Reznjun

today is abraham lincoln’s birthday. except if he were alive today he would have to wait til next monday to celebrate it. then he would have to share the day with george washington. i remembered i had this picture taken i believe in springfield, illinois. it is where abe sat . i dont think it is his hat though. it was put there for turistos to pose with. i was on the retracing of the trail of death. the original trail of death is when they forced about 800 potawatomis on a march to kansas. about 40 died on the way, thus the name. the real tragedy was when they arrived here in kansas. winter was setting in and they had no housing. then over the next decade around 600 of them died. you dont read much about that in history books. you gotta dig for it.

i can still recite most of the gettysburg address. we had to do that for history class long ago. funny how i can still remember it.

i went to a matinee the other day. the place was pretty deserted, about 10 people in the whole theater. went to see slumdog millionaire. that was a good film. kinda got me seeing all that poverty. reminded me of a few trips to mexico when i seen lots of poverty there also. my early days on this rez were spent in poverty too. thing is we didnt know we were poor. it was just life. our people better appreciate what they got. many dont have it like that.

that movie reminded me of when i worked on bridges. we were building a bridge out in the middle of nowhere, kansas. they had this dark guy as an inspector. i told the other guys i was working with ”that is a real indian”. some of the rednecks i worked with asked me how i knew. i said ”cuz he’s from india”. to them all dark folks were the same. some treated us bad, even though we did most of the heavy work for low pay.

i finished a book lately ”angels and demons”. had to read it cuz i seen trailers for the movie that is coming out soon. i like to read the book before seeing the movie. i seen the first one, the da vinci code. i seen some of those places while i was on a trip to europe. wish i had read the book before i went there. it was probably best that i didnt. it would have influenced how i seen the art in the louvre.  or the sistine chapel. didnt need to read conspiracy into great art. art is to be enjoyed. not to read things into it.

still sorting porky hair. gots lots of it to get ready to tie. wont be long before pow wow season is on us. just hope that gas dont continue to go up. i want to hit a few more pow wows this year. kinda laid low the past two seasons because gas was so high. i hope to have a number of roaches done for this season. it is monotonous doing the same thing over and over. i walk as much as i can to take a break. and i am encoding my language into my computor for my sons to study. it helps me to study it while i am doing that. got alot of work ahead of me on that. then gardening season will hit soon too. well it is best to keep busy.