Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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On the Coloring Sheets page, there is a new sheet for Indigenous Peoples’ Day which is today. Below I will explain what each square represents. I’m glad that we are beginning to acknowledge the people who were here long before the Europeans arrived and drastically changed things through their way of life, their diseases, their concepts of ownership, and of course, their biases, which for many remain today.

I am determined to remind myself and others that the land I live and work on once belonged to the world, and the Haudenosaunee (in my specific area) were the caretakers. They were willing to help the new settlers, and did. And I’m sure regretted it. The Europeans weren’t exactly grateful in the long run.

Wherever you live look at the names of the towns. Across this country (the US) and Canada you will find many towns and streets are named with Native American names. I like to look into some of those names and see what they mean in the various languages.

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Election Connection – Republicans will Never Change their Spots

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I don’t even know where to begin with this bullshit.

The weakest Speaker of the House in US history has been ousted and the Speaker’s position is vacant for the first time in the House of Representative’s 243 years of existence.

Good riddance.

Kevin McCarthy is nothing more than a sycophantic, lying, piece of garbage scraped off the bottom of my shoe. Partisan hack and chaos agent doesn’t begin to cover the contempt I have for this phony.

I haven’t even gotten into his smarmy, self-satisfied, failing up brand, and contemptuous face.

But you may say, tell me how you really feel.

And judging by his recent tantrum, Interim Speaker, Patrick McHenry isn’t much better.

Let me actually begin by answering the media’s pressing question: Why are Democrats to blame for this debacle?

Well…they’re not.

At all.

The Democrats have a speaker. The Minority Leader. His name is Hakeem Jeffries. They voted for him at the same time Republicans voted for Kevin McCarthy. For the Democrats, nothing has changed. They support their speaker 100%.

It is not their job to bail out his weak ass.

It is not their job to create a safe space for the Republicans to continue their attack on the American people by their reverse Robin Hood of taking from the least of us and giving to the wealthiest. This isn’t politics as usual.

Except that for the Republicans, it is.

I am currently reading Wounded Knee: Party Politics and the Road to an American Massacre by historian, Heather Cox Richardson. It is more than the journey taken by the United States government that led directly to the Wounded Knee massacre, but it is the politics of the day that led to.

The greed.

The corruption.

Basically, the Republican way of life.

I don’t say this lightly.

Prior to this book, I finished reading Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads by Dee Brown about the building of the transcontinental railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and it is full of the double-dealing, cheating, corrupt railroad tycoons who did everything in their power to steal the land from the Native Americans while committing genocide along the way. (As an aside, Dee Brown also wrote the seminal work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West – I highly recommend it.)

The railroad tycoons did not manage to do this alone. They had help, a lot of help from the US government and the military, all Republican run.

But I diverge from the focus of this writing which for our purposes only touches on the railroads and the Native Americans tangentially to the Republicans’ lying and cheating to win any election.

As I read Cox Richardson’s detailed descriptions of how things went down in the 1890s and beyond, the Republican representatives did everything in their power during the Harrison Administration to retain control of the Congress and the Presidency. They bought off election workers. They kept the Black vote suppressed. They refused to consider Native American citizenship because for some reason, having been born here wasn’t enough to be a voting citizen. Not to mention they weren’t land-owning, a prerequisite for the ability to vote.

They CREATED four new states, and only Montana surprised them by electing a Democratic governor, but other than that, they, as well as Wyoming, North and South Dakota were Republican in every other way. These four NEW REPUBLICAN states received at least four Congressmen and EIGHT senators. This heavily weighted the Electoral College to almost guarantee a Republican victory in 1892.

Which was exactly the point.

Our biggest mistake as a country is letting land vote.

And this was the least duplicitous thing they did to gain votes and money for their personal coffers.

They continually suggested that the land on the Great Plains was great for farming. It wasn’t. And it still isn’t without irrigation which hadn’t been discovered yet as a viable alternative to natural rain. They falsified weather reports, giving the opposite information than the Farmer’s Almanac predicted.

Reading this history, I was becoming incensed. I needed to stop often after I read a paragraph and then highlighted some other Republican misdeed. I was having flash-forwards to modern times and seeing this exact scenario playing out today.

Just look at the last few days of the Speaker vote. One Republican motioned for the speaker to vacate. Eight Republicans voted against Kevin McCarthy. REPUBLICANS. When the interim speaker took over, a small man who thinks smaller, slammed his temporary gavel so hard, he missed the block he’s supposed to hit. His first act as Interim Speaker wasn’t to speak to Democrats, to try to unite the parties or even to unite his own split, petty party, he used that first act to evict Speaker Emerita Pelosi and former Majority Leader Steny Hoyer out of their Capitol offices. Speaker Pelosi wasn’t even in Washington, D.C. She was attending her friend Dianne Feinstein’s funeral in California. Fortunately, her staff had help from Leader Jeffries’ staff to move her office. That’s all you need to know about the parties.

You may not agree with Democratic party policies, but most of the country does. And regardless of even that, when the Democrats are in power, they spend their time trying to make things better for ALL Americans. They’re not out there sabotaging each other and the rest of the country. They’re not holding the debt ceiling and the paychecks of the military hostage. They are working for the people. Always.

What have the Republicans gotten done for the American people?

Nothing.

They’re too busy whining, creating havoc, name-calling, lying, suppressing the vote and everything possible to stay in power.

But when they’re in power, what do they do?

Nothing.

Look back on the last few Republican Administrations. They screw us up so badly and put us deeper into debt, we elect a Democrat who fixes the mess, and then we get collective amnesia.

Remember this on Election Day.

Remember this on every Election Day.

Remember.

Mental Health Monday – Onward

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Today is the first Monday in October, and that means that Suicide Prevention Awareness month has come to its conclusion. Now that you won’t be inundated with reminders every few tweets or threads to check on your friends, to drink your water, to breathe, it may seem as though you’ve been abandoned at the seashore with friends and neighbors waving you off.

This is not what it is, though.

Without the constant social media buzz, it is still important to remain aware of your mental health. Continue seeing your mental health professionals. Notice if the things you like to do become less fun or you dread starting projects. If you journal, continue writing. If you doodle, continue drawing. If you pray and/or meditate, keep up that practice.

Randomly mark a day on your calendar to see how you’re doing; is your coping toolbox ready for your needs?

Take a mental health inventory on yourself once a week or more if it helps you feel centered.

Check yourself, and check your friends.

The awareness month may have ended, but the awareness doesn’t.

You are not alone.

We are all in this together.

St. Therese of Lisieux

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Shrine of St. Therese of Lisieux.
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
(c)2023

Next weekend marks the second anniversary of the death of my priest. In some ways it feels like yesterday and in others it feels like decades since he’s gone. I don’t know if it’s been a disadvantage or an advantage coming into the church so late in life that I’ve only had one priest up until recently. He was a guiding force in my welcome and acceptance in the parish and the Catholic faith, borne from his being Christ in the world through love, care, and guidance.

This weekend holds two saints’ feast days that I strongly relate to Father Jerry. Yesterday marked Saint Jerome’s feast and today is Saint Therese of Lisieux. Jerome was Father’s given name, so there is the obvious connection, and he held a strong devotion to St. Therese, also known as the little flower. When we visited Northern Ireland for the burial of my mother-in-law’s ashes, we stopped in Dublin, where I had the fortune to visit and pray at a shrine of St. Therese. I brought home a postcard for him, knowing that he was devoted to her. At the time, I hadn’t known that she has a much closer shrine, northwest of here in Niagara Falls, Ontario, just over the border. From that shrine at the Monastery of Mount Carmel, the roaring Falls could be heard and if you could get high enough even see the Horseshoe Falls.

The Monastery of Mount Carmel has two shrines; one inside the chapel where I attended mass, and one outside. The outside one was at the end of a path guided by plaques with many of the things that St. Therese is known for having said, culminating in a round clearing bordered by flowers, several park benches and centered with a statue of St. Therese in white marble, holding a cross and an armful of roses.

Those plaques are shared below. I hope they can be read on their own, or prayed with as you like.

Take some inspiration from her words and life.

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Feast Day of St. Jerome (of Stridon)

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St. Jerome was known for his writing. He translated the Hebrew Scriptures from Hebrew to Latin, which was unusual at the time since most people translated it from a controversial text called the Septuagint, also called The Greek Old Testament. He is the second most prolific writer of in ancient Latin Christianity. The first is Augustine of Hippo, who actually had no problem with the original Septuagint.

As a result, perhaps, he is the patron of translators, librarians, and encyclopedists as well as archaeologists, students, Biblical Scholars, and against anger, the latter of which I believe stems from his widely known bad temper.

As a student in Rome, he indulged his hedonistic side, but also attended the catacombs of Rome to visit the martyrs and Apostles there. There were early inscriptions and wall art that I imagine he studied, although he referred to the place as giving the feeling of the terrors of hell.

To put it simply, Jerome was a person of contradictions, some of which can be sourced as his being a student, a constant learner, and a voracious reader and writer. He had a group of women who surrounded him that read his scholarly works, and several were turned towards a life of consecrated virginity and the ascetic monastic life. This had a negative impact on these wealthy women’s donations, and he became at odds with the Roman clergy.

He is considered a saint in the Catholic Church (and a Doctor of the Church there), Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican.

His iconography is often depicted in libraries and/or scriptoriums surrounded by books, parchment, vellum, and writing implements. He sits at a desk, holding a quill. He is also depicted with a lion having apocryphally removed a thorn from one’s paw.

In my sketch below, I have chosen to leave the lion and the saint outside the view as we look into his small cell of scholarly works.

Mental Health Monday – Quietude

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Today is the observance of Yom Kippur. It is the Jewish day of atonement, a time to think back on the bad we’ve done and ask forgiveness, and to look forward on how we can be better stewards of ourselves and our time.

When I was a child, we were not allowed into the temple. I don’t know if that was because the tickets were too costly or if we children made too much noise and fidgeted too much. I have strong and fond memories of playing in the parking lot (which was devoid of cars) and playing with other children. We were dressed relatively nicely, but still playing outside until one of our parents came out to the door at the back, and from the top of the stairs shushed us. If I were being honest, this happened more than the one time.

Growing up, I had difficulty on this day. As a teenager, I would sleep until one in the afternoon, hoping to shorten the fasting we were required to do. I was annoyed that I couldn’t participate in my favorite pastime – writing – because writing was work. (Not to me, but my parents would not hear of it.) We didn’t have computers then, so that wasn’t an issue for me.

As I grew up, I never had a temple near me to attend services (except once) and so I spent my Yom Kippur fasting, reading one or two books, and speaking to G-d.

After I had my kids, I would take them on walks, read to them, and watch PBS.

On these Yom Kippurs that fall during my Catholic years I find myself seeking quiet. Reading. Praying. Fasting. (I try to only take my medicine with a little bit of water.) Thinking back on the last year and looking forward.

For those of you who are not Jewish, who do not observe the fast, this is a reminder that we all need that quietude; that time to take for ourselves where we’re not making shopping or to-do lists, where our brains are not turning over a mile a minute. Take the day if you are able, or an hour, or even a block of fifteen to twenty minutes, and just be. It can be contemplation, meditation, prayer, or just simply resting your mind. That time is your refuge, and it is needed just as much as water is for life.

(c)2023