechanical reason, we are flooded with something outside experience. A <i>theophany</i>, if you believe in Theos. Unless one’s capacity to think is deranged, one’s instrument is broken by madness, the experience usually doesn’t last long. Traces can be captured by our various arts. At least we try.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Lately we have been confronted in the most material way by evil arising from broken mind instruments preying on systems and acting through whole cultures for their own ends. “Money”, a symbol system of value, has taken on a false reality that grips desire and control. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This has interacted with a new ability to communicate instantly by handheld participation in interactions involved in things like the control of massive infrastructures (dams, power stations, GPS), code sent through satellites, standing on the moon and arranging pop-up events. This has had profound and unanticipated impact on our chief money management by creating an instant stock market that feeds on loss and tragedy, justifies the loss of lives and whole cultures, ravages the resources of the planet.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">What is the <i>intense felt meaning</i> that will make this survivable? I think it must be a kind of domesticity, a sensory embeddedness in what might not be real in some ultimate sense, but in the sense of the human life span and sensory capacities can comfort us with song and soup, a human hand held and a laugh shared. It helps if we can pause for a ritual moment that creates a chance to recalibrate, take a breath. Breathe -- oh. . . </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I’ve read and written a lot about how to shift the brain from operating in one system web (there are thousands of them, formed by experience) to another one that fits better or moves to bodily needs like sleeping or eating or contact with another living being. Like going to sleep and waking up or getting hungry or reaching out in a hug. If these things are done well, evil is less likely. This is a reason to feed and shelter everyone universally so they don’t have to riot in the streets to feed their babies, even if it costs lives.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Violence, sex, crime, are pre-existing, inherited animal strategies determined by our evolutionary chain of creation and participation in survival. Each category can be inhuman and destructive or forces for good. Even violence, even crime which is a way of exceeding or escaping one’s culture. Sex in the sense of fertility, continuing the species, has been separated from all the social and emotional management a culture usually invents, so that it struggles to be real. We underestimate how responsible we are for what we create.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This is all foam and verges on the kind of pontification that takes us nowhere. But in a dark world it can be a bit of light. You know the symbols, the stars, candles, searchlights, bonfires and faraway sidereal events.</span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-12904223639745784332020-12-03T04:59:00.000-07:002020-12-03T04:59:06.775-07:00HERE WE ARE ACCORDING TO DOG<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 33px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">In Saskatoon I used to have an on-going argument with a geologist about whether a person would be different from one place to another because of the exquisitely varying isotopes of the elements we ingest with food and breath.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">This was highly relevant because Saskatoon is the home of many uranium miners farther to the north.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">On their weeks off that were obligatory to let their cells and organs recover, they washed their clothes in the city’s laundromats so that if you took a geiger counter into any of them, you’d get a lot of clicking.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Or so it was said — I didn’t have a geiger counter. The geologist and I did agree finally. But the place itself changed me through the culture — some of which I opposed — and the land, a peneplain of grass on a long-gone beach where cranes do their graceful dance and bugle their calls. There just weren't any mountains or dogs.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Much farther south is another remnant of the once continental inland sea. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The Indiana Dunes are among the most significant landscapes in America — scientifically, esthetically, and politically. A remnant of their former glory, they survive as a jigsaw-shaped landscape of beaches, dunes, and wetlands.</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The Indiana Dunes are known as the “birthplace of ecology” in America because in 1899 </i><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>University of Chicago</i></span><i> botanist <b>Henry C. Cowles</b> published his classic paper on plant succession on the basis of field studies here. “ </i>(</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Encyclopedia entry about the history of Chicago.)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Many crucial insights come from the idea of a continuous, inter-related, dynamic place/time where all life participates in a minerally, climatically, and geologically varying context, adapting to it even as changing it both materially and in terms of culture. To survive, life must eat what is there and be consumed by others. Humans can change both their environment and themselves in order to survive. It's harder to change each other.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We see DNA now as a sheet of code that extends through all living beings. From fragments called viral to the highly complex directions for being human, we can sometimes protect ourselves with skins and preconceptions, but other times we are penetrated and changed. As soon as we found the genome, we found the epi-genome that comes from the environment and can switch certain genes on or off or add new bits. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Now we know there are all kinds of “omes” from brain connectomes -- vividly computer-rendered in color -- of neurosystems in the brain to proteomes of the shifting protein molecules in the blood. Everything is a woven, compromised, adapted, spilling-over continuum. Totally wiped out is our 19th century assumption that what we saw is what there was and that it justified our love of naming everything as the same as understanding it.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Everything that fit into what was already there survived. What didn’t fit disappeared. Sometimes we adjusted to a new place and adapted what we remembered from an old place. Thus, the palm tree in Bethlehem that once signified birth became blended with European Celtic forest mysticism that honored the evergreen tree. What about the Inuit who have no trees?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Culture, reinforced by today’s media, converts classic local references created by people who lived there lifelong into something quite different. By now </span>survival depends upon economics --<span style="font-size: 18px;"> what is global is what is marketable. The base of economics is mostly dependent on demographics: who is there, whether they have enough to eat and enough shelter, what they want and whether they can earn enough “credits” (money) to swap for what they need and want. If they don't, they die. We try not to notice.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At bottom much is controlled by resources that quickly get converted into political control and access. If there is a lot of something desirable in one place, it may be very scarce but wanted in another place, and so moving things around the planet has displaced fittingness from one place into another, a constant shifting in hopes of a better fit, more wealth, more chances to accumulate credits. Culture becomes a victim of materialization. Some cultures become stigmatized, worthless.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Since “religion” is sometimes an institution at the mercy of culture, it has also suffered. Sometimes it is portrayed as a kind of magic for believers. In an effort to maintain control it can become an excuse for holocaust. And also an excuse for raping the land, leaving a gaping black hole in the woven life of the planet.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This approach to ceremony I'm developing is a way to reweave the world by using our sensations, our memories, our experiences. to thread meaning back into it. But we can’t neglect the fact of survival, that we all need food, shelter, and work, no matter where we are.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This video link illustrates what I’m talking about. This is in my experience and memory. I remember. I dream it over again.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://vimeo.com/21163086">https://vimeo.com/21163086</a></b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Much of the eloquence here is due to the recovery of the language at <i>Piegan Institute</i>. The young man who speaks so well is <b>Jesse DesRosier</b>. The rowdies by <b>Ick</b>’s are public school products, semi-assimilated. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I took this Pikuni world pattern with me to the <i>U of Chicago Div School</i>. No one understood it. This writing is my explanation for them because that world is ALSO part of my sensory life, my experience, my memory. This is the modern task, to combine different place/times into something new, a way of creating meaning on this planet and in this universe.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaW4i0v-xn6X_E6PNvJ6K1vmvBkRXwQW3RDqA82zyPPeBlWnfOvCgkY66xqvHa0a014yunZ06lqONCZ1eiumRcTAgXp62Q8K2JvhZYpxSKABtr3i7afHyh-xmusPAIetxKYyW7/s259/images-2.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="481" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaW4i0v-xn6X_E6PNvJ6K1vmvBkRXwQW3RDqA82zyPPeBlWnfOvCgkY66xqvHa0a014yunZ06lqONCZ1eiumRcTAgXp62Q8K2JvhZYpxSKABtr3i7afHyh-xmusPAIetxKYyW7/w640-h481/images-2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">U of Chicago "quads"</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjF-G3fSNLLT3VkTbpCwneVFKLt7r2DOnbV3Liu1accaI8rl_g0iEBWIhFrmWDvRZqZOFnW5a7Vh_T2Dy8k2glMQBiBWFH8X5mEZqbe9ye5SeeH8qOcU5FW5jpt2l1IVak3YxI/s437/images-3.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="115" data-original-width="437" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjF-G3fSNLLT3VkTbpCwneVFKLt7r2DOnbV3Liu1accaI8rl_g0iEBWIhFrmWDvRZqZOFnW5a7Vh_T2Dy8k2glMQBiBWFH8X5mEZqbe9ye5SeeH8qOcU5FW5jpt2l1IVak3YxI/w640-h168/images-3.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Chicago</div><br /><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">I was told at Div School that someone asked a famous theologian whether dogs go to heaven.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">His answer was that no one knows, but we ought to act as if they did.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">Can people see the sacred everywhere?</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">I don’t know, but we ought to act as if they could.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">That means what happens to one of us happens to all of us.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">This must be a communion that is never fenced to keep the “others” out.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">It’s a hard morality — not sentimental.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">A little out of control.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">Dangerous.</span> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-45552134439880591032020-12-02T19:35:00.000-07:002020-12-02T19:35:49.038-07:00IF I DON'T TELL YOU, WHO WILL KNOW?<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">It’s so awkward for me, a white woman (napi yahkee), to comment on someone like <b>Jesse DesRosier </b>and you shouldn’t continue reading what I say without watching this YouTube vid.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-qlF4ycgok</b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I knew<b> Darrell Robes Kipp,</b> from when he was a senior in high school in Browning and I had just been hired to teach junior high. <b>Dorothy Still Smoking</b> was in my all-girl speech and drama class where I got in trouble for writing a play about a girl’s reformatory without having any idea it would be taken as being residential boarding school. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In those days <b>Roy DesRosier</b> — Jesse’s grandfather/greatgrandfather? —was the town pharmacist, a red-head of formidable intelligence. He was white, but I think his genes traveled to blend with Blackfeet. I wish I knew more about him. In particular his female descendants are brilliant. One is a doctor in Heart Butte. He should not be just discarded, so I’ll stick up for him, but politically I’m on the wrong side of the blanket.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Jesse thinks the first <i>Piegan Institute</i> was in an abandoned house, but he’s thinking of the earlier <i>Blackfeet Free School and Sandwich Shop</i>, a precursor that was started by <b>Bill Haw</b> (white) in the abandoned commodities warehouse. I put some of this in “<i>Bronze Inside and Out.”</i> It had fizzled by the time <i>Piegan Institute</i> started, but it left an imprint. In some ways, these two ventures presaged the <i>Blackfeet Community College</i>. “It CAN be done,” the experiments said. One organization was part of a whole movement.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When Darrell and Dorothy first began surveying the rez to see whether people would support a program to teach the language, they were startled that people said “certainly not”! In their childhood these adults had been severely punished for speaking Blackfeet and they were determined that their children should not be exposed to such hurt. By now, decades later, the story has reversed and people feel the language should be learned.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Luckily, the Canadian <i>Treaty 7</i> parts of the Blackft nation were allowed to keep much of their culture and they were a reservoir of teachers and ceremonies. I want to pick up on the “<i>Cree Speaker</i>” name. For Blackfeet, “Cree” is sort of the equivalent of “French” for the English. <i>Cree Medicine</i> family members worked for us, but I didn’t tease them about it. (Carl could be formidable.) “Cree Medicine” is meant to be little witchy, a little sexy — powerful. <b>Louise Erdrich</b> knew that when she named a novel that — the title was later changed to <i>“Love Medicine”</i> which is roughly the same.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Jesse’s vid is terrific. He’s done others. I can’t find a copy of “<i>Buffalo Runner</i>” yet but I’m still looking. I haven’t check Vimeo yet.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-85050022154662676302020-12-02T10:58:00.000-07:002020-12-02T10:58:08.961-07:00CEREMONIES OF MEANING<p> <b style="color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Narrativity </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">is a fancy way to say “telling a story” but </span><b style="color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Richard Stern’s </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">classes at the U of Chicago</span><b style="color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">expanded that in his teaching anthology <b><i>“Honey and Wax,</i></b>” so it included music. We did not go so far as to claim that a landscape is a narrative, but I do that now.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><i style="color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> “Most people would agree it is a basic way to be human, to find meaning.”</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">H.P. Abbott</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">These are the stories I use as prompters for ceremonies and rituals, ways to get hold of the virtual, the abstract but deeply felt. “<i>As what one might call an “adjectival” noun, </i></span><span style="color: black; font-kerning: none;"><i>narrativity</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i> suggests connotatively a felt quality, something that may not be entirely definable …”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Narrativity might be a hero surviving ordeals until reaching his goal; a mountain climber who summits and what happens afterwards; a hilarious Napi story about an offended boulder chasing him; another Blackft story about a person who goes up into the sky out of love but gets homesick and comes back. It might be an explanation or a question.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This particular story has been my map all along.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>A Jewish story from Temple B’Nai Toray in Bellevue, WA</b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Whenever the <b>Baal Shem Tov</b>, the great master of Hasidism, saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a big fire in just a certain way, he would say a special prayer, sing a little nigun, a melody with no words, (such as we sang earlier this afternoon) and the miracle would be accomplished and the terrible threat averted.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">A generation later, when his student, the <b>Maggid of Mezritch</b>, needed to do the same thing on behalf of his community, to pray to heaven for protection, he would go to that same place in the forest and say <i>“Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire… but I can sing that little tune, and I still remember the prayer!</i>” and again, the miracle would be accomplished.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">And yet another generation later, <b>Rabbi Moishe Leib of Sasov</b>, the heir to the Maggid of Mezritch, in order to save his people once more, would go into that same spot in the forest and say,<i>” Dear God I do not know how to light that fire, and I do not know the prayer, and even the little song I don’t remember so well, but You can see I know where the place is, and this must be sufficient.” </i>And what do you know? It was enough just to be in the place and the miracle was accomplished.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Then, years later, it fell to <b>Rabbi Yisroel</b> of Rhizin to overcome misfortune for his community. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, and he spoke to God, saying: <i>“I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer, can’t remember how the song goes, and I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story about how the Baal Shem tov used to go and do these things in that place. I only remember the story.”</i> And it was sufficient.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;">______________________________________</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The Ritual Process</i></b> by <b>Victor Turner</b></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><br /></b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This book explains how to create a “liminal space” by providing a way to enter it, being there, and coming back out. Physical senses are the means, like going up a flight of stairs into a cathedral, or the curtain going up before a play, or lighting a candle before praying. The other side of the time/space is coming down, the curtain falling or putting out the candle. Turner worked out this sequence while working with African tribal rituals like coming of age or marriage.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The formula works for almost every ceremony I know, including the <i>Blackfeet Thunder Pipe Bundle Opening </i>in Spring that enlightened me in the Sixties. The cultures Turner studied would create a virtual time/space through the use of their own familiar ecology to enter a protected state of mind and bodies, use that time together to attune, harmonize, resonate and thereby renew each other. Then it turned out the theory worked in “modern” Christian churches.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">__________________________________</p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>The Shape of the Liturgy</i> </b>by <b>Dom Gregory Dix</b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Even familiar and presumably permanent rituals can develop — evolve — over time. The earliest Christians were part of a Torah study group who came together and began to understand in a different way, guided by ideas from Jesus the Christ, until they were “Christians.” Then they shared a meal, mostly bread and wine that they had brought with them. This sharing gradually became sacralized as “communion.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">______________________________________</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Constructing Local Theologies </b>by <b>Robert J. Schreiter</b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Ordinary actions that emerge from life to become part of religion will acquire justifications that come from the theory of how the sacred meanings are structured. This understanding comes from a specific ecosystem and the experience of living in it. How does one take the liturgy of one people (specifically Christians) to a culture that has neither bread nor wine? Schreiter says one must go to the most basic concept that underlies the practice. So communion is not what is consumed, but THAT it is consumed in the company of people who share. It might not even be about eating. And eating might not be about taking a sacred leader into one’s body.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;">________________________________________</p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Multiple Books</b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Research discovers the evolution of a human being from the point of conception. When an infant emerges from the mother, it has already begun to build a brain and its bodily system by pushing against the confinement and what it feels as the mother moves: hears as her heart, gut and lungs work or as she talks and sings or as her body sways through her work. That is, the genome is the map for self-creation, from the very beginning to the rest of life, always building on the sensory experience of the environment. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This evolution was once thought to be a recapitulation of the evolution of our species: fish, amphibian, reptile, mammal. This turned out to be more poetry than science, but it is scientifically true that each stage of evolved life builds on the one just previous: an amphibian is an improved fish, a reptile is an improved amphibian, a mammal is an improved reptile. We carry in ourselves bits of all those incarnations.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The mammal mother’s impulse is to come face to face with her infant. Her mammalian nature — nursing, rocking, stroking, cleaning — gradually creates a virtual space/time between her and the baby. This safe but growth-supporting context is the evolved key to worship and liturgical experiences later in life. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">These ideas provide the basic context of what I’m developing as a structural theory of ceremonies of meaning seen as worship for a community.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-86593425914166403882020-12-01T11:29:00.000-07:002020-12-01T11:29:16.261-07:00MY CAT COLONY IS WATCHING THIS<p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAIezRBmxs17uyJXPPMZuGBiWTMewqJ4Mq1-BhmjzWqm_DN4fzdzA6v0ZnQrR1NRFLx08VNI3auUawydVZ5S8yNEk5b7RjdrGHJgyGiO9_fY-lffMl_L107nKsya1WdUzR1zVZ/s2048/cats+in+window+up+high.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAIezRBmxs17uyJXPPMZuGBiWTMewqJ4Mq1-BhmjzWqm_DN4fzdzA6v0ZnQrR1NRFLx08VNI3auUawydVZ5S8yNEk5b7RjdrGHJgyGiO9_fY-lffMl_L107nKsya1WdUzR1zVZ/w640-h480/cats+in+window+up+high.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">Twenty years ago when I moved in, I did cats the respectable way.</span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">I was hired to teach, so I acquired two kittens, got their shots and spayed them, and spent an hour sawing a cat flap in the security-solid kitchen door.</span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">But I quit the teaching job in a couple of months, scandalized by what it had become, and took a series of little jobs until I qualified for Social Security.</span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;">In the next ten years I wrote my bio of Bob Scriver, "Bronze Inside and Out." </span><span style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px;"> </span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">These first two cats had an aged mother and were probably fed too well. They became arthritic and incontinent younger than they should have. I asked the vet to put them to sleep, which I could afford then. For a week or so, there were no cats and I wept buckets. The vet made it clear he did not like killing cats. He’s invested in the “fur baby” metaphor.</span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Then <i>Patches</i>, the neighborhood feral cat, had her kittens in the garage. She was truly wild — I never touched her. I fed them. The neighbor’s dog killed one. Then she died, but her kittens were no longer feral. </span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The neighbors bought an old pickup and towed it home. Three kittens were hiding in it. One died, they kept one and the third one moved into my house. He became a big dominant striped and dotted tomcat I called <i>Finnegan</i>. The little female I called the <i>Blue Bunny </i>(the name of an ice cream brand) because she WAS blue, fell madly in love with him. She sat next to him, leaning against him, gazing up at his face and purring. After he got her pregnant, he left. I wasn’t sorry. He had peed in the potted plants, picked fights, and generally tore things up.</span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Blue Bunny, by now the<i> Mamacat</i>, had four kittens, which is standard. I was drowning them as newborns while she was outside, but when she came in and saw what I was up to, she moved the last two down the trapdoor under the house, grabbing one by the back leg instead of properly by the neck. It screamed. I didn’t see them again, couldn’t get into the shallow space under the geranium bump-out window where they were in the farthest corner, until one day I heard mewing and here came the black and white kitten I called <i>Tuxie</i>. (<i>Tuxedo</i>.)</span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Half a day later she was followed by the gentle little gray kitten that eventually had its face torn off by something unknown. I drove it -- stoic and immovable -- to the vet to kill the mite, because I can't bear to kill them once their eyes are open. That vet does not like me. He thought that as soon as I saw what had happened, I should have driven thirty miles in the dark to pay him to fix it. If it were possible. He would have done his best.</span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">By now, sets of kittens later — mercilessly edited by me —there is the S-series: <i>Splotch, Streak, Spots</i>, and <i>Stripes</i>. Then the Buttons, who became <i>Zippers</i>, all but <i>Fuzzy</i> who should have been named <i>Tufty</i>. It was badly developed and died for no particular reason. All the kittens struggle with sealed eyes and gloppy noses but then recover except for a few. By now there are only two Zippers: <i>Inky</i> who is not well and <i>Pinto</i>. (There were already three <i>Spotties</i>.) </span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As things stand, there are maybe ten cats, including <i>Salt</i> and <i>Pepper</i>, two tomcats grown huge who are litter mates <i>Caruso </i>walks through the house at night singing. We never see him in the daytime. I feed a couple of cans twice a day to see who’s still here. Seven are sleeping with me by morning. </span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Tuxie and Blue Bunny have caught onto me and don’t seem to have kittens anymore. They may be having them somewhere outdoors where they don’t survive. Tuxie has become a Trannie, acting like a tomcat and relentlessly pursuing the much bigger toms. They run when they see her and shriek when she smacks them. She is devoted to the Blue Bunny and the two of them travel together, but during the morning nap shift, it is Tuxie who settles down with the Zippers and cleans their ears, etc.</span></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One S-series kitten, Streak, has hit her head. (My fault — I pushed her away too hard and her head hit a bureau of drawers.) Sometimes the pupils of her eyes are different sizes and she’s very clingy.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The closest “humane society” is thirty miles away. There was one closer but the woman who ran it left for a better job. My income is a barely adequate: SSI and a small pension. My ancient pickup is not roadworthy.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Of course I googled. Below is an unattributed google.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“A </i><b><i>cat colony</i></b><i> consists of a group of usually related female </i><b><i>cats</i></b><i> and their offspring. The size of the </i><b><i>cat colonies</i></b><i> depend upon the availability of food and other resources. Adult male </i><b><i>cats</i></b><i> do not live in </i><b><i>cat colonies</i></b><i>, but friendly behavior between females and males can occur, especially when familiarity exists.</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #5d6267; font-kerning: none;"><i>Mar 6, 2019”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #5d6267; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This household best fits the idea of a cat colony. There was a feral one up the street that was mostly ginger cats and lived in a old church building, but some one removed them, probably with poison. Once I saw them crossing the street to the house of a woman who fed them. There may have been twelve, all strung out in a line.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #5d6267; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The description above doesn’t refer to “owned” cats but to the semi-fantasy of “feral” cats. There is not enough description of the various ways cats organize themselves. For instance, no one speaks of “satellite cats” that keep a human household or a feral colony as a reference point, coming and going according to need and inclination. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Studies where cats are equipped with tiny cameras so they can be traced and maps of their routines can be studied, revealed that they don’t normally trespass on each other, but that there are “two-fer” cats who belong to more than one household, visiting daily for food at both of them, each believing the cat is theirs.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The Cut Bank animal control officer is as realistic as I am. When he catches a skunk for someone, he releases it in a better place for skunks. He says that the way to eliminate feral cats (and some pet cats) is to suspend the leash law, but in livestock country no one will ignore the leash law except someone’s college kid coming for the holidays and bringing his or her big dogs along. No one brings their cats to visit.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-78802868334150795922020-11-30T04:16:00.001-07:002020-11-30T10:01:40.736-07:00NO CROWN IN THIS STORY<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">In my twenties I would not have failed the Balmoral test as in <i>"The Crown"</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">I could have walked the hills, wearing boots, and stalked the stags like the Royals.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">But I was not quite good enough to call an elk, which is the Montana version of a stag.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">When I tried, the elk ran in a panic.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We didn’t crawl after elk, but hunted on horseback along the tree line of the east slope of the Rockies. We hunted the big migratory birds on the grasslands, though not in a “shoot” the way we see in the movie. Decades earlier </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">Bob’s parents had gone out as a social group, carrying hot drinks in thermoses. Bob and I just stole moments from work. I couldn’t do any of this now, but am glad I did it even as I question why such a thing should be done. We did eat both geese and elk. Even a swan when it was allowed to have a season.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Something similarly Brit pertains to my birth family claiming the Scots culture, attending Highland Games and pretending to dance in a kilt. My mother-in-law, <b>Ellison Westgarth Macfie</b>, called “Wessie”, appreciated all that even if it was not quite genuine. Her roots were in Scotland, but she was, after all, a Canadian ex-pat — in Quebec which I think she thought of as a kind of Indian reservation. Bob was arrogantly proud of it, but also hoping hard for his father’s approval, which he never quite got. His father was not Scots.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In my own family, my father’s raised-in-Scotland father was the key, but his wife’s “Finney” (Irish?) and “Swan” (Metis) background was ignored. Likewise, my mother would never admit her father was basically an Irish Kentucky hillbilly with pretensions. Her mother was a Cochran, much more prosperous. These are "white" characteristics.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In our Portland basement where my father hid his special things, he kept the chanter from a bagpipe which he never learned to play. <b>Bob Scriver</b> could have played it just as he played most instruments, but he preferred the cornet, an instrument for parades and jazz. We did have a bagpiper at our wedding. I don’t know who was at our divorce since I didn’t know it was happening. The community thought it was none of my business.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Oh, I can get into this series! Except Bob and I had no intention to produce an heir. Just a lot of lovely no-worries sex -- vasectomy. There was an equivalent to <b>Mrs. Parker-Bowles</b> named <b>Arlene</b>. They tell me she lives in Texas now. The other wives are all dead. But it was the death of Bob's daughter that made it necessary to take on children when we were not prepared and they were suffering.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The orchestral score for this series <i>“The Crown</i>” is essential as is usually true for these great sweeping epics. I once told a counselor that I felt my life needed a sound track but there were long periods when there was only static. The man just couldn’t get it. At bedtime Bob often went to the piano for the songs of his youth, which I couldn't sing.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Maybe I should have phrased my memories differently, saying that in my life I was passing through a sequence of cultures and that Browning had to combine bagpipes with pow-wow drums. It did, you know. The pipe bands came down from Canada for Indian Days and the big drum often hung in Scriver Studio because it was hocked and we hung it where everyone could see it was safe.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The next stage after Browning when my skills at breaking up dog fights and shooting gophers for the eagle to eat qualified me for the first female animal control officer in Multnomah County (Portland). I never did get into pop music. This was the only part of my life where I did a bit of drinking. Lots of dogs barking. “<i>Oh, where oh where has my little dog gone </i> . .”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Dog spelled backwards . . . but I didn’t do that because I’d found the Unitarians and it was a way back to the grand, the traditional, the learned. The Scottish Presbyterian Church often sympathized with the Unitarians. In those days the UUA still used the blue hymnal with Yggdrasil on the front. Four years went quickly. Many classic familiar hymns joyously sung together until the ministers met annually to sing "<i>Rank by rank again we stand. . ."</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The years in the van circuit-riding around and around Montana were mostly in a van that played its own tune. It had had an antenna attached to one side that had been removed, leaving holes that the wind played like bagpipe drones. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My next call was in Saskatoon where the congregation always began its services, signaled its limen to cross, by playing <i>“Fanfare for the Common Man</i>.” I hope they still do that.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Then confusion. I had gotten hard. Narcissistic or, as my family thought in more basic terms: selfish. My brothers didn’t like me. One had had a concussion. The other, hating Portland, had moved to the SW, married, and took low level jobs. We were not a family that hugged and kissed. My father had died. It was a while before my mother died. Then the older brother took over and dispersed the home. The younger one had a daughter but we didn’t know where she was. Now I do and am packing a Christmas box for her family. She found me by finding my blog.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Bob’s children died young. One of his grandchildren died. I don’t know the great-grandchildren but none have died. Bob's own death was painful, then mercifully sudden in the rough little bathroom of the Scriver Studio while waiting for a pour of bronze in his foundry. <i>"Bronze Inside and Out"</i> is about him.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>DRK</b> called from the rez to tell me. Bob’s funeral was in the old Browning High School gymnasium. <b>Earl Old Person</b> told stories about when Bob was his teacher, and they put an eagle feather in his coffin. The Catholic priest presided.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I had attended Bob’s father’s funeral in the old Masonic Hall but I don’t even know where his mother’s funeral was held. I presume in the Methodist church in Browning where I took the pulpit for a year and Bob funded one of the stained glass windows. The family never attended there. They had supported the earlier Presbyterian church that was folded into the Methodists. Everyone is buried in Cut Bank, except his fourth wife who was cremated and thrown into the sea from Vancouver, BC where she had built a house. Her name is on the headstone but the grave is empty. That about sums it up.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In terms of family I failed everyone miserably, so I have sympathy for <b>Elizabeth II</b>. But at least I did get “the book” written. Not just a blog, but now, through <i>Scribr</i>, gone feral in the world on the Internet. And Lilibet’s story is a series on television during a pandemic. Oh, fate plays tricks! </span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-72789311980818362152020-11-29T04:23:00.003-07:002020-11-29T04:23:40.142-07:00EMERGENT MEANING<p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf24yRCc46b-Y0ddKtUa0GYwstOvic8J-5tCWTLpUukvsGh2cgjd0TYlFrDsdOclvny8S8mQpgSgBVgizLDwDJL56zaQ8hx-mJ9eaXttkirkmoV8ngcGpqANwHpIAEayFbNZQp/s330/images-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="153" data-original-width="330" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf24yRCc46b-Y0ddKtUa0GYwstOvic8J-5tCWTLpUukvsGh2cgjd0TYlFrDsdOclvny8S8mQpgSgBVgizLDwDJL56zaQ8hx-mJ9eaXttkirkmoV8ngcGpqANwHpIAEayFbNZQp/w640-h296/images-2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px;"><p><i><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></i></p>“Ley lines refer to straight alignments drawn between various historic structures and prominent landmarks. The idea was developed in early 20th-century Europe, with ley line believers arguing that these alignments were recognised by ancient European societies that deliberately erected structures along them.”</span></i><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Wikipedia</span>"</span><p></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/ley-lines">https://allthatsinteresting.com/ley-lines</a></b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.4px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">You can’t see Ley lines. They’re kind of a fantasy take off on latitude and longitude and maybe the satelite GPS system that is so useful to us now. When I was the interim minister in Kirkland ’85-86, <b>Karl Thuneman</b> shared some of his writing with me. This is a link to his blog: <b><a href="https://www.mayidwellingratitude.com/about">https://www.mayidwellingratitude.com/about</a></b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">He was still reporting for the Bellevue newspaper then, but he had written a story about a man crossing the crowded bottleneck bridge from Kirkland to Seattle when suddenly the Ley Lines became visible. I don’t recall the details but the point was that there are invisible forces all around us and through us, possibly controlling and guiding what happens, and that finding them out — seeing them — is disconcerting.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In a parallel way<b> Daniel J. Siegel</b>, in his book <i>“Mind” </i>uses quantum physics to approach the unseen powerful. We follow science so far as to know that living cells are composed of molecules which are composed of atoms, but Siegel goes on to say that quantum physics claims that atoms are mostly empty space, except for energy — the most basic constituent of everything. Matter is only concentrated energy — </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #5f6368; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; font-weight: bold;">E</span><span style="caret-color: rgb(77, 81, 86); color: #4d5156; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px;"> = </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #5f6368; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.399999618530273px; font-weight: bold;">mc<sup style="line-height: 0.9;">2 </sup></span><span style="font-size: 18px;">remember?</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So here I am, rejecting superstition and fantasy theology, but science at the most respected levels has guided me back to something just as unseen and — honestly — unseeable. Both Thuneman and Siegel are meditators and are informed about the Asian understanding of existence, which seems to endorse quantum physics. But Siegel also insists that a mind starts with physical sensation and experience through time which is recorded in code through the bottom (earliest) layer of the cerebral cortex and only reaches system concepts at the sixth (most recent and top) layer. I haven’t learned what happens at the intervening layers. Maybe no one knows yet.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We exist on trust. I’m assuming my ceiling won’t fall on me — at least not today. But can I trust that all precautions won’t save me from Covid 19 and we have just narrowly escaped political disaster — if we did. The popular phrase is <i>“trust but verify.</i>” It’s not a bad policy to apply to religion, or what we call religion, because any attempts to prove the category has privilege is fading. When various styles and denominations began to align with political goals, trust dissolved. I mean both the right-wing mega-churches and a liberal denomination like the UUA, which has aligned more and more with the Democratic party.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Different metaphor. If one walks through an old building or a path in a forest that has a lot of spider filaments across the space, they can be invisible though one can feel them on one’s face. On a foggy morning wet aerosols can condense on those silk lines and then you can see them.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So now when I keep wondering about moments of epiphany am I seeing something like a dew-spangled spider web, or am I feeling the structure of the energy under existence? Human thinking is built around metaphors of what is already known. But alongside the yearning to expand in order to sense more, there is a need to feel that what is already as far up through the cortex layers to be a concept has been true and should be defended. We call this “faith” and it’s supposed to be unchanging. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Those who go to tai chi, meditation and the Tao -- instead of the Western structures that have grown into controlling power institutions -- don’t depend upon a big supernatural human-type sovereign and equate obedience with faith. Instead their pattern is participation, fittingness with everything else.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We used to see humans as puppets made of flesh-clay, but now we see humans and all other living things as emergent qualities of energy — a technical mathematical concept — unfolding from a molecular code in the context of life.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“In </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>philosophy</i></span></a><i>, </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>systems theory</i></span></a><i>, </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>science</i></span></a><i>, and </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>art</i></span></a><i>, </i><b><i>emergence</i></b><i> occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“Emergence plays a central role in theories of </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrative_level"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>integrative levels</i></span></a><i> and of </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>complex systems</i></span></a><i>. For instance, the phenomenon of </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>life</i></span></a><i> as studied in </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>biology</i></span></a><i> is an emergent property of </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>chemistry</i></span></a><i>, and </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>psychological</i></span></a><i> phenomena emerge from the </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiology"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #092f9d; font-kerning: none;"><i>neurobiological</i></span></a><i> phenomena of living things.”</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> (Wikipedia)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Two sources of numinous thought have been suggested, one <i><u>“transcendent”</u> , </i>coming from the supernatural which is located above in the sky or more recently in outer space; and the other "<i><u>immanent</u></i>," welling up from the earth beneath our feet. Emergence clearly comes from our experience on this planet as we walk through it. But it seems more trustworthy now that a computer can describe it mathematically.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">There’s a journal and a movement based on emergence theory (cleverly called “emergentism”). Like the rule of law, much depends upon definitions and do they exist.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>The common characteristics are: </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>(5) it is "ostensive" (it can be perceived).”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Wikipedia.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #18191a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So far I haven’t seen “religion” considered in terms of these qualities, but now they suggest something to do that might be worthwhile, even necessary. We need meaning that is not frozen, that is radically inclusive, new but not bizarre.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-47054358605753628952020-11-28T05:29:00.003-07:002020-11-29T16:39:51.183-07:00EVIL<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Over the years my position on Evil has been that it is exclusively human, that an “animal” can’t be Evil because so much is about forming the intention that destroys. I was also arguing that a natural tragedy, like an earthquake or tsunami, cannot be Evil. I see it as an example of imputing agency to something that doesn’t care and I say that the planet, the cosmos, and your ordinary backyard rock doesn’t have thoughts about humans one way or another. They are simply indifferent.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So a quick glance at Google to see how far off I might be, and I’m waaaaay behind. To them “<i>Evil”</i> is a good name for a TV series that claims Evil is supernatural and carries plots about the various religious franchises to see what they believe and what the consequences might be. (Atheism is treated as a religion, which I consider fair.)</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This has been a year that one could fairly call Evil, because intentional destruction and suffering has been the goal of so many people from those who refuse masks to those who poison rivals. No wonder we’re ready for a TV series on the subject. Or are sociopaths simply human stones without the ability to even perceive Evil, not aware of the suffering of others. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One of my fav genres is CSI (Criminal Scientific Investigation) particularly the ones about cold cases. I like that not much violence is depicted, just bloody results, but more than that I appreciate the investigators: calm, detail-conscious, but not cold. They are patient but motivated. Most of the cases that persist until solved — no statute of limitations — are about death. This frees it somewhat from society’s prejudices about what is Evil and what is not, just offensive to this particular demographic.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This series called “Evil” is taking on the Other, the supernatural, the longest established white dominant politico/governing force. It includes women and blacks as investigators. And it wrestles with psych to some degree but not directly. For instance, “possession” is considered in the old traditional sense of having an actual demon getting inside someone. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In contrast, I believe that brains organize identity in systems and are capable of managing dissociation (unbearable reality) by creating several identities in one person. The precursor might be our ability to shift among attitudes, points of view, and empathies. Or maybe acting.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As well, we are more aware now after the present technical exploding of knowledge about things we never could record or measure or theorize in the past. We are more aware than ever that human thought — even with the help of computers — can never grasp all there is in existence, going on everywhere without our knowledge or imagination.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">A third way we learn about evil is in dreams when our under-consciousness brings up in illustrations of things we don’t usually let ourselves think. (Like sex, in this culture where there are so many rules.) And, cleverly, the writers of this first episode include kids just coming to consciousness and therapy based on telling everything.. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The writers also include money and the clever ways to make a profit from “evil”. But the evil content definition is not always there — just the scary realization of unknown. We know about bad drug trips but I’ve not read much about them being access to evil — just torment. The terror of blackouts pulls in alcoholics.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">There’s a performance aspect to religion that I’ll look at closer later. But as the show says, demons love an audience and part of their power comes from us watching the reactions of the others. The sadist-in-chief we know best is a performance artist. He feeds on our shock and fear because he believes it means power and control by him.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">CSI investigators know better. The best programs describe the killers through the clues they have left, including their psychological configuration — sometimes stupid, often controlled by bad templates created in infancy through neglect and pain, and maybe as part of a chain of internally mutilated people who have formed into a system with power because of ignoring social standards. Or maybe they’ve just developed a taste for it, the way it is used by people fighting the system through media and arts. Outrageous, chaotic, and sexy.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I like the inclusion of an infrastructure “fix it” guy on this ghost busters team. The inscrutability of modern appliances often seems to me to be demonic. Old houses develop “minds” of their own, creaks and pops for no apparent reason until they cost you a lot of money to rebuild. A parallel can develop between that and the infrastructure systems of our cellular brains that support our thought-structures. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Are damage from failure to act, from omission, from not monitoring — which happen all the time — either crime or evil? I guess it depends on the consequences. I just watched <i>“The Crown</i>” episode in which a whole school of children were killed by ignoring rules about coal waste management. We seem convinced that destroying children is worse than destroying old people via inattention. Would one say killing children is evil but killing old people is merely criminal? Both are culturally variable.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I have a friend who insists that the universe itself is evil, stalking us and tainting our lives. Some would say this is paranoid and, of course, it’s not if the universe really IS evil, intentional. But I don’t think the universe is hostile or evil or capable of intention. It is indifferent, not at all either the killer kings of the Old Testament or the scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament, early lawyers. Those are projections. We control projections if we recognize them. We can control paranoia — until the tiger turns out to be real.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The trouble with paranoia is that it blocks perception of the anti-evil, the good and the grace that sometimes comes to us. If it feels like a trap — like an uninvited friendship — then it is evil? Don’t answer quickly. It’s not an easy question. Sly evil slips into your life so subtly so luxuriously.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I go back to the opening of this series of programs on evil that is beginning on CBS and is also on<i> Netflix</i>. It is a tour of a fabulous glass and marble house, the kind often used as a set in a popular series about upper-class people, but entirely empty. NOT a shack, NOT a deteriorating trailer, but a place with NO people. I have a clerical colleague who likes to joke about fabulous and esteemed places like universities and resorts. <i>“This would be a really nice place if it could be rid of all the people.” </i>Is this evil of him?</span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">11/29/20 Too bad. The series has faded back to familiar faces and stereotype ideas.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-15572271625002153182020-11-27T04:46:00.000-07:002020-11-27T04:46:17.808-07:00THE STORY OF A DOORKNOB<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Daniel J. Siegel</b> was inspired to use his round coffee table as inspiration for the <i>Wheel of Awaremess</i>. even though his coffee table doesn’t have a hub or spokes. If it had been my metaphor, I would have put the wheel in motion, taking that load down the road. (My thing is not acronyms but rhymes and alliteration.) I suspect this man is secure enough to take a bit of teasing, but it is serious on my part to say that line of thought, intriguing as it is, caters to the people sitting around that coffee table. (I won’t take off on the coffee.) It is a kind of thought that I used to love in the days when I had the time and money to go to workshops.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My own symbol is quite different: a doorknob. Not a nice one, but an old white porcelain doorknob that I rescued from a pile of wreckage left from a house that had been bulldozed. I still have it. There are two stories.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One is the acquisition story. My parents were taking me back to Portland after I graduated from NU. I was devastated and wept hard. Then sulked in the back seat with my bare feet sticking out the window in the hot wind until we got to Browning. When we pulled into the parking of the <i>Museum of the Plains Indian</i>, I got out, stood my unshod feet in the circle of bronze imprints of Blackfeet who had shared sign language at a Thirties conference, and said, <i>“Just throw out my luggage. I’m not going any farther.”</i></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The gift shop clerk directed me to the principal, <b>Tom McKeown</b>, who was catching bait in Willow Creek which runs behind the museum. When I waded out in the marshy grass to talk to him, a blue heron flew up and slowly wing-rowed up the creek. I may have added this to the story later. I've told it many times.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When earlier we had stopped halfway, putting up the tent trailer that my grandfather had invented, I went poking around in debris and found the doorknob. It wasn’t easy to put up the Kozy Kamp tent part because the trailer part was packed with whiskey boxes of my books. My father had been amazed when I just went into the Evanston liquor store and asked for boxes which are the right size and strength for books. He thought alcohol was the devil incarnate. His mother’s brother died of alcoholism.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The symbolism of the doorknob was about the door part, though I can be a bit of a knob. Someone later remarked that “some people are like doors.” They meant opening ways into other constructions of the world. For me, it also has come to mean access to the liminal space defined by <b>Victor Turner</b>, a virtual place both protected and exposed to new meaning.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">So I carried this doorknob along into my ministry. In Seattle I was asked to deliver the keynote speech for a conference of religious feminists where <b>Starhawk</b> was the main speaker. My speech was about socks, real ones, homemade, as a metaphor for constructing meaning. It was roundly condemned on grounds that:</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> 1. A keynote implies that someone has the key, which is a sign of hierarchy and unnecessary experts, like clergy.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> 2. The event was on Friday, the traditional beginning of the Jewish sabbath, but I was not Jewish. (They assumed I was Christian, not picking up on the Unitarian aspect.)</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> 3. I was chosen by the organizers without participation from women everywhere.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At some point Starhawk asked us to put on an altar the things we really treasured. She was aiming at cosmetics but I put my doorknob there. In those days I was too intense to be guarded. My doorknob and my “preaching lipstick” — L’Oreal, very expensive, red-gold — both disappeared. I hurt that they were gone, but thought this level of sacrifice was warranted.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At the next break, a woman brought me back my doorknob. <i>“I figured it was important to you,</i>” she said, which meant she had been paying close attention. I didn’t know her. She was taking care of me.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The keynote about socks became the lead narrative in a collection the Edmonton, Alberta, Unitarian congregation published of my “sermons.” <i>“Sweetgrass and Cottonwood Smoke.</i>” The idea of the series was reading the land, especially the high prairie where both Edmonton and Browning are located.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Fine thoughts for conferences, workshops and retreats are all very well and can earn a living for eloquent people with high aspirations, because those with the time and money will pay for them. But they don’t address the other people, the ones living with violence and murder or the ones who can barely stay alive because of hunger and exposure.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw24memfrBqHjPLoTxWGDElKM7biTxwd0haavQmyEvuH_CHzAnVrkuylhUgLkzUIcPlxUPrAKG0IztH2hLefnn3zH8Wtv9gLjh8WhYXKEVUcvPOmCqRybtOYaqpaABA2OiZjrE/s2048/GLADLY+SHELF.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw24memfrBqHjPLoTxWGDElKM7biTxwd0haavQmyEvuH_CHzAnVrkuylhUgLkzUIcPlxUPrAKG0IztH2hLefnn3zH8Wtv9gLjh8WhYXKEVUcvPOmCqRybtOYaqpaABA2OiZjrE/w640-h480/GLADLY+SHELF.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The Religious Right, I hear, is advocating firing squads for those prisoners Trump wants killed before he leaves because he believes it will please those full of vengeance. Before there were guns, the religious advocated burning at the stake and other tortures. One political group recently rolled out a guillotine. Kind thoughts about compassion while sharing a coffee table have nothing to do with this aspect. What does?</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Do we bring up the wagon wheel used as a frame to bind a man for a flogging? Being “broken on the wheel”? How do we think of punishment except as a hell? How do we trust people to behave if we don’t punish them? And now we know what happens if evil people go unpunished.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Once as clergy I attended a peace workshop where the speaker elaborated on the concept of “Father”, Abba the protector. He spoke of the little kid on the knees of her daddy, secure in his lap. In the question period I asked how this fit for the child who had been molested by the father. He froze for a minute. Then he said, “You don’t play fair.” In other words, we were gaming, tricking by omission. At least he didn’t claim Satan, letting the Papa off the hook. He just didn’t have any consciousness of how wrong things can go. Everything was going well for him. His circle was only for his kind.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But the bulldozer can come to anyone, any time. What does religion or even spirituality say to that?</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-42333617590670798532020-11-26T11:10:00.006-07:002020-11-26T11:11:03.098-07:00JUST PASSING THROUGH<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Though I dissed Dr. Siegel, author of <i>"Mind</i>", for neglecting Evil, I do understand that a teacher and workshop leader needs to use acronyms and metaphors about round coffee tables in order to be understood.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">But for me the real redemption of this thinker after his steps to including emotion, then to embodiment and communication — always widening the circle — is the chapters late in his book in which he explores the <i>Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans</i> with science and finds it undiminished yet not quite as ungraspable as it has been.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s helpful that his sub-chapters indicate the years when that particular approach was being explored by him. The first in this piece, called <u>Meaning and Mind, Science and Spirituality, </u>was thought out between 2000-2005. If the project of “self-organizing” is done mostly unconsciously lifelong, how does one work between the Scylla and Charybdis of such things: on the one hand the rigidity of the prescribed authorities of the past and on the other hand the fuzzy woo-woo of spirituality?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">Siegel organized a think-group of experts and concluded that the key was <b>“integration</b>.” He had an acronymic for that: nine domains of integration. I skipped that part. He also has a word, “mindsight.” It doesn’t touch me. Then he says, “</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>The common denominator that links our inner bodily experiences with our inter-relational experiences is energy and information flow. . . When we see that this flow happens as a fundamental part of a system bounded neither by skull nor skin, we’ve come to embrace the notion of an embodied and relational mind. When this system of mind can be viewed as having the three qualities of being <u>open, chaos-capable</u>, and <u>non-linear</u>, the mind can be seen as a part of a complex system.”</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I wish he had recognized the system bounded by the community consensus, which also imposes order at the expense of growth and relationship. But he is part of a class of people, sometimes called “liberal” or “academic” or even “entitled.” He doesn’t see the imposed limits of that community, which is the water in which he swims.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">So the next chapter is “<i>When in Mind?”</i> with a sub-chapter drawn from 2005 to 2010. He’s not stuck, he’s in California. Now he’s focusing on energy and information flow — quantum physics and the computer math that makes it possible to propose self-organizing. And he’s into meditation and wisdom traditions. Natch. Then he says, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“The </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-decoration: underline;"><i>when</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i> of mind is this emergent property of </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-decoration: underline;"><i>now</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>.”</i></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">To speak of streams, like <i>observing, witnessing</i> and <i>narrating</i> (OWN), is to speak of being as a process, on-going, while happening in the now. "Now" he wants to go to <i>sensation, observing, conceptualizing</i>, and <i>knowing</i> (SOCK). Maintain these streams and then link them to the point of harmony and you will have the felt meaning of life. With the proper instruments it’s possible to physically see the addition of new connections and circuits in the brain, particularly the hippocampus, corpus callosum and insula. Of course the pre-frontal cortex as well. If someone like JFK’s sister has a lobotomy, this possibility is literally cut off. It is a more serious wound than separating the two sides of the brain.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Taking all this into consideration, Siegel is ready to define spirituality, that quality that people claim is more important than an institutional religion. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“1) being part of something larger; and 2) having a deeper meaning than the details of everyday life, something beyond survival alone.”</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">The most intriguing theory comes next and he admit it is incomplete. The idea is that </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Energy is the movement of a potential between openness to certainty as the position on an energy probability curve moved.</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">”</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In terms of the universe, the “Big Bang” moment is all energy condensed into one Now and place, then expanding out according to the Newtonian second law of thermodynamics, always radiating out a bit of energy until it’s all gone. That’s the end of Time. The same thing works in smaller curves as the process of life, each individual beginning as a Now conception and then moving energy into the concentration of energy we call “being” until it is dissipated and gone. I may not be getting it quite right, but this is the general thought. Humans are what happens as Time sweeps the galaxy along.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Siegel speaks of the block of the Now in the same way that <b>Stan Rowe</b>, a professor at the U of Saskatchewan now retired and passed on, used to speak of a “slab of space-time.” Siegel points out that it is not the concept of Time that is a stream but rather it is a way of keeping track of the succession of slabs of space-time as we pass through them. We are as lives each examples of energy passing through time on it’s way to final expenditure.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This is why the advice is to keep moving. It is the continuing work of<i> sensation, observing, conceptualizing</i>, and <i>knowing</i> (SOCK) that comes from process that forms the mind. SOCK is also what defines life, even for a one-celled microbe which must find food and escape danger, even though it has never evolved a brain.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I have a couple of chapters to read yet and Siegel himself is working on the next book, because all this is a process and never finished. I’m thankful that I have his book and time to read it, a place to write about it. I’m thankful that I was able to get an education that prepared me to steer between<i> rigidity</i> and <i>chaos</i>. I’m thankful that at so many points in this stream of life I smacked up against boulders, both predicted and hidden, but then was able to slide off and swim again. I’m not sure whether I’m thankful for all you guys out there reading this. It’s your business anyway.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">My curve has not been a rainbow and now my energy is low, but there’s still a lot more to do. The sun is shining at the moment and the cats are out in the backyard chasing each other until the next nap time.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-18763443138875819612020-11-25T13:45:00.001-07:002020-11-25T13:45:17.305-07:00AN EXPENSIVE REMEDY FOR FOOT NEUOROPATHY<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Since I’m diabetes2 and beginning to have neuropathy in my feet, mostly because I sit too much, my attention was drawn to a long video ad touting a miracle cure.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">It took me a while to track down the five “miracle” ingredients, partly because they were flashed on the screen quickly and had all their long Latinate chemical names.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Here they are:</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>The Five Ingredients of </b></span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><b><i>Bio Sooth Pro</i></b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b></b></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Thiocton Root (thiroxine)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Calciferol (Vitamin D2, beware overdose)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Riboflavine (Vitamin B2)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Folic Acid (Vitamin B9, beware overdose)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"> Methylcobalamin (Vitamin B12)</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">plus</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/item00920/benfotiamine-with-thiamine">Benfotiamine with Thiamine</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> (Vitamin B1)</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>https://www.news-medical.net/health/Can-You-Take-Too-Much-Vitamin-B.aspx</b></span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“As B vitamins are often given as supplements and found in fortified foods, there is some risk of taking too much B vitamin. There are eight B vitamins; thiamine, ribovlavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, biotin, folic acid, and cobalamine. Each functions as an enzymatic cofactor or is a precursor to an enzymatic cofactor enabling many of the basic functions of metabolism in the body.”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The website above lists the recommended dosages. There is also thought about a need to ingest the B vitamins in a physiologically indicated balance. Too much or too little of a single “B” might make trouble if it isn't balanced with the others.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Some experts do not discuss diabetes but rather research </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>metabolic syndrome,</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> which combines glucose management with high blood pressure and obesity I agree with this approach but haven’t kept up with the recent research nor have I found a doc who has.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">It would be a good idea to get a blood screen that measures the amounts of the B vitamins in your blood so you can plan eating and supplements together. If an injection is required or wanted, it will be necessary to go to a doctor. The prices of these supplements vary wildly, so it’s good to know what they really are. The video ad for </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>Bio-Soothe Pro</i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> makes a to-do about the quality of ingredients and the care taken in preparation, which is smart. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I’ve been taking <a href="https://www.lifeextension.com/vitamins-supplements/item00920/benfotiamine-with-thiamine"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #262626;">Benfotiamine with Thiamine</span></a> and it seems to work. I shirk walking because this town’s uneven gravel streets are hard for the balance-challenged, which is what neuropathy of feet does to you besides just hurting. I was irate when a younger person was unsympathetic, saying simply that I was old and should use a cane if not a walker. It wasn’t just my reaction to getting old, but also being brushed off. Finding a cause helps me.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The most problematic element of this </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>Pro-Soothe </i></span><span style="font-kerning: none;">pill is the claim to the virtues of Thiocton Root (thiroxine). Thiroxine is used to affect the thyroid gland, which is in the throat and quite tricky. Most docs doing a checkup will feel my throat for nodules or swollen thyroid, but one advised me frankly, “Your neck is too fat for me to feel anything.” Hmph. (Only one doc ever checked my feet as is recommended for people with diabetes.) </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Messing with the thyroid is not advised without a demonstrated need. On the other hand, my grandmother developed a neck goiter — quite apparent in photos of the time — which was from lack of iodine in northern Manitoba and the reason the family moved to Oregon, nearer the sea. Now, of course, iodine is a supplement in salt. But I, for one, use much less salt than most people, so what does that mean? What did I inherit as epigenome?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">There are several plants that may be what the touters of Thiocton Root might be reacting to, for example, Turmeric and Cucumin. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190410102306.htm</b></span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; color: #474747; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Summary:</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>“Aconite root is used in East Asian traditional medicines to treat pain. Since its toxicity, it is used after heat-processing for detoxifying. The present study revealed that processed aconite root could relief neuropathic pain in murine </i>[mouse]<i> peripheral neuropathy model induced by oxaliplatin, paclitaxel, or partial ligation of the sciatic nerve (Seltzer model), and identified that its active ingredient is not benzoylmesaconine, a degraded compound of toxic mesaconitine, but neoline, a stable compound by detoxifying heat-processing.”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In short, this long vid is a clever promotion for expensive pills venturing into problematic and wistful attempts to “heal thyself.” It could bait one into the quicksand of health quacks, but the compound suggests areas to investigate. Curiosity is good for the cat’s feet.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-29081095900091104222020-11-25T04:04:00.001-07:002020-11-25T04:04:38.642-07:00EPISTOLARY ENTANGLEMENT<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Media sometimes make lists of famous long term friendships between writers. Mine is not on any of them because my correspondent prefers the shadows, but it has transformed — or maybe fulfilled — my life. You can google the most famous pairs, but I want to focus on my metaphorical entanglement which was both real and a theory concept.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>"Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when a pair or group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of .the pair or group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance... </i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Wikipedia</i></span></a></span></p>
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<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The action or fact of entangling or being entangled. A complicated or compromising relationship or situation<br />
an extensive barrier, typically made of interlaced barbed wire and stakes, erected to impede enemy soldiers or vehicles.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The once more common handwritten correspondences between individuals are now replaced by electronic transmissions that happen as quickly as pingpong. This particular exchange first came from a comment to someone else’s blog, then went to email and finally developed into sharing/alternating blog entries. Now it is over.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I’m reading <b>Siegel</b>’s book, “<i>Mind</i>”, and just came to where he admits he is Jewish-heritage/Unitarian-raised/university-employed. I groan. Kumbaya. May no evil cross this door. Hallmarkian lists of virtues. Strings of words that amount to bbb, if you need acronyms to keep order. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But Siegel’s advice still fits. His children asked him what was the meaning of life? His answer was <i>“just keep going.</i>” In spite of it all. This is the true spine of my correspondent’s life after one teenaged attempt to stop, which was foiled by those around him. Now he does the same for others. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">All three of my sibs and I admitted to considering suicide but no one tried it to my knowledge, except myself long ago. But why? I think it was the attachment style: maybe I’ll keep going and maybe I won’t. No decision. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>Disorganized/ disoriented</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">. Neither brother had a clear goal. I did, I just kept being knocked aside by circumstances, fallen on my butt with my head spinning. Again.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Siegel says that when he had a particularly successful intervention with someone, she said she “felt as though she were felt.” Not seen. Felt. Feeling was what I tried to understand at Div School, but didn’t. Kept going. This unexpected shared writing made me feel felt.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I did what I always do in any context: isolate something to research and report what is found out. The kicker with my powerful correspondent</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> was that the needed research was on worse evil than I could ever have imagined. Neglect, abuse, starvation, disease, stigma, atrocity, and demonicaly twisting identity destruction. Boys staying alive by allowing themselves to be fucked, tortured, beaten, starved, defiled, mutilated, and demeaned for money. Boys staying alive by learning to control those demonic people, the earliest often being their parents. Some achieved a kind of gallantry.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I was surprised again by the great body (embodiment) of literature and theory as taboos fell away, thought reframed the obscene, and neuroscience detailed the created connectomes even in the public mind. I kept going.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The shared writing sources were physics, even as atomic power; the Indiana dunes; salmon (Siegel, too, thought a lot about salmon); sexwork; photography; electronics, pandemics, triumphs, images and metaphors, dogs, religion. Not the literary canon. He roamed the world: ”Indian” reservations, gay beaches in tropical places, Nazi death camps, Parisian catacombs, Irish fishing villages, abandoned Italian monasteries, Carolina barrier islands, tall-masted sailing ships on the Caribbean sea, and the railway across Russia to China. I looked at the photos but never copied them — only the writing so I could read pieces again and again. I tried to fit it all together, as Siegel recommends.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This work was more compelling than the published books. It was only on blogs and often deleted. I stretched my own work to try to keep up.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Sometimes I offended him and often I needed explanations when Google didn’t know everything and Wikipedia was just flat wrong. A lot remained mystery. But I kept going. So did he, despite pain and damage only survived with surgery, tabletops of medicine, constant monitoring. (Yes, I’m using Siegel as a distraction and cover for a person who has been attacked by the scurrilous and self-interested.)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">By mistaking the intensity of my attachment as romantic, I finally destroyed the relationship. That is a rigidity, the wrong way to relate between two disorganized/disoriented persons. Siegel’s focus is not the myth of falling madly in love, but rather the provision of a secure family for children. He believes in plasticity as growth. "Entanglement" is in the index of the book five times.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I’m thankful for years of lively exchange, shocking stories -- images and ideas, parallels and differences. Our grandmothers both lived in SW Michigan on farms and we have the domestic part of that life in us as a sense of what a modest, orderly life can be like. But we also have shared the lives of people excluded and impoverished and have seen their value. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My correspondent knew much less about me because I hid and I wasn’t the point anyhow. Since ending the correspondence he has been able to see much more of me as I open up in blogs. Part of what he sees came from him anyway — a shared bitterness and boldness about what can happen. Both our families seemed irreproachable, admirable to outsiders. At my house my father had lots of nice books but behind the dirty clothes hamper, he kept his Police Gazette. My friend’s house . . . it’s his story.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Until I got to Browning in 1961, I walked through life assuming that I was doing the right thing. Ten years on the rez taught me there is no right thing. I didn’t tell the truth earlier. Because I grew up finding out about what had happened in the wars, I knew the dark side. I knew what war did and not just on the battlefield. Mostly to men — boys, really. And their sons. I just shut out the dark of what was close.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One can only survive. And witness, take notes, and testify. For this writer and I that was the shared ground of understanding. No fancy moralizing. No religious cant. Just stories, one after another, some true, some truer than actuality, an entrainment that finally reaches consilience. Maybe. At least vocabulary and principles.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When I got stories about him from some other source, he was indignant, but not as indignant as my family is now that they realize what I've found out. Nothing overtly lethal. Alcoholism, failure. But respectability can be so protected that it creates a darkness inviting penetration. So I do. Him, too. He’s younger. It’s a bit amazing that we’re still alive and writing. Just not to each other.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-36637860349784147672020-11-24T04:40:00.003-07:002020-11-24T04:40:39.762-07:00WE'RE THE WORLD'S OYSTERS<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">When the theory that humans were made of clay by some great anthropomorphism in the sky had dissipated, there was room for the incredible new understandings of how primates became hominins.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">At first it was a matter of getting better at tools and language, but then came the revelation of metaphor.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">And after that, the ability to work as groups because of communication that allowed shared goals and even empathy.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">We’re still working on that.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Parallel, some researchers began to understand how atoms became molecules that could carry DNA from conception to fruition and then to death. The human brain first develops the capacity to sense the world, limited though it may be in the womb, and then these senses begin to build a map of the world and how to operate in it. It takes three years after birth for the genome to build a brain connectome elaborate enough to support walking and talking — if all goes well.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Part of the reason birth is necessarily unfinished is that so much of the world is other people who need to be confronted for the brain map. Humans are mammals who must stay with the milk and protection of caregivers and that involves intimate contact, a relationship — a “virtual” connection face-to-face between infant and adult — is formed during the necessary acts. This is called “attachment.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In the research-supported theory of embodiment, the forming and source of thought and memory are not just in the mind but also in the muscles and organs of the whole body: eventually the legs remember how to pedal a bike and the guts remember how to digest hamburgers.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We become able to think and talk through the development of the third branch of the vagus nerve that connects the brain stem directly to the “frame of reference” in the face and shoulders, which develop the necessary connectome areas for speech. This supports emotion, which is a global body condition guided by molecules in the blood that originate in organs prompted by the connectome. Since part of this is the control of breathing and heart beat plus the rest of the vascular systems that carry information, emotion can be seen in the “frame of reference”. Thus, an observant person can see how another person feels.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Once we learned to write, our memories expanded exponentially across time and place. Our ability to record ideas in metaphors and </span>our ability to read<span style="font-size: 18px;"> has also expanded our essential skull-enclosed and skin-contained identities until they are stories and theories that include the community. Beyond that, we are also defined by what we can imagine even if it doesn’t exist. Our essential experiences not only create our attachment styles, our identities, but also can make corrections and elaborations to them as we continue in the world.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">All this is explored in the book called “<i>Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human,</i>” by <b>Daniel J. Siegel, MD</b>. Preparation in biochemistry did not prohibit him from perceiving and valuing the emotional side of his patients, though the system at that time defined emotion as irrelevant disinformation. He was criticized and took time to think about it. Exploring the thought systems that developed in Asia instead of Europe encouraged him to escape the rigid rationalism of early psychiatry in his beginnings, even to accept psychotherapy at a time when it was considered mere narcissism. Since then he has produced a stream of books, each more enlightening than the last. He has continued to watch the minutia of unfolding the mind.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Two areas of research had just begun in this book, only enough information to intrigue. One was the structure of ways the two sides of the brain interact and reconcile. The other was about the thin layers of cells we call the cortex that wrap every surface of the cerebellum. More thin layers of cortex wrap around a human brain than a primate brain — up to six -- and appear to record our new skills. One seems to be a map of directions: which way there is food and which way to escape danger. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Another seems to have a map of the body, distorted because the parts are drawn according to the richness of the information coming and going in the various parts: big hands, big face. Siegel is interested in a columnar approach — up and down through the layers in a “silo” — because he suspects that the sensations that are handled in layer 1 --which must have been there since the beginning -- are evidently sent “up” to the layers 5 and 6 which are capable of forming the raw code of perception into concepts and meanings.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Psychiatry is meant to include the health of the mechanisms of the body and treat them as possible and necessary, including medicine. Psychology is not meant to diagnose or meddle in the body, but to accumulate information about how it works. My understanding of psychotherapy is recreating the original virtual world that was begun between infant and caregiver. It will necessarily result in the brain prompting the body to vary the molecules traveling through the system, sometimes with healing effects. It ought to clarify the infant maps.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The metaphors of narration are “embodied” by actors and much of considerable overlap exists in the theory and training theories of the actor and the “virtual space” that can be created between performance on a stage and an audience that has focused on them. The manipulation and vitality of live acting is incredibly expanded by modern communication. Siegel’s openness to the existence of wireless structures we can’t see but can use is another value of this book. He even mentions “quantum entanglement” which proposes persisting connections between atoms over great distances.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This whole exploration, which goes far beyond embodiment, is of crucial importance to a writer whose words originate in ideas and understanding as well as the performance of print or image on a page or screen. I’m only halfway through the reading and there is a new book coming after this one. Now I’ll finish the first reading and go back to read again, taking notes to record a glossary that will guide further thought. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-8981980245388130482020-11-23T04:25:00.000-07:002020-11-23T04:25:03.921-07:00THE BRAIN NEST<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When I was a child in NE Portland, Ainsworth was just a street, blocks away and for some reason wider than the others, with a center strip of lawn, a boulevard, kind of sinister in the way that “special” things might be unique, valuable, and therefore guarded. Today in my old age and far away, Ainsworth is still is a word meant to be neutral but has sinister overtones for me, because it is the name of a woman who devised a test of human attachment that carries her name the Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure. It sounds callous and sinister to me, since the essence of it is scaring a child and seeing how they react, then deducing from that how properly attached they are.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In the past I’ve been labeled “borderline” when borderline was a favorite junk definition from people who couldn’t quite put their finger on the problem or even quite why it was a problem. Borderline diagnosed people are judged by the edge of their identity and how it seems to others. Attachment theory is internal, central, and unseen in the structure of the brain connectome. I’m much better described in terms of attachment style. I’ll explain.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I was only and first child of people who grew up on farms but aspired to urban culture. They married late. We lived in a neighborhood that was once a small town (Albina) and kept some of its characteristics. The street went from Prescott where my cousin lives now, down to Alberta along NE 15th as it descended the hill, passed Killingsworth (even more dangerous street, than Ainsworth) and on down to Columbia Blvd along the Columbia River. I think but cannot verify that a classmate lived on Ainsworth and had a mother who went “crazy” though no one would explain.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“</i><b><i>Ainsworth</i></b><i> is a surname with its origins in the Northwest of England. The origin of the word </i><b><i>Ainsworth</i></b><i> is from the Anglo-Saxon word 'worth' </i><i>meaning</i><i> an ‘Enclosure'.” </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">I hear this as “one’s own worth” — how to figure what that is? Something like reputation or more about value in a job? Or is it human relationship? </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My child-enclosure was the limit of how far I was supposed to go on foot, though every time it snowed a bit (not often in those days) a friend and I would take off roaming down the hill and end up near the river, having to phone home for a rescue by car because we were cold and wet. Our caretakers always came for us so we grew confident. When older I sometimes walked down that way to the Oregon Humane Society and then walked back home. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">After I had left, this modest territory became black and then criminalized and then returned to respectabiiity through art, gays, Latinos, and eating places. Waves of population moved through, using mostly the same structures. Under it all was the trolley rail system that once ran down Alberta and over the Willamette River. Under that was a path made by indigenous people and wildlife visiting the river. The people of each phase saw the same place differently. Thus territory carries culture, including animal culture, both with internal maps.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The territory of attachment is virtual — it is not concrete. You can’t see it — it’s only a “thing” because it has been conceived and named and because experience validates it. This virtual territory is a field or space that first develops between the infant and care-giver face to face. In a place where time and change happen slowly and the culture fits, the child or cub or kitten grows up secure and confident. So is the caregiver.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We are witnessing enormous disruptions that prevent people feeling secure or, nastily, can make that a path to destruction when they try to prevent change. It helps to know one’s attachment type. <b>Ainsworth</b> identified three main <b>attachment</b> styles, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>secure</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> (type A), </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>insecure</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>avoidant </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">(type B) and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>insecure ambivalent/resistant</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> (type C) The latter is basically Obstinate Defiant or ODD -- opposing without leaving. The fourth recent addition has been necessary because of our present worldwide conditions: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>disorganized/ disoriented</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> (type D) is produced by “deterritorializing” ¥ou don’t know where you are, what is under your feet or which direction to go. This could be actual or metaphorical.</span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"Formally, deterrritorialisation is the severance of social, political, or cultural practices from their native places and populations.</i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">" Migration, invasion, war, famine, climate change.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #18191b; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://culturenet.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/deterritorialization-and-reterritorialization/">https://culturenet.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/deterritorialization-and-reterritorialization/</a></b></span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The terms deterritorialization and reterritorialization are used to characterize a constant process of transformation, according to </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #1c88d3; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Gilles Deleuze</i></span></a><i> and </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_Guattari"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #1c88d3; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>Felix Guattari</i></span></a><i>. Deterritorialization is the process in which to undo what has already been done. To take control away from places that have already been established. Where “articulations are disarticulated”, an example presented by Slack and Wise. Then reterritorialization usually follows. And this is the process to re-do what has been undone to what has already been done. Except this time, the act of re-doing is to incorporate new power.” </i></span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My attachment style is <b>disorganized/disoriented</b>. The story of “Indian” reservations is obviously and exactly this situation so it feels familiar. Marrying in a progressive time, my father’s sibs had agreed that a person should have only two children, replacements in a crowded world. But my family accidentally had three, due to impulse, bad calculations or the failure of the secret shipment of condoms (illegal in those days) to arrive. Abortion was not an option. That changed the territory.</span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When I suggested the surprise of this baby as a realistic fact, my cousins — each in a family of two children — reacted as though I were talking about abortion which is a subtraction and as though an extra baby was always welcome. But it meant that the family finances and the size of the house was never quite enough. Not a real hardship, but extra stress and maybe confused strategies.</span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My mother had been a successful working girl in a small town, but now she was stretched to her limits and not quite familiar to her environment. My father was a traveling man, mostly on the road. She set me apart from her two sons as a way of survival — but then pulled me back in as an extension of herself, another way of survival. A bit confused.</span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">If the boys were happy and things were going well, I was welcome. If not, I was pushed away. Luckily, she let me read because she wished she had been able to and because then I holed up out of the way. Unluckily, she never could shake the social demand that all women must have proper weddings, meaning absolutely obedient, and passed that on to me. Luckily she was never abused -- just neglected.</span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At forty during a siege of therapy for the sake of being a minister, the counselor forgot my appointment and had left, locking me out. I sat on her porch and wept in an internal storm that was very helpful to dissect.</span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In 1944 kindergarten was half-days, but first grade was day-long. On the first day of school that year I carried a packed lunch but misunderstood the teacher’s instructions and went home for lunch as I used to. At home the door was locked. Everyone was gone. I sat on the stoop and wept. Finally I remembered my lunch and ate it, in the process smashing a ripe tomato all over my face and chin. </span></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Then my mother and pre-school brothers showed up and saw what looked like the result of a bloody accident or an attempted murder. Uproar. I was blamed for not doing as I was told. That was the earliest exclusion from the family that I can remember. It was a thread through my life, determining my <u>disoriented/disorganized attachment style</u>, but it was not at all conscious.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-4857619523789162682020-11-22T09:48:00.001-07:002020-11-22T09:48:07.883-07:00NEVER GIVE UP!<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Combining my learned attachment style of <i><u>disorganized/ </u></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"><i><u>disoriented</u></i> with my tendency to leave things unfinished, has resulted in my relentless determination to be tenacious, to not quit, to not give up.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Because of Trump’s stubborn refusal to accept defeat and get out of the way, we are conscious of the two sides of tenacity.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">His is anchored more in his attachment style which is commitment to his father and father’s values without ever reconsidering them.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Mine comes in part from always reconsidering everything.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">The thing I’m leaving unfinished has somehow changed by my doing it.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Now it’s different. So what loyalty can remain?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The sometimes unappreciated gift of this has been moving through many different situations and world-views and an education that gave me the tools to stay cool and witness. On the one hand my conscious identity says, “You will stick this out as a matter of honor.” My mother did this and taught this, though I sometimes overshot. When I signed the contract to teach in Browning, she said, <i>“Be sure to stay two years or it will look bad on your resumé.</i>” Twelve years later she said, <i>“Aren’t you ever going to leave that place?</i>”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I wouldn’t have left except the only job I could get was teaching and I no longer believed in teaching. It had changed: I now saw it as forced assimilation to a part of society that was dated. But the only alternative was marriage. Even with marriage the terms changed. At first it was romantic. Two things changed it: success which made Bob even more irresistible to ambitious women and the ghost of his second marriage which had oppressed him and slipped that wife's face over mine.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But on my side, I had also changed. Because of his protection and allowing me to attach to him so completely, I had the chance to reorganize and grow. I had claimed this territory, not just one person. I should have given up and left sooner, but it took a while to figure it out. In fact, Bob nearly pushed me out and my successor certainly encouraged him. Also his mom. So it was disorganized and would have been disorienting except that Bob — while circumventing conventional divorce that would have endangered his small empire and with the collusion of the white professional community of the county seat — let me stay on our little ranch on Two Medicine River, the one the flood had converted into a gravel field full of thistles. I loved it. I reterritorialized and reclaimed myself.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Another intense result of the schism between my disorganized/disoriented attachment structure and my conscious, rational, achieving rationality was the ministry. I had attached to my UU minister and wanted to enter his context, which I understood not at all. He told me that. But the side-chutes and stairsteps of the religious institution allowed me to attend the U of Chicago Div School and its associated seminaries. For an example, one of the most powerful was the Jesuit seminary class taught by <b>Robert Schreiter, </b>a priest in a teaching order, which endorsed my original education on the other side of town, theatre classes at Northwestern University, a major confirmation and re-framing. Now I was reterritorializing again. But I had to navigate the ordeals of Meadville/Lombard seminary:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Earning an MA in Religious Studies from the U of Chicago by </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">passing 6 formidable foundational classes.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Passing a test for reading French.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Passing a basic 10 week Clinical Pastoral Care initiation </span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Surviving an internship with a minister at a major church.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Getting approval and guidance from the UUA Fellowship Committee in order to be accepted into the UU placement machinery.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Writing an acceptable scholarly thesis.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Finding the money for all this.</span></li><li><span style="font-size: 18px;">Locating a first congregational ministry.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">There were other incidents: “growth groups” with various counselors, rivalry from other women students, connections with my brief sojourn as a lay UU, being twice the age of most of the students, limited faculty at Meadville and terrifyingly brilliant faculty at U of Chicago, my assumed relationship to my original potent UU minister.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Also, my decade with the Blackfeet meant nothing. I never did connect with the U of C anthropology people. Instead I attached to <b>Richard Stern</b>, the novelist, which was good luck. His “thing” was narrativity and modernity which were both structure and orientation. Useful beyond describing.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Then I found more sidechutes as friendly big male white clergy decided to use a cache of covert Universalist money to send me back home to Montana for a circuit-riding ministry. Tenacity was paying off! The basis was attachment to territory: these men loved the prairie as much as I did. But they adapted to the UU world — but not as congregation serving ministers. I did not. The denomination changed. I left.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">What followed was a return to Portland where my mother refused to let me “come home”. I explored options which included a former high school teacher and a UU clergy colleague. In the end my mother, who knew she was dying, relented. She was already sheltering my youngest brother, but thanks to her teaching career, she had resources.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When she died, I took her bequest and a "flight" back to the edge of the rez, which is expanding so much that one-third of the people in the town are enrolled in the tribe or close to it. This is my burrow and I’m sticking it to it.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The fact that I accept a disintegrating house and too many cats is explained by the safety that lets me explore ideas even as deep in my own psyche as my basic attachment style formed during WWII. It turns out to be relevant. Over-committed, paranoid, tough, and prideful. Each of those qualities work well in the appropriate setting. </span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">What I learned was not the drive to control or be “Number One” but to do what works, to endure hardship, and to accept that nothing is permanent or even stable. Also, to always be conscious that some people will disappear, no matter how beloved. </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-2027978670559172602020-11-21T04:48:00.000-07:002020-11-21T04:48:05.114-07:00HANG ON TIGHT!<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcd6ipjEDIvhlj282xrLNo_83nJFxoO3H8orwiCdxcX7ldGwOEDhUzkURxa-s4msR0hBOGTZDgJa6bj2DSPz3B9VHVfrAL8KIS6O_hE8-qB9zoHHScAvzosq2XV7TBK9Ry5gCj/s259/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="481" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcd6ipjEDIvhlj282xrLNo_83nJFxoO3H8orwiCdxcX7ldGwOEDhUzkURxa-s4msR0hBOGTZDgJa6bj2DSPz3B9VHVfrAL8KIS6O_hE8-qB9zoHHScAvzosq2XV7TBK9Ry5gCj/w640-h481/images.jpeg" width="640" /></a></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">There are two major groups of baby birds: </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">altricial</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> and </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">precocial</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Precocial</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> birds, like many domestic fowl, hatch and walk off, looking for “someone” to follow — hopefully a parent rather than a passing cow, though attaching to humans is always amusing.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">All songbirds are <i>altricial,</i> meaning they are hairless, noisy, and scream for food, rather like humans. They have larger brains in order to compose music, a precursor of language. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The variation in mammals comes basically from the necessity of nursing with milk and physical care like cleaning. Some babies can set off on foot right away but sticking close to mom; others need to stay in the nest, though it may be a psychological one embodied by the arms of the caretaker. Babies who do not attach to their caretakers will perish. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">During the first three past-womb years, they learn to walk and talk. Inside their heads they are forming a tangle as filamental, opportunistic and wedged together as a twig-type nest, but it is made of neurons, the axons of nerve cells plugging together to form a map of their world. This tells them what to pursue and gobble and what they should run from. In shorthand, it is the genome building the connectome from sensing the environment.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvy19L3tKaQcHoufXFgCZrbjcONymEj9t23ABKaG8VA_I0277QOhYBX3N5QgYW_ulDpQvFRWF-vsLumNYl4xDRbq3b5ZSUaMeRrA4fOSGOE0MG-QNcnZNupKUGcvgUudLsU9Jr/s640/connectome-640x518.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="640" height="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvy19L3tKaQcHoufXFgCZrbjcONymEj9t23ABKaG8VA_I0277QOhYBX3N5QgYW_ulDpQvFRWF-vsLumNYl4xDRbq3b5ZSUaMeRrA4fOSGOE0MG-QNcnZNupKUGcvgUudLsU9Jr/w640-h516/connectome-640x518.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A computerized map of the connector</div><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When they can move themselves, babies learn to “run for your life” in two-fold ways (run to caregiver for safety or escape for safety). If the caretaker or the escape route are not safe or are missing, that might mean death. We’ve seen the toddlers who venture away from their moms, then panic and rush back to mom. We’ve seen vids of fox cubs who see danger and bolt down the burrow. These behaviors are instinctive and built into mammals. The related adventures design the connectome.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px;"><i>“The Politics of Attachment: Lines of Flight with </i><b><i>Bowlby</i></b><i>, </i><b><i>Deleuze</i></b><i> and </i><b><i>Guattari</i>” </b>is about these stories. You can find it on </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px; text-decoration: underline;">Academia.edu</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px;"> if you wish the fine-tuned version with a political slant, which is that some will argue this means mothers should stay home and raise children: this material is ammunition. My political angle is different: pointing out the destruction and distortion of children wrenched from their caretakers, esp. mothers with the biological and genetic connection of birth.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I’m not just talking about the atrocity of seizing children in order to deter immigrants, but also about the many modern forces that remove the mother and destroy the nest. I include the upending of families governed by fertility ethics; drugs including alcohol that smash behavior; monetary pressure that requires moms to work and housing to be unreliable; and the media distractions like TV, the Internet, and pocket communicators.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">All of these factors destroy and distort attachment. Damaged attachment function (biological as well as psychological) creates a sort of person who can’t see reality, who has few resources and limited energy, who can’t think of options or be creative.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">One set of thinkers identifies four “kinds of attachment.”</span></p>
<ul>
<li style="color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">secure.</span></li>
<li style="color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">anxious-preoccupied.</span></li>
<li style="color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">dismissive-avoidant.</span></li>
<li style="color: #18191b; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">fearful-avoidant.</span></li>
</ul>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Some identify a fifth category that might be called “intermittent” or “disorganized/disoriented.”</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We idealize the “secure” attachment children as becoming confident adults who are effective in the world. This was ideal when most people lived by agriculture or in small towns. Certainly the most secure babies are those in cultures where they are carried on their mother’s backs. But there are cultures where this is dangerous.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Bob Scriver</b> used to say that when one was driving and suddenly came upon “white” children, they would stay in a group. You either avoided them all or hit all of them. But “indian” children would scatter. Most would survive or maybe one or two could not be avoided. One can see this in younglings in wildlife movies. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">If you pull into a yard with children who are not secure, you may not see any children because they will be watching you from the brush. Flight away from danger has been learned. Secure children will run to the intruder to see who they are.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The nature of the citizenry will depend upon the majority attachment styles learned according to the social stratus of their group, the economic and crime status of the neighborhood, and the capacity of the progenitors. The result will not be theoretical, but actual — really happening. A remapping of the genome/connectome.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Some families will sort children, allowing some of them steady attachment and protection — either boys treated as primary or girls accepted as motherly or glamorous —which has consequences. Birth order matters. Twins matter. Prettiness matters. Extended family support matters. All this is the material for biography or maybe autobiography, which are about individuals.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #101214; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But when there are aggregates of styles or circumstances of attachment in great enough numbers as in war or depression or famine, these become the material of culture and culture change. Wise polities take these into account when developing child care systems, and look out for the interest of those with hostile caregivers. <b>Deleuze</b> calls the result “living forms” arising from within the people. </span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #101214; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #101214; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><b>Guattari </b>says something similar about the adolescent who must now add sex to attachment. These thinkers are almost unbearably multisyllabic, for instance: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“to liberate a new abstract machine that will be manifested in the most diverse registers: redirection of perceptive codes, folding of the self and/or poetic, cosmic, social exteriorization, etc. But this release mechanism in reality has nothing unilateral about it because other “external” semiotic components could accelerate, inhibit or re-orient the effects of the biological and seminotic components of puberty.”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It’s enough to make anyone go hide in their mother’s basement (burrow). But D and G are always looking at the big picture and the possibility that some exterior force — war, climate change, earthquake, tsunami — may not allow the possibility of flight to anywhere because the whole landscape is changed to much to find either the anchor person or place. Survival offers only risk and death. Pandemic is one of those exterior forces.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">This passage deserves to be high-lighted: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>“You have to keep enough of the organism for it to reform each dawn; and you have to keep small supplies of significance and subjectification, if only to turn them against their own systems when the circumstances demand it</b><i>.”</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The thinkers are speaking to healers, saviors, leaders. But some circumstances will remove all of them. Then what? We can only draw on what has gone before and how it has already shaped us. We need to do that now.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I want to end on a positive note. When the Big Flood came through the rez and killed many, a huge cottonwood on <b>Merle Magee</b>’s river bottom ranch was uprooted and crashed sideways into his floating house. A nest of robins went with it. After the storm the sturdy nest had survived on its branch. The parents had also survived and continued to bring food to the babies who grew to maturity as always.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Did you note the little owl who attached to the Christmas tree? The one named for a millionaire?</span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="background-color: white; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2cNroIqYtYuc7UpQ4sEI_dXEdk4qnld6f6UVosjxAO6MS3uIfa4zmlYZxe4-JPAvnz1ll0h0v3aqa22VTRqyEQmE4UP9fx2XZ3Z2naHPr41pZAknpKgGvimdrpHC4ssy_2fi/s640/2020rcowl.2e16d0ba.fill-661x496.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2cNroIqYtYuc7UpQ4sEI_dXEdk4qnld6f6UVosjxAO6MS3uIfa4zmlYZxe4-JPAvnz1ll0h0v3aqa22VTRqyEQmE4UP9fx2XZ3Z2naHPr41pZAknpKgGvimdrpHC4ssy_2fi/s320/2020rcowl.2e16d0ba.fill-661x496.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-60460660346769806742020-11-20T05:22:00.000-07:002020-11-20T05:22:29.599-07:00OPPOSITION DEFIANCE EXPLORED<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Though I can find no evidence, I could swear I wrote a previous post about “oppositional defiance disorder” usually described as a child’s stage of development.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">But the post is gone.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Sorry if this is just a repeat, but it seems important enough to repeat, esp. now.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This website relates ODD to ADHD and surely that’s justified if only in terms of anger arising from frustration and injustice.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://www.additudemag.com/oppositional-defiant-disorder-in-adults/">https://www.additudemag.com/oppositional-defiant-disorder-in-adults/</a></b></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“Adults with </i><a href="https://www.additudemag.com/what-is-oppositional-defiant-disorder/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #0d677a; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>ODD</i></span></a><i> are more than just aggressive and irritating from time to time. They feel mad at the world every day, and lose their temper regularly. This may manifest as verbal abuse or road rage. Adults with ODD defend themselves relentlessly when someone says they’ve done something wrong. They feel misunderstood and disliked, hemmed in, and pushed around.</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“Constant opposition to authority figures makes it difficult for adults with ODD to keep jobs and to maintain relationships and marriages. They are particularly quick to anger, they are impatient, and they have a low tolerance for frustration. They see themselves as mistreated, misunderstood, and unappreciated. They see themselves as the victim rather than the cause of the pain in the family system.“</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“ODD has a strongly genetic component. It runs in families and several people in the same family may be affected. It often begins in childhood with patterns of rebellion against adults and their rules. Some children with ODD outgrow the condition by age eight or nine. But about half of them continue to experience symptoms of ODD through adulthood.”</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This website includes a self-test.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I see this as built-in to our culture now. There seem to be two modes: aggressive and passive. Aggressive can be violent to the point of murder. Passive is one I’ve used myself rather often: simply standing and staring as though not speaking the language. In fact, verbal ODD is pervasive when contrasted with actual defiant behavior.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Certainly there is justification for ODD now: out of work, evicted, broke, infected — some of it randomly and some of it imposed by cultural injustice or bosses and politicians taking advantage of the opportunity.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“Individual therapy teaches people with ODD a series of techniques for managing anger, controlling emotions, and solving problems. It can provide positive alternative behaviors to replace defiant ones. This type of therapy works best when it begins early in life, when family and social interactions aren’t ingrained and difficult to change.”</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Suggestions abound about which pills to take, all very fine and civilized if the environment allows it. Otherwise there are fistfights, rebellions and even wars. I don’t see discussion in terms of universal cultural addressing of what is making people so rage-ful. The real cure is justice, listening and empathy. </span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">An enraged father who acts out his frustration at home creates a whole family that becomes angry, if not intimidated, fearful, and distorted. But so many jobs are frustrating, not least those of cops. My own father was aggressively angry when we kids were small, but as he aged he went to passive defiance, saying “duh” and staring at us. Hard to know how much of this is genetic, but some for sure. It’s my paternal family’s style.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The major insight of <b>Steve Benen</b>’s book,<i> “Imposters”</i>, is that the Repubs discovered how much damage they could do by simply failing to do anything as well as blocking everyone else. If this were defined as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, the idea might lead to insights. So that suggests a third route of defiance: getting very very rich, rich enough to ignore law. </span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It also begins to explain that if you are frustrated by the Rule of Law, you can simply ignore it. No need to punch the lawyer — just go silent and uncooperative. Of course, cops know that the cure for that is violence, but it becomes a habit one takes home. How does the Rule of Law have any relevance if it’s not enforced? Again and again we see our mighty leaders simply shrug and the monitors (those not fired) finally shrug as well.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Magnifying a child’s transitional frustration and opposition as a strategy for control into an adult’s disrupting defiance and then to a cultural feature that could bring down the nation is still not addressing an even bigger horizon — the failure to handle cultural sea changes that many cannot understand or even survive.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My parents were struggling with the transition from an ag-based world and its morality to that of the industrial revolution which they never quite mastered, much less getting past the first signs of a new world order based on knowledge and abstract skill. Both my parents were fascinated by the new knowledge of cosmos and cell metabolism, chimps and hominin brains, but they had nothing to put in the place once occupied by “God.” My mother was much attached to the idea of a forgiving Jesus but married my father even though he publicly announced he was an atheist. My maternal grandfather, who was certainly ODD, threatened to skewer him with a pitchfork. Maybe it was a safe aggression on her part to defy her father in the name of love.</span></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #141414; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Searching for a new approach, I watch <b>David Attenborough</b>’s films. Get distance, way up high or way down deep. Look at the enormous masses, the devastating losses, and then the incredible beauty and fittingness of individuals. I see these factors in my index groups: Blackfeet, young gay men and UU ministers. It’s in my memories of <b>Leland Ground</b> whom I noted in a post, BECAUSE he was one who tried to guide his despair and rage into salvation. </span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-40885314723422057462020-11-19T10:33:00.002-07:002020-11-19T11:26:01.391-07:00LELAND GROUND'S DEATH HITS HARD<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">This photo of</span><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> Leland Ground </b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">was taken in 1961 behind the original Browning School where there were teacher apartments.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">The dog belonged to the Hazeltons and was supposed to be a guard dog.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">You can see it is guarding Leland. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1TqkeD6_I_eCpKyAIWbQCfRYoR7Ubjsek35c6K32WNhPI9giK-yVOzpg_JBkIln4T40xziiH6VESjFxGaV5oTdM2dDS0I_lWMBXsCj0PiNhBFQwfriXrW1EgHqIUlDRYseHv/s400/Leland093.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1TqkeD6_I_eCpKyAIWbQCfRYoR7Ubjsek35c6K32WNhPI9giK-yVOzpg_JBkIln4T40xziiH6VESjFxGaV5oTdM2dDS0I_lWMBXsCj0PiNhBFQwfriXrW1EgHqIUlDRYseHv/w426-h640/Leland093.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px;">I didn’t know Covid-19 had killed Leland until I finally saw a list of victims in the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px; text-decoration: underline;">Glacier Reporter</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-kerning: none; font-size: 18px;">. He was in my 1961 7th grade English class and talked a lot about candy and Hawaii. Those were hard times, much more spare than today. My contract was for $3450. I had no telephone, no car, and an apartment so small I could sit at the kitchen table and without getting up reach both sink and stove.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When I moved back here in 1999, Leland was one of the first to visit me. He brought me “deer meat” which is what fancy people call venison. I kept a box of mint tea, which he preferred rather than coffee. We’d sit and talk, sometimes frivolously and sometimes very seriously. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">After another murder on the rez he was incredulous that I’d known about what amounted to hundreds, particularly in the Sixies when I was married to <b>Bob Scriver</b>, who was City Magistrate and Justice of the Peace at the time. Leland had thought the reason no one did anything about it was that no one knew, but everyone did. He ran his Eagle Calf oxygen supply business out of the house where Bob Scriver grew up, next to where Piegan Institute was built much later.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I blogged about Leland on June 13, 2007. About this time he had trouble with his leg. Instead of going to the Indian Health Service, he went to the Veteran’s Administration hospital near Helena. There he became infected with resistant Mersa bacterium and got worse instead of better. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (</i><b><i>MRSA</i></b><i>) is a bacterium that causes infections in different parts of the body. It's tougher to treat than most strains of staphylococcus aureus -- or staph -- because it's resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.”</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Some docs wanted to amputate his leg but a young VA physician was determined to use every possible approach, some of them very new. For a time Leland could go home but had to inject himself with antibiotics. At one point the doc used radioactive tagging to find exactly where the infection was hiding. After months of painful struggle, Leland was cured. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Besides me, Leland visited a man in town who lived in a trailer behind the old Texaco station now being cleared out. The man was a loner who often traveled around town in an old car he inherited from his mother, stopping by pedestrians to start conversations. He didn’t die of Covid but was found frozen, sitting in his easy chair. His trailer had run out of heat. After that Leland didn’t come so often.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">At one point the Browning Schools, as the Blackfeet Heritage Program, helped create a series of small books about Piegan individuals. “Grass Woman Stories” was told by <b>Mary Ground</b>, that vital and vivid ancient matriarch. They were recorded by <b>Cynthia Kipp</b>, her granddaughter, who also just died of Covid-19. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In this book Mary Ground told a dramatic story from June, 1896, that began at Holy Family Mission School where she was a student and interpreter. It was about lovers who fled on horseback, taking refuge at Willow Creek School north of Browning. A pursuit and shoot-out led eventually to death. Leland either didn’t know about the book or hadn’t read it but was indignant that he didn’t know the story earlier, since he was also a descendent of Mary Ground. Those books need to be reprinted and publicized. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Eventually Leland told me about a hit-and-run death in his childhood that killed a sister he was supposed to be watching though he was not much older. This haunted his life, drove his beliefs. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I have a copy of a novel he started about a magic healing plant. I gave him a copy of the pic you see here, and he framed it to hang on the wall at Eagle Calf.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">His death was in April in Oklahoma.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://www.buchananfuneralservice.com/obituary/leland-ground">https://www.buchananfuneralservice.com/obituary/leland-ground</a></b></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Leland's hometown was Browning, Montana.</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-kerning: none;"><i> </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He grew up with his mother and father John and Evelyn Ground. He was the second oldest of four brothers. Rodger, John, Rick and Larry and two sisters Venetta and Christy.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Leland was an artist when it came to how he viewed life, he always was of the mindset that you have to look for the good in your life.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He displayed this through his love for not only being a visionary when it came to projects that he would undertake, he loved to build anything that he could, he loved to showcase his creative side through his paintings, writings and his endless words of wisdom.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Leland was a dreamer, he longed to see the success for his family, friends and his people. He graduated from high school in 1967 and then went to Haskell in Lawrence Kansas. There he received a degree in accounting and earned a certificate in meat cutting. From there he went on to enlist in the air force in the early 70’s. He was in the air force for 3 years where he studied avionics and repaired aircrafts. He believes serving taught him a lot of lessons that he adopted as a part of his character, he learned self discipline and consistent hard work will allow you to reap the benefits of whatever you put your mind to.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He was Sergeant from 1969-1972</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>While he was in active duty he got married to Shirley on December 23, 1970.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>When he was honorably discharged from the airforce they moved and lived in LA for 2 and a half years where he did meat cutting. And they then moved back to Browning and from there they welcomed their daughter Carlin into the world in May 1971 and Tisha joined them in 1981. He went on to not only accomplish many jobs, such as.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i> </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Full charge Accountant-Blackfeet Nation</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Legal Research Analyst-Blackfeet Nation</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Oil and Gas Coordinator-Blackfeet</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Natural Resources Director-Blackfeet Nation</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Tribal councilman-Blackfeet Nation</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Tax Administrator-Blackfeet Nation</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i> </i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He soon became an entrepreneur and owned his own businesses</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>One of them involved laying insulation in peoples homes, he had a construction business that he undertook with his brothers. And there was EagleCalf medical.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Where he took care of oxygen patients and set up their medical equipment.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He is the type of person who will ask about “how is the Lord treating you?” first before talking about someone’s daily life or the issues at hand. He had a way of making you take a step back from your problems and look at your situation from a different perspective.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>The essence of who the lord was in leland's life, brought him together with his wife Kimberly and her daughter Jessica. He married Kimberly on December 16, 2000. They believed that helping people along their travels was their ministry and for the next 19 years they shared their love for the Lord with everyone.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He loved cooking, fishing, playing stick games , traveling to powwows, traveling to the beach, visiting family and friends all along the way to his various destinations. While leaving them with much laughter and beautiful memories to reflect on.</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>He is survived by his wife Kimberly Ground, his daughters Carlin, Tisha and Jessica. His sisters Venetta and Christy, his brothers Rodger, John, Rick and Larry. His grandchildren Kenny, Jordan, Aubrey, Lenna, Tahj, Taya and Kyra</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>God children: Melissa St. Goddard, Tisha Littleplume and Kyle Calflooking</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Great grandchildren: Anastasia, Keira, Aurora, Amelia,Amaziah, Jericho, Jazmine and Malachi</i></span></p>
<p style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i> </i></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-64823532157834251752020-11-18T13:19:00.001-07:002020-11-18T13:19:23.330-07:00SELF-CARE: this is personal<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">I’m going to post this without cooling and editing because otherwise I might lose the courage.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Nor posting to Medium which is supposed to be “fine writing.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4M8ZXhpqbq65TlAl6bRl3ZUkvOg8vGBBlKZrNV5j2x904GJd2yDzvpFqAb7FJzXOpMdhS0xMnT7wxYoksLYGss7GEVViLklcYIvrbpVwNzQy9ag2wC91yymsKLmDiIbijJ71p/s2048/chair+by+heat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4M8ZXhpqbq65TlAl6bRl3ZUkvOg8vGBBlKZrNV5j2x904GJd2yDzvpFqAb7FJzXOpMdhS0xMnT7wxYoksLYGss7GEVViLklcYIvrbpVwNzQy9ag2wC91yymsKLmDiIbijJ71p/w640-h480/chair+by+heat.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">My gas installer had a mild case of Covid in August. Enough time has passed that I think he might not be contagious and anyway we stayed far apart as did all the tradesmen who went through here. Either I didn’t catch Covid or I had it but couldn’t tell it apart from the status quo.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Pondera County is where I live. Toole is where the laundromat is. I’ve been wary of using the laundromat, but now I look at these stats:</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Pondera</b>: <b>62 active</b>, 198 recovered, 2 deaths</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Toole</b>: <b>24 active</b>, 541 recovered, 8 deaths</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Toole is the Port of Entry to Canada and a train/truck intermodal center, plus a prison and nursing homes. I doubt whether the prison occupants are counted here.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">For comparison, </span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Cascade</b> (Great Falls): 3339 active, 788 recovered, 53 deaths.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Glacier</b> (Blackfeet Rez, if their stats are included): 137 cases, 964 recovered, 18 deaths</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The big health label beyond Covid is Diabetes 2 which I’ve had for years now. I’m not on insulin and cut out all sugar except that late in the afternoon I often hit a low and eat a few squares of chocolate. Biggest worry is the impact on my feet. <i>“Sitting is the new smoking.”</i> By bedtime my feet are engorged despite being on mild heat. I’m taking Benfotiamine, Vitamin B1 made more soluble, which seems to help. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The tradesmen always said, “You don’t look like you’re 80.” They are used to women my age here who have lived on sugar, nicotine, and alcohol and been out in the sun a lot. Nowadays they also have Diabetes 2, but are dependent on horrendously expensive insulin paid for by Medicare. They are vulnerable to everything and die young of cancer.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When I stopped eating sugar, I lost about thirty pounds, but didn’t get thinner. Instead my skin became loose and is still puckered like seersucker. I have what the Heart Butte kids used to call a “pop belly” — very common around here — but now it’s more of an empty sack. Still makes it hard to tend to my feet. I should be massaging them regularly after soaking in hot water. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">But the real health hazard is my attitude. I just don’t care about all this stuff you’re supposed to do. For one thing a person is supposed to use bedtime and rising as well as the three meals at the normal times. But I’m not scheduled like that. I respond to the cats’ schedule: Up at 4AM, eat write and back to sleep at 5AM; up at 9 or 10AM; hand-eat all day; nap at noon; eat at 5PM; nap afterwards; eat at 9PM; bed at 11PM. This does not correspond to when pills are supposed to be taken. On the cats’ schedule it doesn’t matter whether I care or not because they pester until I do it, but they don't know about pills.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This old house is full of workarounds, operating gimmicks. displacements, etc. I’m trying to disperse my library and archives, but the pandemic means that the places I want to take them are closed. The most I can do is box and label. The cats enjoy the chaos and like sleeping in the boxes. But they are taking liberties with their turds. I sheeted the front room rugs with plastic, which they assumed means they can “go” anyplace now. Not quite ten cats compose a colony of relatives, and I’d like to give away some. Four big soft agreeable tomcats would be good mousers on ranches except that the coyotes eat them. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">No money for veterinarians. The town is too small for occasional spay/neuter clinics and the larger towns do not advertise them here. I have not contacted the one humane society I know of in Shelby. Whatever the cats are carrying — viruses, microbes, worms — I share. No fleas or ticks. I have not given birth to kittens. Occasionally a kitten begins to cough and dies. There are four corona viruses that afflict cats.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">In terms of writing, which is the point of all this, the content is going well. I’m gradually finding the people I should be relating to. I had high hopes for Medium which started out talking about quality writing and turned out to be how to make a living by re-cycling pop stuff. I can’t make money from them because the setup is for people in cities who have websites and cell phones for transferring funds. If I had a website, as suggested by Lulu.com who wants me to sell books, I would be starting a kitchen table business that if successful would eat up my writing time. Internet use is getting more difficult and intricate just as I am less able to cope with it.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Lately I’ve been attracting business parasites who offer to rewrite my material into movies or correct the dozens of mistakes I’m making in formatting or some other thing that would make me rich and famous. I also attract people who read a post like this and are filled with benevolence, wanting to offer friendship and maybe even gifts because they want to get past my boundaries and save me, be part of my life. I puke. History buffs think I’m in their frame of reference, which is white triumph over savages. Not.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I should provide something positive that I really like and seems to be a way forward. <b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch v=KJn4s4IhXjQ&feature=youtu.be ">https://www.youtube.com/watch v=KJn4s4IhXjQ&feature=youtu.be </a></b></span></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">This is three interviews, one with the editor of Slant publishing house at the beginning and one with a Christian screenwriter at the end.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">The middle is about kids, which I don’t do.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">It sounds as though they’re claiming Christianity back from the mega-church-mega-mad people and also taking down the idea of “fencing the Communion” which is the historical term for an early time when the Christians were so defensive that they would only allow the “saved” to participate in ritual.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">Not that I’m Christian or want to be, but that it’s in my culture along with other “religions”.</span><span style="font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">I want to part out that “thing” and scrap some pieces.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The writing that has seemed cast aside is the exploration of ideas, well-explored and expressed. Where is the audience? Certainly not in politics and not in venues like Medium. It’s almost like people are hiding in fear of attack.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">No one here will attack me, but they will withdraw services. I’m past that now. My house is much safer without gas pipes underneath it. The wall furnace is my only gas appliance and it vents outside. The cats love it.</span></p><div><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-27302831869275411852020-11-18T05:24:00.004-07:002020-11-18T05:24:56.296-07:00RELIGION IS A BIG TENT<p> <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">When I admitted that the reason I applied to Meadville, the UU seminary, because it was a way to lift up the skirt of the U of Chicago Div School and get into the tent without having to compete with a lot of Ph.D. candidates, my mentoring minister did not object, but he had a lot of warnings.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Some were useful.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Some things he didn’t know about.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Like, the prejudice against what they called “phenomenology” which is about the sensate world rather than some virtual dimension. Likewise, their need to be logical, reasoning from prior knowledge, and excluding emotion as a contamination. They didn’t like women either. Nor were they really acquainted with “the parish,” meaning the care of people with an affinity gathered in a congregation. Meadville was a side show about actual ministry.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But there were other streams of thought, like the core of comparative and historical religion, which prompted me to accumulate moments of intense meaning that were not traditionally considered “religion” because they made no explicit claim to be an institution. This meant I could include my experience with Blackfeet Bundle Ceremony as well as moments of high theatre. This took me to the discussion of religion as liturgy which is a performance that used what I had learned as a theatre undergrad taking classes in acting. Shared dimensions include the individual management of the performer/celebrant; the integration of other levels like music, building, education, management of birth, marriage and death; and the shared experience of the collected people.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Religion is also a culturally identified body of thought and performance developed in a particular time and place, emerging out of the ecosystem. Awkwardly, it often functions as a rival government, esp when it is displaced from its origin which the participants cling to as “the old country” of their identities. Before people moved around the planet in such numbers the government and the religion were the same thing.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The now growing category of “nonreligious but spiritual” opens a new approach that is particulate in terms of members and yet can be identified as a “thing.” A few very tentative groups are organizing.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Many “religions” began as dissent from the pre-existing, without the founders even knowing it was separate — like <u>Christianity</u> coming out of <u>Judaism</u> or <u>Lutherans</u> coming out of the <u>Roman Catholics</u>. Usually the dissent is framed as reform and in terms of dogma, but later is seen as a reaction to socioeconomic forces. <u>Transcendentalism</u>, for instance, though it didn’t continue to develop at the time — maybe what we’re seeing now is the eventual continuation. The catastrophic impact of climate change without any “big hand” of God certainly makes us wish for an Oversoul.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">My mention of <b>Eliade</b> prompted my cousin,<b> Katherine Rouzie</b>, to point out a professor named <b>Wasserstrom</b> at </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;">Reed College</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">, the UU founded college in Portland.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><a href="https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/wasserstrom-all-religion-is-interreligion.html"><b>https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/articles/2019/wasserstrom-all-religion-is-interreligion.htm</b>l</a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The festschrift begins with an essay Steve once casually shared with GhaneaBassiri when they were preparing to coteach a course called “</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><i>Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion.”</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i> . . .</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>The essay, “Nine Theses on the Study of Religion,” puts forth the idea that all religion is inter-religion, meaning religion is always relational. There are no clear boundaries between religions. That is why the term religion is useful. It captures as the scholar’s object of study the ways specific religious traditions have historically developed in relation to one another. Embedded in the concept of religion are specific religions, such as <u>Judaism, Buddhism</u>, or <u>Islam</u>. . . .Rather, Wasserstrom observes that systems of belief do not exist in and of themselves, in isolated categories. They exist among people. Given this, he reconsiders religion as faith and posits that the role and responsibility of religion scholarship is to make sense of the complex relations humans have maintained—both past and present—by appealing to the gods.”</i></span></p>
<p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #262626; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Below is a quote from a<b> Jay Livernois</b> review of Wasserstrom’s book. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #5c5c5c; font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>“In the nihilistic aftermath of World War II, the efforts of emerging phenomenologist <b>Mircea Eliade</b>, Judaist <b>Gershom Scholem,</b> and Islamicist <u>Henry Corbin</u> formed the discipline of the History of Religions (in Ascona, Switzerland).” </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> Until now I’ve not seen Eliade grouped with anyone (maybe <b>Tillich</b>) or called “an emerging phenomenologist.” I thought Eliade was stand-alone, unique. Given the resistance to phenomenology at the U of C Div School of my time, this helped explain why he was housed (both office and apartment) with we UU’s. (UU’s, of course, love prestige so welcomed him.)</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This was before the wave of unchurched but spiritual people and just at the beginning of what I call the Algerian French philosophers: <b>Foucault, Derrida,</b> et al. No one suspected that we would ever be able to penetrate the neurological mysteries of cells and brains. These developments have made rational my insistence on religion as an immanence of meaning arising from the interaction of humans with ecosystems and achieving a transcendence of conventional behavior.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">It was the very U of C insistence on analyzing one’s methods and sources, which they took to be access to the true value of a Ph.D., that forced me to be so self-conscious. Far from the prescribed steps of Euro philosophy, my methods were sloppy, random, happenstance, and therefore able to see what was invisible to some. The only explanation those scholars seemed to respect was supernatural. They were unwilling to give up mystical experience and I agree with that. They also couldn’t give up the metaphor of “God” but kept Him as a “thing” with a new name, love or something. Inevitably their systems drifted back to a big Pater in the sky.</span></p>
<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>from</i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><i>: “Nine Theses on the Study of Religion” </i></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>a chapter in a very expensive book by Wasserstrom.</i></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;">“I think the peculiar office of scholars in a careful and gloomy generation is to be (as the poets were called in the Middle Ages) Professors of the Joyous Science, defectors and delineators of occult symmetries and unpublished beauties; heralds of civility, mobility, learning and wisdom; affirmers of the one law, yet as those who should affirm if in music and dancing; expressors themselves of that firm and cheerful temper, infinitely removed from sadness, which reigns through the kingdoms of chemistry, vegetation and animal life. — </span><b style="font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;">Ralph Waldo Emerson</b><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-style: italic;"> Religious Studies, in so far as it is philosophically defensible, seeks a general perspective. The study of religion strives for philosophical understanding of the human as such and seeks species-wide generalizations.” </span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hmmm.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-60658005138311463682020-11-17T04:43:00.001-07:002020-11-17T04:43:28.585-07:00BLACKFEET WRITERS<p> <b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">David Treuer</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> recommended this list of books assembled by </span><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">Nancy Snyder</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px;">(She seems to be white if that matters to you. Treuer is half-white. I'm white.) I'm just noodling along here, free associating.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b><a href="https://bookriot.com/classics-about-indigenous-people/“">https://bookriot.com/classics-about-indigenous-people/“</a></b></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I know "Ceremony" and "House Made of Dawn" as truly classic. The books are:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807028363/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0807028363"><i>AS LONG AS GRASS GROWS: THE INDIGENOUS FIGHT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, FROM COLONIZATION TO STANDING ROCK</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY DINA GILIO-WHITAKER</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1597142018/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=1597142018"><i>BAD INDIANS: A TRIBAL MEMOIR</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY DEBORAH A. MIRANDA</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104918/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0143104918"><i>CEREMONY</i></a> BY LESLIE MARMON SILKO</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0399573194/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0399573194"><i>THE HEARTBEAT OF WOUNDED KNEE: NATIVE AMERICAN FROM 1890 TO THE PRESENT</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY DAVID TREUER</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>HOUSE MADE OF DAWN</i> BY N. SCOTT MOMADAY</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081951182X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=081951182X"><i>IN MAD LOVE AND WAR</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY JOY HARJO</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1786636727/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=1786636727"><i>OUR HISTORY IS THE FUTURE: STANDING ROCK VERSUS THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE AND THE LONG TRADITION OF INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY NICK ESTES</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312263805/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0312263805"><i>PRISON WRITINGS: MY LIFE IS MY SUN DANCE</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY LEONARD PELTIER</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>THERE THERE </i>BY TOMMY ORANGE</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155659383X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=155659383X"><i>WHEN MY BROTHER WAS AN AZTEC</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY NATALIE DIAZ</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/164129017X/ref=as_li_tf_il?ie=UTF8&tag=boorio-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=164129017X"><i>WHERE THE DEAD SIT TALKING</i></a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> BY BRANDON HOBSON</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">None of these are about Blackfeet. One or two are poetry anthologies. What Blackfeet books could have been on this list? (I’m excluding <b>Adolf Hungry Wolf</b> and <b>Hugh Dempsey</b> because they are white but married to Blackfoot women, which is spelled differently because the Blackfeet are on the Montana side. It’s a silly distinction between sides of a single tribe, but it makes a difference in terms of publishing. Dempsey is Canadian. Hungry Wolf is Californian. (!) Style difference. I'm speaking here personally rather than academically.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>James Welch, Jr.</b> is, of course, the definitive “Blackfeet” writer though it was his father with the same name who grew up in Browning. James Jr. happened into the circle of <b>Richard Hugo</b> at the U of Montana just when the genre of “Montana writers” was at its peak at the same time as the "Native American Renaissance" was cresting. He was educated in Minneapolis and from a middle-class family with Cherokee roots. He was skilled and aware, but they still love him more in France than in the US.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87F-fuIUY38E9nOKZs6Mk_8vBO8PHH_c5xuKusb2UWPOSVsumaRyMTUYGTQnGhxgdBC5Nppn9asDGbXldS0lpPk6vvjJX3WgaiwIfRPuEMh7bk0yktuKI9U8DTmIVyHbPkrht/s500/9780932845382-us.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="500" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg87F-fuIUY38E9nOKZs6Mk_8vBO8PHH_c5xuKusb2UWPOSVsumaRyMTUYGTQnGhxgdBC5Nppn9asDGbXldS0lpPk6vvjJX3WgaiwIfRPuEMh7bk0yktuKI9U8DTmIVyHbPkrht/w640-h484/9780932845382-us.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Bob Scriver </b>was a white childhood buddy of this writer’s father, who did not write but alternated between welding and medical administration. Bob was a sculptor successful enough to self-publish picture books about his portraits of Blackfeet. At first, just when I was about gone from the marriage in 1973, we sketched out four books meant to be paperbacks, but instead they became hardback picture books, two about the work and one about rodeo. <i>“The Blackfeet Indians: Artists of the Northern Plains”</i> is quite splendid, combining sculpture with artifacts.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Twenty years after Bob’s death, I wrote <i>“Bronze Inside and Out”</i> about him. It was published by the University of Calgary Press as part of a series contracted for as part of a confused and troubled “house” that soon decamped to Athabasca Press. They asked me to dump Calgary and go with them, but I did not.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOMKPeVObIFJr-UuFJxOKe5kbULMANNbHbsFdlUW2qjiWAkLjwBuYWRKJYsOjQLGBoZHdtmUvx9zfGMGwfHJsTM47CxHQ5hrslxek2oEBlo3aisOtVxGkdkMBfIHoJFthn48-x/s250/417H4XET28L._UY250_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="188" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOMKPeVObIFJr-UuFJxOKe5kbULMANNbHbsFdlUW2qjiWAkLjwBuYWRKJYsOjQLGBoZHdtmUvx9zfGMGwfHJsTM47CxHQ5hrslxek2oEBlo3aisOtVxGkdkMBfIHoJFthn48-x/w481-h640/417H4XET28L._UY250_.jpg" width="481" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">My own best book, <i>"12 Blackfeet Stories"</i> definitively about Blackfeet is a string of short stories, one per generation, that would relate to the history of the Blackfeet and get people to understand change over time. Each was prompted by one of the artifacts from Bob’s big book</span><i style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">.</i><span style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;"> Self-published, it soon went “feral” on the Internet. So I just put </span><i style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">“Heartbreak Butte</i><span style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">” about teaching there directly on the internet as a blog: </span><b style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">“<a href="http://Heartbreakbutte.blogspot.com">Heartbreakbutte.blogspot.com</a>.” </b><span style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;"> Cost nothing. Writers on the rez could easily do the same but are still stuck in anthopology (Napi stories) or maybe novels.</span></div>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Richard Lancaster</b>’s “<i>Piegan</i>” purported to be authoritative and personal but no one knew him since he was Texan. His book is praised and won prizes — it is just what people expected a book about “Indians” to be. I would classified it with “<i>Hanta Yo</i>” by <b>Ruth Beebe Hill </b>who came every summer but fantasized about Lakota. </span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Lancaster developed his manuscript through pre-existing library materials, covert criminal behavior on the rez and lies about it. He broke up families and left with the pieces. I don’t know how he got to be published, but his agent had a lot to do with it. That just pushes back the question to how he got his agent, but it was the time of the “NA Renaissance” wave and the Sixties romance with the indigenous. These two authors show that a white person can exploit indigenous people. It depends upon timing, what is popular at that moment</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><b>Percy Bullchild</b>’s <i>“The Sun Also Rises”</i> must have come from some similar source, recruited by some agent who wanted the action, but Percy knew what he was talking about. Not until the editing stage did the stereotype kick in. </span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As far as I know, there are no indigenous editors at publishing houses, unless you count <b>Adrian Jawort </b>who got tired of fooling around and started his own publishing business<b>. </b>He’s not Blackfeet. Most indigenous writers with books published come from journalism, like Jawort or academia like <b>Deborah Magpie Earling </b>who is not Blackfeet but started at the U of Montana after the death of Richard Hugo and the end of the “Montana writers” wave.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I can’t think of any Blackfeet writer who began from status or money on the rez. I’m not even aware of tribal people who have that kind of status, though in the oil drilling days some had money. Nor do I know anyone who began by taking MFA workshops and ended up with a book. Nice articles maybe.</span></p><p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">An interesting case is </span><b style="font-size: 18px;">Sidner Larson</b><span style="font-size: 18px;">, Jim Welch’s cousin on his mother’s side at Fort Belknap. They often spent summer together but Sidner went to law school, owned a bar, became an academic and wrote two books, “</span><i style="font-size: 18px;">Catch Colt</i><span style="font-size: 18px;">” and “</span><i style="font-size: 18px;">Captured in the Middle.</i><span style="font-size: 18px;">” Not Blackfeet, not famous.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The recent apocalypse among academic minorities — as universities decommission them as quickly as they had hired them — slapped him hard. He has been one of the most inclusive of the “Indian” writers — not one who excluded people because of tribal status or whatever. Still grounded in “Indian law” which many people don’t realize exists, he has many papers at <i>Academia.edu. </i>In the Seventies he organized a NA lit conference in Eugene, Oregon, that included Joy Harjo and N. Scott Momaday plus many others. I attended.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Romantic novels about pre-contact days will always exist because people love them — this is a continuation of an affair with “nature” that came from Europe. They just won’t sell if they challenge the stereotype and much of the territory has been claimed by sci-fi. The justice angle persists. These are the prejudices of publishers and editors regardless of the authors involved. They try to control what they believe will sell, but the ultimate success of a book depends on the wave passing through the readers which publishers may not understand.</span></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 22px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">As you can see from the list at the top of this post, to the NA people themselves political books about the fates of tribes are still relevant as the resource seizures in Indian Country continue. The most outstanding of these for the Blackfeet is <i>“Rebirth of the Blackfeet Nation, 1912-1954”</i> by <b>Paul Rozier</b>, academic but drawn from local archives of real documents. Not very romantic. No Blackfeet that I know of has tried to do this kind of thing. Too much work. Not useful for snagging. Movies work better.</span></p><p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: #010101; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0