A Portrait

Some artwork I did back in 4th grade, when I drew a lot and was also fascinated by the Plains Indians:



I forgot about it for a good long while, until I stumbled across a photo on the Internet:



The feather gives it away, I think. :)

Then, while sorting through lots and lots of old personal papers this past year, I came across my drawing again. In retrospect, looking at this and other drawings, I'm really not as good of an artist as I thought I was, and as everyone said I was. But I'm not too bad, either. Maybe I'll start drawing again someday.

Yes We Can

A year ago today, we had no hope. Our current president and his administration were committing atrocities on a nearly weekly basis, making a mockery of the Constitution he had sworn to uphold, and demonizing half of us to pander to the other half. The Congress we had elected in 2006 to stop him ... wasn't. Our leaders were too busy playing shell games with each other while feeding us lies and platitudes, and no one knew what to do about it. I doubt I was the only one who was waiting for a revolution to come.

A year ago today, the dominant race and culture of America had all the power, and they did not mean people like me when they talked about "real Americans." Every day in a thousand subtle ways they told me that I am not one of them, I am not the same. My voice is irrelevant because I am merely a guest here and I do not matter.

Then came a man with a voice from the other side. A man who has lived in the same America that I live in, who sees all of the flaws in it that are invisible to every leader that has come before, those that we're "supposed to" vote for by tradition (of the dominant race and culture). A man who speaks sincerely and plainly about the things that actually matter, a man who isn't trying to fill us with platitudes to hide his true agenda, a man who cuts straight to the truth.

Thank you, President Obama, for finding a way to bring on the revolution from within, for having the courage to reach across the Decider's divide, for volunteering to redeem us in the world's eyes. Thank you for daring to take a stand as a black man representing the voices of all minorities, for challenging us to add our voices to yours, for letting us take back the country that was and always has been ours. Thank you for showing the world that we are Real Americans too.

A year ago, we lived in fear. Now we have hope. A year ago, I was ashamed to be an American. Now I can be proud.

Yes we can.

Things I Remember

I remember the world holding its breath, watching to see what we would do. I remember when we stood at the precipice, on the cusp of world unification, strength in togetherness, so many directions we could go, so many possibilities. All it needed was a great leader with the confidence to take that step forward. And I remember thinking, this man, the one who leads us, is not that man, and he will stumble and fall.

And he did.

I remember the aftermath when "we" decided strength came from standing alone. It's something a great many teenage boys start out thinking but eventually, as they mature, learn better and grow out of. I remember thinking that the one with the most power had not. Many people stall out somewhere along the way, for many reasons. It's unfortunate that one of those had come to that place of power, a scared little boy instead of a true adult.

I remember when we became "we" and eventually not "we." For me, it was when he declared war on "terror" - and I knew we would be tilting at windmills forevermore. That was when he lost me.

But I remember all the hope in that first perfect moment.

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What I said last year also still applies.
Jim Wright's memories
Robert Sloan2's thoughts on the matter
Alcar's thoughts

Days Five and Six: History and Culture

Pearl Harbor has several memorials related to World War II.
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The USS Bowfin, a submarine launched on the one-year anniversary of the 1941 attack, is open to the public for audio-guided tours. Inside, it looks similar to a battleship except smaller and much, much narrower. (Note: my experience of battleship interiors consists entirely of the USS North Carolina - as viewed while walking through at high speed.) It's amazing how many people they managed to fit in it, not to mention the number of enormous torpedoes they stashed away front and back.
** **
Aside from the submarine itself, there is also a museum about subs in general, a park with lots of different kinds of torpedoes and the giant guns that shot them, and a small outdoor memorial to all the U.S. submarines and submariners that were lost during the war.
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Submarine memorial with USS Missouri and USS Arizona memorials visible in the background


The USS Arizona is the main memorial people think of when it comes to Pearl Harbor memorials. It sank with over a thousand people still on board, and most of them are still there. The memorial was built over its midsection, and the flagpole is where the ship's flagpole was. Visits begin with a 20-minute documentary about the context of the ship's sinking, using all-original historical footage, which does an excellent job of setting the mood before the ferry ride to the memorial itself.
**
The inside feels open and peaceful. At the other end from the ferry landing, the names of everyone who died is inscribed on the back wall, from floor to ceiling. The part that really got me, though, was the small box to the left. On it were the names of all the survivors who had come back to be buried with their shipmates, the earliest in (I think) 1981 and the latest just a few years ago.
**

The USS Missouri was where the Japanese officially surrendered to the U.S. in 1945. It's right next to the USS Arizona. There is also a USS Oklahoma Memorial - a battleship that capsized during the attack with hundreds aboard, and the second largest number of casualties. Unfortunately, we didn't have our act together enough to visit either of those.

USS Missouri from the Arizona. The white buoy marks the end of the sunken ship.

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The Polynesian Cultural Center, although the admission seems rather steep at first, is actually well worth the money. Tickets allow visitors to enter for up to three days, and include a free memento picture, snailshell necklaces (in lieu of fresh flower leis), guided tours of the whole park in a choice of languages, canoeing in their central canal, an IMAX movie about coral reefs, and bus transportation to and from nearby Laie.
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View on the central canal running through the whole park

Each of the seven mini-villages represent a different Pacific island, with authentic buildings and cultural information explaining their shapes and purposes.
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New Zealand is another name for Aotearoa.

There are music and dance lessons specific to each island. There is also a place for Easter Island.
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Columns of coconuts in Samoa
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These women were making grass hats.
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Easter Island exhibit

The highlights, however, are all in the 20-25 minute afternoon shows. Six of the villages present them on different aspects of history and culture. I learned all about coconuts in Samoa, how ukeleles were invented in Hawaii, conch shells, drums and clapping in Tonga, quite a bit about the uses of different plants to make buildings, clothing, and/or food, and was starting to get a grasp on the subtle differences between kinds of dances at each island.
*
Then there was the evening show. As luau entertainment goes, it was pretty spectacular - especially the Samoan fire knife dancing. However, we'd just been to a smaller (and more expensive) luau a few days earlier, and it was a bit much right afterward. They also sell authentic luau food between the last of the afternoon shows and before the big main show, but we skipped out on it and ended up at McDonald's. (We should probably just have gone to the Polynesian Cultural Center the first time.)

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Beach of the Day
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Kailua Beach is on the east shore. We went there in search of fine white sand. It did turn out to be softer and lighter in color than some of the other beaches, but still isn't Florida calcium carbonate white. The waves were relatively gentle, and there was a wide flat island that looked close enough to walk to (but wasn't really).


* pictures taken by my mother
** pictures taken by my cousin Angela

American Indian Creationism

The American Indians are from America.

If you're like me, you read that and immediately thought about the Bering Strait, and how they came to the Americas some 10 to 40 thousand years ago via a land bridge. The American Indians aren't from America, they walked here and settled it from somewhere else.

Are the Chinese from China? Did they not also walk there from elsewhere to settle? If you're like me, that thought doesn't occur to you at all when you think about those people in those places. Why, the Chinese have 6000 years of recorded (written) history and culture, which is a really long time.

So is 10 to 40 thousand years.

Where is the difference coming from, then? All through grade school here in the U.S. (and probably Canada), we are taught that the native Americans came to the Americas via the Bering Strait. Scientifically speaking, this is not in dispute, because every human being on Earth originally came from Africa. But somehow this has turned into the notion that the native Americans are not from America and have no claim to their own land. (Just think about that one. Do the Chinese "have claim" to their land?) It's a notion that isn't based in science at all, but in politics, and specifically in something called Manifest Destiny.

Meanwhile, according to the American Indians, they have always been here. God gave them Turtle Island when the world began. This has led to a form of creationism that is every bit as irrational and anti-science as Christian and Muslim creationism, and focuses mainly on attacking the Bering Strait theory.

I'm a scientist. I can happily mock Christian and Muslim creationism until the cows come home. But from the American Indians, it just makes me sad that I can't think of a respectful way to defend myself.

So I won't, because I would rather agree with them.

Manifest Destiny was wrong. The American Indians are from America.

11 Sep 2001 - Ficlet Style

Six years ago today, a bunch of mean people flew airplanes into buildings. They were terrorists. They successfully terrified the American people. The U.S. was so terrified, in fact, that it flattened Iraq. I suspect this wasn't the result they were hoping for. To date, it's unclear who's winning and what they're winning.

Broad Thoughts about Anthropology, History, and the Nature of Thoughts Themselves

Thoughts are ephemeral things that follow the same quantum mechanics rule as Schrödinger's cat. That is, attempting to note the train of thought in progress, even just mentally, interferes with it and therefore changes it. Not noting the train of thought in progress means that the whole train is often lost back into the subconscious, with only fragments left over that aren't sensical enough to record.

For example, on the way to work today, I had part of a train of thought that went thusly:

1. Han Chinese as opposed to non-Han Chinese. (I have no idea how I came to that subject.)
2. There are non-Han Japanese. The original inhabitants of those islands have physical characteristics distinct from the present inhabitants. Some of them still remain on Hokkaidō.
3. The original inhabitants of the American continents most closely resemble Asians. The dominant modern view seems to be that all of the American Indians are physically and culturally homogeneous - but really, if one thinks about it, that makes no sense. The Americas are very large, and there is no reason why all the peoples on them would be the same. (And in the same way, neither are all of the peoples in Asia, even though a lot of people think all Asians look the same, too.)
4. Out of all of the tribes that were here before, my favorite were always the Lakota. I was obsessed with Indians as a preteen, reading everything I could find about them (which wasn't much, unfortunately). I once drew a pencil portrait of Sitting Bull, based off of the famous one of him (and possibly the only picture of him that exists). I wonder what happened to it...
5. Something about blood quantas and how they make no sense. A person is not bits and pieces of different ethnicities and cultures. A person is a single whole. There is a Lakota ritual, apparently, that declares an outsider to be Lakota - and once it's done that's the end of the question; regardless of what the person looks like or what their blood heritage is, they are fully Lakota thereafter.

I spent much of my time at work today trying to recall why I was thinking about any of this and how I could turn it into a post worth reading. Sadly, I had no luck, and that's why it's just a list of fragments.

Independence Day, USA

In this month's newsletter from my apartment complex, they wrote a blurb about the American Revolution. It includes the sentence: "Many British consider the American Revolution to be one of the biggest mistakes in their country's history."

I shared that sentence with some Brits. One of them laughed his head off at the notion. The other one made annoyed muttering noises about how the problem with America is the non-aboriginal inhabitants of it, who ought to learn something about politics and history.

The one time I've heard a Brit comment other than that, it was to say that the colonists were a bunch of rabble rousers who were constantly starting conflicts with the natives that England then had to defend them from.