scaticoke - schaticoke - schaghticokes tribal recognition disputed: What is it? | What difference does it make? | I know that for about a half dozen decades or so, this tribe of Native American people, who live not far from the toney Litchfield County village of Kent (can't get much more British Isles in name) Connecticut has been working their way through the Federal bureacuracy at the BIA to gain tribal recognition | Now that they are on the brink of getting recognized, the respected elders of Kent disagree with the findings becuase their ancestors -pale and pasty faced descendants of people frome another continent- have lived in the area almost 200 years | Alright, maybe it's 300; it isn't much longer that than, we can be sure |
     What is it about the descendants of land robbers that makes them feel entitled to something was never their to begin with ? | Were 'genocide' just a funny word in the English language, the situation, because if its repetetiveness throught the centuries and across the continent, might be laugable | But it is not |
     That the respected burghers of Kent use the thought that the recently recognized tribe might build a casino is not surprising, they have a real fear about the rightful desceandants of the lands they live on actually having the resources to take it away | But let's not kid ourselves | Documemntation of the tribe's presence and existence has been around longer than the settlers who now clain the area as their own |
     In truth, they no more own the land they live on that humans own the oceans by virtue of having traveled upon them |
     More later



  ¶ 09:05 0 comments

  music right now | Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain () | Michael Hedges - Torched (1999) |

climate change | Since the middle 1980s, when NOAA researchers first noticed a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, the evidence of planetary climate change has continued to mount | In February 2004, even the Pentagon issued a report that affirmed this phenomena, identified some of the social and environmental problems our global citizenry are likely to face as a result of ignoring this mounting evidence | In England, the Guardian Unlimited picked up the story (Lord knows,
Rupert Murdoch won't spend much time on it) thus making it available to anyone who doesn't want to keep their own heads in the probverbial sand |

Chris Elliott is a strong speaking, opinionated New Hampshire native living in Portsmouth New Hampshire and writes on everything from gay marriage to how some folks have compared George Dubya to Hitler | His opinion is a breath of fresh air! | For once a change from O'Reilly Factor clones spewing forth unintelligible peans to tax reduction for the rich, pro-war jingoism, supply(less) side voodoo economics [the present admin's figures make Reagan's economic practices seem downright socialis by contrast] I found out about him quite by accident | I'll be reading his columns with interest |
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  how "maximium" security? | I work at a maximum security facility | It is my job to listen to ~and see if it is possible to resolve~ complaints from the the residents of that facility | I'm also enjoined to advocate on residents' behalf | It is not a job that engenders friendliness from others working there, though I work hard at maintaining balance |
     Virtually everyone there is incarcerated, I am careful (as are others) to refrain from using the term "inmates" | Administration may not privately have a problem with that term, but publically it isn't used, because where I work is also a facility operated under the auspices of mental health funding, the inmates are referred to as "patients" | Now, I could get into a whole long discourse here on contrasting "treatment", "care", "services", therapeutic milieu" and such ... and I may do that some time in the future, but right now it would get me off topic |
     Right now, the topic is just how secure maximum services are | Where I work, given that since the place began operations, in the early 1970s, given that in that entire time no one has ever escaped, I'd say the place is pretty secure about being locked down |
     My inquiry is more toward how "secure" is a facility [any such facility] if the inmates are albe to learn things about the outside life of anyone working there, especially given that these folks do not have internet access, and opportunities to actually correspond with the outside world, while not absent, are impinged upon significantly |
     Mind you, I'm not surprised to hear that inmates know details about the personal lives of personnel working inside | Hell, numerous staff, themselves, can be quite chatty and genial ...if not to the inmates, then with their co-workers | And some of those same staff do so -in easy earshot of residents- without even a thought as to whether or not the residents are listening | You can certain that they do | there have been significant details about staff whom I have to find out about, that I have learned from the patients, simply because those staff speak in front of t hem as if they are not capable of remembering what the staff spoke of | Boy, are those staff wrong | It happens, more often than one outside might think it does |
     If the immates learn about staff personal lives from other staff, especially if and when the details learned can be sensitive, controversial or disconcerting to the listener, how secure is that facility?
     I have my suppositions as to how secure the facility is, but I'm more curious about how others think it might be at the moment | Feel free to private e-mail me on the question |

music right now | Michael Franks - Abandoned Garden (1995) | Natalie Cole - Stardust (1996) |

recovering back | not that anybody has asked, but my problem with the torn deltoid muscle has abated to the point where I'm now doing real exercises in physical therapy instead of just wincing over deep massage and ultra sound | And it's been three weeks since I no longer had to take oxycontin to ease the pain | If I had any left do you think Rush Limbaugh or Courtney Love would come to visit? |
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  who is who on the 9-11 Commission | Have to thank Big Rick Stuart Radio DJ FM for this set of bio stats | Always good to know who is doing our investigating for us |  ¶ 02:04 0 comments

  Thanks to Emanuele in Paris | Your response to my posting about Vera Cais has resulted in two kin long separated resuming their prior conversations |   ¶ 01:30 0 comments

  My response to the KOS flap | When the British employed the Hessians to fight the upstart American colonists, it didn't serve their purpose in the end.
     Hired, contracted, mercs, what you may call them, ~ have always gone to where they see their bread getting buttered | I don't blame them, but to pay for their adventures with their lives... I feel bad for the families of the hired security forces who were killed; it is always difficult to lose someone you love, and in a brutal and gory manner |
     It is the profiteers in such endeavors I hold accountable | Resource, construction and oil compant Executive Officers; Military Strategists; and people who foist themselves into leadership posts to pursure their own ends | If these corporate oilmen (et al) want to have a resource war, let them have it at their own expense. Use some of those corporate perks dollars that go to CEO compensation packages instead of demanding the American, Spanish, British. Aussie or Polish citizenry use their tax dollars to pay for the private profits resource wars |
     Anybody want to start considering what sentence the crime of committing ECONOMIC treason should bring to the offender? We're talking a whole class of perpetrators here, now, and around the world, bear that in mind |
     History is gonna catch up with all of those miscreants anyway | So crow loudly at the top of the nest now, because eventually, those at the top are going to lose | Truth always trumps falsehood | Sometimes it just takes longer to be realized |  ¶ 23:51 0 comments

  Biking through Chernobyl | Elena who hails from the Ukraine, notes early in her commentary that Chernobyl, in her native langauge, is "Wormwood" a substance referred to in the Christain Bible's Book of Revelations, and signifying the end times |
     On her tour she shows us a land virtually uninhabited, with decaying buildings and well tended highways | There is no place to buy gasoline, however, so travelers had better be well stocked before heading into the area | She says the landscape is divinely eerie | Who could disagree ? |

"...Some tourists companies have been trying to arrange tours in this town, but the first group of tourists found the silence unnerving and downright SPOOKY. And it is. They charged 1200 hryvnas for a 2 hour excursion and after some 15 minutes, they wanted to flee to the outside world. The silence here is deafening..."

     I have purposely limited providing my own readers with only one photo link to Elena's travelogue | You really ought to see it for yourself : http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/  ¶ 10:34 0 comments

  Rockwell Kent | While sort of aimlessly surfing sites about a couple of different artists, I stumbled upon a wealth of sites about the artist Rockwell Kent | I've long admiered his work, as well as his indomitable spirit | And it takes very little encouragement (none, actually) to spend a moment telling you all about one of my most favorite artists |
     Now, to bring you up to speed on this, Much of the time I spent was while looking at a remarkable site devoted to Kent's work that was put up by Doug Capra, a history and writing professor at Kenai College, up in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District | I wrote Capra about his site | Herewith I share what I wrote |
     Coming across the pages -this evening- that you've put up about Rockwell Kent's time in Alaska was a breath of fresh air for me. And I read what you have written thus far on your play, which I gather you have already had at least part of it performed. Hope it was well received ...or is he still getting bad press in Alaska?
     And since I was able to enjoy another's perspective on an artist I have for many years enjoyed, I thought it only fair to share with you a brief encounter with Mr. Kent, albeit, posthumosly; he being represented by his widow, Sally.
     I was, at the time, working for a printing company (Denton Publications) in the Adirodacks
back in the late 1970s. One Christmas season it was my job to come up with a center spread "Christmas Card" that would be published in all the 10 papers the company printed each week | One thing was certain was that everybody was tired of having head shots of themselves with some holly and wreaths on the side |
Since I was handy at pen and ink sketching myself, I was assigned to come up with something new |
     At the same time, I had recently seen a show at Lake Placid Arts Center that was comprised of many different Christmas cards created by Kent for friends, family, corporations and just as concepts for cards | I quickly saw that whatever I would do wouldn't hope to match up with the beauty of Kent's possibly "minor" works | My idea, then, was to see if we could get permission to print a card or two as the centerpiece in the papers | I had no idea what I was getting into |
     I got the gumption up, looked in the phone book, and called Sally Kent Gorton at Asgaard Farms | She said she'd be delighted to have me come visit and see what might be suitable |
     I expected to stay an hour or so. I spent the entire day |
     She graciously showed me around their home, the one built after the fire in 1969, pointing out a vast array of paintings, prints, raw sketches, stage designs (for an opera, Peer Gynt) that he had done and were still at home |
     Because it was cold, the studio was closed, but after the tour of the home, she left me alone in a room filled with drawered cases of works on paper | She apologized for the work being so disorganized and told me I would have to look through the darwes to find the images I fet I needed |
     The rest of the day I was left alone with the collection | It was like being thrown in a cave of riches and told
to look at whatever I pleased | When I was through, I'd pared it down to some two dozen images, which she then entrusted me to take with me for a week so the printing company could reproduce them | She asked only that the paper print a proper copyright notice as the Estate was having troubles with an unnamed but prestigious publishing house in New York City that had apparently taken to publishing works of her late husband without even a scintilla of permission or credit, profiting from the sale of reproductions of work without proper payment |
     At the paper, it was difficult to pick out which ones would go larger which would not | We opted to print them all | One of them, a cross section of a family's home at Christmas, was the cover image |
     When I brought them back, she again thanked me and gave me a print of Kent's of the Upper Jay, NY covered bridge, only a few miles from Asgaard | I thought I should be thanking her |
     Later, I was to receive two gifts | One of them one of the few remaining signed copies of N X E, the other, an 1890s edition of William Blake's "Jerusalem" with two different bookplates on the inside page | A letter was enclosed noting that the book had survived two marriages and a fire and that whenever I got tired of doing hand lettering to look at these things for inspiration |
     I still do |
     I also further marvel, to this day, how both the power and generosity of Rockwell Kent survived all this time, well after his passing from this realm |
     While I was disappointed in not learning what or how the play concludes, what I read so far has me hoping to some day read the rest | If you haven't already done so, I hope you can complete your play about Rockwell Kent | I recognize though, that, sometimes, any thoughtful project can take years to complete |
     It seems so important that people do what they can to preserve and make known the work and life of this exciting human being | How much richer we all are for the vibrance of his life, and for the ability he had in being able to chronicle it so skillfully |

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for more info on Rockwell Kent:
Plattsburgh State's Rockwell Kent Gallery | Rockwell Kent Wilderness Homepage by Doug Capra | Smithsonian Magazine article The Stormy Petrel of American Art | Artcylopedia's Rockwell Kent entry | The Hermitage Museum collection  ¶ 23:28 1 comments

  Who watches the right wing ranters? | I read with interest and curiosity the POV of some characters and pundits who make no attempt at ideologial neutrality |
      There's NewsMax, touting itself as "America's News Page" filled with bits about everything from Castro's daughter to creating spume and foment supposedly about John Kerry, whom its claimed rakes massive sums from campaign financiers (as if Dubya's rake was smaller) |
      One thing you WON'T find on the site, however, is who is behind the website | When you follow the web funding and support comes from none other than Richard Mellon Scaife
      Is this honest journalism? | Not in my book |
Gotta thank Conservative Web Watch for its work at exposing the crusty links in the disinformation war
      Another site that takes a closer look at enemies of free speech | Both warrant review |  ¶ 04:24 0 comments