HEALTH, RESPONSIBILITY, AND GOOD FORTUNE

It seems that a large part of the current national rift can be defined as the resistance of many citizens to the concept that we Americans are all in this together. The mindset has become us versus them.

Many people seem to be carrying the belief that their personal good fortune is totally due to their having lived a responsible, hardworking, and ethical life. Therefore this line of thought follows that the less fortunate people must somehow be flawed individuals.

The great force that is unrecognized by these Americans is fortune itself, otherwise known as luck. It plays a larger part in our lives than one might initially think. But the reality is that life is one big lottery: where you are born, when you are born, who your parents are, whether you are a male or a female, and on and on. These basic factors of luck are strong influences in the direction one's life takes.

Here is the cliche argument that I keep hearing. "I've worked hard all my life for every penny and everything I have, and I'll be damned if I'll help pay for medical costs for someone who drinks, smokes, does drugs, is jobless, and has squandered every dollar they've ever had."

Well it's not that simple on either side of the equation. Most people are basically good. If this was not true, then society could not exist. But there are a thousand turning points of fortune that can lead a good little kid to become an irresponsible person with a skewed attitude. And it's possible that good fortune will fail to shine any light at all on a person who is striving to make a better life, and strands that person in a dismal living scenario.

So then why should those who are more fortunate be asked to chip in to help those who are less fortunate? Because that is what being a nation is about. It is about a people's common destiny.  

Absolutely we should each be held responsible for our own life decisions. But equally important, we each should never forget that good fortune, or luck, plays a generous part in the course of our individual lives.

Good fortune has placed us in this particular nation at this particular time. There should be no whining by anyone about being asked to give. If we as a nation don't wish to devolve into a soulless culture of survival of the fittest, then we must promote the concept of gratitude for the fact that most of us do actually have the ability to share part of our personal bounty with others who are in need.

We need to remember that individuals are not simply good or bad people, but also lucky or unlucky people. And never presume that your own luck won't change for the negative, and that you will never need to seek help from the kind hearts of your society.

OUR CONTAINERS

Unless we are an identical twin, each one of us is walking around as a unique combination of our parents' DNA. This is part of life's lottery. It is lucky or it is unlucky. Once we are born into this world, there's only a limited number of alterations we can make to our ever changing "containers". 

Whichever culture a person lives in has its own standards as to which types of containers are deemed alluring, and which are not. First world cultures tend to attach an unwarranted amount of social significance to this. Too many people spend a tragic amount of energy, time, and money fretting over this challenge.

Women in such cultures are pressured into making their faces into a painted canvas. Some results of this are very beautiful, but they are only a culturally approved mask, and nothing more than that.

My unvarnished youth

I'm not saying that it's not a true pleasure to be at that momentary point in one's life where one's container looks so alive and fresh. If only we could convince the young to fully appreciate the transitory nature of this, and persuade them that aging is not a sin or embarrassing. Aging is life's success story, and that's just the way it is.

Our containers are just one aspect of our existence as we walk this planet. It is our visual identity, but not the most important thing about us. People who never come to realize this can end up going to drastic measures to try and stop the progression of time upon them. Most people who do that end up looking at least a little off base, or even no longer like the person whom others have come to know and love. Or worse, they end up looking sadly bizarre.

My unvarnished age

We all must try to keep our containers functioning properly. We all must try to stay out of physical harm's way. We all must come to realize that our containers are part of the "wakan tanka", the great mystery, of this universe.

Beauty beyond time and circumstance

ANNA'S LEGACY

My mother grew up in a dismal, deteriorating small town in southeastern South Dakota, inside the Yankton Sioux reservation, during the 1920's and 1930's. She (Dorothea), her parents, and her six siblings somehow crammed into this little house. 

When the kids in her family misbehaved, they were called dirty little Indians. My mom and her siblings hadn't been told that they also had some African heritage, so they didn't know why some kids in town also taunted them with the slur nigger.

Her father died when she was 17, but Dorothea managed to graduate from high school as an excellent student.

Her older brothers joined the military, and her mother took the remaining four daughters and moved West in hope of a better life. Dorothea had a challenging start to her new life in Southern California, but things eventually evolved and she ended up spending the majority of her years there, living a good life.

So my big question is, with such challenging and dismal years in her youth, why, in the early 1950's did she make sure that her three children all became enrolled Sioux tribal members? Far removed from South Dakota, in sunny Southern California, why did she not just let it go?

What is it about Native American heritage that remains so special, even in light of its long and tragic history of struggle? Why do I and some of my cousins remain preoccupied with that small percentage of our DNA identity? My generation of the family is far enough removed from this heritage, in both time and circumstance, that it could never be our main personal identities. Unless it somehow comes up in conversation, I don't mention to people that I'm a tribal member.

Yet I think that everyone in this branch of the family holds this sliver of heritage close to his or her heart. In genealogy, the number one false family story in the U.S. is that great grandma was a Cherokee maiden. Well, in our case great grandma Anna Dezera really was a Native American, a Yankton Sioux woman who married a soldier from the nearby military outpost. They spent the rest of their lives eking out a living by farming the reservation allotment land that she had been granted.

Great grandpa Micheal Howard & son Edward

In my full family tree, I have branches with many ethnicities and from many countries. They contain plenty of stories of courage, struggle, and achievement. But this single Native line of my heritage keeps drawing me back to it as I do my research. Rest assured that mine is not the common case of romanticizing the lives of the 19th century Indians. It turns out that my male Yankton ancestors made a specialty out of becoming scouts and interpreters for the U.S. government. Great grandmother had three husbands. Great grandmother's brother was indicted and convicted for running liquor into the reservation.

Nativism in the larger sense is flourishing throughout the planet right now, in a strange backlash against the monetary and technological trends of globalization. People more than ever, it seems, are staunchly clinging to identities based on city, state, region, country, ethnicity, sexuality, politics, religion, or sports. Take your pick. It's apparently strong in human nature to want to identify with a group. So perhaps being identified, if only to a degree, with a culture as unique as the Sioux, is something our family just cannot let fade away, as years pass and new generations arise.

An annual Indian Census record

To me, genealogy research is not just about collecting names and dates. It is about describing and documenting how, over centuries and decades, the gift of life was passed down from one generation to the next. It seems that it's impossible for me to fully describe that special regard I have for that part of me that is linked to the first people to inhabit this continent. So I continue to honor the ancestors by speaking their names and telling their stories.

SIMPLICITY AND TIMELESSNESS

We Americans love our consumerist stuff, and spend our whole lives attempting to acquire it. We are so lucky, in comparison to other regions of the world, that we can achieve this goal with relative ease.

This quest drives the lives of more Americans than not. It leads us to distraction and the feeling that we will never have quite enough or as much as some others.

I have wonderful news for you all, which I gained by slipping down the economic ladder. For the majority of us Americans, we indeed do have enough things from which to craft a comfortable and satisfying life. I'm speaking from the perspective of one who dwelled in the middle of the middle class, not as someone who has struggled a lifetime just to stay even.

I very much suspect that a majority of Boomers haven't really done a good job at getting ready for senior citizenship. From my West Coast observations, it appears that most of our generation has spent decades in quest for all that consumerist stuff. Now, if we're lucky, we're entering our senior years. Many of our careers are becoming obsolete and we're being encouraged to or forced to move over. And I can advise from the other side of that predicament: don't panic.

Keep calm and simplify.

Get your affairs in order. Take inventory of all that stuff. Figure out which stuff is baggage, and which stuff is treasure. Get a clear picture of what your assets are, because this is it, folks. After you are done being scared, take long walks and deep breaths, then count your blessings. Most of us have many more blessings than we realize. And if you haven't noticed already, all that stuff isn't the meaning of life. The meaning of life always has been and currently is all around you, and equally important, within you.

Next, allow yourself to take the most fabulous step of all - release yourself from that literal clock that has ruled most of your life. Keep your appointments and dates, but otherwise live your days at your very own personal pace. You will find the illusion of timelessness. That absence of that domination by the clock, that feeling of timelessness, is the most peaceful and luxurious gift given to those of us who have left the workforce for good. 

Hopefully at this stage of life you know who your true self is, so spend your hours dabbling at or charging towards whatever pleases you most. You own your hours now. So I say, see you in the realms of peace, happiness, and contentedness.

SELFISH AND SCARED IN AMERICA

I keep trying to sort out why our fortunate and prosperous nation has begun running down a path of ugliness and stupidity. I think the current state of the union is a tapestry woven from both history and lack of foresight.

Elements:

• The inability of too many of us to overcome deeply innate or family taught feelings of dislike and distrust for those who are different from us. Ever since the Civil War this country has tried to convince its citizens to rise above these feelings, to behave as better human beings. Until recently. All out distrust and disdain is now becoming national policy.

• Teaching recent generations that they are very, very special individuals who are entitled to a big house, a new car, an interesting job, and lots and lots of toys. These consumerist generations seem baffled and resentful when their storybook possibilities fade with life's realities.
• Technology has burgeoned into our society simultaneously as a pacifier and as an eliminator. Nearly all people have access to every kind of knowledge, data, communication, and entertainment in the palms of their hands. Ominously, this same technology is steadily diminishing the need for skilled, thoughtful, and hardworking employees in businesses looking to achieve high productivity and financial targets. 

• The biggest goal of "think tanks" in our country needs to be to define new occupations that can be developed to sustain a middle class. The shrinking of the middle class is a national crisis which is making people scared and angry.
• America's education systems have not evolved. The frameworks and goals for primary and secondary education must be reworked for the twenty first century. Regional task forces need to study and redefine what the local young people need in order to succeed as adults in each region. This should be seen as a top priority infrastructure project.

So what do we currently have here? A scared, shrinking middle class, with a younger generation raised on false expectations. We have instant global media which may or may not be telling us the truth as it stirs up our emotions and desires.

Those bent on "deconstruction" and "freedom from government regulations" have recently gained the edge in the federal power structure. It appears that to them, freedom means being excused from any obligation to help and protect fellow citizens.

We need somehow as a nation to take a hard look in the mirror, and see that in our fear and self-absorption we've placed the keys to our fates into the hands of a very unpredictable driver and his unethical and unrepentant pals.

This current situation is stunning, and it's frightening to think of what it might take to bring us as a nation to our senses.

THE NATIVE UPRISING

A little bit about me. Passing me on the street, one would see me as an older white lady. I am, but I am also an enrolled citizen of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.I have always lived on the west coast, but my mother grew up on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. She made sure her children became enrolled tribal members, and she made sure we children were well aware of the conditions of poverty which she and her siblings grew up with as a mixed blood family in South Dakota.

I always have been proud of that special percentage of me that is Native American. I have deep respect for the tribal members whose families never left the reservations, and thus lead much more challenging lives than mine.

In April of this year LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a Sioux historian whose work I have read online, became alarmed when it became apparent that construction of a crude oil pipeline was coming very close to her home and possibly through sacred grounds. The pipeline was also slated to run beneath the Missouri River, the most important water source for the region. LaDonna used social media in July to call out to any Native Americans who could, to come camp by the Cannonball River and try to get the pipeline company to reroute, as the company had done for the city of Bismark to the north.

First a trickle, then a deluge of people from tribes throughout the nation arrived. With thousands of campers it became the largest gathering of Native Americans in at least 100 years if not more. Each tribe flew its flag. It became the United Nations of the First Peoples. 

When one considers the true history of Native Americans in North America, that they were often sworn enemies, this confluence becomes doubly beautiful. And many socially aware groups from around the world have made known their desire to "Stand With Standing Rock". Called Water Defenders, the activists have sworn to keep things nonviolent. As of this writing, they have encountered state militia, private security thugs with attack dogs, road blocks stopping delivery of camp supplies, mass arrests, and now that fall has arrived on the prairie, they were struck by water cannons in below freezing temperatures.

The first blizzard of the season has come through, and I don't know how the campers can remain without casualties. What I do know is that whatever you want to call the descendants of the indigenous tribes of North America - Indians, Native Americans, First Peoples, Natives, or by their tribal affiliation - they have joined and they have risen and they will never be again relegated to a footnote in history.

A COMMONER'S OBSERVATIONS

I assume no one wants to hear yet another set of theories about what the hell just happened, but I want to lay this out at least for myself.

There are times that the President's actions do directly, and sometimes existentially, effect our lives. For this reason I always watch the presidential campaigns carefully.

Elements of Hillary's Loss

• Misogyny, both unconscious and overt. This is still ingrained in our culture, even though some strides have been made.
• Ageism. Overt. Not only was she a female, she was an older female. I could tell that some of the former-Bernie/never-Hillary young adults who were posting on social media saw her as the stern mother or grandmother (whether they realized it or not).
• Long History. This woman was a politician, either directly or by association, from her college years to the present. With politics being so sketchy and dirty, no one can come out clean as a whistle after that many years and that many positions served. The target on her back was her long history of public service, both triumphs and warts. Being female made that target even bigger.
• Over Confidence. After all, the U.S. had just twice elected a black man as President. It may have been presumed that this paved the way now for a woman President. 
• Blindness to The Shrinking Middle Class. I think she didn't see the full picture of the massive festering negativity of the lower middle class who never fully recovered from the Great Recession. Those people are probably the largest demographic that turned against her.
• Bernie's Millennials. In their youthful ideal hearts, they could not accept that Bernie did not win the nomination. In a tantrum, they didn't do what Bernie next asked for them to do - vote for Hillary.
• The OJ Effect. I realize that this is is a controversial statement from me. President Obama practically begged people of color to honor his legacy by voting for Hillary. It turned out they did not vote for her in the numbers that they had for him. I think it was a lack of enthusiasm for her based on her race as well as her gender.
• Cuba. The elder Cuban Americans in south Florida did not like one bit the normalizing of relations with Cuba, having spent their lives hating the Castros, and so they kept their votes Republican.
• Dislike of Them Both. Counties were reporting that there were thousands and thousands of ballots where the voters voted for everything else but for President. Compounding that was the percentage of eligible voters who didn't vote at all, which was disappointingly and embarrassingly high.
• Diminished Voting Rights Act. It has been reported that there were over 800 LESS polling places in the South.
• The Electoral College System. Historically this system was established as a buffer between the real voices of the citizenry and the federal government status quo. There is no reason for this system to remain today. Twice now in 16 years it has awarded the Presidency to the person with less actual votes. This demonstrates that it is no longer a fluke event. In the name of Al Gore, we can't let this issue just slide away once again. It must be eliminated.
• Enthusiasm. The haters really, really hated. I watched the Republican convention and it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The mob type hatred mentality displayed by the whole crowd as well as the speakers made me think of Germany in the WWII era. 
• Campaign Rallies. Trump held many more rallies than Hillary did and they were big, loud, and hateful. There was one long weekend when she announced that she was going to take a break to do some fund raising. Trump doubled up on his rallies during that time.
• Unfettered lying. Her opponent with no hesitation lied as big and as often and as ugly as anyone ever has in history. The great mystery is why so much of the population either didn't realize he was lying, or didn't care that he was lying.

Not a list of excuses, but ingredients in a horrific stew we must all now eat.

2017 UPDATE:

• I stand by all of the above, but I didn't realize at the time of writing it that Putin had also been so vigorously stirring the election pot. I now see that this Russian input, along with the laptop e-mails being announced so late in the race, gave the final momentum to push her campaign over the cliff.