Tethered: December 6th 2021

An interesting word “tethered” a word synonymous with hooked, lashed, tied, or chained to.

We can look around us and see this word or it’s meaning a very big part of our lives.

It can be likened to an umbilical cord as we were tethered to our moms before birth. Later we’re asked to cut the apron strings. We leave the nest and sometimes cut ties with family.

But we really can’t since, there is always an invisible connection.

In the grade school playground was a game called “Tetherball.”

It had a 10ft pole with a metal ring on top of it. To this was tied a cord of about 7ft in length. The cord is attached to a hard rubber ball sort of like a soccer ball. The ball has a place where the cord was attached to it. The game required two players who hit the ball back and forth trying to get the cord wrapped around the pole before the other player could.

Our lives like the ball are tied to a central pole or if you will a point. Whether through the family lineage or history we have a beginning and an end.

The internet is another of those links we have to other people and things.

How we use it is important because it can become too intrusive in our lives. I see people with their faces glued to a little screen, fingers moving rapidly over it.

As I am in writing this but my sixty-five-year-old fingers don’t move as rapidly!

What is written just like the “Tetherball” can wrap us around an idea whether it’s good or bad.

Indians-indigenous whatever are without excuse too as it has invaded their lives. Movies use to show us communicating with each other by using drum beats, smoke signals, and then mirrors as we acquired technical expertise.

The animal and bird calls that we use to do by making them with our voices are now included in the phone apps. As the comedian Yakov Smirnoff used to say “what a country” yes “what an app!”

Natives are Tethered to the land and so are those who were born here. So now we have a common ground. Yet we are still separate. Will we ever be able to say together “what a country we live in?” Will we become “one nation under God?”

Right now, it seems like we are many nations disgruntled all disgruntled and oppressed.

“Are we going to be tethered to hate?”

Pearl Harbor December 6th 2021

A name that evokes more memories, images and a vast array of emotions.

I’ve visited the Arizona memorial and seen the footage of all the destruction that took place.

We have many monuments to heroic deeds and reminders of what happens when countries disagree. Disagree not strong enough rather “hate” that seems to be the theme running through our land.

Yes, our land!

As a native I have to bridal my tongue, and emotions as I look around me. If we are to move forward and come together as the country did after Pearl Harbor, we have to lay aside our own animosities.

Though the fight for rights of peoples goes on.

We can take down a statute because it doesn’t represent everything or everybody.

But!

Can we take down the ideas set forth by them that reached further than their own nose or vision. Truly vision is something that changes because it is taken up by others who improve on it or are supposed too!

Pearl Harbor represents an attack on a country and its ideals but also the strength of it to rise up and fight for its right to exist.

Pearl Harbor decades later still exists. Old enemies become allies but new enemies rise up. Let us remember that out of destruction rose a new strength and purpose.

People laid down the pen, brush, pitchfork, and most importantly their culture to meet the enemy.

Pearl Harbor Day, when America rose in strength from the smoke of destruction.

May God always bless. Amen

Turkey Day December 6th 2021

Another day of celebrating with family. Friends plenty of food and football games.

What is this day that America celebrates?

Is it just to eat turkey?

Watch football and Americas’ team the boys from Dallas?

Let’s venture back into “Hysteria’’ that word is better because today there is more of it. It tends to change everything that it doesn’t agree with into something it can agree with.

There’s that familiar story of the first “Turkeyday” with those Pilgrims and of course the Indians. It is true at first mistrust came but co-existence was arrived at too. With any people mistrust is an unfortunate outcome from jealousy, greed, and lust. Which of these caused all the problems for other turkey days?

May we say all of them; and today this is where we as a country are at now.

As the saying goes “back in the day” there was no celebrating for me for turkey day. What mom and dad put on the table you ate or didn’t eat simple as that! Brown beans, fried taters, gravy, and homemade biscuits were the fare on this day. It included sometime during the year a good helping of rabbit, squirrel and porky pig.

As sis got richer the turkey started appearing but I still liked what mom cooked. At this time the chicken would make an appearance as we got richer too.

In other words’ better commodities!

I still like chicken instead of turkey even that old colonel’s kind too. You all do know he never served in the army? I don’t really know if he did or not and he might have just been a private.

Think what you will but be thankful for what you have. Family, friends, freedom for all these can vanish with the stroke of a pen it seems like these days.

Give thanks that our minds are set above the “hysteria” of the day. The food will be eaten, the game will end, we will be fed and entertained. I’m thankful I didn’t have cook the turkey! I just ate the chicken and meatloaf and egg salad and pies!

I thankful for sweatpants you can always stretch and not bust out of them!

Turkey day naw a day of thanksgiving for all the blessings.