Reznjun

today is my sons birthday. william turned 23 today. he goes to haskell and is working as an intern at our casino for the summer. i am proud of him. we dont get all that much into birthdays but we do try have eats. busy time now getting garden produce picked and gathering coming up. so  we just gonna eat out. we picked mexican in topeekee. we like spicy food now and then. i bet he wont want to wear the sombrero and have the staff sing to him tho. i know i wouldnt.

my crooked neck squash are ready to dry now. that will take some doing. looks like i have alot of them. cant see too far into the garden because their leaves cover the ground. i have noticed the ones on the edges. i probably have more this year than i have had in a long time. i remember when i was young i helped to dry them. i even knew how to braid them like they did then. i cant remember how to do that now so i just dry them. i will have enough to last til next growing season. and i can still donate some for the gathering meal.

i grew up on this rez when we didnt have electricity or running water. can still remember those days but i find it hard to live without my cell phone and computer. the other night i went to services for an elder so i left my phone in the car. when i went home i couldnt power up my phone. i charged it and it still wouldnt work. since i pay for an extended warranty i took it to the phone place. they didnt see anything wrong with it. the girl said it was probably the screensavers i had in my phone. they interfere with the software. so they deleted them. it hasnt given me a problem since. but it zapped out my caller id pictures, speed dials etc. so i had to reload them. nice thing is they loaded me a free memory card.

i seen where our president sat down and had a beer with a cop and a professor. guess it was about racial profiling. or a misunderstanding. but then racial profiling is a misunderstanding. i dont see all that much of it like in yesteryear but some still exists. for the most part most people just want to live. racism is ignorance. thankfully we dont have many racists left. sad that we have any though. i can understand the prez trying to get opposite sides to sit down together. i dont see the beer part though. dont want to alienate people that drink but i seen too much of what it can do to our people.

speaking about racial profiling…i got ahold of an old newspaper clipping. it was published in 67. it was about the high school i went to, i was a sophomore then. the principal was talking to the reporter about indians. he said “we’ve got a couple who are pretty sensible”. so he sent someone after one of them. his runner came back “without the Indian”. so he told him to go to the pool hall and look for him. me and my brothers hung out down there. we didnt have  any sensible indians in the crowd we ran with. we were young and carefree.

i was reminded of an incident that happened years ago. i lived another part of the country then. there was this young indian who musta seen alot for his young years. he climbed to the top of a watertower. guess he was suicidal.  a crowd gathered, cops came. they tried talking him down. this took awhile. people got impatient. they wanted a show. so the crowd started chanting ‘jump’. this went on awhile. that was cold. people can be cruel. the dude finally came down. i never forgot that.

yesterday for the first time in my life i rode a four wheeler. man that was fun. i was tempted to speed but thought better of it. i dont need cheap thrills at this point in my life. buzzed about the hood, thru hayfields and down the road. never knew how fun those things could be. konugish ran along side. didnt think that dog would keep up with us. he eventually fell back. i fed him when he got home.  riding that machine was fun.