All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

A Forgotten Native American

Aging Capriciously

I think it is fair to say that Ti-bish-ko-gi-jik or Father Philip B. Gordon of the Ojibwe tribe in Northern Wisconsin was not forgotten since he was never really remembered.  I have lived in Wisconsin and Minnesota since 1965 and I never heard of the first North American Catholic priest who was also a Native American.  A friend of mine told me about the attached article which is a compilation of stories and a short biography of Reverend Gordon written by Paula Delfeld in 1977.  I am always amazed by the lack of history for Black Americans but it is probably true that Native Americans are equally forgotten in our American educational system.  Call me naïve but I always thought history was supposed to be unbiased and objective and inclusive.  I am still waking up to the fact that it never was.  The following link includes some interesting pictures and…

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Until the fat lady sings*

NANMYKEL.COM

When the great backlash occurs, who will be left standing?  Doesn’t history tell us that extremes in population sentiments swing back and forth?  Enough usually becomes enough.  Surely common sense will settle over our land soon?  Wishful hoping?  I’ll vote. What else do you suggest?

I liked this from the post of a Dr. who’s a vietnam vet.  Lost his blog, link, tho…

“We can reduce the lethality of guns by limiting clip capacities and by eliminating rifles that were designed for military purposes and not hunting.  Why anyone would need a rifle with more than a three round capacity is beyond me.  Rifles should be for hunting or target shooting and nothing else.  Any game that you are hunting will be gone long before you can chamber and fire your third round.  A .223 caliber was first designed for the military in Vietnam.  I had to qualify on an…

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Friend Felix Speaks Again

NANMYKEL.COM

4th of JULY:  GOOD GRIEF!

If you like pretty poems, please look away,

for here I lament decay, dying and death.

I’m not bemoaning my dying contemporaries,

who lately fall like old-growth trees in a forest.

Nor do I pre-grieve my own impending death.

My concern is for the fate of our democracy,

as it is doing a dangerous dance with doom.

Our precious political freedoms are eroding.

Our fractured center seems not to be holding.

Our democracy could be in its death throes.

Female bodily autonomy has been outlawed,

voting rights have been wantonly suppressed,

there is massive support for Trump’s Big Lie.

The Supreme Court defies the majority’s will.

Throughout our land gun fetishism flourishes.

Louder liars shout down the voices of veracity.

Violence grows, the environment degrades.

This Independence Day is a day of gloom.

Sadly I fly our tattered flag upside down.

Today I can’t sing…

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Thoughts About Legal Precedents

bluejayblog

The national concern over the present “activist” U.S. Supreme Court has escaped few citizens this summer. The rulings on women’s rights, gun regulation, and more, has many people worried. We are rightly concerned about our basic rights to go about our lives in a peaceable manner and fulfill our civic responsibilities. After the Court’s precedents are established, they will hold great power over Americans.

The current consequences for Americans is that new precedents can and will overturn well-established precedents on privacy, safe environment, separation of church and state, marriage equality, equal opportunity, and voting rights. The overturning of the well-established precedents negatively affects millions of people.

A great deal of legal weight is placed upon a precedent even if it does not support legalistic theory as strongly as we have been told. The first, original precedent logically would not have been based on precedent. Logically thinking, there must have been…

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Diary

Kaushal Kishore

Once I was buying some stuff at a shop and the shopkeeper was using torn pages from a notebook to wrap the items he was selling. Along with that notebook, he had some other notebooks as well, but I was attracted to a notebook, which was written in very good handwriting, although its pages were in tattered condition.

I asked the shopkeeper from where he got it. He replied, “From a scrap seller.” On my request, he readily agreed to give it to me for free.

This notebook was nothing but a personal diary, a treasure trove of someone’s memories. It was anonymous and had no name or address on it, but every word was relatable to me.

I wondered how much time, effort, and above all emotions would have been put in by the owner of this diary, which has now become junk for the very world he loved…

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Covid killed so many of us – now the UK government fears our tears and rage | Michael Rosen | The Guardian

I came out of my dose of Covid and my time in intensive care not being able to stand up or walk, with one eye hardly seeing and one ear hardly hearing. Micro-bleeds in my brain have permanently knocked out the respective optic and auditory nerves. I readily admit that I look at the comments by Johnson and those scientists and feel aggrieved. And I’m not even the loved one of someone who died in that time. I’m not a health worker who lost a colleague at the very moment the PPE was insufficient or poor. On one occasion the PPE that came into my ward was secondhand and one piece had blood on it (as testified by the consultant).

I have been in meetings with people in this situation and many feel desolate, betrayed and abandoned. All the more so, when they hear people telling us that it was a “scamdemic” or that we had underlying health problems or that we were so old we were going to cop it soon anyway. One famous journalist reassured me that she knew I had been ill, “but,” she added, “you are 74”. That “but” is doing a lot of work. What’s “but” about being 74? Are my days less valid than her days, I asked myself. What kind of social contract do we have with each other in which I can be dispensable because I’m 74?

Meanwhile, this great invention, the NHS, saved my life, taught me how to walk, helped me help myself get fit, through the gloriously cooperative labours, skills, knowledge and experience of hundreds of people, many from (or with origins in) many different parts of the world. When I meet any of the nurses, doctors, physios or occupational therapists who looked after me, I am moved to tears.

To my mind, they represent the best of us; togetherness in the face of danger and loss. And, take it from me, they have suffered and are still suffering. Some have been unable to go back to the wards. When I signed permission for me to be put into induced sleep, I was told I had a 50:50 chance of waking up. It turned out to be a slightly better ratio: 58% of us survived; 42% died. That’s a lot of death for young health workers to cope with.

Actually, 200,000 is a lot of death for all of us to cope with. I wait – and keep waiting – for that national moment, that service in St Paul’s, that official gathering where we can all reflect at the same time on what has happened to us. Because the deaths have happened to us as individuals – and not in a public shared way, in some horrific act of war or genocide – it has become easier to tidy it away. The burden of the national and social trauma is being carried by us in our families and personal relationships. It’s almost as if this government that went into the pandemic mocking the public health response is afraid of our tears and our rage.

Source: Covid killed so many of us – now the UK government fears our tears and rage | Michael Rosen | The Guardian

Good People Doing Good Things — Rescuers

Filosofa's Word

Today’s good people are everyday people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time … and jumped in to help someone with a disability, likely saving that person’s life.


Jake Manna was installing solar panels in Buttermilk Bay in Plymouth, Massachusetts, when he heard that a 5-year-old girl with autism was missing in the neighborhood. Though he was unfamiliar with the area, Manna immediately climbed down from the roof where he was working and joined in the search. Heading down a rural path to a nearby stream, he discovered a diaper and a T-shirt.

Thinking the girl was close by, Manna walked along the stream to a marsh, where he found the young girl wading in water up to her waist.  Though Manna tried to convince her to get out of the water, the girl continued to wade, according to police. Fortunately, Manna was able…

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