OCTOBER - EPISODE X: FALL 2017

WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE X: FALL 2017

Hello People of the World;

Well October has come and gone and already we are setting up for Christmas! What? When I comment on how Culture and Tradition lie to us, I use Christmas as my Exhibit #1 to show that how tradition and culture has changed what was a pagan festival celebrating Saturnalia, into Black Friday. So yeah, Culture and Tradition, they lie to you.

Oh’s no! It has gotten cooler now outside! It is as if the earth tilted away from the sun for some reason and yet again, yet Again, Yet AGAIN, has caught us unaware and we begin to wonder if cooling temperatures during the autumn season is supposed to be an annual thing that just happens. Hmm. Then we complain, as if the very act of doing so will change the course of the Earth.

All right, let’s get going:

1:[ Opening thoughts: My dear Readers, cherish your hearing. In March of last year, I suddenly lost partial hearing in my right ear. I thought it was due to low-frequency loss due to age. I still have no idea, other than an obstruction, that caused my hearing to degrade. But near the end of last month (Sept), my ear finally spit out something and a few hours later, my ear popped and my hearing returned. It was weird. Suddenly, the world got really loud.

2:[ Talks with Bonnie: The other day I was craving Pizza Hut pizza for some reason. Bonnie, being the awesome she is, decided then and there we were going ot find one and we drove around Skokie and Niles in search of a Pizza Hut. But what sparked this was the nostalgia I had for the old Pizza Hut in Riverton when I was a kid. It was a huge deal to go there. I went to many a classmate birthday parties there. The school would take those fundraiser reward field trips there. It was situated near “The Electric Quarter” the first and only arcade in town.

I remember the high-backed benches, the red seats and check tablecloths. The wood décor and the anticipation of waiting for your pizza to arrive was such a joyful experience. Plus having video games and a jukebox there was also a plus. Man, I miss that old place. These storefronts they have now just don’t have the same charm. Well, it’s official: I am an old man complaining….

3:[ I have had my own franchise ideas over the years and am scared to share them for someone stealing the idea, but sometimes, I find that someone has had the same idea and made it into a reality. Oh well. The main one I have is called “Coffee and Frybread” that serves only those two things. Folgers and Frybread – just like real Indians! None of that elitist coffee shop bullshit that fools you with fake labels such as “organic” and “fair market”, or has some sort of spice in it. It’s not coffee anymore after that. No frappis or lattes or whipped cream-topped nonsense. Just straight up coffee in a mug.

I do have other Franchise ideas but I do nto think they will be as popular as “Coffee and Frybread”….

4:[ Bonnie and I got into one of our deep philosophical discussions and decided that a Leaf Blower should really be a leaf mover. It really serves no purpose other than to move leaves around. What I mean really, is; why not simply use a rake?

5:[ I had this whole shpeal about how we treat women, and this whole “Guilty By Proximity” associations we make in light of all the recent allegations coming to light; how one woman’s cash settlement sort of taints ALL women’s claims. It is just really another protective barrier for the likes of dudes like me, not to take any responsibility. Funny that, that whole “guilt by proximity” does not go in the opposite gender direction….

6:[ So, I sat on another panel; why is it that people are only interested in Native Americans when they want to find how they themselves could, maybe, possibly be Native too? No one was really interested in what two Native people had to say. In fact, when we do not accede authority over our culture to the other panelists, people are always trying to for Native people. When they cannot, when we insist on speaking for ourselves, they then try to be Native, espousing DNA and ancestry. When they cannot be us because we are careful who we allow into our tribes, they will try to vanish us by stating we were never really here, because Land Bridge, or Lost Tribes, whatever it takes to state, “Natives were not really just here.” If not, then: UFO’s. Really.

7:[ So, Chance the Rapper showed up at my Work Place last week. Apparently, he bought out several showings of the film “Marshall” about the young Thurgood Marshall. He even showed up at the theater and made an appearance in one of the auditoriums. I never got to see or meet him, but many of my co-workers were stunned to learn that I actually new who he was.

Other celebrities I saw at Showplace include that guy from the Furious movies and John Singleton, whom I now wish I went up and shook his hand for “Boyz in the ‘Hood”.

8:[ Here is my review of Sherman Alexie’s Latest Book: Until I read his latest biography “You Don’t Have to Say ‘I Love You’”, I had no idea that Sherman Alexie has his own literary tropes, the main one being, as a Native author, he will tell you that he has every right to be a trope-y writer….

There, finished this finally. Now on to writing next month’s edition. That is it for this month. You have my apologies for having such a short edition. Life has been plodding along and I have been hit with some difficulties but I am trying to get through them. It will not stop me from writing my thoughts for you month to month, though you may find that we end up with short writings such as these. My jobs and the film festival are my only excuses and I really should not offer them up as such.

As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.

Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”

2017 Ernest M Whiteman III