This is a clip of the opening of the pow wow at The Smithsonian … you will see some of my friends who are Veterans being the honored carriers of the United States flag. The veterans are most often in the front rows of the grand entry.

Then will come the veteran’s honor dance, one of many this night… honor truly, because they carry proudly the American flag under which their own ancestors were murdered and persecuted. Even so: The American flag is given prominence over all the Tribal and State flags. The past not forgotten, but America our country in our own way now, too. Honor.

Honor dancing; you see the opening dance as people file into the dance arena; they are doing a knee-bending dip-step that covers only a tiny amount of ground at a time. This dip-step shuffles forward, almost in place, and it makes everyone’s fringes sway, makes every last feather tremble, makes every metal jingle skirt sound like the wind over mesas, makes every set of rattles worn at knees sound like hard rain. In the storm. Dancing in the storm. Honor.

You see to the lower right in the film, the antelope, the deep, the crows, the eagles, and deer dancers and the bear spirits and more, dancing … beginning to dance, loosen up, returning to their pelts. Honor. To be so fully alive and instinctual. Honor.

Read the rest of this entry »

With an estimated one out of three Americans casting ballots before Election Day this year, it may be time to rethink the tradition of having tens of millions of voters swamp polling places on a Tuesday in November. Why just one day? Why not two, three or even a week?

The advantages of converting to an Election Week are many and obvious:

*With the uncertainties of electronic gadgetry, a longer period would reduce not only endless lines and voter frustration but allow more time to resolve registration challenges and to count and, if necessary, recount ballots;

*Races would not be decided by bad weather conditions that sometimes make it difficult for the aged and the infirm to get to polls;

*The self-employed and others who find it hard to take working time off would have the choice of voting on a Saturday;

*The process would not be so dependent on aggressive get-out-the-vote tactics by political parties.

Read the rest of this entry.

Filmmaker Will Drinker has a reminder about the importance of this month and about a must-see project he’s working on with his brother:

October Is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month

by Will Drinker

Are you aware of Dan Drinker?

Dan is a 23 year old man with Down syndrome who is not only aware of the current presidential race, he’s participating. Dan endorsed Barack Obama (take that, Sarah Palin), he voted for him in the primary, he even saw the senator speak at Penn State.

I’d like to make you aware of my amazing older brother, who just happens to have Down Syndrome. We are making a documentary together about his life. See him the way I see him at http://dandrinker.com.

I feel a need to preface this by stipulating the following: When it comes to the divisive national issue of abortion, I am reluctantly pro-choice, while finding myself supportive of certain sensible restrictions and limitations on the practice. Further, I understand that not everyone will make the choice to give birth to a child if they know ahead of time that it will be hazardous. I will also state that after a couple of weeks of research, I have more than sufficient grounds to oppose the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate. But even given all that, when I read this story from my friend The Lady Logician, I began to wonder about some of the people in this world.

The short version is that there is apparently at least one person out there who thinks that a woman who chooses to bring a baby to term while knowing that it will have serious medical issues is somehow guilty of being greedy and burdening society.

…unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child’s life upon others.

While I found the story pretty disgusting, it was nothing near the level of outrage they managed to drag out of my radio co-host. Click through the jump and get the full flavor.

If I may, I would like to take a moment to interrupt your normal rage of righteous indignation over this or that with a brand new entry in the “Why On Earth Would You Say That?” competition. Out on the campaign trail once again, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden took time out to say,

I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?

I don’t care whether he meant it that way or not, but one of the more idiotic things you could do at this point is is start tossing out arguments that drag Sarah Palin’s child into a scientific debate. Does anyone really think this is going to win sympathy or support for the Democratic ticket? There is a valid debate to be had on stem cell research in terms of whether or not it should be done at all, whether adult or embryonic stem cells should be used, moral and ethical considerations, etc. But it can all be done in a mature way keeping to the science at hand or, at most, the general principles regarding the use of embryonic material.

Somebody has to get a leash on this guy.

Todd and Sarah Palin have named their little guy Trig, which according to the family, is a Norse word meaning “true” and “brave victory:” The name is in honor of his great uncle, a Bristol Bay fisherman. The name Paxson comes from a snowmobiling area in Alaska which the Palins cherish.

If this little boy’s names are an indication of his family’s hopes for him, their recognition of his gifts yet to be unfurled, then it may well be that this child’s life will present a rare landscape, seldom seen by most, and many many challenges met with true and straight heart.

In depth psychology, the symbol of the fisher and the wild landscape are ancient ones, and are particularly related to la Mer, the fisher being the one who returns day in and day out, to that origin of basic, basic life; the one who is nourished by what he or she finds /catches in the great oceanic life form that rocks so much life. In some of the oldest tales from the Inuit, the fisherman is ever amazed at his finds, and has a heart like a north star– it does not waver.

Though there are health issues of the body, often, and there will be issues of protecting this young soul from those who do not understand, a child with Down’s syndrome, nonetheless, is a treasure in these ways of the ancient fisherman, also. Heart like a North Star. You can count on it.

It seems that Sarah Palin’s reputation for being a ‘barracuda’ has captured the attention of the planet. Now William Waack, O Globo of Brazil’s chief foreign columnist, has weighed in - warning U.S. Democrats in part:

“Attack a woman like Palin, and the result is to make her a victim of machismo, sexism, prejudice, etc. Turn your back to her and you’ll be left with a nice bite on your rear end. And Obama’s must be hurting now: Palin attacked him in a way that not even Hillary Clinton had the audacity to do. She didn’t even spare Obama’s wife Michelle.”

So will the choice of Palin do the trick for McCain? Waack adds:

“Irony, sarcasm and good humor are components of a well-organized speech to a chosen public when one is playing at home (as is the case for the Republican convention). It’s difficult to calculate how well Palin will be able handle the pace of the next nine weeks, especially when she’s no longer a novelty. The election isn’t lost for the Democrats, but Obama-Biden is still far from a guaranteed victory on Nov. 4.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Republicans may not like the type of questioning that the American media is subjecting McCain’s shock VP pick to, but it isn’t only American journalists asking ‘personal questions’ about Governor Sarah Palin, who could soon be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

For Switzerland’s Nachrichten newspaper, Patrik Etschmayer writes in part:

“Even if she tries to smile it away and to make it look pretty: The pregnancy of her daughter - in contrast to other pregnant U.S. teenagers in a financially comfortable situation - can be directly attributed to the twisted sex education policies of Sarah Palin and other conservative Christians, which still assert (despite clear statistics to the contrary) that vows of celibacy keep teenagers from having sex.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Palin is ordinary.

Yes. Ordinary.

Our country, and the world, is populated by millions of women just like her… worker ants, carrying astonishing loads many times their body weight, building, building, nourishing, nourishing, organizing, organizing.

The worker-ant is a pattern of Nature. An ordinary one. A usual one. Not an odd, strange, once in a lifetime one.

Come with me to the South and I will show you the most beautiful and semi-treacherous “steel magnolias” who follow the worker-ant pattern precisely. The entire culture would collapse without those radiant, wily-coyote women; they are often found in legislatures, homes and businesses, propping up all kinds of matters behind the scenes and being wickedly funny topside.

Come with me to the farmlands and small towns of the Midwest and I will show you the most gorgeous corn-fed women who are pretty and pony-tailed and run grim in the blood to get done all that must be done, by their lights. Backbone is how they call it there. They can gentle the horses, rev up the tractor, negotiate with the bank officers, run the corporation, marshal the family.

Come with me to the gaming tables of the Southwest, and I will show you women dealers who have many children, a husband or not, and they may also be building a manse out in the desert while taking care of their elderly folks… and without a complaint, and just a lot of ‘family management style’ in those manicured hands. ‘Never is heard a discouraging word,’ is not just a song. Funny, in MSM, we often hear of those who tangle in the traces, but little about those who remain in harness, pulling hard and strong for life.

Come with me to the East and to the self-built Courts of the Monied and to the huge hives of the Publishing Empires along the coast… and I will show you worker-ant patterns in women taken to such extremes that the women will use their beds as desks to dictate to the family and their corporate sister and brother-ants, even though the woman herself just came from chemotherapy two hours ago.

Anywhere we might go together, you and I, we can easily, with just one or two questions, scout-out myriad women who ‘do it all,’ and continue to ‘do it all,’ until they die.

Some can shoot a gun, others aim ace-accurately and shoot from the hip. Some can skin a coon, others can skin a dollar ’til the eagle screams. Some can dress-out a moose, others can ad-dress injustice and turn it to the good. Some can raise ten kids, others can raise hell and make useful and long-overdue things happen, at last. All this is Ordinary.

Their secret? Often, it is Love with a capital L.

We know that what we are attached to in heart and spirit is also what creates what we might also call - and not with disrespect but just with a reality take - demented loyalty.

Like the most dogged of the worker-ants, to mix a metaphor, we trudge onward, sometimes leaping, sometimes dragging our rear-ends in fatigue. But, we go on. Ask any matriarch of any family. Ask any worker-ant, male or female.

For many women of the world believe they hold the only light that is not inextinguishable by bad turns of fate, by running off-track, by getting to the place where the road runs out and you have to go it alone on foot. They believe they are outrunning the devil they know. Somehow, someway. They believe they are following the God of their bones. Worker ant style.

Thus, Sarah Palin is ordinary. Just like countless other women. Ordinary. Loyal worker-ant. To each her own devils; to each her own vision of Creator.

Setting aside all the projections about Governor Palin’s ‘extraordinary ordinariness’ in family and work life…. let us see then, as she gives her speech today, what actually does set her apart from this ordinariness that most women carry without hype.

Let us watch and see.

Don LaFontaine passed away in LA today, after a protracted illness. He was 68 years old, a man of imposing body mass and a gruffness that hid an “I’m just jacking you around,” sense of humor.

He could say, “Pass the peas,” and make it sound momentous or ominous. A deep baritone with clipped articulation: you’ll recognize his voice immediately as the one used in thousands of film trailers throughout your years on earth.

Known for the tag line intro: In a world… where nothing is sacred; in a world… in which love no longer exists; in a world where nothing is as it seems; in a world where the enemy is also the only hope for saving the planet…

Listen… and remember

Sarah Palin today announced that her 17-year old daughter Bristol is pregnant. She will marry the father.

Word comes from McCain sources that the family announced this in response to rumors that Palin’s son Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome, was actually Bristol’s baby. Those rumors have been effectively quashed by this photo taken in April, just before Trig’s birth.

There are still many questions swirling about Sarah Palin’s decision to board an 8-hour flight from Texas to Alaska AFTER her water broke. She was one month premature with a special-needs child and risked infection and a dangerous airborne delivery by going back to Alaska and not having the baby in Dallas. Anecdotal conversations I’ve had with women show horror at the prospect of getting on an airplane after leaking amniotic fluid late in pregnancy. Who would do that? Isn’t that reckless?

All of this comes on the heels of an ongoing investigation into Sarah Palin’s potential abuse of power for firing the Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for not removing Palin’s ex-brother-in-law from the police force. Mike Wooten, the trooper in question, had been abusing Sarah’s sister and was embroiled in a nasty custody dispute.

Each of these stories in isolation would be noteworthy and a bit odd. But taken together they portray a family in a great deal of crisis - a special-needs infant, a sister and brother-in-law embroiled in a conflict that could result in legal charges filed against Governor Palin for abuse of power, and now a teenage pregnancy, made public apparently to deflect attention paid to the bizarre circumstances of Trig’s birth.

I have no idea what the political ramifications of all this are. I suppose many people will just feel more sympathy for a family that is all too “real.” I know that I feel sympathy for them. But the thought that John McCain knew all of this and decided to promote her from Alaska Governor to a heartbeat away from the Presidency is quite stunning. What does it say about McCain’s judgment? Die he really vet her? Or did he figure that our tabloid-obsessed nation would somehow not care about these things? Or maybe he calculated that these stories would just make her more authentic and sympathetic. Who knows?

All I can say is that this campaign has gotten truly bizarre. Is there any modern precedent for this? GOP officials are supposedly a bit stunned at the Bristol pregnancy. Does this factor in to a “family values” campaign in some way? As a decidedly non-family-values voter I have no idea how to calculate it.

Nati