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Native American Music Awards

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Tenth Annual Awards Saturday, October 4th, 2008
Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel Niagara Falls, NY
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Kite surfer gets caught by plane

The deaths of classmates

Getting older is just a fact of life. This year is the 35th anniversary of my graduation from high school. Numerous people got hold of me, but I cannot go because it is being held on the same weekend that my daughter is getting married in Tulsa.

The thing that struck me when I went to check out the website for it though, was the list of people that have died since we graduated. I can remember nearly all of them and some of them I had gone to school with from grade school through senior year. There are still a couple hundred students that have not been found from my graduating class, so the numbers may be much higher. Rest in Peace...

Lynda Becker Pitcher
Hope May Mason
Rita Burch
Dwight McWilliams
Barry Cotton
Felix Monroe
Jonathan Cross
Margaret Montgomery
Mary Foreman
James Neighbors
Dwight Harp
Richard Southerland
James Hendrick
Tammie Sullins
David Hess
Jana Troullier
Steve Hester
Pedro Velez
Bobby Hornbeck
Debbie Wilson Barker
Albert Anuska
Kent Ferris

I can still see most of their faces at 17 or 18 years old just as if it was yesterday, yet some of them, like Pedro Velez, died right after graduation and have been gone over 30 years already. Life is strange - who dies young and who doesn't...

SECRET PLACES OF THE EARTH

Although it is generally believed that most of these have been photoshopped in, it is still interesting to see how close satellites can get to the earth and take pictures. There is no privacy left in the world!

Truly talented children!

11 year old Bianca sings!

6 year old Connie sings!

Cheeky Monkeys ( 8 & 9 year olds) Amazing!

Lost Friends

I guess I am the world's worst about keeping track of friends. I just don't do it. The people that I hung out with for the first 35 years of my life I never see anymore with the exception of one person. Then, I lived in another town for 9 years. Made a lot of friends there. But I have been here for 9 years and I simply do not have any contact with the friends I had there. It is sort of out of sight, out of mind. I know at first it was because I was so busy raising kids, working, etc... These last nine years I worked two jobs and had no time for friends. Sure we had the occasional party and the college kids after they were all 21 hung out at our house many weekends. They came from OU, OSU, NSU, Connors, and other colleges and then they all got into their late 20's and they have kids now and it's too hard to get together like that.

Everything is temporary if you give it enough time. Or at least that is what Jewel says. I tried to get in touch with a friend I had in high school. We are having our 35 year reunion in September but it is the same weekend that my daughter is getting married so I won't be going to that. Probably wouldn't go anyway. But, as I said, I have tried to get hold of the one person from high school that I had a friendship that lasted up into our late 30's before she moved out of state. She is being like me. Not interested. Too much time has passed. She is a right wing republican and I am a semi conservative democrat. She has a whole passel of grandkids and I have none. I had to face the fact that anything in common we ever did share we no longer do. I saw a picture of her. She has had enough face lifts and botox that she looks like she is stretched tight and doesn't look anything like the way I remember her. I still have all my original wrinkles.

I feel my age. The biggest thing on my calendar is doctor's appointments and I am still not diagnosed. Soon it will be a year since I have been trying to find the source of my problem so we could FIX it. I have had so many needles stuck into arms, legs,hips, back, etc.... I have had every spinal injection they can do and none of it has worked. Next Friday I go into the Spine Hospital again. This time for a spinal tap and Cat-Scan with contrast and on a tilting board to view the spine in as many positions as possible. It seems that something is hiding behind the bones and does not show up in MRI's. The spinal fluid is also something they will test.

I used a cane for awhile. Today I had to use a wheelchair. I really don't want this to be a permanent thing. I have been going to the Pain Management Center for months now. I go there in pain, they inflict more pain on me, and then they ask me how I am managing. I see now how they got that name.

I don't like drugs. I don't like narcotics or pain pills. I may have to start taking them just to function. It won't be me anymore. My body is wearing out before my mind. Sometimes I think it would be much better if it was the other way around....

My Anti-Mexican email propoganda rant

I would like to state an opinion (as far as I know I still have that right as an American - maybe not) and it is just my opinion. It doesn't matter to me if you agree with it or not. It would just be nice if, for once, people could look at this issue from a slightly different angle for a change! I guess your ability to read this and contemplate it will be something of a test of how open or closed minded you are. No one can make you believe anything you don't want to believe or force you to change your position on an issue. But I have not seen anything but negativity and anti Mexican forwards on the Internet and I think it only fair that we consider this "problem" from outside the box.

Let me offer a more sensible solution for the immigration problems than the downright ugly and totally racist ones I have read that go around the Internet. I was just thinking that it has been over 2 years and most of New Orleans looks just like it did when Hurricane Katrina hit. It's a wreck and what has FEMA done? Well, we don't see reports on the news of all their amazing progress do we? What we need to do is fire all of the FEMA administration, and start over. Perhaps we could hire Carlos Mencia as the head of the new FEMA.

Let's change FEMA to Find Every Mexican Available and put them to work in New Orleans with clean up and if the government is not going to rebuild the levies then they just need to say so and then let the new FEMA know where the end boundary is and let them rebuild all those homes for the rest of New Orleans and all the other coastal cities devastated and just think of the money we will save coz we sure don't pay Mexican workers even minimum wage now do we? However, right now your tax dollars are going to that area, but nothing is getting done because it is caught up in beaurocratic red tape and a top heavy administration.

When we built that house in Guymon, we went to a huge tree sale in Norman and bought about 15 pine trees. They were huge. Way too big for Rodney to dig. Trying to find anyone to do the work was impossible and the trees just sat there needing to be planted very badly. Rodney was watering them everyday trying to keep them alive. We tried the employment office and word of mouth and no one was interested in doing the work until we found a group of Mexicans. They did not speak English. HOWEVER, there were 4 of them and they dug ALL 15 holes right where I wanted them and as deep as I wanted them and as wide as I wanted them because I showed them with a tape measure and hand gestures. And they got those trees planted. Not only that, but they did it in one day and I did pay over minimum wage. Every Mexican I have ever had work for me has been an incredibly hard worker. And I can honestly say they are also far superior to others I have paid for day labor.

People love to attack the Mexican workers who come here and pick crops and do hard manual labor, but I seem to get those emails mostly from people who wouldn't be caught dead doing the work that Mexicans are doing in this country. A review of American history shows that the infrastructure of this country was largely built on slave labor and our railroads by the Chinese who died in vast numbers due to the dangerous working conditions. If you don't recall this, find a current American history book because the old ones glossed over the facts and the newer ones are more likely to be at least halfway honest.

During the depression it was the uneducated who worked for the WPA and built so many of our roads, bridges, national guard armories, etc.... and again for very low wages. Hard and dangerous work, low pay, but people so desperate to put food on the table for their families that they did it. Many had to move around to follow jobs, leaving children moving from school to school, or dropping out altogether.

And now it is the Mexicans doing the work no one else will do, and true to our ancestors and their attitudes, we put them down and complain about them and talk about building a big fence to keep them out. That's the dumbest idea I have ever heard, but it won't surprise me if our government spends billions of dollars doing just that. Duh! Ever heard of wire cutters? Or are they going to have the national guard stand shoulder to shoulder across the entire Mexican border? Oh wait. They can't do that! Our National Guard is no longer in THIS country to guard our nation. It is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our Coast Guard has even sent Coast Guard Cutters to that region and I always thought the point of the U.S. Coast Guard was to guard OUR coasts! Silly me! Instead, let's try to keep all those Mexicans out. Well, enjoy it when food prices quadruple along with gas and everything else. This won't affect the rich and powerful. They have no need to be concerned. But this will affect me and possibly you (unless you are one of the rich and powerful - and if so, how come I don't know this?)

People can make all sorts of claims about what a drain the illegal Mexicans are on this country, but our prisons, the homeless, the drug addicts, gangs (especially in big city schools), and the welfare system are far worse! It is predicted that by the time I am of age (as a baby boomer) to draw Social Security, they will not have the money to meet the needs of all the eligible baby boomers. Our government is not too good with budgets or the concept of national debt.

Our government makes those rules about illegal immigrants and that very same government also passed the Patriot Act in the middle of the night right after they lied about the "weapons of mass destruction" that we were going to find in Iraq. Man, for a place that is all sand, they sure are good at hiding stuff! They still can't find Bin Laden. Are we that inept? Why do you think Colin Powell refused to serve in Bush Junior's second administration? Going into the 6th year of this "war" and watching the national debt climb higher and higher along with the price of gas, and desperate Mexicans trying to feed their families and risk their lives to come here to pick lettuce for 12 hours a day in the heat for low wages, and the best injustice we can come up with in light of the huge MESS we have gotten into over the past 6 years is to badger illegal immigrants? I think there are far more pressing issues.

Well, the truth is, everyone who is NOT Native American is an immigrant and Ellis Island is just a little bit out of the way for Mexicans. In my current American Literature textbook, from which I teach, it states that around the time of Columbus there were approximately 25 million Indians here. Today there are only 2 million and half of them live on reservations in poverty conditions. No, we didn't kill all of them with bullets. We killed them with diseases we brought over to this continent like smallpox and diphtheria. Nope, antibiotics had not yet been invented. Our history is not all that pretty if you really study it. Of course, things like Vietnam, the truth about slavery, the annihilation of the Native American Indian, and even the FIRST Korean War are barely a footnote in history books because we don't like to publish our failures. One can only wonder how Americans (if the country survives another century) will view this time in which we live.

Last summer I went to New York City and out to the Statue of Liberty. It says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Well! Does it say anywhere EXCEPT FOR MEXICANS? No - and I read it TWICE.

Ellis Island, which was the arrival point for European immigrants, is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Between 1892 and 1924, more than 22 million passengers saw the Statue of Liberty as they passed through Ellis Island and the Port of New York. This landmark of freedom became a National Monument in 1924 and a major tourist attraction in the 20th Century. They settled in different areas in the East and that's why you still have places today like China Town, or areas with lots of German speaking Americans, etc... but that's ok with us. As long as it is not Spanish! It's actually quite interesting to me that English became the national language since Columbus and many of the earlier explorers of America were from Spain and spoke Spanish...but I digress.

Do you believe in the U.S. Constitution, the amendments, democracy, the preamble and the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty? If so, then stop bashing the tired, poor, huddled masses of Mexicans trying to survive and feed their families. They don't want to be illegal - but it is very difficult to gain citizenship. It is far easier to marry or divorce, take flying lessons without the need to learn how to land the plane, or even to go out of the country and adopt a HUMAN baby, than to gain citizenship.

For decades we have had Arabs attend our colleges and some have trained at Flight schools. Isn't that more of an issue and problem than Jose and Juanita who ran in the night across the river in hopes of a better life with no plans of flying planes into tall American buildings?

And yes, I think there should be ONE language in this country and it should be English, but I also just read a sewing pattern written in 6 different languages. I think the workers should be able to get work VISAs without jumping through a million hoops written in a foreign language to them, and yes I see how the GOVERNMENT has got the whole thing screwed up with giving too much aid, medical and otherwise, pretty similar to the way the welfare system is all screwed up too. But keep this in mind. OUR government made those laws! People blame Mexicans for taking advantage of the benefits offered them if illegal, but they are not the ones who passed those laws. It was the people who WE voted into office! Bashing the Mexicans for our idiotic governmental laws is like killing the messenger. It makes absolutely no sense to me. We have to share the blame for voting the wrong people into thousands of elected offices.

Many of us live in luxury compared to our ancestors, but we sit back in our overweight bodies because we have plenty to eat, and sit at our thousand dollar computers and forward to all our friends all this anti Mexican mumbo jumbo completely out of context to all the other government waste that also exists as if it is the only problem. The truth is that as much as you send those around the Internet over and over again, change has to come from within. Our government has to change laws and make them equitable and fair. The entire justice system needs to be revamped and don't even get me started on the IRS! But if we are going to shut off Mexican immigration, then why not Canadian immigration? And if so, don't you think someone should be up there on the Statue of Liberty sanding off the words of hope it offers and change them to - GO AWAY - we don't want anymore immigrants! So much for the whole concept of liberty. Let us not also be known as hypocrites in the 21st century along with the other shames of our history. Being proud to be an American is an admirable thing - especially considering that we must forgive our forefathers for the wrongs done to people of many races. Today you see ads on TV that say "tobacco stops with me." It would be nice if intolerance could stop with "us" and the U.S.

Currently reading :
Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell (Nutshell Series)
By David S. Weissbrodt