October 8, 2012 archive

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Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Illegal immigration in America started on October 12, 1492 when Christopher Columbus bumped into an island in the Bahamas thinking he found the western route to India. We all know how that turned out.

The history of the treatment of Native Americans by the illegal immigrants from Europe is abominable and continues to this day. Of the over 500 treaties the United States government signed with Native American tribes, the government has broken or violated every one. That’s quite a foreign policy record.

Twenty-two years ago South Dakota renamed the second Monday in October Native American Day in honor of the indigenous people who suffered near-annihilation after Columbus opened doors to the New World. This is how Native Americans commemorate the day:

Diana King is an enrolled member of the White Earth Indian Nation in northern Minnesota. For the last 12 years, she has taught at the Waubun High School, which is located on a reservation. “Columbus Day is a chance to teach about who we once were, what has become of us since Europeans arrived on our shores and who we are today – a struggling but surviving people,” King says.

Each October, King creates a bulletin board that illustrates a rich display of indigenous life on the American continents circa 1492.[..]

“I want teachers to teach more about Indian civilization just like they do with Egyptian or European history,” she says. “Our … history did not begin with Christopher Columbus.” [..]

“Even though 70 percent of our students are Native, most of our teachers are non-Indian,” she says. “When I started here there were no Ojibwe language classes and there was no after-school program for Native students. Working with teachers to help educate them about our students about their culture and the issues they face living on the reservation is critical to promoting success.” [..]

“We should have been wiped out,” she says. “It’s a miracle Native people still exist. I have never liked the word ‘conquered.’ We are still here after 500 years. And maybe every time Columbus Day comes around, we should rethink who the real heroes are: the explorer or the survivors?”

On Columbus Day, Indigenous Urge Celebration of Native Culture & Teaching of the Americas’ Genocide

Also from Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviews Native American Activist Dennis Banks who shared his experiences and view about this day:

On “Columbus Day” – known to many as Indigenous Peoples Day – we’re joined by Dennis Banks, a legendary Native American activist from the Ojibwe Tribe. In 1968, he co-founded the American Indian Movement. A year later, he took part in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in California. In 1972, he assisted in AIM’s “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. That same year, AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. In early 1973, AIM members took over and occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for 71 days, which some have come to call Wounded Knee II. Earlier this year, he led a cross-country walk from Alcatraz to Washington calling for the release of imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier. Banks shares his thoughts about Columbus Day, the U.S. treatment of American Indians, and his own story of growing up in the BIA boarding school system.

Please sign the petition to President Barack Obama: Clemecy for Leonard Peltier.

Thanks to my friend Izzy, aka Black Eagle.

Cartnoon

Out of Sequence.  Happy Columbus Day.

Hare We Go

On This Day In History October 8

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 8 is the 281st day of the year (282nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 84 days remaining until the end of the year.

 

On this day in 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, igniting a 2-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings,leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; $3 billion in 2007 dollars) in damages.

The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration  that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871, killing hundreds and destroying about 4 square miles (10 km2) in Chicago, Illinois. Though the fire was one of the largest U.S.  disasters of the 19th century, the rebuilding that began almost immediately spurred Chicago’s development into one of the most populous and economically important American cities.

On the municipal flag of Chicago, the second star commemorates the fire. To this day the exact cause and origin of the fire remain a mystery.

The fire started at about 9 p.m. on Sunday, October 8, in or around a small shed that bordered the alley behind 137 DeKoven Street.[3]  The traditional account of the origin of the fire is that it was started by a cow kicking over a lantern in the barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O’Leary. Michael Ahern, the Chicago Republican reporter who created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had made it up because he thought it would make colorful copy.

The fire’s spread was aided by the city’s overuse of wood for building, a drought prior to the fire, and strong winds from the southwest that carried flying embers toward the heart of the city. The city also made fatal errors by not reacting soon enough and citizens were apparently unconcerned when it began. The firefighters were also exhausted from fighting a fire that happened the day before.

After the fire

Once the fire had ended, the smoldering remains were still too hot for a survey of the damage to be completed for days. Eventually it was determined that the fire destroyed an area about four miles (6 km) long and averaging 3/4 mile (1 km) wide, encompassing more than 2,000 acres (8 kmĀ²). Destroyed were more than 73 miles (120 km) of roads, 120 miles (190 km) of sidewalk, 2,000 lampposts, 17,500 buildings, and $222 million in property-about a third of the city’s valuation. Of the 300,000 inhabitants, 90,000 were left homeless. Between two and three million books were destroyed from private library collections. The fire was said by The Chicago Daily Tribune to have been so fierce that it surpassed the damage done by Napoleon’s siege of Moscow in 1812. Remarkably, some buildings did survive the fire, such as the then-new Chicago Water Tower, which remains today as an unofficial memorial to the fire’s destructive power. It was one of just five public buildings and one ordinary bungalow spared by the flames within the disaster zone. The O’Leary home and Holy Family Church, the Roman Catholic congregation of the O’Leary family, were both saved by shifts in the wind direction that kept them outside the burnt district.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning


Art Glass 37

Late Night Karaoke

Rumblestilskin or Jon the Giant Killer

(1:33)

Pique the Geek 20101007: More about Sodium

Last time we started our discussion about sodium, and tonight we shall continue it.  We have pretty much covered the quantum mechanical part and the properties and uses of elemental sodium, so tonight we shall focus on some of the compounds of that element.

Sodium compounds are extremely common and widespread, but not universally distributed.  This is important for reasons to be seen later.

The most common sodium compound is common salt, or sodium chloride, NaCl.  Everyone has personal experience with salt, both as a nutrient and as a melting aid for icy surfaces.

Living Now

Somehow my four Apocalyptic horses have become six.  Yes, we have a barn, a riding arena and twelve happy faced girls atop glitter ponies for a birthday party on a perfect fall day.  We are getting rave reviews from all who attend our new country setting.  It is dusk to past dawn hard work but there is love here.  Foliage trail rides will turn into sledding on the hill will turn into an Easter Egg hunt in the spring.  If boneheads screw it up not in the meantime.

Methinks people in general have lost their horse sense.

OK it might be nice to have my computer apps on “the cloud” but that means my computer life, my actual real life lives on “the cloud” which means none of “my” shit, “my” life, “my” data, “my” tax returns, comments on Farcebook, Tweets, my last colonoscopy, credit score, political leanings,Google search history, cell phone GPS location history is hardly private.

Well do I actually have anything to hide?  Well no but, how do I explain this.  In coming to care for six horses do I think people suck more than horses.  Well ya.

People hump each other in more ways than horses can even think.  Sure there is a herd mentality but horses don’t think about whose God is better, who has granite countertops and who doesn’t or who is more popular and who is not.  

They can hear my footsteps in the morning as I walk up to the barn.  I have come to know which horse whinnies and I value that more than all the kings men, the lamestream claptrap streams to the Chinese slave made IPhone I don’t have.

Paradise I have found but how long can I keep it.

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

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Our regular featured content-

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Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

The Stars Hollow Gazette