Xmas 2011

I know this isn’t good to talk about, but all the political news coming out of D.C. is sickening to hear and read about. One side hates the other and vice-versa and it doesn’t look like there are any viable political solutions in sight or at least any time soon. On January 1 many people will wake up with a hum-dinger of a hangover, but also 160,000 million hard-working Americans will see payroll taxes go up, and another two million will lose unemployment benefits because those jokers in D.C . have to indulge in a political pissing contest. It's bad enough, that they already see their taxes thrown down into a bottom-less pit with no results.

It’s the same old tired thing, the Congressman who is already comes from a rich family, has a truly nice salary, great benefits and one sterling retirement package will tell his adoring constituency what they want to hear and they will bring back the pork to their districts and everybody is happy. Of course, he has his fingers crossed behind his back when he is saying all these political things to his voters. When it’s all said and done, the payroll tax will go up, the esteemed congressmen will go on break and go home and tell their people that it’s the other side holding up progress in the country, Obama will fly to Hawaii to play a little golf and lounge on the beaches which is good for them, but not for America. Of course, we gullible folks will vote them right back into office. Damn, and people condemn Indian politics. Oh, well it best not to pay attention to politics anyway so you won’t be disappointed. Nonetheless, politicians will ruin everything we have in this great country if they continue to have free political rein.

We had some bad weather here in Kansas, but the main storm missed us. It will happen soon enough though. Christmas looms on the horizon and I need to do something about this shopping thing. Maybe it’s time to stop writing and do my best Tim Tebow imitation and offer a personal confession: I haven’t done any shopping for gifts and probably won’t. Wouldn’t it be pathetic to see me down at the mall at this stage of the game trying to figure out what to buy? The truth of the matter is that my wife does the shopping and doesn’t really want me along since I must give the impression that I would rather be somewhere else. She wraps the gifts up and the girls and grandchildren open up their gifts and say “thank you Misho and Grandma.” And then I say, “ok, what did I get you.” That too is pathetic, but what can I do?

Also during these festive times, I sometime get scared and fearful when I get behind the wheel of my vehicle. I can just hope those beastie deer don’t decide to cross my path because they can do some real damage to your car and to you. They are heated up like a politician in a D.C. hotel room, so its not all their faults.  I did see a beautiful wild-life scene the other day on my way to Dancing Ground: A fairly good sized bobcat ran in front of me, it was right pretty and could cover some ground. The bobcat is a graceful animal. It's been awhile since I've seen one here! When I was younger than I am now, I used to own coon-hounds. I did a lot of hunting with my neighbor and one time our dogs treed a bobcat. I had it stuffed and still have it today.

Oh, on the morning news they said the dead North Korean leader has a warm corner in hell waiting for him, so much for good feelings at Xmas time! But don’t let all these dark writings hold you back from having a great Christmas. From me to you and your family: Merry Christmas!

Diggin up pictures!

This the last picture we took as three brothers.  Larry, on the far right, died later that year in 2007.  We were at a Potawatomi Gathering and for the hell of it, we took this picture by the buffalo head.  It was crazy because a slug of people took our picture too for some reason.  I wanted to share this picture so I won't forget either.  We really had a good time that summer day!

This is my nephew, Steven Mitchell, he dropped by from some tiny place near Phoenix, AZ. Steven wanted to visit his Potawatomi relatives for a few days.  I'm glad I was at the Craft Sale when he pulled in.  His journey was well over 20 hours on the train. My grandson Pat ko shuk wanted to know about him.  I told him he is the son of my brother Bubs and  he would be closer to an Uncle to him than a cousin, in our way.  I missed seeing him grow up, along with other nephews and nieces and I'm so glad to see them when they do come here to visit. It's hard for an old cold hearted guy like me to develop tears but I did today when my nephew hugged me, but don't tell anybody.

Songs, movies, book-writers and college professors!

As I get older and try to write on occasion, I look back on possible influences. As a teenager which was a blue moon ago, my brothers and I would listen to Bob Dylan and Creedance Clearwater Revival in the 60s, but I don’t remember any good music happening in the following decades. I think Dylan and John Fogerty of the CC Revival were excellent writers and their work will stand out for a long time. They could put the words together in a beautiful fashion and tell a story of a torn generation, where revolution was the catch-word. People were against this and that, kinda like today.  For example, in the song “Fortunate Son” Fogerty sang:

“It aint’ me. I ain’t no Senators son. I’m no fortunate son. I ain’t no millionaires son. It ain’t me.”

He referred to how the rich folk didn’t go to war (Vietnam at the time), but all the poor people did – kinda like a bunch of young Potawatomi’s did back then. And Dylan had a message in all his songs. I always thought, damn these guys had such a gift of telling a story.  Can you imagine writing one hit song and living off the royalties?


I’m not much of a movie buff, but I couldn’t help admire the writing in the movie Forrest Gump. It was funny at times, serious at times and showed how Gump fell into the accidental fame category. One day, he was showing Elvis how he would dance to a song and pretty soon Elvis was on tv doing Forrest Gump’s dance. He was always in the background of some event such as the day they let blacks attend white schools. And since he could run so fast, “run Forrest run,” he parlayed that into a football scholarship at Alabama playing for the Bear. From there he went to Vietnam to become a war hero, a champion ping-pong player, a lucky fisherman and savvy investor to become a rich guy. His memorable quote on this:

"Lieutenant Dan got invested in some kind of fruit company.  So then I get a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more.  And I said, that's good!  One less thing."

During the whole process, he was to meet several Presidents. “I’m going to meet the President, again,” in a voice only Forrest Gump could say – the emphasis was on “again.” But the point was that each story-line was so imaginative and believable and I was so amazed somebody could think of putting all these stories together in one movie. Never in another hundred years, in my opinion, will somebody come up with a movie like that again. In fact, somebody said recently all the good stories have already been told. It would be nice to be surprised though!

I thought Hunter Thompson could tell a story well and I read most of his books. They were descriptive pieces of work and I liked the way he told the story. Recently, I read a Simon Winchester book about China and he did a great job of educating the reader about this country and at the same time to tell a story, also very descriptive. A singer named Steve Earle wrote a novel called “I won’t be leaving this world alive,” and I don’t know that I’m going to read the book anytime soon. I might if I saw it on the bargain book rack, but I liked the title and who would have ever thought of a naming it that?

I covered possible influences in song-writing, movies and book-writers, but I can’t leave out college professors. I graduated from Washburn University in Topeka. I think they got tired of seeing an old Indian guy walking around their campus. The higher-ups got together on a cold winter night in the administrative offices and said "give that Indian his degree and get him out of here", so I moved on in the Spring of 1993.

Before I took that step into college life, I had worked construction and in packing houses, but a knee injury made me think about changing course. I had some help before I went to college. I always read during those early years, the early wild years but my time wasn't always an alcohol-fogged life. I read many books, newspapers and as many magazines as I could get my hands on especially those from the local laundry mat. So that made my classes fairly easy and the reading wasn't a problem for me, but I did struggle with the writing, at least in the beginning.  I worked hard at it, though. I went out and bought several books on the subject and read them extensively. I never developed into a professional, but learned enough to tell a story or something close to that.

I majored in Political Science and I took a large number of history classes (I lacked 6 hours from having a double major). Political Science was a hard subject but it was a helluva lot easier than the history classes I took at Washburn. Both subjects had some excellent teachers like Cecil-Fronsman, Freeman, and Wagner, to name a few. They made me work on the writing and of course the subject itself. It seemed like the 15 page papers never stopped but that helped me later when I wrote about our tribe and other stories.

All of this intangibles of life combined may help explain some influences that made my writing a bit easier. That's all I got to say about that!

Fences, windows, bad backs and graffiti!

I had some busy weekends in November. I replaced part of my fence in the backyard. I put up the old fence back in the 1980s and the main reason was that I wanted to put in some trees and plants, but also to have some privacy. Before I did that, the local dogs would dig up the new plants, so I had to take drastic measures. The fence over the years started to sag, which was the result of not doing it right the first time. When I put in the posts in concrete, I didn’t let it set for four or five days, so it sagged. This time I did it right! Putting in the fence and a new flower bed took me and Mike, a guy who lives south of me, a couple of weekends to get done. I wanted to cut my big garden down, so I hauled the dirt from my garden in a bobcat and put it over the top of the fence and after that we wheel-barreled it into the flower bed. I had to put a small fence in to keep my dog Koda out of the bed. Moving dirt put the hurt on these old bones, but now it’s ready for Spring planting. I intend to plant some of my garden stuff closer to my house and water. It will be easier for me to maintain a few garden areas instead of one huge one. A big garden is very time-consuming and between that and mowing my big yard left me little free time to do other things. Now with this plan in hand, maybe I will end my strike against the Royals. I’ve went to one game since the 1994 baseball strike. I’m a little more interested since they have a solid bunch of young players, so I may go watch one game anyway.


I’m a garage sale freak. I sometimes go and look and never buy anything. My daughter tells me why don’t you buy something? I respond that it’s the hunt that counts and in that context I have made some good buys. One time I bought a door with three windows in it, an old-time design, for $5.00 and I replaced the front door of my work-shop with it, put some paint on it and it looks like it belongs. A few weeks back I bought a 36x66 window for $10.00 at another garage sale. It was cold outside which made it difficult to do my outside work, so I decided to put in the window in the back of my work-shop, but I had to replace some 2x6s and built up the area for my new used window. It took me a few hours but I did get the window in and the trim work done and new paneling. (I used paneling to hang my pictures on because when I get older, I will sit in my daughters discarded barber chair and look at my pictures and souvenirs from my travel on my walls and remember what once was). I finished it up with some high dollar paint I bought for $5.00 at another garage sale. Damn, see how far an old Indian guy will go to justify a garage sale purchase. I enjoy that kind of work, but I ain’t no carpenter either. I do it for the fun of it and my back is telling me to slow down on projects for a while.

On another note, my nephew said: “Can't help but feel sad for our reservation. It has so much potential to look and feel great but it's antagonized by hooligans and citizens who just dont care anymore. When i drive around i see graffiti on bridges, playgrounds, and signs. That is if the signs still there and not filled with bullets. Feels bad man...” Yup, nephew this place has changed a bunch over the recent years. It’s an indictment on all of us who live here for not taking care of what we are lucky to have. I paid for my home and took care of my place for all these years and when you have a stake in something you take care of it, but everybody don’t feel that way, but there is no personal satisfaction either.

Birds, Jayhawks, censorship and shoppers

So many countless birds died so we could fill our bellies on turkey-day yesterday but that's the way it's suppose to be, I suppose. My family and I went to the big city, ate at this place that was open, it was good. We ate and left. No dishes, no ritual with all-night cooking and no worn out grandma. Once done there, we were able to retire to the easy chair and nap, dreaming good dreams when we owned all of this country, hunted and fished where we wanted. Back then we didn’t have to have a permit to do those things, of course. The only worry we had was finding food to live on and to fight off those other tribes trying to infringe on our territory. Then somebody fed a group of Pilgrims some turkey and our lives changed forever. But once the dream was over, we have to move on from that nightmare, kinda like our other birds in Kansas.


The Jayhawks are in rebuilding mode and trying to find where they stand in the big picture called the NCAA . The other night they gave those preppies from Duke all they wanted and if it wasn’t for that scrub off the bench who despite having his eyes shut made a three pointer to seal KU’s loss in the Maui Invitational. KU lacks bench strength, which will hurt them, but the big-time is right around the corner with a top-of-the line 2012 recruits coming in and the depth problem will go way. T-Rod might stick around for another year since prospects don’t look good in the strike-infested NBA. Those twins should have stayed for another year, now they got to play on the Philly play-grounds or in Barcelona, Spain. To be blunt, there are high expectations from the KU Jayhawks, this isn’t politics where it’s just the opposite.

Speaking of politics, I must mention that political expression could be extinct in Kansas soon. Ol’ Richard Nixon would have been proud of what happened here last week. Staff members of our Governor, not having anything better to do monitor social media for postings containing his name. They discovered some remarks about the Governor from an 18-year old high school girl visiting Topeka from Kansas City on her tweeter account. The staff members notified the school she came from immediately. Her school principal scolded the poor girl for an hour in his office. He told her to apologize to the Governor and even told her the points she needed to hit upon in her letter. The girl’s family was rightfully shocked over this whole incident. Yet, the Phelps gang can squat on 10th and Gage every week and put up their hateful signs and picket military funerals. Oh yeah, those people are a bunch of lawyers and know how to exploit the legal system to get their message out, but this poor girl can’t tweet tweet. I bet she won’t be visiting Topeka anytime soon. So much for free expression in Kansas and we know that couldn’t happen on our Indian reservations.

Also I’m glad I didn’t go to Los Angeles to do any Black Friday shopping at Walmart. There was a woman using pepper spray to keep the rest of the customers away from some electronic stuff she wanted to buy. Wow, that puts a whole new perspective on shopping. I hope she wasn't a tribal member!

Invocations, boys and medals!

I went to a meeting in Oklahoma the other day and once it was over, I  blazed it back to see my grandson Pat ko shuk give his first public invocation at an event in Fort Leavenworth. He is 11 years old and said the prayer in our language. His prayer is something we have worked on for a good while now and he says it every day.  I taught him some pretty tough words and it must be true that young people pick up the words better because he did.  He said these are hard words but we hung in there and he picked them up.  Using Indian words daily seems to be part of the answer.  They asked me to go to the podium to translate what he said, but I first had to tell how each of us Indians have a role to play, some sing, some dance and some do the praying so it is a matter of working together.  Rest assured, one person can't do all of that. 

The officer in charge gave him three medals for doing the invocation. My wife was worried that he would get stage-fright, but I knew he could do it.  It really is unheard of to have a young man of his age give an invocation.  When the program was completed, the officer called him up there and gave him the medals.  I was so surprised because in this neck of the woods being recognized for using the language is kinda rare and I felt emotion inside.  I hope he sticks with it and learns more.  My Mother would have been proud!  I learned from her and now my grandson is using the words she taught me.

Keo komo Kweh

This is a picture I had to post.  Her name is Rose Ann Potts or Keo Komo Kweh.  She is Grandma to my wife Voncile.  By all accounts, she was a hard working woman.  I believe she is drying pumpkin or getting ready to cook up some squirrel in this picture, a picture I haven't seen before. I got the picture from Sharon Walder.  She had a huge garden and can you imagine the time involved to dry corn and pumpkin?  Back then there were no refrigerators so this method had to be used.

I'm cutting back my garden next year because of the time involved and of course I can go to the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, but this lady, along with countless other Indians, never had that option.  They had to put in the work if they wanted food that up-coming winter.  We would do the same thing if we had to now, but it isn't that hard now, we can always burn it to the grocery store on the corner.  She spoke our language, attended our religious ways and was an inspiration to many.  We have a much easier life today than these old folks so it makes you feel guilty to a certain extent. This picture was taken during the Great Depression, so it was doubly important to make the gardens produce and do the work necessary to put up the food for later.