disturbing the comfortable

Thank god it's over: the Fourth. The best thing about it is that Jesse Helms decided to croak. One of the last big-time suthrun racist assholes has left the building. There's been a nauseating wave of eulogies for the old fart. Like instead of being an incredibly bigoted man he really was a great politician, a great conservative...well, hmm. He was a politician all right: he knew where the bodies were buried and he knew who buried them (along with the ones he'd planted...), and, yeah, he was a conservative. He was an unreconstructed Confederate, was what he was.

At least, a voice in the back of my mind says, he was up front about it. Yeah, he was that. But Hitler was upfront, too.

I've been working on a pair of new moccasins; Sun Dance is in less than three weeks and I want a new pair to wear. I'm not dancing—I just ain't got the stamina for it this year. With luck I can pull it off next year. So, I'll be a supporter. I'm looking forward to it: essentially a week with a focus on spirituality. I'm jonesing for it—a political junkie who needs to detox. Anyhow, the moccasins.

I bought the materials last year. The instructions I found are adequate and vague—sort of like they were written by someone who knows the English language better than how to actually make a pair of moccasins... There are many different styles of mocs, just like there are many different kinds of Indians and many different environments in North America. The kind I'm making are a hard-soled Plains' style: a sole of rawhide, and uppers of soft leather—something for hiking over rough ground, avoiding thorns and rocks. The Indians out here, at least the people up at Warm Springs, made one-piece moccasins, folded over and sewn along one side. They're pretty easy to make: sew them up inside out, and because the soles are soft, it's a simple matter to turn them right side out. The kits you see, and the kind that are commercially manufactured, the moccasins called "moccasins," are in the style of the upper midwest. Anyhow, I'm plodding along on them. I get arthritis in my wrists and hands and it's slow going. Hell, even typing is getting painful. Grumble.

However, life does go on, yup. And there are still those of us who hope for a better tomorrow. Still.