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editor
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 Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 8:55 am Post subject: |
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The Walrus
Magazine Subscription
Rough Justice
Illegal diamonds are the prize. But death in the Amazon rainforest is the price, as Indians, Brazilian miners, and a mysterious third party fight over the richest deposit in South America.
By Shawn Blore
November, 2004
| Quote: | Night falls early in the Amazon. Through the darkness, the headlights of my little white rental car trace the outline of elaborate marble tombs. Close in front of me, the beams illuminate a solitary row of wooden crosses, the names stencilled in black. Fifteen of the graves have only numbers.
This is the last earthly resting place of twenty-nine diamond miners, killed on Arpil 7, 2004, by warriors of the Cinta Larga Indian tribe. Nearby, I see a wooden plaque on which someone has inscribed a miner's epitaph:
In the game of life we all place wagers.
Of all that I had, I bet the most
important -- life -- and lost...
I won the most valuable of all rewards --
the kingdom of God.
(-- p. 62 |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 12:21 pm Post subject: |
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From Famous Four-Flushers:
Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Notebook
Of Mohawks and Mavericks
By Garret Keizer
December, 2008
| Quote: | I was just your average hockey mom.
—Sarah Palin
I have never gotten over the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act of masquerade. On the night of December 16, 1773, “a number of resolute men (dressed like Mohawks or Indians),” as later reported in the Boston Gazette, managed to dump some 90,000 pounds of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. They did this, again as reported by the Gazette, “to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had plotted.” From a distance it is hard to say which disguise was the more outlandish, that of the local merchants got up as Hiawatha or that of a beverage tax got up as the tyrant’s scourge. To come even close you would have to dress up a million- dollar-a-month AIG booty bag as a “consulting fee.”
The Tea Party proved catalytic - one book devoted to the episode bears the title The Night the Revolution Began - and prophetic as well. Americans have been dressing up ever since: Ku Klux Klansmen costumed as ghosts, ghost-white college kids posing as homeboys and Rastas, corporate lawyers decked out in Stetsons and cowboy boots, Wall Street sharpies affecting the flabbergasted expressions of sucker-punched rubes. ("That thar" mortgage thingamajig done blew itself up"). Add an extra touch of fantasy to the makeup and you get Ronald Reagan as the savior of democracy and John McCain as the patron saint of reform. J. Edgar Hoover may never have stood so resolutely for the American way as in those legends that have him flinging a boa round his neck and prancing before his full-length mirror in drag.
Numerous studies have been written on the role of masking in traditional cultures, but they throw little light on the false-face societies of the United States. Probably no one theory could account for our every disguised, for Al Jolson in blackface and Rush Limbaugh as the aggrieved common man. I suspect that aside from the obvious explanations - the fun of dressing up, the benefits of anonymity as you hatchet open chests of tea - the main reason we mask ourselves is to hide from the claims of common life, which is to say, the claims that taxation in its purest form attempts to address. The partisan badge, the counterculture face paint, creates the illusion of membership in something less dull and burdensome than the whole human race. ... (-- p. 9) |
Official and Confidential
The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover
Hardcover
By Anthony Summers
| Quote: | Several accounts of Hoover, who was FBI chief from 1924 until his death in 1972, have hinted at his homosexuality but a new biography provides an eyewitness account of him dressed in black and red gowns, false eyelashes and a wig, taking part in orgies in New York's Plaza Hotel. In attendance, according to the account, were blond teenage boys who read the Bible and had sex with Hoover.
According to Anthony Summers, author of the new biography, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J Edgar Hoover, the FBI boss was an active member of a homosexual group that included the lawyer Roy Cohn and the liquor baron Lewis Rosentiel.
Eyewitness of the Plaza orgies is Lewis Rosentiel's then wife, Susan, who claims she saw Hoover 'wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces, and lace stockings and high heels and a black curly wig'. Cohn introduced him as Mary, she says.
In an excerpt of the biography in next week's Vanity Fair magazine she adds: 'It was obvious it wasn't a woman; you could see where he shaved. It was Hoover. You've never seen anything like it. I couldn't believe it, that I should see the head of the FBI dressed as a woman.' She says Hoover, Cohn and her husband had sex with the boys, one of whom read from the Bible.
Another time at the Plaza, Ms Rosentiel says she saw Hoover in a red dress with a black feather boa around his neck. 'He was dressed like a flapper.'
The wonder is that Hoover, whose stock-in-trade was blackmail, including tracking President John F Kennedy's sexual dalliances - should have risked being blackmailed himself by taking part in orgies at one of New York's most fashionable hotels, which was not exactly a 'safe house'. Also, Nicholas von Hoffman, a biographer of Roy Cohn, points out that Susan Rosentiel, disliked Cohn and other ex-FBI people close to him and one can never be sure of the motives of those in the Hoover-Cohn-Rosentiel group and who may now feel it is safe to speak out. It has long been rumoured that Hoover had an affair with his aide, Clyde Tolson, and all these sexual adventures, if true, put Hoover's FBI stewardship into a new historical perspective. (From FBI chief exposed as a secret transvestite: Peter Pringle reports from New York on new allegations that J Edgar Hoover attended orgies, wearing a fluffy black dress to one, and was blackmailed into protecting the Mafia by Peter Pringle in The Independent, Feb. 6/93) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 11:15 am Post subject: |
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The Cat's Pajamas
Stories by Ray Bradbury
Hardcover
| Quote: | "Well, here's how it is, Mr. President. There was a meeting of Democratic senators in North Dakota. Thirteen of them went to the Pocahontas Big Red Casino for a night of whoopee."
"You can say that again," said the president of the United States.
"Well, one thing led to another and they wound up giving away the whole damned country."
"In one roll of the dice?"
"No, as I heard it, one state at a time."
"My God."
"To be accurate, sir, they lost New York City first, but the fist state to go was Florida."
"That figures."
"After that it was most of the southern states. Something to do with the Civil War."
"How's that?"
"I don't know. It's still all a little fuzzy. But the Civil War's never been completely forgotten, and it would be just like southern Democrats to deal it back to the reds."
"Then what?"
"Well, state by state, ending with Arizona, and the next thing you know, with a final toss, America the Beautiful, sea to shining sea, belonged to Iron Cloud."
"The Indian chief?"
"Yes. He runs the casino."
The president mused and then said, "If they can drink, so can I. Refill my glass." (From Hail to the Chief at pgs. 44-45) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:39 pm Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
Shingwauk's Vision
A History of Native Residential Schools
Paperback
By J.R. Miller
| Quote: | The French effort in the 17th c. failed for reasons that would become depressingly familiar to generations of assimilators from the early nineteenth century onward. First and foremost was parental resistance to separation from their children, an attitude that the French thought was unusually strong among the Indians of North America because of their excessive love of offsping. As the Récollet Gabriel Sagard noted, 'they love their children dearly,' even though 'they are for the most part very naughty children, paying little respect and hardly more obedience.' To a European Christian it seemed that 'unhappily in these lands the young have no respect for the old, nor are children obedient to their parents, and moreover there is punishment for any fault. ' And Nicholas Denys agreed, contending that Indian 'children are not obstinate, since they give them everything they ask for, without ever letting them cry for that which they want. The greatest persons give way to the little ones. The father and the mother draw the morsel from the mouth if the child asks for it. They love their children greatly. (For their part, Indians regarded French mothers as 'porcupines' because of their stern attitudes towards the young and to child-rearing.) In fact, Europeans usually failed to note that, among Indians, discipline was applied to children, although it was administered in ways unfamiliar to the intruders. Usually, discipline and social control were exercised through praise, ridicule, rewards, and privilege - a subtlety that the Europeans missed. In any event, the Europeans' censoriousness about Indian children, and their proclivity to employ corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes, made it very difficult to secure children ... Indian children were also repelled by the competitive pedagogical techniques that the missionaires, especially the Jesuits, employed. The use of prizes, examinations, and public exercises to create competition and bring about higher levels of achievement was utterly foreign to Indian ways, including the indigenous peoples' methods of educating their young. ...
What made the alien nature of European schooling harder to accept was the fact that indigenous peoples were unimpressed by the newcomers and their strange ways. few among the Native peoples in the 17th and 18th c.s could see much reason to want to become like these bizarre strangers. After initial awe at Europeans' technological superiority had ebbed, North American Indians were usually not impressed by the intruders. By and large they regarded the French as ugly, feeble and ill-prepared to fluorish in the North American environment. Many of their ways, especially the outlandish practices and customs of the celibate clergy, were so weird as to convince Indians that there was an unbridgeable gulf between them and the intruders. (From PART ONE Establishing the Residential School System, pg. 55-57) (footnotes omitted) |
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Last edited by editor on Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:35 am; edited 2 times in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Jun 28, 2009 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Hardcover
By Truman Capote's pal, Harper Lee
| Quote: | Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasional camellia, getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Maudie Atkinson's cow on a summer day, helping ourselves to someone's scuppernongs was part of our ethical culture, but money was different.
"Tell you what," said Jem. "We'll keep 'em till school starts, then go around and ask everybody if they're theirs. They're some child's, maybe - he was too taken up with gettin' outa school today an' forgot 'em. These are somebody's, I know that. See how they've been slicked up? They've been saved."
"Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that? You know it doesn't last."
"I don't know, Scout. But these are important to somebody..."
"How's that, Jem...?"
"Well, Indian-heads - well, they come from the Indians. They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried chicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life 'n' good health, 'n' passin' six-weeks tests...these are real valuable to somebody. I'm gonna put 'em in my trunk."
Before Jem went to his room, he looked for a long time at the Radley Place. He seemed to be thinking again. (-- pgs. 39-40) |
Listen:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
Audio CD
Narrated by U.S. actor Sissy Spacek, a Southerner herself
There are others but this would be our version of choice. |
View:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
DVD
Featuring Robert Duvall in his break-out role and Gregory Peck, reminding us of a time when Hollywood still had leading men - so long.
ESL students need have no fear of the mild southern colloquy in this film classic. It was made at a time when elocution was still an important asset in the acting trade. As Robert Graves so neatly put it, goodbye to all that. |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:32 am Post subject: |
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From the Will to Win:
Gourmet
Magazine Subscription
No such thing as a free lunch
For generations, the students at Red Cloud Indian School raised their own food - then the federal government got into the act. Ever hear of a road paved with good intentions?
By Sam Hurst
| Quote: | In the 1880s, the Lakota chief Red Cloud turned away from the buffalo hunt. He turned his back on the militant resistance of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull that would lead both warrior chiefs to violent deaths. He settled on the arid, harsh Pine Ridge Reservation in the Badlands of western South Dakota and began the painful process of assimilation.
One of the first decisions Red Cloud made was to invite Jesuit “Black Robes” to set up a boarding school to teach Lakota children and their families how to farm. The school would be a bridge to a new way of life, a refuge from the radical change that was destroying traditional Lakota culture and diet.
The idea that the gumbo-soil grasslands that sustained small migratory herds of elk, deer, and buffalo could be transformed into prosperous family farms now seems absurd. But on the narrow floodplain of little White Clay Creek, in the shadow of native corn patches and thickets of chokecherries and wild plums, the Jesuits built a school and, for more than a century, nurtured a self-sustaining community. As the decades rolled by and the reservation sank into the nation’s worst poverty, Red Cloud Indian School survived as a sanctuary for the best and brightest college-bound Lakota students. At the center of its identity was its ability to feed its people.
Cecelia Fire Thunder is the former president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She enrolled at Red Cloud in 1952 and stayed there until 1963. “We would go back to school in September,” she says, “and the boys would immediately start with the harvest of potatoes and cabbage. They made enough sauerkraut to last for years. The girls would can and cook. I became a good cook at Red Cloud. Some of the priests were dairy farmers, and the boys milked the cows every day. We always had fresh milk, and we would skim the cream right off the top. I remember wringing the necks of chickens and dipping them in boiling water to make it easier to pick the feathers. The main thing was three square meals a day. No junk food. And nobody went hungry.”
Henrietta Cross Dog started at Red Cloud in 1953. I ask her what she remembers most about the school farm. She thinks for a while, and then laughs quietly to herself. “Nobody ever got sick.”
The history of American Indian boarding schools is extremely conflicted, and horror stories about the abuse of the children are legendary. Schools like Red Cloud that have survived into the 21st century have been forced to undergo painful soul-searching and reconciliation. But as today’s students and faculty struggle with the related epidemics of obesity and diabetes, there are aspects of the troubled past that hold positive lessons for the future.
Brother Mike Zimmerman stands on a concrete landing outside the cafeteria and points. “All that land where the football field is now used to be the garden.” “Ten acres, twenty?” I ask. He chuckles. “Oh, no. Much bigger.” He turns, indicating an area behind the machine shop. “Over there was a huge potato field and a chicken coop. We kept hundreds of chickens. We also had a cattle ranch.”
Students took classes in home economics, farming, carpentry, and outdoor survival. They also worked hard in the fields, the bakery, and the kitchen. The ovens and dough mixers, bread slicers, ten-gallon milk cans, even coffee grinders gather cobwebs in the basement of the 19th-century brick building. Grappling hooks still hang from the iron rails of the meat locker. Brother Mike crabwalks under the new heating ducts suspended from the low ceiling and gestures to the wide, cool floors where apples were stored. Fifty years ago, this basement was a busy place.
There was never a final decision to dispense with Red Cloud’s commitment to self-sufficiency. It just fell victim to a hundred small decisions and a cascade of unintended consequences. In 1910, for example, when the Great Sioux Nation was broken up and the best fields were sold to white farmers, parts of the Red Cloud farm were dispersed. When the worst stories of abuse at boarding schools surfaced, many liberal supporters of the school found the idea of children working to grow food an offensive echo of forced child labor. In the 1960s, when the school stopped boarding students, there was a natural expectation that they would eat at home. As farm bill after farm bill promoted formalized school lunch programs, regulatory standards became stricter and the rhythms of the school’s food system broke down. As sanitary regulations were tightened, students could no longer wash the dishes. Perhaps most importantly, knowledge slipped away. The Jesuit farmer-priests retired and died. No one replaced them. Idealistic young teachers arrived, but they taught history and chemistry, English composition and physics. No one was a farmer.
Then, in the 1990s, the Lakota Nation woke up to the fact that diabetes was sweeping through every family. (Today, the Indian Health Service reports that nearly a quarter of the adults on the reservation are diabetic.) Great numbers of children were obese and suffering from symptoms of diabetes. Red Cloud students were eating meals at the Pizza Hut in Pine Ridge or at Big Bat’s gas station and convenience store, which features deep-fried fast food and 44-ounce soda pop “specials.” (-- pgs. 46-48) |
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