IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

Not following blogs lately, I was surprised to find how many have commented on the Ward Churchill controversy. Euro-American genocide of American Indians and questions of whether or not Churchill was a white guy masquerading as American Indian in his position as an ethnic-studies professor at the University of Colorado aren’t your everyday lunchable subjects. I expected some acknowledgement on the virtual streets but not as much as I observed. How did he suddenly blossom into the Jane Fonda of Afghanistan and Iraq? I’ve not heard anyone say it but next he’ll be addressed as “Ward Fonda!” The last I read of possible payola behind the Caplis attack was a number of days ago. My thoughts on the matter don’t gel. I would say my brain has been altered by the barrage of sound and image loops that H.o.p. immerses me in daily, brief bites rerunning concurrent that pave no here to there, dig deeper and deeper ruts in which I find my thoughts pooling, going nowhere. But in this case perhaps my thoughts on Churchill don’t gel because of the usual Montebank what pod is the pea hiding under now trick. So many “what is” balls in play but points of origin mostly hide from me behind “what appears to be”. I’ve a few thoughts on the issues, not on the people, but note that the Peltier Legal Defense Committee would appear to be supporting Churchill from the POV of the controversy being a deliberate smear campaign with falling dominos intent.

George Tinker (Osage, Professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions at Iliff School of Theology) speaks up for Churchill.

We’ve been reading a lot of Tinker around here the past couple of months.

Then suddenly there’s this picture of Churchill with a rifle and beret on the web. Flashback to Patty Hearst. And Madonna posing as Patty Hearst in American Life. There’s an echo of a rifle in those bars behind Madonna and an American kiss on her forehead. Though I think (I do) that a rifle is suggested, the beret and national symbols (again, the flag only inferred through bars and stripes) alone are understood as all that’s needed to bring to mind militants, revolution. Funny, put on a beret, toss in a star and stripe, and the brain processes, “Revolution.”

Churchill says the photo was for a student art project in 1996. I believe it. It looks like something a student and professor would do together.

I wonder if Churchill would be game for a cameo in John Waters’ next film.

Churchill mentions in his “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens”, the severed heads of Raritans kicked for sport along the streets of 1643 New Amsterdam in the shadows of the future’s WTC. So-called Kieft’s War, a history given in John Fiske’s 1902 “Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America”. Kieft’s war is also covered in a book by Russell Shorto, “The Island at the Center of the World : The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America”. An individual on a news list I’m on relates that Shorto details how colonists protested the actions of Kieft (as does Mr. Fiske above mention), his slaughter of the Wappinger Indians, and how Shorto concludes the massacre was exaggerated and things weren’t as bad as all that.

Though the outcry is over Churchill and what he had to say on 9/11, it’s curious how a number have used it as a launchpad to revisit Churchill’s assertions of Euro-American genocide of American Indians, and condemn him for these remarks as well.

While reading up on Shorto’s book names mentioned in it keep pinging my brain. Oh, yeah, Dutch. We’re talking about the Dutch here, aren’t we. I always forget the Dutch have anything to do with me. Go down one branch of my family and you hit a point where that narrow branch blossoms out into lots o’ Dutch marrying Dutch, oh yeah, right, down New Amsterdam way, names like Joris Rapalje and Catalina Trico for starters and Van Cleefs, Vanderbilts, Schenks, Covenhovens, Vanderbeeks. Rarified and exotic to my ears. Remained rarified and exotic until a friend of Marty’s, a year ago, gave him a box of mildewed books for a library fund raiser and in it was Heller’s “Picture This”. And from it I gained a bit of insight (small) into 17th century Dutch society and Dutch mercantilism, coinage and debt and profit.

I remember when, after 9/11, George Bush encouraged us all to get back out to the malls and shop again. Exercise our freedoms. Shop.

I wonder what Ward Churchill’s speaking schedule was over the past four years. Certainly he had many engagements. Why was it Hamilton College that got him busted for his views on 9/11? Why now?

5 down. The developers of this reading program H.o.p. is now doing sure knew what would grab H.o.p.. One-eyed and three-eyed Martians (creatures determined as being from outer space are always Martians to H.o.p.), robots and, tomorrow, dinosaurs! Today’s email (Lesson 5 review) informs me, that tomorrow’s reading world is in the land of the dinosaurs. “Yea!” says H.o.p. The print materials came in today and I was a little surprised with his enthusiasm over them. We’ve been using the print-out map from the website where you mark your progress through the reading worlds, and H.o.p. was all glee over the real version that was part of the package, “I have to mark my place on the map!” And ultra simple, ultra short readers for exercise in transferring skills from monitor to print.