Name six things you would do to make the world a better place

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Bake brownies for the kids in the shelter
2. Help the world stay healthy
3. Send money to Africa to build hospitals
4. Send money to St. Francis School
5. Teach people that drugs can make you die
6. ?

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I would build new schools
2. I would give poor people bags of clothes
3. I would heal the environment
4. I would make colors that are vibrant
5. I would make solar power buildings
6. I would work to end prejudice

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Build houses for homeless people
2. Give food and money to the church
3. Give supplies and money to the school
4. Pick up trash and recycle the stuff
5. Teach math to other people from different places
6. Teach other people our language

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Get rid of drugs
2. Have electric cars
3. Have no tax
4. Let Iraq win the war
5. Lower food and gas prices
6. Pick up trash

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Be kind
2. Be nice to my sister
3. Be nice to one another
4. Follow the Ten Commandments
5. Love one another
6. Respect my mom and dad

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Go visit people in jail
2. Have a cheap or free yard sale for the poor
3. Help pick cotton to make shirts for the homeless
4. Help the EPA with the endangered animals
5. Recycle all soda cans I can find
6. Use solar energy to save the environment

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Get houses for the poor people
2. Let black people sit in the front of the bus
3. Put some churches in places where they don't celebrate God
4. Stop the people from doing tobacco
5. Take away all of the white people who were shooting and killing the black people and being mean
6. Take away guns forever

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I would clean out all the dirty junk in the ocean
2. I would do a lot of recycling
3. I would leave fish for the sea creatures
4. I would make peace with each other
5. I would make sure there is no more whale hunting
6. I would stop Middle Eastern countries' slavery of women

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Build schools
2. Don't kill
3. End drugs
4. Harvest more crops
5. Listen to people
6. Pick up trash

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I want everyone to be friends
2. I want more Spanish people in the United States
3. I would clean up the trash
4. I would save energy by turning out the lights when no one is in the room
5. I would say no more drugs in the world
6. I would stop all wars

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Better schools
2. Fresh water
3. Good penmanship
4. No drugs
5. No mean teachers
6. Send all the white people back to Europe

Friends

Friendship is the only cement that will
ever hold the world together.

Woodrow Wilson

The Diary of Anne Frank

by AJ:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was playing chicken at Mundo Lake at night. Scary things are happening in The Diary of Anne Frank. People got killed by other people and went to concentration camps. If I were Anne Frank, I would go to court and prove that the Nazis were being mean and unfair. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would walk into France and fight.

by Ariana:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when we were coming back from Lybrook. I saw a UFO at night. In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. Anne’s sister was called up to a concentration camp. People were dying. The family had to hide to live. If I were Anne Frank, I would not bug my parents. I would accept that I had to go into hiding. I would help the people around me. If I were captured by the Nazis, I would lose my life and be with God.

by Andrew:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was nine years old. We went to the Renaissance Fair. We went to the bungee jump. I went so high I almost fainted.

In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. Anne Frank has to move to hiding. She has to leave her belongings and her cat. There are people trying to put Jews in concentration camps. If I was Anne Frank, I would only eat, go to the bathroom, and be some entertainment. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would pray to the Lord.

by Simon:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was five years old. I was riding my bike in the field to go look for arrowheads. I was halfway there when, all of a sudden, dogs came running after me. I was so scared I dropped the bike and ran.

In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. First, the Nazis were after them. They they had to hide and be quiet five days of the week. If I were Anne Frank, I would listen to my parents because it was for my own good. I would think of Holland before the Nazis came. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would pray and hope I would die.

by Jay:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when we were coming back from Lybrook. We were telling scary stories on Long Bridge. Te Ada said Long Bridge was a haunted road. She said people saw things there. We were still telling stories when we saw the game and fish people trying to find something in the field. I was so scared.

Scary things are happening in The Diary of Anne Frank. The first thing is when they had to go into hiding. Then they had to go to the concentration camps. If I was Anne Frank, I would pack a lot of food, put clothes on, and find a hiding place. I would live there. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would try so hard to get away. I would keep warm. I would save food to eat. I would do anything to get away.

Mini-Me on the slopes

Fourth-grade boys find it comical to wrap their knees in their jackets and pretend to be Mini-Me. Below, they combine Mini-Me with snowpiles for twice the hilarity.

Thanks to Grama, we have twenty pairs of gloves for the playground fun.




Mini-me can also roll down the slide.

Pueblo Indians are not Apaches

Along the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico are several abandoned Pueblo villages.

Pictured here are the remains of the old village at the bottom of a place called Frijoles Canyon. You can get dizzy looking up at the cliff dwellings.




There are still lots of Pueblo people in New Mexico. The Pueblos were village dwellers, unlike Jicarilla Apache Indians who didn't stay in one place, but instead followed the buffalo herds with their tipis.

Touring Santa Fe

Hard to say what was the best part of our two days in Santa Fe. There was plenty of eating, drinking, and shopping with Ms. Kristin, the first-grade teacher, and Te Ada, the coach.



Santa Fe is really old—older than Jamestown and Plymouth. It was established in 1598 by the conquistador Juan de Oñate, who named it La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís (the royal city of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi). The picture below is from El San Miguel Misión, a 1610 church.

I saw an amazing (and a little disturbing) exhibit of a guy called Fritz Scholder at the Institute of American Indian Arts. And if that wasn't enough, I found out that Fritz was a major influence on another important Indian artist, who happens to be Te Ada's brother!

Georgia on my mind

Did I sense, when I stopped to take this shot, that someone else had already captured it?

Ghost Ranch is in Abiquiu about an hour from here. The 21,000 acres that comprise Ghost Ranch were part of a land grant to Pedro Martin Serrano from the King of Spain in 1766. It was the site of many hangings and is haunted by those spirits; thus, its name Rancho de los Brujos (ranch of the ghosts).

Georgia O'Keeffe visited Northern New Mexico in 1917. Like me, she fell in love with it. In 1934 she made it her summer home. Private and reclusive, she spent her time hiking, exploring, and painting. When her husband Alfred Stieglitz died in 1946, Georgia moved to Ghost Ranch permanantly. During the last years of her life she lived in Santa Fe where, when she died at age 99, she was quoted as saying, “I find people very difficult”.

There is more good information at the PBS American Masters site about Georgia O'Keeffe.

Indians or Native Americans?

Said George Carlin: (I read this in the ladies room at the reservation police station.)

"Now, the Indians. I call them Indians because that's what they are. They're Indians. There's nothing wrong with the word Indian. First of all, it's important to know that the word Indian does not derive from Columbus mistakenly believing he had reached "India." India was not even called by that name in 1492; it was known as Hindustan. More likely, the word Indian comes from Columbus' description of the people he found here. He was an Italian, and did not speak or write very good Spanish, so in his written accounts he called the Indians, "Una gente in Dios." A people in God. In God. In Dios. Indians. It's a perfectly noble and respectable word.

So let's look at this pussified, trendy bullshit phrase, Native Americans. First of all, they're not natives. They came over the Bering land bridge from Asia, so they're not natives. There are no natives anywhere in the world. Everyone is from somewhere else. All people are refugees, immigrants, or aliens. If there were natives anywhere, they would be people who still live in the Great Rift valley in Africa where the human species arose. Everyone else is just visiting. So much for the "native" part of Native American.

As far as calling them "Americans" is concerned, do I even have to point out what an insult this is? Jesus Holy Shit Christ!! We steal their hemisphere, kill twenty or so million of them, destroy five hundred separate cultures, herd the survivors onto the worst land we can find, and now we want to name them after ourselves? It's appalling. Haven't we done enough damage? Do we have to further degrade them by tagging them with the repulsive name of their conquerors?
And as far as these classroom liberals who insist on saying "Native American" are concerned, here's something they should be told: It's not up to you to name the people and tell them what they ought to be called. If you'd leave the classroom once in a while, you'd find that most Indians are insulted by the term Native American. The American Indian Movement will tell you that if you ask them.

The phrase "Native American" was invented by the U.S. government Department of the Interior in 1970. It is an inventory term used to keep track of people. It includes Hawaiians, Eskimos, Samoans, Micronesians, Polynesians, and Aleuts. Anyone who uses the phrase Native American is assisting the U.S. government in its effort to obliterate people's true identities.

Do you want to know what the Indians would like to be called? Their real names: Adirondack, Delaware, Massachuset, Narranganset, Potomac, Illinois, Miami, Alabama, Ottawa, Waco, Wichita, Mohave, Shasta, Yuma, Erie, Huron, Susquehanna, Natchez, Mobile, Yakima, Wallawalla, Muskogee, Spokan, Iowa, Missouri, Omaha, Kansa, Biloxi, Dakota, Hatteras, Klamath, Caddo, Tillamook, Washoe, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Laguna, Santa Ana, Winnebago, Pecos, Cheyenne, Menominee, Yankton, Apalachee, Chinook, Catawba, Santa Clara, Taos, Arapaho, Blackfoot, Blackfeet, Chippewa, Cree, Mohawk, Tuscarora, Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Comanche, Shoshone, Two Kettle, Sans Arc, Chiricahua, Kiowa, Mescalero, Navajo, Nez Perce, Potawatomi, Shawnee, Pawnee, Chickahominy, Flathead, Santee, Assiniboin, Oglala, Miniconjou, Osage, Crow, Brule, Hunkpapa, Pima, Zuni, Hopi, Paiute, Creek, Kickapoo, Ojibwa, Shinnicock.

You know, you'd think it would be a fairly simple thing to come over to this continent, commit genocide, eliminate the forests, dam up the rivers, build our malls and massage parlors, sell our blenders and whoopee cushions, poison ourselves with chemicals, and let it go at that. But no. We have to compound the insult. Native Americans! I'm glad the Indians have gambling casinos now. It makes me happy that dimwitted white people are losing their rent money to the Indians. Maybe the Indians will get lucky and win their country back. Probably they wouldn't want it. Look what we did to it.

Reservation dogs

From a blog on rural life in the U.S.:

"Certainly, on a very realistic level, one can make the case that reservation dogs are not very well cared for and can present a hazard to themselves and the community. They run wild, over breed and seldom see the veterinarian. But on a lighter, philosophical level, I think rez dogs possess a dignity denied the suburban dog. Rez dogs seem to have places to go and important business to attend. They trot down the road with their eyes fixed on some distant errand. They attach themselves to dwellings where people feed them, occasionally pat them and generally don't drive them off, but they definitely have their own society.

When Indians speak to their dogs, the dogs will look up and smile, happy to be noticed. They wear their goofy grins as they stroll around the edges of a powwow and seem pleased that the "doings" are going so well. But rez dogs know their place and seem to have a genuine pride in this structure. One senses that they'd be insulted at the dandified shows of affection bestowed upon the suburban dog.

Safe and healthy with his trips to the groomer and store-bought toys, the suburban dog seems stripped of his "dog-ness" and to my mind, often wears a look of resignation as he eats his diet dog food. The Rez dog, however, ragged and underfed, a cloud of dust emerging from his coat when you pat him, always wears a smile."

Walking from Colorado

It's about 7 miles from Edith, Colorado, to Lumberton. I posted summertime photos of this road a while ago. Here are some wintertime ones. Can you see the two elk in the picture above? (Click on it for a better view.)

This little piggy

. . . turned into three months of bacon.

Reading to the little guys

The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett is one of the hundreds of new books we received this year from Zoe Holbrooks and her colleagues at the University of Washington.

"Alooki spotted three pairs of beautiful boots standing in a row.
She put on the biggest boot. "Too big!" she said.
She put on the middle-sized boot. "Too fancy!" she said.
She put on the littlest pair. "Just right!" she said, wiggling her toes in the soft fur lining.