'Third-World conditions right here in our own country'

To be useful, honorable and compassionate.
Seems like it all started as when the pastor talked to him. Doug McKenzie describes it this way.
"Pastor Ellen (Fenter) had contacted me about going to an Indian reservation in South Dakota to help take some donations from the church's storage. I decided to go ahead and make the trip with Carl (Fenter, the pastor's husband). On Monday morning, I met Carl at the church to load up the donations and make the long drive to South Dakota. While loading the donations, that seemed to be not in that great of shape and nobody helping load the trailer, I may have started out the trip on a bit of a negative side. The drive not bad, but when we got to the reservation and the people started gathering around the truck, very happy to see us. As we opened the trailer, there were enough young men to unload everything. Old women came up and gave us hugs, thanking me for everything; the little children were running around playing with their new toys. Experiences the happiness in all those faces, and it just did not seem like we did all that much."
Doug McKenzie and others made additional trips.
A flyer that they put together for one the trips asks:
"Please help. South Dakota Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Indian Reservations. We are in need of donations for an auxiliary heat source. Last winter too many were lost from freezing to death! We are trying to give 300 or more heaters to the ones that are in the most need.
With discounted pricing from the local Big R store, the group was able to gather enough for 238 new heaters at $16 each, for one of their trips. On another trip, 100 fans made their way to reservation families because of the groups efforts.
McKenzie is concerned that still is not enough help, and plans to do everything he can.
"We can't turn our head and pretend the problems are not there. It is Third World conditions right here in our own country. Unless we start helping out, they will start disappearing. Diabetes, cancer, other health problems like Arthritis, are rampant. I do have a heart."
No one really questions that.
McKenzie and other continued to make the long trips — and plan for more.
He and Tom Del Porto are trained as electricians and have the idea that could put together enough people to help out with building trade experience to perhaps build chicken coops and green houses and such on the reservations. Maybe minor repairs on homes and such.
McKenzie, who himself suffers from Diabetes, knows the importance of providing healthy food items, and with the help of his wife Angie, working at the King Soopers on Baptist Road, the store provides discounted items to put together significant food boxes for families.
From that introduction, "This trip weighed heavy on my mind, so over the last couple of weeks I have been talking with Serena King to see what I could do to help. Now I am asking for your help and support to make this commitment to the people of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. I believe there is an urgent need," McKenzie wrote in a recent appeal.
McKenzie, from a Kentucky coal mining family, with Shawnee roots, thinks the best thing to ask is:
"What else can we do."
He has made five trips in the last year bringing hundreds of needed fans, heaters and food boxes, as well as other items. He plans on continuing the mission.
Those interested may contact, or donate at The Church at Woodmoor, reference Native Americans, 18125, Monument, Co, 80132. Phone 719-488-3200.

Clear to me, like rattlesnake's tale

Steam rises from the hot swirling water to soften philosophy in front of me

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 It became clear to me. Simplified. Like the Navajo woman staring out to the west in a R.C. Gorman painting. It is not what you say that is important. How do you say it?
The woman, of course, has big feet and hands, abnormally so, as she stares off the page. An inverted sphere, or bowl, describes the light to me. A faint shadow, back on the unseen wall behind her jet-black hair, fills in the detail. The geometric design on the bowl reminds me that not all of life is a circle.
The steam rises from the hot swirling water to soften philosophy in front of me. It is an intended, programed, planned softening.
Folklore says the Ute figure Ouray spent a lot of time in the latter part of his life, languishing in his namesake springs. Utes thought of the springs as sacred ground. Others say the waters softened the edges on his Arthritis, or aches and pains from the strange path he followed.
Ouray popped up like a Forest Gump figure, from culture to culture. From family connections with the Jicarilla Apache, to the French, Spanish and Mexican traders of old Santa Fe, to the negotiations (perhaps with no authority) in Washington ... with Otto Mears, Kit Carson, and the "great white father" Abe Lincoln. Being an Indian was more complicated then. Choose your battles, careful who you befriend. Choose your enemies.
My own family struggled with it. Enemies or friends? Great-grandmother Minnie Buce Carrigan described the horror in her book, "Captured by the Indians."
"My father began talking to the foremost Indians. My brother has told me that father asked them to take all his property but to let him and his family go. But the Indian replied in the Sioux language, "Sioux cheche," (the Sioux are bad.) He then leveled his double barreled shot gun and fired both barrels at him. He dropped the baby--she was killed--and running a few yards down the hill, fell on his face, dead. The same Indian then went to where my mother had sat down beside a stone with little Caroline in her lap, reloaded his gun and deliberately fired upon them both. She did not speak or utter a sound, but fell over dead. Caroline gave one little scream and a gasp or two and all was over with her. The cry rang in my ears for years afterward. My father was thirty-three and my mother thirty years of age when they were so cruelly murdered by the Indians."
She was captured, and then finally liberated 10 weeks later.
Yet, she later worked as a cook on the Rosebud Sioux reservation. My Granddad Owen, grew up there.
Though, in those days, they didn't give you much time to grow up. He worked as a cowboy with a cattle outfit moving herds from the Dakotas to Arizona with the seasons, from age 12, until a horse threw him and he broke his leg. He later homesteaded here in Colorado.
Growing up and Southwestern Colorado, I had some experiences myself with Navajo, Ute, Hopi and the Pueblos of New Mexico. I saw a measure of racism toward Native Americans. Things that were just not fair, not right.
 Listen to me... I will tell you more.
As the Navajo proverbs says, "There is nothing so eloquent, as a rattlesnake's tail."

 

Happy Christmas to you and yours

There is a long-standing Irish tradition that, just before Christmas, you start cleaning out everything. Give everything a good scrubbing. Clear the clutter. Sweep out the carriage house and the front walks. Clean the barn. Paint or whitewash the outbuildings. Mop the floors. Change the curtains. Wash all the linens. Make sure the windows are spotless.
Some say it is to make ready for the Christ child, the new-born king. Some pass it off as preparing for Father Christmas.
The Sioux tribe has a custom, though not necessarily exclusive to this time of year, of calling over all their friends and perhaps a few enemies, and giving away most of their belongings. Just start handing stuff out, the more valued the possessions, the better the person holding the giveaway is reported to feel.
Ben Franklin asked the question “How many observe Christ’s birthday? How few his precepts? O ’tis easier to keep Holidays than commandments.”
In the interest of cleaning things out and giving things away, I have tabbed a few holiday related posts.
May peace and plenty be the first to lift the latch on your door, and happiness be guided to your home by the candle of Christmas.
Nollaig faoi shéan is faoi shonas duit.'
A prosperous and happy Christmas to you.
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Please click on the following for Holiday-related stories.
• Bing Irish Bowie at Christmas
• Yule log warms through the ages
• Christmas is for everyone, even the dog
• Christmas at Taylor Hardware
• Paper boy in the Christmas card
• Things you can count on