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Camp Runamok

March 21, 2011

Camp Runamok

Quilcene, Wash.

Morning came and the light was rank. Ordered by the sounds of the water flowing, dripping. The damp grass was soft, wet by low-hung clouds. The darkness that had hung over me for days before now left with the fleeting darkness of the night. Alive was this place, as was my soul now set free, and to posture as anything else would be to lie.

Rain set upon us for half the day. Pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, drip, drip, drip. It fell and careened down the sides of the buildings, just out of reach, out of touch. Rain, cleansing, washing bare of the wounds of stress, the torment of our lives that daily make us crazy. 

I felt as though I were an animal, writhing in the newfound freedom, set free after many years of imprisonment, though it had only been 12 weeks.

Afternoon came as suddenly as the morning had, or so it appeared. The rain, apparently having washed all clean that it could, relented and the sun tried to show itself. But it could not be done, and it too relented to the clouds and fog that pressed it so. The air, damp and cold, was refreshing still and revived the soul to breathe it in. Then the rain came once more and the fog set in thicker still.

No trouble, I thought, the beer was still cold, and it warmed me thus.

The fog came in so thick the bay seemed to disappear from below. Only trees, rain and fog now. Ahh, but how grand a sight!

In layers the trees sat. A layer close by, seen in great definition. Then, another beyond a little bit, still stood out from the fog bank that now backed the view. The next layer was partly shrouded in fog, seeming to be almost unreal, as if fading from the world. Beyond that, only the shape of the hills and mountains could be made out. The shapes of evergreens could be spotted here and there, but even the few of them still clear began to fade from view.

A grey monotony set over the whole scene – a spectacle of the powerful weather. But none of it bothered us. We sat warm and dry, and listened – pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, drip, drip, drip – as the rain beset us again and washed our souls as clean as the damp grass under our feet.

The stress falls firmly on the candidate with the least belief in reality

I would have to say it's been a fair shake of time since my last post. Indeed, the last post was even a school assignment that I somehow felt obligated to post to this blog. God help us all.

The surviving rats of the political sphere have apprehended the most lecherous creatures, once again, to run for office in desolate and despicable places. Congressman Todd Akin has somehow managed to avoid a hanging and continue his seemingly hopeless run for a seat in the Senate on behalf of Missouri. His ideas about rape and pregnancy are right up there with bloodletting to cure infection —which I have always found to be quite effective.

Not that Missouri is either desolate or despicable (Mizzou friends need not take offense, as I assume you are similarly shamed by your failing leadership), necessarily. But honestly, it's no California.

Akin's trouble began when someone let him speak freely. This same issue happened to President G.W. Bush with some regularity, and made for fantastic sound bites in each day's news cycle. Apparently, Akin's campaign manager failed to wake up from his cocaine/whisky hangover on that particular day. Those Midwest republicans certainly know how to combine booze and drugs to a finely honed point of near certain self-destruction before pulling it back just one notch and surviving to the next bender.

As a fan of benders and self-destructive behavior, I can see the attraction of their party and their candidates, but it's hard to get behind the science of auto-rape-pregnancy-prevention in a woman's body. I can't say where that idea came from exactly, but my sources have placed it firmly between the Bible and some more risque books by Stephen King. Sounds fairly legitimate to me.

Alas, the presidential race is fairly close, but still will be a losing matter for Mr. Romney. I have not been out on the campaign trail, but rumor has it that he takes his breakfast dressed in extremely inappropriate fashions.

Now I must go...the beer is running out and I need a bloody mary.

I am just an item made up of atoms,
I just woke up one day and there I was.
You drink too much and should be slaughtered,
and yet we go to bars together.
I held up a microscope to my mind today,
I saw the universe in the moment.
The tinyest molecules were suddenly in view.
I saw me and you, and your father and mother too.
The shameless sheep were there too,
We crawled into bed together.
We crawled into a bed of sin and degradation.
We nearly lept upon the chance!
It was the ecstasy of the world.

I looked at the map today,
and I saw you there on it.
You stood tall and wept when you saw you could not leave its face.
Its face was isolated, and sorrowful.
You cried upon it.

I lept at the wall today.
I cried at it too.
We are not the same, you and I.
We left from school both, but we left in many different conditions.
You, the tirade. Me, the fool. But we did both leave. We were no longer there.
Jim Morrison faces us all the same, and yet he is gone.
No more, no more. It is all the same. It is the end.

I drink too much and should be slaughtered, but I am not.
I woke up one day and I was insane too.
Not just all the children,
But me too.
Where is that southern rain???
It hails too much and i can't think in the snow.
It's just he rain that makes it all worthwhile.


I was crawling out of the majestic temple when I saw her.
It was the sign I had been waiting for. The white rabbit. She stood before me.
And she was empty.

When the Story Stolen is Also a Fake

In a Time magazine article, Sherman Alexie argues that Nasdijj, the author of “The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams,” a so-called autobiographical essay, is a “thief and a liar” and Alexie suspected that the whole thing had been made up (Alexie, “When the story stolen”). An investigative story found that the essay and following book were both written by a white man of European descent who had made it all up. Alexie approached the publishers of the book, “and told them his book not only was borderline plagiarism (Nasdijj’s story was very similar to Alexie’s own) but also failed to mention specific tribal members, clans, ceremonies and locations, all of which are vital to the concept of Indian identity” (Alexie, “When the Story Stolen”). Alexie essentially argues that the work is not only a ripped-off fake, but also inauthentic. Whether or not Nasdijj meets Alexie’s expectations, it’s hard to say, but there is evidence – or lack thereof – in Alexie’s work that calls his own authenticity into question by this definition. 

For his part, though, Alexie does not entirely miss his qualifications. Alexie’s writing in “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” includes a variety of genuine, specific locations in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Wash., not far from the city of Spokane. He also includes such far-flung places as Phoenix, Ariz., and, slightly closer, Seattle. One such place, Benjamin Lake, is a campground and park, not far from Spokane (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 13). Other places include: the Walla Walla State Penitentiary, Devil’s Gap Road and Tshimikain Creek (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 25, 32, 76). Based on proximity to the reservation, these places would likely have genuine historical ties to the tribe. 

Perhaps the most vivid evidence of Alexie’s use of true “Indian identity” comes in the story, “The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire.” Arrested and faced with unclear criminal charges stemming from his storytelling, Thomas gives testimony as though he were involved in the Indian Wars as both a horse and a person. In his testimony, he retells the story of Colonel George Wright’s horse slaughter at Spokane Bridge in 1858 from the perspective of one of the horses who survived (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 96-98). Alexie writes with extensive detail a very true and honest historical account of what happened during that time period. The story of Qualchan, also told by Thomas Builds-the-Fire, becomes a very realistic snapshot of the Indian experience in that it ends with Thomas telling of how the city is building a golf course where he – Qualchan, that is – was hanged (The Lone Ranger 99). This not only ties an event in the story to historical settings, but also builds on the too-common theme of attempts by whites to honor Native history in ways that do more damage than good (e.g., Washington Redskins, Cleveland Indians, etc.)

Alexie’s “reservation realism” serves its purpose in offering a unique snapshot into the brokenness that must exist in Native American life. The damage done by white settlers and the United States government did not stop when the Indian Wars stopped and the picture painted by Alexie is authentic enough for most readers. But it may not be authentic enough for him. 

Alexie’s stories do mention many specific places, people and events, but Alexie also casts many characters in very general ways. He also uses institutions and places that anyone – Native or otherwise – could know and be familiar with. Two such examples are the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Tribal Council (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 59-60). The first, the BIA, is a federal institution, known to anyone who has studied some light American history. The second, the Tribal Council, is fairly likely to exist in almost any Native American tribe. Not very specific either. Although these instances are questionable, there are others that stand out as even further from meeting Alexie’s own standards.

As pointed out already, Alexie does use some very real and very specific places. He does name plenty of tribal members, or at least we can assume they are tribal members. But did Nasdijj really just not name any people? And where are Alexie’s specific ceremonies and clans? Nope, none of them either. But let’s go one step at a time.

Of the components Alexie said were missing from Nasdijj’s work, specific tribal members were the first mentioned and I think this is an important place to start. Alexie names many people in his work. Native American names – “tribal” names, if you will – are used for many: Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Jimmy and Norma Many-Horses, Lester Falls-Apart, just to name a few. These are specific tribal members – in a work of fiction. So far, Nasdijj’s only crime is lying about the origins of his story. Alexie says in the Time article that Nasdijj wrote of a child named “Tommy Nothing Fancy;” perhaps this was not a genuine enough name? (Alexie, “When the Story Stolen”). What would make a character a “specific tribal member” versus just some made up character in a work of fiction? They are not real people, though they are perhaps based on real people, as Alexie tries to claim and then unclaim in his introduction (Alexie, The Lone Ranger xix). Regardless of these characters’ basis in reality or not, Alexie asks for something unreasonable: real people in a fictional story. If I wrote about Native Americans, I would do research and make up authentic-sounding names too, but they would not be specific tribal members any more or less than Alexie’s Jimmy Many-Horses or Thomas Builds-the-Fire. 

Alexie also claims that Nasdijj failed to mention any specific clans or ceremonies in his work. However, Alexie doesn’t seem to mention any of these either. There are certainly instances that appear ceremonial in Alexie’s work, such as when Big Mom hands Victor the tiny drum in “A Drug Called Tradition” (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 23). Big Mom tells him that it’s her pager and she will come anytime if he just taps on it. Of course, Victor never does, and she dies later, but he holds onto it forever. 

This example is hardly a ceremony and it would be hard to even say it had anything to do with tradition. Certainly, drums have a place in Native American tradition and have often been used to summon spirits and so on, so there is some merit to that. But, for me, this symbolic gesture does not represent a “specific tribal...ceremony.”

Another possible example is in the story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” where Thomas Builds-the-Fire tells Victor a story. “There were these two Indian boys who wanted to be warriors. But it was too late to be warriors in the old way,” begins Thomas (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 63). In the short narrative, Thomas tells of how the two boys stole a car and drove it to the city, parked it in front of the police station and then returned to the reservation to receive praise as warriors. This story is indeed symbolic of modern members of the tribe attempting to participate in a ceremony of becoming a warrior, but what happens is hardly ceremonious. Even in a destitute reservation community, somewhere desperate for tradition, it still seems unlikely that their parents would be proud of them for stealing a car, whatever the meaning held for the boys. In Alexie’s story, it represents the conflict emerging from assimilation and the desire to hold on to traditional culture, a theme that runs throughout his stories. It’s an honest theme, but not a tribal ceremony.

There are, of course, brief mentions of powwows. Norma Many-Horses writes to Jimmy in postcards sent from “powwows all over the country,” in the story, “The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor” (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 167). A powwow is a traditional Native American ceremony...that almost anyone in the United States would know about with a fifth-grade education. This does not make Alexie’s work any more authentic or genuine. In yet another story, a young Victor is described as “fancydancing” in his father’s old outfit, a traditional outfit with feathers and decorations (Alexie, The Lone Ranger 87). The fancy dance is an interesting example of a traditional ceremony. This dance is thought to have begun in the 1920s and 1930s in response to the United States and Canada outlawing Native American religious dances (Wikipedia). These types of dances were based on traditional dances, but the problem for Alexie is that this type of dancing was not specific to the Spokane tribe, or really any of the other tribes who practice it now. It was, in fact, most likely invented by the Ponca tribe in Oklahoma, far from Eastern Washington. Again, Alexie does not meet the standards he seems so eager to hold others to. 

When he sets out to criticize Barrus – for writing under false pretenses as Nasdijj – Alexie sets standards for “authentic” concepts of Indian identity in writing fiction. But when his own work is measured against these same standards – for tribal members, ceremonies, clans and locations – it hardly measures up. True, Alexie’s work seems to paint a genuine picture of the reservation experience, while Nasdijj’s work, simply by being exposed as fake, loses much of its authenticity. But Alexie wants to say that, because Nasdijj wasn’t real – and therefore had not actually lived on a reservation – he couldn’t accurately portray a life and experiences there. Alexie doesn’t say that, though, and instead comes up with a short list of problems with Nasdijj’s story. Alexie’s “specifics” hardly hold his own work up. In fact, Alexie’s own writing puts the authenticity of the entire collection in question before the first story even begins: “So why am I telling you that these stories are true? First of all, they’re not really true. They are the vision of one individual..., so these stories are necessarily biased, incomplete, exaggerated, deluded, and often just plain wrong” (Alexie, The Lone Ranger xxi). This statement shows that Alexie’s work shouldn’t be trusted any more than Nasdijj’s – whatever other standards it's held to.

The bottom line? The next time Alexie decides to publicly deride someone else’s work for any question of its authenticity, he had better be careful about the standards he holds it to. He might want to first put his own work to the test.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New 

York: Grove Press, 1993. Print.

Alexie, Sherman. “When the Story Stolen is Your Own.” Time, 29 Jan. 

2006. Web. Oct. 2011.

“Fancy Dance.” Wikipedia.com. Wikipedia, 24 Jan. 2011. Web. 3 Dec. 

2011.

Yes, I know, a Wikipedia citation in an academic paper. Whatever, the prof said it was ok and it's not like it was some controversial article.

Top shelf pizza at Pudge Bros

Pudge Brothers Pizza
269 Northeast 45th Street
Seattle, WA 98105-6147
(206) 545-9355

When the discerning pizza connoisseur hunts down the best pies, he smells the dough and samples the sauce. Toppings come and go–sausage, ham, pineapple, chicken cordon bleu–and they don’t mean a thing if the crust and sauce stink. Some places look nice and offer you everything but the kitchen sink on your pie, but don’t come through when it gets down to the ever-important sauce and crust.
Pudge Bros. doesn’t go crazy with extravagant combinations like some Seattle pizza spots either, though they do offer 18 specialty pies in vegetarian and meat combos. Nor do they have a large, fancy restaurant for eating in–there are just four small tables and a bar along the window to eat on. This place is almost all kitchen. But they do have a good crust and a tasty sauce worked out that make each pie a little slice of heaven.
The crust is light, fluffy, and not too thick, which might turn off the thick-crust lover, but the flavor is all there. One customer even said the crust was “legit.” The marinara, by the account of the reviewers, sold the whole thing. Sweet, slightly spicy, but not too much. Full tomato flavor with Italian spice keeping every bite interesting. With a sauce that good, they could put on any toppings.
As a true pizza joint should, Pudge’s also offers calzones, sausage and meatball sandwiches, breadsticks, cheesy bread, and even wings. For drinks, they keep it simple with soda and juice–no beer or vino.
Cost comes in fairly competitive, with their “monster” 18” pies starting at $17, and slices under $3. Despite the small restaurant area, their table service is surprisingly good, and deserving of tips.
Pudge Bros. Pizza represents what a real pizza place should be: focused on crust, sauce and service. Save the fancy combinations for someone else.

4.5 licks of the lips.
Photo by Sean Sherman of The Ebbtide

Taste of India delights taste buds

Hanging out on Roosevelt with an appetite for something different? Taste of India might just have what you need.
Right on the corner of Roosevelt and 56th, in an unsuspecting little building, this Indian joint serves it up with class. Start with being seated by the host–who is often the owner–to a table in one of three small dining rooms. Each dining room is somewhat unique; one with more natural light, one with more Indian tapestries adorning the walls, and all will fill up on an average lunch hour.
Along with the menus, guests will receive a complimentary hot appetizer with a delicious dipping sauce. The sauce, actually called a chutney, is a tantalizing combination of ground up fresh mint and cilantro next to a sweet sauce made from tamarind. Be sure to order the spinach nan–a fresh-made bread filled with spinach–as a follow-up appetizer and you’ll be happy to see it arrive with more chutney, and quite enough for a party of four.
The servers are friendly, and the service is quick. Even as a lunch hour picks up, guests can expect to be well-taken-care-of by the superb staff. Order the Chai tea (ancient Indian style, not Starbucks) and a server will keep it topped off without delay.
The menu contains a wide array of offerings, including, along with traditional Indian fare, Mediterranean and Tandoori cuisine. Tandoori is interesting as it is an ancient method of cooking using a clay oven called–you guessed it–a Tandoor, and the dishes are cooked slow to “perfection.” Each of the Indian dishes may be ordered with either vegetables, chicken, lamb, beef, fish, prawns, or tasty little rectangular blocks of cheese called Paneer. Try the Paneer, it’s totally scrumptious.
The dishes are traditional, and also very flavorful. Sometimes traditional food can be a little boring, but Taste of India brings enough pizazz to the food to make it interesting. Also interesting are the genuine dessert offerings. The Kulfi, an Indian-style ice cream, has a different texture than you would expect, and is quite good, but the cheesecake drizzled with mango sauce is really top-notch. Not your traditional Indian fare maybe, but what the heck? You might as well get your rocks off when you can.
The cost is fairly reasonable considering the quality of the food and service–$10-15 per plate for entrees–so students can still afford to bite into some choice Indian food without taking a second job.
Despite all this goodness, Taste of India fails to serve alcohol–not even beer or wine, so it can only get four out of five licks of the lips.
Still, next time you’re feeling the need for a new flavor that comes in a delightfully friendly package, step on a bus, get in your car, or ride your bike over to Taste of India at 5517 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle, Wash. For more info, check out their Web site, www.tasteofindiaseattle.com

The Mecca serves it up proper, old-school style

Any trip to the Seattle Center neighborhood deserves a stop at The Mecca for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The good old-fashioned, all-American food and drink will surpass your expectations and the top-notch service will plunk you right into 1950s diner happiness.
Start with a cup of coffee in the morning, but don’t expect to stay all day on just a cup of joe. The “Sumatra Mandeheling” is good “For three cups or one hour of rental space. You know who you are. No pitching tents,” says the fun-to-read menu. However, you won’t want to just sip the Sumatra, because any of the large entrees will not only fill you up; they’ll surprise you with their skillful recipe and scrumptious flavor.
Although the food is grand, the cafe is split in half, and on the other side of the dividing wall from the small, black-and-white booths, the narrow bar is open every day. The happy hour of the 80-year-old bar offers the best deals of the neighborhood from 3-7 p.m., seven days a week. If a seat at the bar isn’t private enough, the semi-circular “Elvis booth,” as I call it because of the giant picture of the King hanging above it, is all the way at the back, and will set you as private as you could be in this tiny place.
Their shirts, that read “Alcoholics serving alcoholics since 1929,” are probably true for the most part, but you don’t have to be a drunkard to enjoy a timeless classic like The Mecca.
526 Queen Anne Ave N., Seattle, Wash. 98109

Don't move or I'll crash right into you...

It's not easy to work sometimes. The turbulent world holds me up in so many different ways that I can hardly find time to breathe, let alone get on top of the mountains of work that I have to do.
My current projects have seen little in the way of progress in the last week, or even the last two weeks. Being sick held me back, and then, after recovering, the world was full tilt with distractions. Valentine's Day brought a full weekend of non-work related activity, only to lead to a week that saw almost as little progress. Yes, the dogs of distraction, and the pimps of procrastination were working overtime on an easy target. By Wednesday, they had me winding my way to Aberdeen, WA to buy a fast motorcycle. While this is a great advance for the wildest forms of journalism, it does very little for actually helping me write. The picture is becoming clear: stop with the bikes, the valentines, the lawnmower racing, the facebooking, the iTunes music hunts, the online games, the twittering and the blogging (see what it's doing?) until something tangible is produced.
Good God! This is not the time to mill the hours away typing nonsense into the web box; it's time for some action. Two, maybe three more weeks and it will all be coming to a head. The hammer is definitely going to fall and I don't want to have my head under it when it does. Blend in, take cover, and see your way to the front, man. This is the hour of great import.

The city is in ruins, but the people are ruined

As the newspapers all print cover stories detailing dark, ominous rescue missions - some productive, others futile - and photos depict streets strewn with bodies, buildings collapsed, and sobbing mothers, it is indeed hard to focus on much else. The world around seems blurry, surreal, as millions suffer a great and tragic catastrophe.

Their world was already a bleak one; the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, a government known widely to be as corrupt as a king, and a land frequently blasted by hurricanes and tropical storms. Looking from that perspective, one might have thought that things couldn't get much worse. But they did, they damn well got worse by leaps and bounds. Theirs is a trouble that will last; it will last beyond the last dying gasp of a person trapped in rubble; beyond the panic of the looters and rabble rousers in the streets; it will last beyond the stench of decay that correspondents report to fill the air across the city. The U.S. will put our military in place and rebuild the ports, the streets, the homes and the capital building, but trouble will still hang acrid in the air.

How much aid will it take to replace the lives lost? Can a price be put to such a thing? The people, those left breathing anyway, have lost big, and a city rebuilt, even a government and infrastructure system repaired to a level beyond its previous dysfunction and all the food they can eat will not erase the memory of this disaster. Their friends, neighbors and family who were lost in the quake will not come back, but their cries for help shall not cease. No, those left behind shall be forced to endure with a kind heaviness over them; a feeling that they got lucky and now the cost is to remember. They will hear the screams long into each night before they sleep, and when they do find sleep, the sights of faces and bodies will trouble their dreams; they will smell the foulness of the air even in the midst of a field of tulips. Each reporter writing from Port Au Prince talks about the screams and cries of those who are still trapped but cannot be found, or quotes someone else who has heard the same. This will not stop for those in Haiti, for the people left behind.

No human should ever be forced to go through a thing like that. There is no wrong that requires such suffering. Pat Robertson seems to think a "pact with the devil" has caused the devastation, but even the most spiteful person I know would never buy into such madness. Pacts with the devil? Are you daft man? Mr. Robertson should hop a first-class flight to Haiti and lend a hand in the streets, maybe collecting bodies or some other painful task; he should really get his hands dirty and see, just see first-hand how it feels to be those people. To truly suffer the inhumane.

Research and such...

This week was the beginning of the new quarter and thus, the beginning of my honors research project. I immediately found myself in quite deep with the seemingly "light" load I took this quarter. The project for honors is one of two mostly independent research projects I'll be doing this quarter, along with American Foreign Policy and my job at the paper. Not that I'm afraid of a little work, but it could get messy.

A meeting this week gave me a clear direction for my project and I have undertaken the beginnings of my research. I picked up three books and a half dozen or so journal articles to get things moving. I also seem to have picked up a cold from somewhere and I sure hope I can battle through it because there is no time for laying up sick.

Why oppose Ref 71?

As our society investigates possible moon colonies, looks for water on Mars, and designs cars that run on corn oil, some people still can’t let go of irrational prejudice against other humans.

These prejudices have been more prevalent than ever as voters contemplated, and then approved Referendum 71, to allow domestic partnerships for same-sex couples and give them essentially the same rights as married couples.

While King county voters approved the bill almost 2 to 1, more rural eastern Washington stood predominantly opposed to it. As a presumably biased resident of King county myself, I can’t help but wonder about the thinking behind denying rights to people based on their sexual orientation.

The rights that were in question involve things like inheritances to spouses, attending to a partner’s affairs in the event of death or illness, or even just being allowed, by law, to be at their bedside in the hospital.

One of the largest campaigns against Ref. 71 is operated by a group called Protect Marriage Washington (PMW). In one campaign video, they talk about supporting “love” and “family,” and purport “facts” like “few homosexual relationships last longer than two years.” This “fact” in particular raised the hairs on my back and set off my journalist alarm that told me to dig deeper. When I followed their source back to the Family Research Council (FRC) website (a decidedly conservative, christian group based on my observations) however, I found some problems with their statistics.

Firstly, many gay rights activists defend against the argument that they have shorter relationships by pointing to current heterosexual marriage statistics. But before I even get to those, the FRC website handily discredits that defense by pointing to marriage statistics from 20-plus years ago. Using statistics based on marriages that began in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, they show that at least 70 percent of hetero marriages last 10 years or more. With information that old, this argument can hardly hold any weight. Current trends reported by the U.S. Census Bureau show that fewer couples are even getting married, which would suggest that statistics about longevity may be less accurate. And what does this have to do with giving same-sex couples the same rights as others? PMW says they’re “protecting the sanctity of marriage,” and even “the children.”

But the PMW campaign doesn’t stop there. In the same video, they go on to say that HIV/AIDS and suicide rates are higher among homosexuals. I have heard these kinds of statistics before, and my first thought is: wouldn’t a group that is historically marginalized, oppressed and ridiculed, for what to them amounts to their very nature, have a statistically higher suicide rate? So they have it a little rough, I get it, they don’t fit in, and in adolescence (the group that was surveyed to provide their stats contained only adolescents) they have a higher suicide rate. I would bet that other outcast groups have similarly high rates of suicide and depression. And once again I can’t seem to see how this would inhibit same-sex couples from enjoying the same rights as straight folk. In fact, I think this argument defeats itself; if gay people were treated equally by everyone, then perhaps these alarming statistics would fall dramatically.

Religious beliefs are also a big part of the argument against same-sex unions. Religious people point to the fact that homosexuals are deemed evil by some interpretations of the bible, or simply excluded from other interpretations. Articles on the PMW website, which, I should point out, have no authors listed (no doubt to avoid the same type of discrimination that same-sex couples face), report that same-sex unions pose a threat to religious liberties “for those who still believe that marriage...is between a man and a woman.” However, as the article drones on about traditional considerations and problems with child-rearing, they fail to pinpoint what these threats are. In one video of a politician (somehow unnamed throughout the video) I found, he said that rights are given by God, and any rights given by mankind are actually only privileges. Well, even if you don’t believe that same-sex couples are given the same rights as hetero folks, what’s wrong with giving them the privileges then?

Now, those who signed the petition that actually brought Ref. 71 to the ballot, since the bill allowing rights to same-sex couples was already signed into law on May 18 of this year, have asked the Supreme Court to prevent the release of their personal information “because of the ongoing threats, harassment, and intimidation supporters of traditional marriage are subject to.” Wait just a minute, this is exactly what those people have been doing to gay people for decades.

Most people I talk to about this feel like I do, that same-sex couples are no different than any other couple and why in the hell should they be denied the same rights? But 48 percent of Washington voters don’t feel that way, in fact, most of them probably feel that these people threaten them, their children and their good ol’ American way of life.

Despite all the misrepresented surveys, uneven statistics, or irrational religious arguments, I still can’t see any good reason to withhold these basic rights from those who choose a partner of the same sex. The fact is, they just aren’t that much different from you, me or anyone else.

The Duwamish and their tribulations

Just saw a presentation at SCC on the Duwamish tribe and some of their history. Here's a quick summary:

They occupied much of the greater Seattle area originally, from Des Moines to Everett, and from Issaquah to Elliott Bay. They greeted early white explorers and, later, settlers, but eventually were deemed to be taking up too much space. When Seattle began organizing, one of the first ordinances set forth in 1865, number five, to be exact, called for the "removal of the indians." This included not being allowed in the city past dark (despite being employed in the city in factories and such), and later led to the government ordering their longhouses burned. Many tribesmen refused to cooperate and suffered forced removal, the burning of their personal homes, and some were even shot.

As they were forced out of the city, many went back to their tribal villages along the Duwamish and Black Rivers. This proved futile, however, as progress continued. The construction of the Ballard Locks led to a 20-foot drop in the level of Lake Washington, which dried up the Black River, an historical home to the Duwamish tribe. Making things worse, there was great pressure to straighten the Duwamish River to give shipping traffic easier access. The effects of this were felt by the few stragglers and at least one couple starved to death one winter as they tried to maintain their lives on the riverbanks.

The tribe is still fighting for recognition by the government today, even though they won it under the Clinton administration, only to be overturned by the Bush administration.

Good presentation, very insightful, and a typical story of the Native American; courted, befriended, taken advantage of and then betrayed completely.

News Meetings

News meetings leave me tired and hungry. The stories are late, as usual, and yet somehow, the paper will come out on time again. My box will fill up by Wednesday night and I'll work long and hard to get it all cleaned up and ready to print. As if by magic, it will all come together and form a good paper by Thursday night.

But I'm still hungry and tired. So I guess I should just get something to eat, write a couple of pieces and call it a night. Ciao'