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Saturday, July 26th, 2008
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3:43 pm - Patio Pet Door For Sale -- $100
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It's lean, it's mean, and it lets your cat get in and out without you standing there holding the door open for fifteen minutes. You can even close it off if you want to keep your pet indoors or out.
* Adjusts from 76 3/4 - 81"
* Flap Size 5 x 7 Inches
* UltraSeal® all-weather, energy-conserving flexible flap system reduces energy loss
* Extra-strong magnets hold the flap in place for a weather tight seal
* For right or left sliding doors
* Heavy-duty aluminum construction -- White finish
* Shatter-resistant, tempered safety glass
This item is slightly used but is in great condition. Feel free to reply with any questions.
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(tell me tell me tell me)
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| Thursday, July 24th, 2008
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6:24 am - Rules of the Road
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Bob Novak says, If you don't like the way I drive, stay out of the crosswalk when the Walk signal is on. Also, Pedestrians make great hood ornaments!
He drove away from the scene, but a bicyclist chased him down and informed him that he'd hit someone. Novak claimed he hadn't noticed the 66-year-old man splayed on the roof of his black Corvette. And yes, it happened in broad daylight. Early stories were that the pedestrian had minor injuries; more recent ones are reporting more serious problems.
Novak was fined $50.
Now, this sort of behavior is not limited to pundits.Thomas Druce, a hotshot young Republican state representative in PA, made the mistake of running over a homeless Black Marine veteran and covering up the man's death.
Nor is it limited to Republicans. Chappaquiddick, anyone?
I know a few people who, while driving, have accidentally killed another human being. The anguish never leaves them. And God knows it could happen to any of us at any time; it doesn't take much inattention. But my God, you *stop*. You call 911. You do what you can to help. You don't drive away and hope nobody noticed.
Maybe you have to be an ordinary person to think that way. Because the famous seem to run and hide.
Be careful out there. Be responsible. And if (God forbid) you should get in an accident, do the decent thing.
Edited for clarity.
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(11 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
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9:26 am - Is Autism Real?
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Not according to Michael Savage, who wants us all to know that it's just brattiness caused by a lack of a father.
From ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) amenquohi, whose son is autistic:
Conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage has an opinion on autism that he felt like sharing with his listeners.
Some parents of autistic children have called for Savage’s firing after he described autism as a racket last week. “In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out,” Savage said on his radio program last Wednesday.
Savage then went on to say, “What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them don’t act like a moron, you’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up! Act like a man! Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’”
Mr. Savage's program is nationally syndicated, and airs on Talk Radio Network. You can email them here, or contact them via fax, phone and snail mail at:
Talk Radio Network
P.O. Box 3755 Central Point, Oregon 97502
Phone: 541-664-8827
Fax: 541-664-6250
Feel free to click on Talk Radio Network's homepage, check out their sponsored ads and then let their sponsors know you won't buy their products and services as long as they advertise on TRN while Mike Savage is spouting his ignorance and vitriol.
Clearly Mr. Savage is wrong: He acts like a moron and is third most popular talk-radio host, after Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. But then, maybe he isn't acting at all.
Some of the most moving posts I've ever read have been written by amenquohi about her son. Just the other day she wrote about a breakthrough with him -- a post that brought tears to my eyes.
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(15 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Monday, July 21st, 2008
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6:41 am - ANNALS OF PTSD: One More Casualty
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Joseph Dwyer was a hero who became famous for carrying a wounded child toward help, an act of courage documented in one of the most famous photographs to emerge from the Iraq War.
A medic from Long Island whose brothers were cops, he joined up after 9/11. He cared for the wounded on the battlefield as the army fought their way from the Euphrates to Baghdad. When medics are under fire, they don't shoot back. They're too busy putting pressure bandages on sucking chest wounds, or tying tourniquets on the remains of a limb, or strapping their wounded friends onto stretchers. He was decorated for his courage with a Combat Medical Badge for service under fire.
He came home safely from Iraq, but he couldn't get the war out of his head. The VA gave him medicine and inpatient treatment, but they weren't enough.
Imagine the endless nightmare of war superimposed on your normal life -- ordinary sounds threaten death, roadside litter becomes an improvised bomb. Imagine the heart-pounding terror every time someone knocks on your door. He lived in that hell for five years. Finally he died there.
Technically, the death was from a drug overdose. But when you're frightened sick all the time, unrelentingly, any drug that will give you surcease can be an unbearable temptation.
I hope he has found peace and rest now in a place without gunfire. I pray that his wife and daughter, his friends, his family, will all find consolation. But for those who live with this pain, there is very little consolation.
PTSD destroys lives, and it can spread to your partners and into the next generation. My father was a medic in the Korean War. I'm sure that some of what he did to me, some of the living nightmares i still fight, came from the battlefields of Korea.
In "Let the People Speak," Stephen Fry interviewed various (possibly fictional) members of the British public about the first Gulf War, which was then beginning:
"Let's get one thing straight," said a doctor from Long Melford. "Soldiers are made from flesh and bone and tissue that is, as Wilfred Owen said, 'so dear achieved.' It has taken them from 17 to 30 years to grow into what they are. In seconds it can be a tangle of blood and smashed material that can never be put right again."
. . . "Are you in the business of comforting the enemy?"
"No, I'm in the business of repairing flesh. Just be sure. For God's sake be sure."
Minds can be smashed beyond all repairing, too. It took 26 years to make Joseph Dwyer into the kind of man who would rescue the wounded under fire.
It took 91 days on the battlefield to destroy him.
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(15 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Sunday, July 20th, 2008
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10:00 pm - RANT: After 32 Years, Network Still Nails It
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Network is probably the greatest rant movie ever made. (I can't think of another contender with so many great rants from so many different characters.) And this rant (newscaster Howard Beale's magnificent on-air breakdown) seems eerily on-target for life as it is today.
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]
'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:
[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
Not a Goddamned thing has changed except that we now have video games and the Internet.
current mood:  pessimistic
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(13 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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5:28 am - Sunday of the Living Dead
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A question that came up in discussion last week, but that I didn't have time to pursue:
Are zombie movies an example of cultural appropriation? Why or why not? Show your work, and keep those fish livers out of my coffee.
ETA Apparently the question was originally posed by bcholmes. I am a stickler for credit.
Also, you may want to go take The Amazing Undead Poll. I'll wait.
current mood:  braaaaaains
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(12 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Saturday, July 19th, 2008
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10:41 pm - Thoughtful Survey
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| Friday, July 18th, 2008
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11:20 pm - Yes, Another LOLcat
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| Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
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3:01 pm - Countdown to Regime Change: Welcome to the Republic of Gilead
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Next up: the criminalization of your menstrual period.
Please note that this proposal is based on polling data of when random individuals think a pregnancy begins. The more ignorant and credulous and anti-science the American people are, the better for those who want to keep women barefoot and pregnant.
This proposal is likely to increase the gap between rich and poor. You can bet that well-off women will be much more likely to have access to birth control -- as long as the men who own them prefer it that way.
You think when all those extra babies start arriving, the Republicans will want to educate them? Not a chance. Still less will they want to decently feed and house them. Except in prisons, which I predict will be more and more used as sources for labor, if the Republicans have their way. I won't call it "slave labor"; that term is too emotive. Let's just call it cheap, expendable, low-overhead labor.
ETA Go to zarq's LJ for ways to prevent this from being implemented.
current mood:  pissed off
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(16 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
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11:54 pm - Links & Memes: Love & Marriage
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| Monday, July 14th, 2008
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9:38 pm - Officially Cheerful
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Had a rough day? Stressed about the looming Apocalypse and your dwindling bank balance? You need James Lileks. You need The Institute of Official Cheer. It's got everything, all enhanced by elegantly phrased snarky commentary:
* Clothing ads from the 1973 Sears catalog! Go ahead and laugh. But dammit, we thought it was pretty. Except the plaid pants. And some of the hairstyles. And all that polyester. No, I didn't buy my clothes from Sears--that was too fancy. What Ma didn't make, we got from Eynon Drug.
* Elvis meets Liberace! And other all-too-memorable publicity shots.
* Sometimes meat likes to dress up and feel pretty. A sample of the joys of The Gallery of Regrettable Food -- actual food illustrations and photography from the Depression through the swinging 70s. There are a few recipes, but the focus is on the unappetizing pictures and Lileks's delicious commentary. Imagine the mind that could dream up hot dogs in aspic. No, don't. Not if you're eating. Or about to eat. Or ever want to eat again.
Most of the content in Lileks's books is no longer on the website, but truly they are worth buying. (I keep an eye out at used bookstores and library sales; so far I've picked up two, plus a book of essays.) He describes a loaf of mottled red meat sludge in aspic as "a core sample from a mass grave." He tells the hidden stories of the people in those illustrations. Truly, he is the MST3K of old advertisements -- and his wit is as sharp as his eye. (He also posts a lot of other useful and interesting material, including old photos of Fargo, ND, and Minneapolis.)
The effect of reading anything by Lileks is, first, laughter, tinged with horror. Then, as you read on, uncontrollable spasms of laughter. Then choking, screaming convulsions of something that might be laughter or agony, garnished by tears. Then full-fledged hysteria. It's absolutely guaranteed, and it's one of the best ways I know for dealing with a horrible day.
Why yes, I had a . . . regrettable day. Any day in which one's automobile, freshly emerged from the shelter of a warranty period, demands repairs that will cost almost a month's rent (which, incidentally, has just been raised again), that day cries out for Official Cheer.
(It worked, too.)
current music: Welcome To The Cruel World - Ben Harper
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(17 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Sunday, July 13th, 2008
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9:09 pm - L&M: That's Outrageous!
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| Saturday, July 12th, 2008
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7:14 pm - Quotes of the Day; Gotta Love the James Brothers
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
—William James, Collected Essays
We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
—Henry James, The Middle Years
current music: I. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso - The Academy Of Ancient Music
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(4 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Friday, July 11th, 2008
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5:00 am - High Tech Weirdness
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Some of you may remember that I had a bit of computer trouble a few months ago. My G4 desktop, which I'd bought used, was unbootable. I ended up having to have the desktop's main hard drive wiped and a more up-to-date version of OS X installed. I'd saved everything into the smaller drive.
When I got the G4 desktop back, there was no smaller drive. After talking with the computer guys, I realized that the smaller drive must have been a partition of the main drive. Oops.
Tonight, for complicated reasons, I had to install iLife 05 on the desktop. The disk came with the Mac, and the software had been installed when I bought the thing.
The smaller drive is back. Complete with all its files.
WTF? Is there a disk-partitioning utility on iLife?
current mood:  confused
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(14 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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12:09 am - Happy Birthday, Frederick Buechner
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Today Frederick Buechner turns 82. Happy birthday, and thank you for your graceful, Grace-filled writings.
(And I thank gramina, who first shared Buechner with me. He's one of the uncountable blessings she has brought me, so I was particularly pleased to see his opinion on same-sex relationships.)
Some quotations:
I have tried to be as honest as I can be to my own experience: what it's like to be alive on this planet. With a particular eye cocked to, a particular ear cocked to the elusive, ambiguous presence of God.
=======
If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, small your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
=======
The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done....The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.
=======
[on President George W. Bush] This shallow, reckless, monolithically complacent man who touts his belief in the philosophy of Jesus but advocates tax cuts for the richest of the rich instead of succor for the poorest of the poor, who has entangled us in an unnecessary, unwinnable, and increasingly murderous war against shadows, who consistently favors the interests of big business over those of the imperiled environment, and appoints an official of the International Arabian Horse Association to be in charge of managing horrors like Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, surely the second George Bush is not the only one to blame for his insane and tragic chapter in our history, but it is hard to imagine a more appropriate symbol of it than the never-to-be-forgotten Mission Accomplished dance he did on the carrier's deck for all the world as though he really believed it.
=======
There is perhaps no better proof for the existence of God than the way year after year he survives the way his professional friends promote him.
( more quotations )
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(11 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Thursday, July 10th, 2008
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4:17 pm - POLITICS: Countdown to Regime Change
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| Monday, July 7th, 2008
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7:27 pm - Update on Murder in Silicon Valley
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Remember the Reiser murder case? Hans Reiser was convicted of murder despite the absence of his wife's body. He claimed she had gone home to Russia, and a lot of people believed him.
Well, Nina Reiser is definitely not in Russia. She was until today in Redwood Regional Park. Now she is in a morgue, awaiting identification.
Why do I assume this body is Nina? Because Hans Reiser led the police to the grave.
Rest in peace, Nina Reiser. May your children grow up healthy in mind and heart and body.
Oh, Hans. If you hadn't hidden the body, you could have got away with manslaughter. But you were just -- clumsily, crazily -- trying to protect your kids. I hope someday you understand that your eagerness to arm them against a scary world, was abusive and cruel and unnecessary. It didn't have to be this way.
current mood:  sad
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(26 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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12:48 am - Yeah, More Links
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| Sunday, July 6th, 2008
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3:34 pm - IN MEMORIAM: Thomas M. Disch
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He wrote beautiful prose. He wrote beautiful poetry. The rage and pain and beauty of his work shone like supernovas at sunset. He was viciously original and sometimes just vicious.
He was notoriously hard to deal with -- his LJ, tomsdisch, demonstrates his prickliness and anger. Those may be characteristic of a man who never learned to defend himself against the world or his own deep pain. (No, that's not just something I say of the honored dead. I have loved, do love, a few people like that.)
He killed himself on Independence Day -- surely a comment and a message to us. And his magnanimous, lyrical descriptions of life after death in The Businessman give me hope. Perhaps he has found his way toward that heaven where suicides learn to cope with life.
current music: In Parasceve, Lectio III - Choir of Westminster Cathedral
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(1 story | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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8:09 pm - What Happens in Vegas . . .
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Gets reported on LJ.
Minor revelations from the trip to Vegas:
I don't care how dry the air is. If it's over 80, it's too hot for me. If it's over 100, it's far too hot to leave air-conditioned shelter for any reason short of a firebombing.
People who eat a lot of quesadillas really do need a cast-iron frying pan or griddle. A flimsy stainless-steel frying pan is not an adequate substitute. This should seem obvious; after all, everything is better with a cast-iron griddle or frying pan. But I never tried to make quesadillas without one before. Both the pan and I have permanent scars.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) alanbostick has hidden talents. Not only can he make perfectly crisp bacon in a frying pan, he can do so naked. With no screaming or apparent blisters. (Yes, he said I could post this.)
Dialup is slow, balky, and frequently interrupted, but it's better than hotel wifi.
At 3AM in Nevada, you can play video poker in a supermarket, but the liquor aisle is closed.
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(13 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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5:32 pm - L&M: Let There Be Light. Please. We Could Use Some.
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11:44 am - QOTD
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"Good systems can allow talented people to use their talents. Bad systems cause award-winning landscape architects to spend their time fixing lawnmowers." -Steve Roesler
This is true of jobs, families, and any other system you can name.
Thanks to the friend who posted this; it was f-locked, so I won't name names, but you know who you are.
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(5 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
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2:46 pm - Quotation for Today
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I beg you... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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(11 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Monday, June 30th, 2008
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8:10 pm - L&M: Lazy Transition Day Edition
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Last night I slept in my own bed. Today I feel the languorous pleasure of repletion. The motel bed was excellent, the company delightful. But being home replenishes me.
Today I'm puttering. Or pottering, although for me that has an echo of tottering, so it's the sort of pottering I might do if I were 98 and frail and scented with lavender. (When I'm 98, which is only anther fifty years or so, I plan to stomp around and smell like oakmoss.) Later I'll go out, get the mail, pick up milk, and become a productive member of society again. But now I'm just relishing home.
So. Links.
Happy centennial, Tunguska Event!
oursin brings us the Middlemarch choose-your-own-adventure game.
Live Long And Marry is a fandom auction to benefit marriage equality. The auction will raise money for the fight against the California initiative which will legally destroy existing same-sex marriages and ban any further ones. If the initiative passes, it will write discrimination into the state constitution, annull existing marriages, and make Mr. Sulu cry.
There's an amazing array of goodies available, from fanfic to jewelry, and a lot of it is customizable to your precise specifications. And the cause couldn't be better.
My offerings:
Cross-stitched Monogrammed Coaster (2 Letters)
Cross-stitched Monogrammed Trivet (2 or 3 Letters)
So, what have you been up to?
current mood: blissed out
current music: I Don't Wanna Talk About It - Indigo Girls
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(8 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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7:30 pm - Offered: Cross-stitched Monogrammed Trivet (2 or 3 Letters)
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This belongs in ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) livelongnmarry. Bid there!
Offer: I will cross-stitch any two or three initials of your choice onto evenweave fabric, using silk or cotton floss, and mount it in a trivet.
Looking for the perfect gift? Have your friend's initials cross-stitched in zir favorite colors and mounted in a sturdy, clear acrylic trivet. The trivet is 5'' square with a 4'' space for initials. This gives room for extra curlicues or even a border.
You can also honor a marriage or relationship with a monogram. Entwine their first initials together for a romantic gift that commemorates their love. The trivet offers room for multiple initials -- celebrate polyamory!
You choose the initials!
From A to Z, we have them all. Add a crown to give your friend the royal treatment.
You choose the colors!
Embroidery floss comes in hundreds of shades. Choose your friend's favorite color or match zir decor. Overdyed (multicolor) and metallic floss are also available, as are a number of different fabric colors.
Contact: My email is in my user info.
Delivery: I will have your monogram stitched and mailed by September 1.
Minimum bid: $10.
Tags: offered: misc items, seller: wordweaverlynn
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7:30 pm - Offered: Cross-stitched Monogrammed Coaster (2 Letters)
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This belongs in livelongnmarry. Bid there!
Offer: I will cross-stitch any two initials of your choice onto evenweave fabric, using silk or cotton floss, and mount it in a coaster.
Looking for the perfect gift? Have your friend's initials cross-stitched in zir favorite colors and mounted in a sturdy, clear acrylic coaster. The coaster is a 4'' hexagon with a 3'' round space for initials. This useful gift will remind your friend of your love and generosity a dozen times a day.
You can also honor a marriage or relationship with a monogram. Entwine their first initials together for a romantic gift that commemorates their love.
You choose the initials!
From A to Z, we have them all. Add a crown to give your friend the royal treatment.
You choose the colors!
Embroidery floss comes in hundreds of shades. Choose your friend's favorite color or match zir decor. Overdyed (multicolor) and metallic floss are also available, as are a number of different fabric colors.
Contact: My email is in my user info.
Delivery: I will have your monogram stitched and mailed by September 1.
Minimum bid: $5.
Tags: offered: misc items, seller: wordweaverlynn
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| Sunday, June 29th, 2008
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8:24 pm - Home at Last
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| Saturday, June 28th, 2008
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7:29 pm - Leaving Las Vegas?
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Last weekend the Bay Area was in a scorching hundred-degree heat wave -- about as hot as Las Vegas. I was glad I was here, since (like many Bay Area folk) I have no air conditioning.
The heat wave, plus the drought, parched the forests of Northern California. Lightning strikes did the rest. By June 26, 1,100 wildfires were burning 250 square miles of Northern California land. Some were as close to San Francisco as San Bruno Mountain, near SF Airport. But even the distant blazes contributed smoke that eddied over the region. Air quality went from good to unhealthy for people with asthma. Even those without sensitivities to smoke reported itchy, reddened eyes and trouble breathing.
If I had been home, I would have been living in my HEPA filter mask, and even that might not have kept my asthma from flaring. But I was in Las Vegas, watching the air quality reports. Our original schedule had us leaving here on Sunday, June 29. That's tomorrow. However, there is no point in driving back only to land in the ER.
After the trip to Madison, the abortive and sickened days in Philadelphia, and more than two weeks in Las Vegas, I want to be home. I want to see gramina. And Gabriel would like me to be home, if only to let me know how very upset she is that I've been gone so much. alanbostick wants to be home with wild_irises . Time for this adventure to be over.
So I've been checking the forecasts and the fire news. It looks like it's getting better. Air quality prediction for tomorrow: moderate. For Monday: good. Unless something catches fire tonight, we're going home tomorrow.
from ptor: NASA Image of Fires Burning in California (as of June 25). .
Bay Area Spare the Air page, with predictions for specific places. You can even sign up for alerts to come to your email, pager, or cell phone.
How to deal with all the smoke, and what dreadful things will happen to your lungs if you don't.
ETA The air-quality alert has been extended to today -- but not in the part of the East Bay where we're headed. We're coming home. (Knock on wood.)
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(2 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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| Friday, June 27th, 2008
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5:15 pm - L&M: Share the Joy
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| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
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9:14 am - Remembering History
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On June 25, 1876, the Sioux and Cheyenne (under the leadership of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse) defeated the Seventh Cavalry (under George Armstrong Custer) at the battle of the Little Bighorn. Custer's detachment was wiped out. The other squadrons, under Major Marcus Reno and Captain Frederick Benteen, suffered serious losses and fled.
Custer died because he made overwhelmingly bad decisions. He underestimated the number of his enemy. He planned his strategy without knowing what kind of ground he would need to cover. He thoroughly lived up to his standing at the very bottom of the West Point Class of 1861.
But the war for the Black Hills -- sacred ground to the Sioux and Cheyenne, a source of gold for the whites -- was not over. Within a year, the Indians were defeated, and their lands were taken away. It is particularly outrageous that one of their mountains was later carved into the likeness of four dead presidents.
Today is a day to ponder the racism, arrogance, and stupidity of some American leaders, civil and military. To remember that, instead of being the good guys, the US government can act with evil, and that they do so on behalf of every American of any race, creed, language, gender, and political opinion. To mourn for the soldiers who died on both sides, not forgetting the humanity of our enemies or our own troops. And to resolve never again to allow this kind of shameful behavior to stain the history of this nation.
Lakota Account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn
White Scout's Account of the Battle.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. If you haven't yet read this well-researched, meticulously documented book, read it. After nearly forty years, its narrative has not lost its power to shock or to move.
Little Big Man. Dustin Hoffman as a 101-year-old white man raised by Indians. This underrated movie intersperses hilarious satire with utterly shattering scenes of the white war against the Indians. Arthur Penn directed just three years after his landmark Bonnie and Clyde. Features Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, and Richard Mulligan (later a star of Soap). Mulligan's turn as Custer is worth the price of the DVD.
current mood: somber
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(4 stories | tell me tell me tell me)
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