I left South Dakota in a driving, cold rain ... by the the time I had reached Rapid City the temperature had dropped to 7C. I had a choice ... slip into the Badlands or keep going.
The further West I traveled the harder the rain; the colder the weather. If you look at a map of the US, Interstate 90 takes a NW sweep just after Rapid City. I decided to press on to test the hypothesis that it was my western progress that was of concern to whomever is 'watching', so to speak.
Sure enough within an hour the weather improved, the temperature rose and soon the precipitation ceased completely.
By the time I was past the Black Hills headed towards Little Big Horn the sky was starting to clear ... at Little Big Horn, I had totally clear skies and the temperature had increased to 22C.
I continued on to the Bozeman area but I won't say exactly where for obvious reasons.
The drive I covered today was the 'path' that Lewis and Clark and company took in 1804-1806 after the Louisiana Purchase ... the result of that expedition was a push westward, spurred on by Thomas Jefferson ... fueled initially by eastern mercantile/colonial expansion enterprises but later ballooned thanks to the California gold strike and the completion of the rail system.
What started as a friendly cooperative venture between Lewis and Clark, the voyageurs and natives who accompanied them, was bookended in 1876 in the now famous encounter at Little Big Horn - taking place along the same path I drove today.
It was only a few years later that North America's indigenous peoples were totally defeated ... not so much by guns and ammo, but more by the unending parade of colonial expansion westward, and the realization that their way of life was changed forever ... their spirit had not only been taken away from them ... a continuous re-writing of agreements regarding land access and ownership ... combined with a continuous litany of lies and damned lies on the part of politicians .... had by this time, destroyed their spirit completely.
Well ... this is where you and I find ourselves today .... as a result of the recent financial collapse our lives have changed forever and our spirit is waning ... not yet destroyed.
That said .... every lie, every mistake, every injustice ... all of it ... that was promulgated against the native peoples in the 1800s ... is still being repeated today. They add up to something like this ...
It's on Wall Street, it's in politics, it's in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... and it affects us all on Main Street.
We are in a better position today than our native friends in the 1800s ... we can read, we can research, we can vote ..... we don't need a hero to take us out of the mess we are in ... we need to take charge of the ballot box, see through the rhetoric and elect people who are not dedicated to a philosophy, even if that philosophy hurts everyday folks; we need to elect people who are dedicated to everyday folks and are willing to bend or change their philosophy when common sense dictates.
If this doesn't happen, then our spirit will indeed be destroyed ... and if that happens .... New Orleans 12 hours after Katrina will look like a picnic ....
To quote from verse 333 of the Krome Koan,
'Everybody lies ... but it doesn't matter since nobody listens'
I recommend the following reading,
1) Undaunted Courage
2) Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
3) The Death of Conservatism
4) Max Blumenthal's Book
I'll be heading into Yellowstone tomorrow ... I will be heading south on a direct line to intersect the path that I would have been on had I headed due west at Rapid City ...
We shall see if that poses any difficulty ... I intercepted another one of 'their' messages ... you can see it here ... wonder if they're talking about DC ... or Ottawa ... or ....
More later,
Forever Man
Check this out ....
