Category: Teaching

Debbie and I took a field trip on Thursday to the New York Botanical Garden to see the Holiday Train Show.  Photos of that show will come later.

Our first order of business after arrival at the Haupt Conservatory which housed the show was to locate the restroom.  While ding so we had the opportunity to tour several of the other exhibits.  In today’s edition are photos from the desert plants exhibit, with a few from the tropical rain forest and aquatic plants exhibits.

Most of the photos are thumbnails.  Clicking on them will reveal larger versions.

CENSORED:

Navajos at Big Mountain resisting forced relocation view the 19th Century prison camp of Bosque Redondo and the war in Iraq as a continuum of U.S. government sponsored terror. Louise Benally of Big Mountain remembered her great-grandfather and other Navajos driven from their beloved homeland by the U.S. Army on foot for hundreds of miles while witnessing the murder, rape and starvation of their family and friends.

“I think these poor children had gone through so much, but, yet they had the will to go on and live their lives. If it weren’t for that, we wouldn’t be here today.

– snip –

“The U.S. military first murders your people and destroys your way of life while stealing your culture, then forces you to learn their evil ways of lying and cheating,” Benally said.

And of course per history repeating…

Once upon a time, in a land far away, I participated in a writer’s workshop at a Women’s Project Retreat.  A large part of my reason for being there was the attempt to become an accepted member of the Arkansas women’s community.  Many of the attendees wished I were not there.

We were given the first phrase of the beginning of a story and asked to finish that beginning.  You are invited to do the same.

The first story:  

The second story:  

The following are my efforts, the first one in prose, while the second one became a poem.

And there is a story that goes with them, a story which has never actually appeared in anything but a comment before.  I’m appending it to the end to make it easier to find in the future.

I was in ninth grade at Lake Oswego Junior High for the first half of 1963 and a sophomore at Lake Oswego High at the end of it.  

And music ranged from the Beatles at the beginning of the year…to the Beatles at the end of the year.  The meaningful music was in between.

I pulled the news from 1963 out of wiki, every fifth story, chosen in order to hit my birthday.  I’ve added some content and some memories and followed a few threads forward.

I found it an interesting study.  I hope you do, too.

I was in eighth grade for the first half of 1962 and a freshman, but still at Lake Oswego Junior High at the end of it.  I had my first girlfriend, Bonnie, who became too much of an obsession in my life for quite a few years.  I played a football game in the middle of Typhoon Frieda on October 12.

And music ranged from Nat King Cole to the Beatles.

My back is killing me today, so in lieu of actual writing, I pulled the news from 1962 out of wiki:  every fifth story.  In some cases, I added some comments.

I found it an interesting study.  Maybe you will, too.

An elder told me that the Navaho took Geronimo’s bones and gave them a proper burial before the U.S. Army only thought that he remained buried at Fort Sill after they buried him there. I told her I had been to the grave site. She asked me, “Did it feel like he was in there?” “No,” I said. “They ‘buried’ him in the grave stone by stone, so he wouldn’t ever come back,” she said. I personally don’t believe he is at Fort Sill, and I don’t believe this either –

Whose Skull and Bones?

“The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club & the K — t [Knight] Haffner, is now safe inside the T — [Tomb] together with his well worn femurs[,] bit & saddle horn.”

The Sand Creek Massacre and the Washita Massacre both led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. The Sand Creek Massacre brought the realization that “the soldiers were destroying everything Cheyenne – the land, the buffalo, and the people themselves,” and the Washita Massacre added even more genocidal evidence to those facts. The Sand Creek Massacre caused the Cheyenne to put away their old grievances with the Sioux and join them in defending their lives against the U.S. extermination policy. The Washita Massacre did that even more so. After putting the Wounded Knee Massacre briefly into historical perspective, we’ll focus solely on the Wounded Knee Massacre itself for the 118th Anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

History.  

Many highlights stand out and many dates are remembered for their significance as to world events.  Of course, we here in The United States of America tend to remember more the dates of events that have been crucial and important to our young country.  

We all know that on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, HI, which caused the USA to stand up and be counted beyond just monitary assistance to other countries in WWII.  We also know the highlights of what came after, up until the end of WWII.  Yet, not many know how hard our President Roosevelt had tried to work with Japan, especially, in order to keep the entire world from breaking out into war.

“Few opinions that I will express” are more certain that Michael Medved denies genocide. No, it is not an opinion, he literally denies genocide (1st article from 2007).

Reject the Lie of White “Genocide” Against Native Americans

Few opinions I’ve expressed on air have produced a more indignant, outraged reaction than my repeated insistence that the word “genocide” in no way fits as a description of the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists or, later, American settlers.

Consequently, Medved has a current egregious example of his genocide denial.

http://images.google.com/image…

Chief Black Kettle:

I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.

When future historioranters analyze the data from this past election, at least one thing will be abundantly clear: of all the nations in Africa, Kenya played the largest role in America’s 2008 electoral process.  It hadn’t been expected to be so – the odds were on perennial favorites like Egypt, South Africa, the still un-interdicted Sudanese Genocide, or that nutjob in Zimbabwe – but there Kenya was, looming like Kilimanjaro over the Serengeti.  And I mean over all the Serengeti: not only does the President-Elect have a close connection with the nation – Sarah Palin’s Witch Doctor is Kenyan by birth.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll contemplate a land that’s seen everything from the Dawn of Humanity to becostumed imperialists to a sad-but-all-too-typical history of governance since the Era of Decolonization.  Maybe along the way, we’ll come to know a little more about the most famous Kenyan-American of all – a guy who even now seems to be operating by that old African proverb, “Just because he harmed your goat, do not go out and kill his bull.”  

There have always been problems with trying to share my experience as a transwoman.  I can only speak my experience.  And I can only speak my experience from the point of view of now.  I mean, I have taken great care to preserve my writings in the 90s as they were written, because they portray how I felt then, but often I have difficulty even remembering the frame of mind I was in when I wrote them.

I am not a transman.  I cannot speak for any of them, though I can feel a sense of kinship.  And I can try to speak in favor of the rights we should have in common.  Our common experience, however, may be too ephemeral to grasp.

I am not pre-operative.  That was left far in the past.  And I forget.  I’m sure some of that forgetting has been intentional.  There are pains I would prefer were left behind.

I’m also not black.

But how can anyone understand the whole without understanding some of the parts?

We have a new blog on our Blog Roll.  I stumbled across Monica Roberts’ TransGriot when I was looking to increase diversity in my essay for Friday.

One of the discussions I stumbled on was about that fact that black transwomen are almost universally assumed to be prostitutes, in life and especially in death.  I was looking for that today when I decided to take a look at something else.

Perspective can stand to be expanded.  Besides, I’m tired and can handle a discussion much easier than a lengthy psychological analysis.