I have decided that Crazy Horse, of the Oglala Lakota people, was born in 1843. The historians' best guesses place the year as early as 1838, as late as 1846, with the general drift in the middle of that range. So I choose 1843 because that makes this year one of those newspaper fillers announcing a birthday ending in the "iconic" zero, in this case his 140th.
Furthermore, I have designated the precise day to be my own birth anniversary. It isn't too much of a stretch. Things got dreary in the buffalo hide lodges out in Powder River country in the Moon of the Deep Cold. After you heard the same coup-counting tales for the third time since autumn raid on the Crows, there wasn't much to do other than crook a finger at one of your wives and settle in under the sleeping robes. Nine months later, in the Moon of the Yellowing Cottonwood, Sioux camps reverberated with papoose squalls.
I have no physical gift to offer to Curly (later Crazy Horse, also called Strange Man). Murdered at age of 34, he's beyond need of powder and lead and three-point blankets, so probably something symbolic will be appropriate.
Something honoring his memory as a three per center of his people, just as some of us try to be among ours. Something noting that he fully accepted and fought for the traditional libertarian life of the Teton nations. Something lamenting that it got him killed by timid and traitorous friends, even though the instrument was a blue-coat bayonet at the door of the Iron House at Fort Robinson.
Maybe I'll publish it; maybe I won't. If I do I'll title it "The Man Who Was Not a Savage."
Aug 20, 2013
Alert; Old Fart with Gun
Now that's cool and might start a trend . Cap the home-invading bastard and then call 911. "No hurry guys. He's bleeding out on the linoleum.We'll have a snack for ya' when ya" get here."
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Life is fairly forgiving. You can make some whopping mistakes without becoming dead on a nice old lady's kitchen floor. Rodney Long managed it though.
He was in trouble, of course, for breaking jail, shooting a deputy sheriff, stealing the patrol car, crashing it, and leading Iowa cops on a merry chase through the woods and fields . Had his misjudgements ended there, he might have survived to metabolize at citizen expense for decades to come.
His deanimating mistake was waking Mr. and Mrs. Mauderly in their rural home last evening and waving his pistol around for a few hours. First reports say 71-winter Jerome did the shooting. Then Carolyn, 66, made the phone call, and, if she plays true to our hospitable form, some nice cookies for the nice young officers who had been traipsing around the section for about four days.
Today's debate resolution: Resolved: That a private citizen should never take the law into his or her own hands.
I will defend the negative.
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(Lots of details still unreported.)
--
Life is fairly forgiving. You can make some whopping mistakes without becoming dead on a nice old lady's kitchen floor. Rodney Long managed it though.
He was in trouble, of course, for breaking jail, shooting a deputy sheriff, stealing the patrol car, crashing it, and leading Iowa cops on a merry chase through the woods and fields . Had his misjudgements ended there, he might have survived to metabolize at citizen expense for decades to come.
His deanimating mistake was waking Mr. and Mrs. Mauderly in their rural home last evening and waving his pistol around for a few hours. First reports say 71-winter Jerome did the shooting. Then Carolyn, 66, made the phone call, and, if she plays true to our hospitable form, some nice cookies for the nice young officers who had been traipsing around the section for about four days.
Today's debate resolution: Resolved: That a private citizen should never take the law into his or her own hands.
I will defend the negative.
---
(Lots of details still unreported.)
Aug 16, 2013
Tattoo a warning on the little bastards?
An Iowan who is quite likely to be an eligible voter went to the doctor requesting a tapeworm removal. He (she?) bought it online and popped it down, hoping to get skinny. Perfect logic. The worm would eat the excess calories from the daily triple bacon burger with extra cheese, fries, and a large chocolate shake, for breakfast.
The healer called the official state doctor who tsk-tsked to the press that eating tapeworms is a sub-optimal idea and suggested that stricter regulation may be necessary.
“I’ve heard that say 150 years ago, the proverbial snake oil medicine people would go around and, indeed, sell tapeworms as a weight loss remedy back then,” she says. “Those were the days before there was any government regulation on these things.”
Couple of things:
--The doc misses the larger problem which could, and should, henceforth be known as tapeworm.gov.
--A supremely apt Internet gag hit my inbox a day or two ago: "I don't say we should kill all the stupid people. Just take all the warnings off all the labels and let the problem sort itself out."
The healer called the official state doctor who tsk-tsked to the press that eating tapeworms is a sub-optimal idea and suggested that stricter regulation may be necessary.
“I’ve heard that say 150 years ago, the proverbial snake oil medicine people would go around and, indeed, sell tapeworms as a weight loss remedy back then,” she says. “Those were the days before there was any government regulation on these things.”
Couple of things:
--The doc misses the larger problem which could, and should, henceforth be known as tapeworm.gov.
--A supremely apt Internet gag hit my inbox a day or two ago: "I don't say we should kill all the stupid people. Just take all the warnings off all the labels and let the problem sort itself out."
A Pound, a Pound, My Kingdom for a Pound
Things are tough in Merrye Olde Theme Parke these days, and at first I thought this was a made-up deal -- Parliament looking for ways to stimulate the economy, specifically the enterprises of barristers, solicitors, Her Majesty's royal judges, and, probably only indirectly, the powdered wig industry.
It occurs that I was wrong, or mostly so, because the English have discovered an avid interest and much controversy in the dug-up bones of Richard III.
I dunno, but probably, if you had asked him, he was sufficiently content to continue resting under the Leicester church (later a parking lot) for 538 years, until some busybodies (busier than his, anyway) dug him up for a DNA swab. Yes, it was White Rose himself. That settled, it was time to replantegenet him, and here the issue got thorny.
His relatives, including a -- get this -- 17th great-grand-nephew* demand he be sent to York for his final resting place; or maybe just semi-final given the English propensity to seize any excuse to relieve boredom.
The issue went to a judge who said the relatives could, in fact, sue, but he really wished they wouldn't. He asked them to get together over a nice cup of tea and work it out to avoid a trail which would be, shudder, "unseemly, undignified and unedifying...".
Just so. And there it stands for the moment, bearing in mind that we have not yet addressed the question of why Leicester wants so badly to keep the majestic bones. AP to the final-paragraph rescue:
Leicester is hoping for a tourism boost from its association with the king, and is building a 4 million-pound ($6.3 million) visitor center near the spot where his remains were found.
Gee, so it is about money. In which case may your American cousin, suggest something? Thank you.
Stuff him. Put him on a flatcar and roll him around the countryside, charging a few pence a peek. Every week you can count the take; dole out a little here, a little there. You know, something like Jumbo.
The issue went to a judge who said the relatives could, in fact, sue, but he really wished they wouldn't. He asked them to get together over a nice cup of tea and work it out to avoid a trail which would be, shudder, "unseemly, undignified and unedifying...".
Just so. And there it stands for the moment, bearing in mind that we have not yet addressed the question of why Leicester wants so badly to keep the majestic bones. AP to the final-paragraph rescue:
Leicester is hoping for a tourism boost from its association with the king, and is building a 4 million-pound ($6.3 million) visitor center near the spot where his remains were found.
Gee, so it is about money. In which case may your American cousin, suggest something? Thank you.
Stuff him. Put him on a flatcar and roll him around the countryside, charging a few pence a peek. Every week you can count the take; dole out a little here, a little there. You know, something like Jumbo.
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