---o0o---
Friday, June 07, 2013
Chiet Seattle's speech, like it or not
By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor/
Seattle/Pac. NW stringer
Some of Chief Seattle's speeches and quotes are controversial--not due to their content (but that too), but because scholars and others (mainly conservatives, and gun nuts[1], ) believe the Chief's speeches were enhanced in the 60's by environmentalists, and others for their own nefarious purposes. [2] Certainly no one thought much of them before the 60's, when the words suddenly chimed with the times.
Chief Seattle's Reply
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? That idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and
experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memory of the red man.
The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consideryour offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.
This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that the ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells us events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our cannoes, feed our children. If we sell our land, you must learn, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. I do not know. Our ways are different than yours.
The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insects wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.
The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night ? I am red man and do not understand.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a mid-day rain, or scented by the pinon pine.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breaths. Like a man dying for many days is numb to the stench.
But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.
And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadows flowers. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I'll make one condition, the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage and I do not understand any other way.
I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.
What is man without the beasts ? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.
You must teach the children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may discover one day - our God is the same God. You may think you know that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.
The whites too shall pass, perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket ? Gone. Where is the eagle ? Gone. The end of living and beginning of survival.
-- Chief Sealth (Seattle)
[1] I I go back and forth on the phrase gun nuts. My tendency is to include everyone who owns any weapon more powerful than a squirt gun or whipped cream dispenser.
[2] From the Wikipedia: Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed, but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Sealth gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.
Seattle then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook jargon, and a third person translated that into English.
Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the speech, based on Smith's notes. It was a flowery text in which Sealth purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded "...but a fragment of his [Sealth's] speech". Recent scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith's supposed translation.
In 1891, Frederick James Grant's History of Seattle, Washington reprinted Smith's version. In 1929, Clarence B. Bagley's History of King County, Washington reprinted Grant's version with some additions. In 1931, John M. Rich reprinted the Bagley version in Chief Seattle's Unanswered Challenge. In the 1960s, articles by William Arrowsmith and the growth of environmentalism revived interest in Sealth's speech. Ted Perry introduced anachronistic material, such as shooting buffalo from trains, into a new version for a movie called Home, produced for the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Radio and Television Commission.The movie sunk without a trace, but this newest and most fictional version is the most widely known. Albert Furtwangler analyzes the evolution of Sealth's speech in Answering Chief Seattle (1997).
The speech attributed to Sealth, as re-written by others, has been widely cited as "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values", but there is little evidence that he actually spoke it. A similar controversy surrounds a purported 1855 letter from Sealth to President Franklin Pierce, which has never been located and, based on internal evidence, is considered by some historians as "an unhistorical artifact of someone's fertile literary imagination".
Seattle/Pac. NW stringer
Some of Chief Seattle's speeches and quotes are controversial--not due to their content (but that too), but because scholars and others (mainly conservatives, and gun nuts[1], ) believe the Chief's speeches were enhanced in the 60's by environmentalists, and others for their own nefarious purposes. [2] Certainly no one thought much of them before the 60's, when the words suddenly chimed with the times.
Chief Seattle's Reply
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? That idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and
experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memory of the red man.
The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man - all belong to the same family.
So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consideryour offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.
This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors.
If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that the ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells us events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our cannoes, feed our children. If we sell our land, you must learn, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert. I do not know. Our ways are different than yours.
The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insects wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.
The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night ? I am red man and do not understand.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a mid-day rain, or scented by the pinon pine.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breaths. Like a man dying for many days is numb to the stench.
But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.
And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadows flowers. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I'll make one condition, the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage and I do not understand any other way.
I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.
What is man without the beasts ? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.
You must teach the children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.
This we know, the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may discover one day - our God is the same God. You may think you know that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.
The whites too shall pass, perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket ? Gone. Where is the eagle ? Gone. The end of living and beginning of survival.
-- Chief Sealth (Seattle)
____________________________
[1] I I go back and forth on the phrase gun nuts. My tendency is to include everyone who owns any weapon more powerful than a squirt gun or whipped cream dispenser.
[2] From the Wikipedia: Even the date and location of the speech has been disputed, but the most common version is that on March 11, 1854, Sealth gave a speech at a large outdoor gathering in Seattle. The meeting had been called by Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens to discuss the surrender or sale of native land to white settlers. Doc Maynard introduced Stevens, who then briefly explained his mission, which was already well understood by all present.
Seattle then rose to speak. He rested his hand upon the head of the much smaller Stevens, and declaimed with great dignity for an extended period. No one alive today knows what he said; he spoke in the Lushootseed language, and someone translated his words into Chinook jargon, and a third person translated that into English.
Some years later, Dr. Henry A. Smith wrote down an English version of the speech, based on Smith's notes. It was a flowery text in which Sealth purportedly thanked the white people for their generosity, demanded that any treaty guarantee access to Native burial grounds, and made a contrast between the God of the white people and that of his own. Smith noted that he had recorded "...but a fragment of his [Sealth's] speech". Recent scholarship questions the authenticity of Smith's supposed translation.
In 1891, Frederick James Grant's History of Seattle, Washington reprinted Smith's version. In 1929, Clarence B. Bagley's History of King County, Washington reprinted Grant's version with some additions. In 1931, John M. Rich reprinted the Bagley version in Chief Seattle's Unanswered Challenge. In the 1960s, articles by William Arrowsmith and the growth of environmentalism revived interest in Sealth's speech. Ted Perry introduced anachronistic material, such as shooting buffalo from trains, into a new version for a movie called Home, produced for the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Radio and Television Commission.The movie sunk without a trace, but this newest and most fictional version is the most widely known. Albert Furtwangler analyzes the evolution of Sealth's speech in Answering Chief Seattle (1997).
The speech attributed to Sealth, as re-written by others, has been widely cited as "powerful, bittersweet plea for respect of Native American rights and environmental values", but there is little evidence that he actually spoke it. A similar controversy surrounds a purported 1855 letter from Sealth to President Franklin Pierce, which has never been located and, based on internal evidence, is considered by some historians as "an unhistorical artifact of someone's fertile literary imagination".
---o0o---
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
Alien Lore No. 249 — Mass Abduction in New Jersey?
By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed
Illustration by Jack Brummet, © 2008
What follows is the witness narrative from a case file in the MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) database. The incident occurred on May 20th, 2013 in 'Jersey. Long Description of
Sighting Report — "I've always been a skeptic of aliens and UFOs, up until two nights ago, and I feel lost and confused, that's why I am here. I would like to start off by telling you that about 3 weeks ago I saw an unidentified flying object that looked like a fireball in the sky, and since then I have felt like I am being watched.
Illustration by Jack Brummet, © 2008
What follows is the witness narrative from a case file in the MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) database. The incident occurred on May 20th, 2013 in 'Jersey. Long Description of
Sighting Report — "I've always been a skeptic of aliens and UFOs, up until two nights ago, and I feel lost and confused, that's why I am here. I would like to start off by telling you that about 3 weeks ago I saw an unidentified flying object that looked like a fireball in the sky, and since then I have felt like I am being watched.
"Two nights ago as I was about to go to sleep I saw something in my room through my peripheral vision. I don't remember going to sleep, but I do remember waking up in a metal room and I was lying on a metal bed and I was restrained.
"I struggled to turn my head and I saw many people lying in these metal beds just like mine and I focused on one in particular which I realized was my sister, it seemed that everyone was in some state of unconsciousness. At that point I realized that something was very wrong and I was conscious of the scary situation I was in. I started to panic and tried to free myself. At that point I realized that I was surrounded by short beings, they were grayish in color and seemed oblivious to the fact that I was trying to fight my way out of the restraints.
"I struggled to turn my head and I saw many people lying in these metal beds just like mine and I focused on one in particular which I realized was my sister, it seemed that everyone was in some state of unconsciousness. At that point I realized that something was very wrong and I was conscious of the scary situation I was in. I started to panic and tried to free myself. At that point I realized that I was surrounded by short beings, they were grayish in color and seemed oblivious to the fact that I was trying to fight my way out of the restraints.
"Suddenly out of nowhere came a bright light and another being appeared, this one was taller and had a more oval shaped head with indentations in it and it was almost tan in color. It communicated with me telepathically and I asked it what it was doing to us and it said "We are looking at your DNA." I asked it why it was doing this to us and it replied "All humans have alien DNA, but not all humans have the same alien DNA" I asked it where they were from and it said "We come from Sirius" and it also told me that they have been coming to me for a long time.
"At that point it disappeared and my fear returned and I started screaming from the top of my lungs, the next thing I remember is jumping up from my bed screaming waking up everyone in the house.I haven' t slept for 2 nights now....."
"At that point it disappeared and my fear returned and I started screaming from the top of my lungs, the next thing I remember is jumping up from my bed screaming waking up everyone in the house.I haven' t slept for 2 nights now....."
---o0o---
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
The night Miles Davis was pummeled by an NYC cop (the week "Kind Of Blue" was released)
By Jack Brummet, American Music Ed.
From the original 1959 AP article "New York -- Miles Davis, 32, of 881 10th Avenue, a trumpeter now appearing in Birdland, 52nd Street and Broadway, was arrested after fighting with patrolman Gerald Kilduff, who had ordered him to move from crowded sidewalk. In the scuffle, Davis was hit on the head with a blackjack for which a St. Clare's ambulance had to be called. "
According to a recent article on the assault in New York magazine: a cop asked Miles to move from the crowded sidewalk. He said 'I work here' and, pointing to the club's marquee, 'That's my name up there.' A plainclothes cop, misreading the exchange, rushed over and beat Miles over the head. He was released on a $10,000 bail. Doctors put five stitches due in the wounds.
One of the commentators on a recent piece about this wrote: "Crazed Black Man Bangs Head On Nightstick as Policeman Stands Helplessly By"
This beatdown happened one week after the release of Kind Of Blue.
From the original 1959 AP article "New York -- Miles Davis, 32, of 881 10th Avenue, a trumpeter now appearing in Birdland, 52nd Street and Broadway, was arrested after fighting with patrolman Gerald Kilduff, who had ordered him to move from crowded sidewalk. In the scuffle, Davis was hit on the head with a blackjack for which a St. Clare's ambulance had to be called. "
According to a recent article on the assault in New York magazine: a cop asked Miles to move from the crowded sidewalk. He said 'I work here' and, pointing to the club's marquee, 'That's my name up there.' A plainclothes cop, misreading the exchange, rushed over and beat Miles over the head. He was released on a $10,000 bail. Doctors put five stitches due in the wounds.
One of the commentators on a recent piece about this wrote: "Crazed Black Man Bangs Head On Nightstick as Policeman Stands Helplessly By"
This beatdown happened one week after the release of Kind Of Blue.
---o0o---
Drawing: Faces No. 505 - the staff meeting
By Jack Brummet
[Graphite pencil on 24" x 24" polyester "cloth"]
[Graphite pencil on 24" x 24" polyester "cloth"]
---o0o---
Monday, June 03, 2013
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Saturday, June 01, 2013
Poem: The Quest
By Jack Brummet
It’s all one story—
A ragged shape-shifting tale
Of incredible coherence and constance,
Encompassing all you know,
All you don’t know you know,
And all you one day will know.
There is more
To be seen, tasted, heard, and felt
Than can ever be known or told.
Our myths flourish and spread,
Person to person,
And the mysteries of the seas and skies and stars
Fill our collective conscience
With mystical scenes,
Quests, and tales of greatness.
These myths, tales, and fables
Cannot be invented, ordered, or denied.
When you strip away the stage flats, makeup, and costumes,
It’s all one story
Starring our private heroes and dreams.
---o0o---
It’s all one story—
A ragged shape-shifting tale
Of incredible coherence and constance,
Encompassing all you know,
All you don’t know you know,
And all you one day will know.
There is more
To be seen, tasted, heard, and felt
Than can ever be known or told.
Our myths flourish and spread,
Person to person,
And the mysteries of the seas and skies and stars
Fill our collective conscience
With mystical scenes,
Quests, and tales of greatness.
These myths, tales, and fables
Cannot be invented, ordered, or denied.
When you strip away the stage flats, makeup, and costumes,
It’s all one story
Starring our private heroes and dreams.
---o0o---
Peace along the Columbia: a respite from the Sasquatch Festival
By Jack Brummet
I went for a walk at Sasquatch to clear my head, and stumbled into nothing.
Ten minutes after being in the middle of 25,000 people partying, all of a sudden I was completely alone with nary a human or animal in sight. And I shot this photograph.
---o0o---
I went for a walk at Sasquatch to clear my head, and stumbled into nothing.
Ten minutes after being in the middle of 25,000 people partying, all of a sudden I was completely alone with nary a human or animal in sight. And I shot this photograph.
---o0o---
Stazzi paints with Tonia Calderon
By Jack Brummet, Art Ed.
I had to share this photo of a budding young artist. On the left is my great (some people believe the correct term is "grand") nephew Stazzi working with the artist Tonia Calderon [http://www.toniacalderon.com/#!/home] on a painting of Malcolm X. Is this cool, or what?
I had to share this photo of a budding young artist. On the left is my great (some people believe the correct term is "grand") nephew Stazzi working with the artist Tonia Calderon [http://www.toniacalderon.com/#!/home] on a painting of Malcolm X. Is this cool, or what?
---o0o---
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