Articles for Native American Heritage Month

This is the last of the months for this year, so when I decided to do it, I had more time to prepare.

By the time we got to November, I had four articles and three names I wanted to look up. 

That was a start, but I really wanted to do some searches and get the whole schedule set for the month. I mean, sometimes when you know what you are doing you can put things in a better order.

That just didn't feel right. Instead I went along, with material presenting itself in time as new articles popped up, or as I remembered people and connections.

Some of it came from the music. Redbone was on the list, whom I knew, and then also Romeo Void. I had not known that Debora Iyall (November 21st) was Cowlitz; that's pretty local. 

One of those led to an extra link. Christian Staebler's Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band has a nice account of the Hendrix/Redbone meeting, and Hendrix's own roots. None of the Redbone articles really explored that, so I added one that day (November 26th) that was about Jimi.

In addition, I could post an article about Stephanie Craig (November 19th) because we went to hear her speak at the library. Since then, I could not stop thinking about a video, One Becomes the Other, I had seen from Jeffrey Gibson. I posted an article about him the day after hers, and a link to the video.

The video is about items locked away in museum archives, with no one seeing them or connecting to them. The potential advantage of being in a museum collection is that it can inspire and educate others. I will not do so when locked away in drawers where only staff has access.

That is the antithesis of a lot of these articles, which ended up being mostly current or sometimes history that was fairly recent. 

So much of what we get wrong about Native Americans is about relegating them strictly to the past. They're still here, and that refusal to connect makes some abuses easier.

At the beginning of the month, I could never have planned on posting about Confederated Tribes of Umatilla citizen Elaine Miles being detained by ICE, but it happened.

When I decided I was going to post articles for each of the heritage/pride months this year, it was because the government was erasing history and I was determined not to forget.

I don't know how next year will shape up, but the need to remember remains.

November daily articles: 

11/1 CCC totem poles: https://www.juneauempire.com/news/fdrs-new-deal-helped-preserve-alaska-native-art-like-these-three-totem-poles-in-juneau/

11/2 First first responders: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-first-first-responders

11/3 Canoe: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-canoe-in-the-forest/

11/4 Water potatoes: https://www.vox.com/climate/377249/climate-solutions-traditional-indigenous-foods-water-potato

11/5 Residential school story https://thewalrus.ca/my-father-was-found-in-a-residential-school-incinerator-when-he-was-an-infant/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

11/6 Ada Blackjack: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ada-blackjack-arctic-survivor

11/7 Bill Reid: https://www.visitexpo74.com/art-and-music/bill-reid-bear

11/8 Nancy Ward: https://www.allthingscherokee.com/nancy-ward/

11/9 Maud Bolin: https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/it-happened-here-the-remarkable-life-of-maud-bolin-pilot-rodeo-star-philanthropist/article_b0f6c41c-6529-11e7-9724-17ac3034eeb5.html

11/10 Allan Houser: https://westernartandarchitecture.com/june-july-2025/perspective-allan-houser-1914-1994-a-legacy-of-independence-and-innovation

11/11 Code Talkers: https://historychronicler.com/navajo-code-talkers-and-their-lasting-impact-on-wwii/

11/12 MMIWG: https://icnacsj.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-what-is-mmiw/

11/13 The Deadly Aunties: https://goldcomedy.com/resources/the-deadly-aunties-are-getting-uncles/

11/14 Rebecca Roanhorse: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924734316/i-longed-to-see-something-different-so-i-wrote-it-questions-for-rebecca-roanhors

11/15 Louise Erdrich: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1052730892/louise-erdrichs-the-sentence-review

11/16 Wilma Mankiller: https://savingplaces.org/guides/wilma-mankiller-first-woman-principal-chief-cherokee-nation

11/17 Xelena Gonzalez and Adriana Garcia: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/25/1166059909/author-xelena-gonzalez-and-illustrator-adriana-garcia-on-their-new-childrens-boo

11/18 Adam Beach: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/q/adam-beach-has-never-been-afraid-to-confront-his-trauma-on-set-1.7120974

11/19 Stephanie Craig: https://www.orartswatch.org/hands-of-the-ancestors-kalapuya-artist-stephanie-craigs-mix-of-past-and-present/

11/20 Jeffrey Gibson: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/29/1190952604/jeffrey-gibson-indigenous-artist-venice-biennale

Bonus video: https://vimeo.com/413789286

11/21 Debora Iyall: https://www.slumbermag.com/enter-the-void-catchinig-up-with-debora-lyall/

11/22 Spirit Mountain: https://www.smokesignals.org/articles/2025/03/13/spirit-mountain-community-fund-awards-more-than-400-000-in-grants/

11/23 Greenland Inuit: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wlw2qj113o?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

11/24 Makah: https://www.knkx.org/environment/2025-11-21/makah-tribes-treaty-protected-whaling-rights-remain-blocked-after-more-than-25-years

11/25 Cherokee Nation: https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/oklahoma-tribes-file-lawsuit-over-reservation-hunting-rights/ar-AA1R3Y7f

11/26 Jimi Hendrix and Redbone: https://redbone-band.com/blog/2025/1/17/who-is-redbone-the-pioneers-of-native-american-rock-music

Bonus article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007766.2022.2099196#d1e203

11/27 First Thanksgiving: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/thanksgiving-myth-and-what-we-should-be-teaching-kids-180973655/

11/28 Elaine Miles detained by ICE: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/northern-exposure-actress-elaine-miles-detained-by-ice-told-id-is-fake/ar-AA1RlpW5

11/29 Leonard Peltier: https://apnews.com/article/leonard-peltier-release-fbi-killings-indigenous-rights-8b7da707f4921e974b53ede7d032cf23

11/30 Movies and shows: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/native-american-movies-tv-shows-indigenous-history-culture-thanksgiving

Related posts:  

Black History Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/07/black-history-month-articles-2025.html

Women's History Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/05/fighting-erasure-daily-articles-and.html 

Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/07/asian-american-pacific-islander-history.html 

Pride Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/07/pride-articles-for-june.html 

Disability Pride Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/08/disability-pride-month-2025.html 

Hispanic Heritage Month: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/10/hispanic-heritage-month-2025-articles.html 

Sympathy for the weasel

I realize that doesn't sound super sympathetic. He definitely wasn't the devil, but he was something. 

Before I get into issues of death, communication, and misogyny, this is a recap of our history and interactions in the hopes of answering all questions (which is lengthy). It is also my attempt to offer some understanding to him.

Two people that I care about a lot are very sad about his passing. One of them said, as we were texting: "He could be a jerk for sure. He could also be funny and considerate."

I never really got that side of him, but my time with him was limited. People contain multitudes, and that's important.

We met in 1st grade and went through to grade 5 in the same school, but usually not in the same class. I never really got close to him. I didn't really like him, but I couldn't point to any specific reason. With most of the kids I didn't really like back then, I usually knew why.

There was a boundary change for Chehalem in fifth grade. At the time, elementary school was grades 1 through 6, then junior high for 7 through 9, and high school for 10 through 12. 

Most of the kids affected by the change started the next year at Aloha Park. Those of us who were going to be sixth graders could choose to remain at Chehalem for our final year of grade school, then on to Five Oaks for junior high. Otherwise, Chehalem fed into Mountain View for junior high. Both Mountain View and Five Oaks fed into Aloha High School. 

Four of us chose to do have our final year at Chehalem, but he went to Aloha Park for 6th grade. I suspect he was not that attached to anyone at Chehalem and was glad for the change.

I know he was picked on for being fat. I was too, but being a heavy kid with his name when Fat Albert was a popular cartoon was not great. I know people "joked" about it, but I don't know how much.

At Five Oaks we ended up in the same social group. That consisted of some girls I really liked and some guys who were mostly not that great, but we still did things together. All but one of those guys was mentioned in his obituary, which seemed a little weird. 

Things we did together included plays and drama class. I gave up plays in high school and the rest of the group didn't. I saw all of them some in high school, but mainly I was doing other things.

We had a brief encounter at the ten-year reunion. Everyone was talking about him losing weight, which he had. I mentioned him looking different and he seemed irritated. I really did not handle that well, partly because in the back of my mind I was thinking that I still don't like this guy, but also he had gone from red-headed to blond and I was fixating on that, though I didn't actually ask. Did it naturally lighten? Because it was really red! Did he bleach it and then color it? Did he lose his hair and it grew back differently? Was there other cancer?

(One factor that comes up in some of these stories is that I am probably not completely neurotypical. Years later I still wonder what was going on with his hair and probably most people did not think about it that much.) 

The next major interaction happened around 2008. I was newly on Facebook and campaigning hard against another guy from the junior high group who was running for office. I had also come to learn that candidate had been really abusive and awful to multiple people I cared about. Albert was not the abuser, but he tolerated it and was not helpful. I did hold that against him, but I was late to the party and those were not my stories.

Anyway, through mutual acquaintances I heard that those two had been discussing my blog and the page hits it was getting. I then got a friend request from him. I was not going to accept it, but I didn't feel right just ignoring it because of our shared history, so I sent him a direct message explaining that.

He wrote back a really angry message insulting my blog in a way that was supposed to be a "Gotcha! I know about your blog!", except I thought the reason I gave made it pretty clear that his interaction with the blog was why I was not accepting his friend request. I knew that he knew about it, but maybe I did not communicate that clearly. 

I blocked him then and didn't think about it anymore. 

Around the 20-year reunion in 2010, I started hearing from a lot of classmates (all women) that he had hit on, using the exact same phrasing. In at least two cases he also aggressively hit on friends of theirs, apparently from going through their Facebook feeds. 

At least one of those women started the conversation because he had been badmouthing me. She was trying to see if we'd had a bad breakup or something, like were we rivals for his affection?

I kind of laughed that off, but I saw the light go out of her eyes when I repeated his pickup lines; she had thought she was special. Some women had worse experiences, and for some it was mildly annoying or surprising, but there were at least a couple that were really disappointed. 

Plus he was in a long-term relationship the entire time. 

I had forgotten about him badmouthing me. I was pretty sure I had posted about his relentless hitting on classmates before so searched. Yes. 2010. It mentions the badmouthing and the digging for information there. At the time I probably just wrote it off as him still holding a grudge, but it could have been an a strategic attempt to undermine my credibility. 

When I say that some women had much worse experiences than me, for at least two, that included looking at their Facebook friends and finding additional women to hit on, where the friends were requesting intervention. There were also some overly angry, maybe even frightening, responses to refusals. That message I got back in 2008? That tracks, and seems to be a reaction to setting a boundary.

I believe his spree of hitting on classmates happened shortly after a lot of us were getting on Facebook and right around the time of the ten-year reunion, which makes sense. It went on for quite a while after, but I can see where suddenly being in touch with people again felt like an opportunity. (Our class has not been immune to reunion-related hookups.)

Almost done.

I don't actually remember which election it was when he was overbearingly correcting everyone's political posts and comments and getting blocked. I'd had him blocked for at least a few years by then, so I never saw his posts

What I did see was replies to him on other threads, which gave kind of an idea. In addition, whenever I would mention unfriending or blocking someone, I would get a few questions of whether it was him (or sometimes Kirk, who in some ways was very similar but with whom I had much less interaction). 

I actually don't even know what his political leanings were. It sounds like his general view was "I am smarter than you; even if you said something right you are still wrong in a way I must explain to you!"

Sounds Libertarian.

I do know what it's liked to be picked on. I know some of that continued even into high school. We had some common ground there.

For a long time I believed my real life would start and everything would be great when I finally lost weight. I never did, but I have sometimes thought that if I did, I might resent people who treated me differently then. I could also end up really disappointed when it didn't fix everything. That might have been a factor for some things with him (with structural misogyny also being huge).

From our interactions at school I do remember some attempts to make things about himself and get validation. I suspect that was something he did want a lot. I was not good about giving it to him, what with not really liking him and also this being around the time when I discovered that attention-seekers were my people-pleaser Kryptonite. 

I can also comprehend how -- if you are not enough for yourself -- aligning with someone who is perceived as more powerful -- even if that is through their mistreatment of others -- makes a certain sense. I don't like it, but I get it.

That's what our relationship has been through my eyes. 

The hitting on women and getting angry at boundaries is why I think of him as a creep. The need to demonstrate his intellectual superiority to everyone is why I think of him as a jerk. That is still not all he was. Maybe some of him being funny and considerate was part of trying to be ingratiating to get more validation; I could have been kinder about that. 

We all have our flaws, and none of us are only our flaws. 

I can feel sorry for him. I still don't like him.

I feel somewhat bad for complicating things for people who did like him, but there was another side of the response that made it feel very necessary.    

I think that's a pretty complete background. Friday through Sunday are different topics, but next week I will try and explore some of the other issues that have come up through his death.

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2010/01/ive-always-had-such-crush-on-you.html 

My Facebook post blows up: a series

The first thing I should mention is that yesterday was a really busy day.

I did try writing a blog post. I wasn't sure what I really wanted to write about, but the real problem was that I kept leaving. That also affected what happened on Facebook.

The first thing that happened was that the day before, I found out that someone died.

This was someone I met in first grade, and spent a fair amount of time with in junior high, but we were not close. Fair or not, I never really liked him. I know a lot of other people had problems with him over the years.

Suddenly everyone was so sad over his passing.

Okay, that's fair. Not everyone has the same experiences. I just kept finding it more irritating that there was all this praise. Like, I remember when a bunch of people were blocking him; did we just forget that? Or did the blocks work so well that those people hadn't heard? 

Good riddance posts would probably be in bad taste.

Fair or not, I was getting more irritated. 

This was all happening on Facebook, so there I wrote" “I am feeling very hard-hearted today, because that guy was a creep and a jerk.”

This was someone from school, but the first people seeing my posts were from church.

It had not occurred to me at all that this particular post could sound like it was about a bad breakup or failed romantic relationship. Probably school friends would be less likely to think that I would post anything about dating, but I was getting some sympathy that I had not expected.

I also got one direct message from a school friend asking about identity. More of those came later.

I wrote a reply for clarification:

"He's from school. I remember a lot of people blocking him as he relentlessly attacked their political posts, and also him hitting on girl after girl with the exact same words, even while living with someone, and that if someone needed support after being bullied that he always favored the bully, but sure. Great guy."

Plus in that conversation I mentioned that he was dead, which probably removed any doubt. 

But also, I left. First I went on the Franz Bakery tour, which was great. Later that night there was a church activity, plus setting up before and cleaning up after. There was a lot of time when I simply was not looking at things.

Then I got back home and looked. Oh. 

A lot of people chimed in. Some were surprised, but no, in fact, there were people who remembered those aspects about him. There were also people who did really feel grief, but could acknowledge those aspects. 

There were also people who were shocked, and that is not surprising.

There was a lot to think about, regarding death and how we remember people and misogyny and safe spaces and communication. I wrote a lot in my journal last night, and remembered other things that so I wrote more this morning. I am going to spend some time on this.

I had not been sure what to write about, but sometimes information presents itself. 

Movies about death: The Farewell and Shadowlands

I did do some writing on media about death previously:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01/a-year-or-so-of-magical-reading.html 

Even though that post title indicates a focus on reading, the arc on Blackish where Bow's father dies had a big impact.

There were movies that were part of this too, with mixed results.

The Farewell (2019)

This one touched me a lot. I did actually reference (though not very much) it in a different blog post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/07/movies-for-apahm-2024.html 

That timing is weird to me. I seem to remember seeing it in the theater, which should have been around 2019 or 2020, but I did not write about it until 2024? Or maybe I had just been holding on to it, not really completely processing it.

It appears that I saw it while I was still a full-time caregiver; I can't imagine why I had to put off writing about it.  

In the movie, the grandmother of a large family has cancer that it is assumed will be fatal. They decide to keep it from her, but hold a wedding so all of the family will come together and can spend time with her. One granddaughter is especially struggling with it, though you do see the pressure on the grandson getting married as well. 

We can only assume that Nai-Nai's children and extended family are having struggles that they are not showing.

The granddaughter's father takes her aside and explains that they are carrying the burden for the grandmother.

There is a level at which I still don't know how I feel about that. It can be beautiful to help people with their burdens, but I hate not having knowledge. If the grandmother would have specific things she wanted to do to prepare for death, they are not giving her the chance. They seem to be thinking that knowing would overshadow everything, and it might. 

Making plans without knowing outcomes is part of life. 

(As it is, it was based on filmmaker Lulu Wang's real family, and her grandmother lived at least six years past her diagnosis. She did find out because of the movie.)

What I do know is how hard it hit that we (especially me) were carrying the burden for my mother. 

Because of her mother, Alzheimer's was a big fear for her. It could have been horrible for her as she felt things slipping away, but through a combination of denial and not being able to perceive and know plus forgetting things that did sink in, in many ways her suffering has been relatively light. As she started to not be able to have peace in the house, she moved into residential care and found an active social life where she was very popular. She became carefree in a way that she never was before.

Back at home we are still feeling it. We are going to be feeling it for a while.

Shadowlands (1993)

I know I saw this much after its release, and I have to say I hated it.

I love C.S. Lewis, and I like A Grief Observed, which I assumed had influenced this.

First of all, this movie, based on a play, is pretty boring, even with some good actors in it.

I don't hate it because it's boring, but because I think it is so completely false to the real people that they should have made it straight fiction.

I don't object to them only showing one of her sons; combining characters is pretty normal. 

Lewis was indeed caught by surprise by falling in love with Joy. It did change things for him, but the film portrayed him as this barely awake to humanity recluse who only came alive because of her. 

Before Joy, Lewis was a soldier, he had a long-term relationship with another woman, and he had to care for a very alcoholic brother. These are mostly things I know from other people who hated the film, but they aren't hard to fine. One former schoolmate described Lewis as "riotously amusing."

Because the writer has no idea of Lewis as a person, we have a Lewis who has to learn to live not just from Joy but also from a fictional student who falls asleep in class because he stays up late reading books that he steals.

You can do that without taking up a spot at Cambridge!

It's like the worst fan fiction where the writers are trying to correct the flaws in a work that they couldn't understand because it didn't align closely enough to their experiences and worldview. (Which makes it weird that there is a line about books helping us not be lonely, because if you can't learn to understand other points of view from books, what are you even doing?) 

I guess it's good if sometimes the media you are watching for one specific purpose does not really work with that purpose. 

I probably did cry when Joy died, but it didn't stay with me. 

I am still mad about this movie years later. I kind of want to hold it against James Frain, who played the narcoleptic kleptomaniac, but he is a good actor. It's not his fault. It's the playwright. 

If at some point I decide to watch The Farewell again, there might be value in it and there would certainly be emotion in it.

Shadowlands does not merit any more viewings. 

But was it cathartic?

Probably not.

I believe it was when I was writing about Thunderbolts* and its emotional effect on me that I got a little hung up.

I was simply trying to write a sentence about how it wasn't exactly catharsis but -- instead of saying what "it" was -- I got hung up on the concept of "catharsis". 

I thought I had read once that catharsis was a myth, but people say things like that about many concepts. Often the concept is still useful.

I also recall Alice Sebold being frustrated when people would tell her how writing The Lovely Bones must have been cathartic for her regarding her own rape. No, that was not how she felt about it. 

So, even when we use the word (whether in noun or adjective form), we might be getting it wrong. 

Probably one good rule of thumb is to not reference other people's trauma just to sound smart.   

As concept, "catharsis" has medical, psychological, and dramatic constructions, and even multiple meanings within those categories.

For example, from a therapy standpoint, there is disagreement about whether catharsis for getting anger out helps to dispel or to reinforce anger.

I had not thought about anger so much. My idea of catharsis was that something brings out the sadness so you cry and feel better. 

The word "purge" is sometimes used. 

A lot of it is predicated on it being common behavior for people to repress or ignore their pain and problems. 

That totally happens. Then catharsis is supposed to be bringing it out into the open so it can heal. 

There are questions about whether something setting off that grief for pain is effective too. In fact, some of the theatrical disagreement is that if the play gives the audience catharsis then they are not motivated to change things. That can make the art a total failure, relegating it to bourgeois pap. 

Okay, that was mainly Brecht.

Allow me to add that right now I am reading a book called The Myth Of Closure. One thing it argues is that the pursuit of closure can prevent growth, especially if we are waiting for it to act.

I am leaning toward agreeing with that. "Closure" sounds more final than anything in my experience.

For a long time I would find movies bringing out a disproportionate amount of tears, but that never brought significant relief.

For one source of the tears, I first became aware of it around 2003, but the next real leap forward in understanding and coming to grips with it happened in 2018. I may be a slow learner, but there were a lot of experiences and reflections and things along the way. 

What I learned in 2003 was important and did make a difference, but there was a limit to how much I understood about it then. Now I understand it better, but there is still a limit to how much I have been able to put it into practice.

I do remember being afraid that at one point there would be an insight that would incapacitate me emotionally, where I would only be able to cry for three days. When the next big realization came, it was fine, and even anticlimactic. 

I believe that was because of many tears -- working out the emotion -- and many insights -- working out the understanding -- along the way. When everything finally came together it did so easily, if you don't count all the years that went into it.

Hearts and heads are not always (maybe not even often) in sync. 

There can be great peace in them coming together. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/10/all-better.html  

Three times

Dealing with my mother's impending death has me remembering two other things times when the possibility was right there.

I don't talk about the first one a lot. My mother was dropping me off at the train. 

At this point, she was still doing pretty well. We were still a couple of years away from her getting lost or losing any existing memories. However, it was getting darker, and the cars around us looked fast with glaring lights. I had this terrible thought that it was not safe to let her drive back to the house by herself. 

It was a short distance, though one she would get lost from, maybe two years later. It should have been fine, but an inner voice was screaming at me to not let it happen. I had her drive back home with me. Once she was in the house I ran to the bus stop. I was a little late, but I knew it was the right thing.

It felt like a real possibility that there would have been a crash, not necessarily even dementia-related, and that I would have lost her.

It was my birthday, and I had been fighting with my sisters. That would have been terrible timing. 

Possibly some of the financial losses and burnout that have happened over the years would not have happened, at least not in the same way, but I think the responsibility I would have felt and that my siblings would have possibly felt toward me... it's hard to believe that would have been a better outcome. 

Some good things that did happen would have been missed as well.

The second thing happened a few years later when I was already her caregiver. A few months ahead, I started feeling like she would die in October.

Intellectually I thought that would probably be okay; we would miss some of the heartbreaks that come with the progression of dementia. 

As we got closer, I felt like it was too soon and would hurt too much. I started praying -- begging -- that she wouldn't leave us yet. 

Obviously, she didn't. I could just have been wrong, but my feelings were that we had been getting close and gotten a reprieve, for which I was grateful. 

Once again there were hard times that followed, along with good times too.

I have wondered if there was a purpose in going through those emotions, like maybe she was supposed to stay longer all along, but I needed to have a different perspective on it. 

Maybe all of that was in my head.

Regardless, now it is not just my feelings; medical staff have told us that she has entered end of life.

At this point, the good times are very limited. When I visit her and I talk or sing or hold her hand, I feel love for her and that is not a bad thing, but it's not great.

Intellectually, this should be fine, more so than at any time previous.

Emotionally, there is still this internal cry of "Don't leave!"

I am not praying for that. I think this really is getting to the point where it is the best thing. 

I also don't know that it is possible to be emotionally ready and welcome it. There might be relief after it has happened, but I am not feeling it now. As much as this has hurt all along, anticipating the end hurts and I am sure the end itself will hurt.

Which I guess is my long way of saying that our hearts and heads are not always caught up.

I think the other important thing to note is that life is hard, but I believe it is worth it. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/10/this-is-sadness.html  

Songs squeezed in between things

As previously mentioned, last year I went longer than usual for Hispanic Heritage Month songs and did not really do songs themed on Native American Heritage Month:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/12/daily-songs-for-hispanic-heritage-month.html 

I thought this year could be the reverse of that, but then we also had vacations where I was not able to post, and let's not forget that there is Halloween in October.

Finishing up going back through the start of the Billboard Hot lists put me at about October 15th, the official end of Hispanic Heritage Month.

The other interesting factor is that last year in Indian Country Today, Miles Morriseau posted songs by Indigenous artists that could be good for Halloween. I held onto it for a year, but the plan was to end October 2025 with that, and then with November's usual 30 songs by Native American artists, that would kind of even things up.

https://ictnews.org/news/indigenous-halloween-playlist-witches-devils-and-a-voodoo-queen/ 

Of course, then I did not post songs for October 19th through 22nd, so Morrisseau's Halloween song choices ended on November 4th. 

I am really having to embrace mess this year.

Anyway, this is how things went down from October 15th through November 4th" 

I really like the idea of Halloween caroling. I think it could be a lot of fun, and probably a good set would be three songs. This is my tentative list, though "Sweet Vampires" may not be completely family-friendly.

10/15 “The Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett
10/16 “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon
10/17 “Sweet Vampires” by Alkaline Trio

Speaking of Halloween and Disneyland, I thought I would see what the Cadaver Dans and the Downtown Disney SCARE-olers sing. It is not surprising that they use "Monster Mash" and "This is Halloween", as well as "Grim Grinning Ghosts. The Cadaver Dans apparently also do "Happy Trails", and since most of those performances seem to happen in Frontierland, that makes sense.

That didn't necessarily change my caroling picks, but I did throw "Grim Grinning Ghosts" into the daily songs list on our departure date, as well as “Recuérdame” from Coco, though you could argue that song should have been for November 2nd.

10/18 “Grim Grinning Ghosts” by The Mellomen

--vacation--

10/23 “Recuérdame” by Carlos Rivera

Plus, there were at least two songs from artists that I listened to in the months in question, that have made my regular Halloween playlists. Well, there were two:

10/24 “La Vampiresa” by Los Tigrillos
10/25 “Zombie Love” by Lightning Cloud

Finally, I finished with the suggestions from ICT, with some familiar names and some less so.  

10/26 “Witch Queen of New Orleans” by Redbone
10/27 “Showdown at Big Sky” by Robbie Robertson
10/28 “Devil Came Down on Sunday” by Derek Miller
10/29 “Evil” by Crystal Shawanda
10/30 “Monsters” by Kristi Lane Sinclair
10/31 “Jack the Ripper” by Link Wray
11/1 “Fox” by Beatrice Deer
11/2 “Eyes of a Stranger” by Breach of Trust
11/3 “Hoodoo Lady” by Blue Moon Marquee
11/4 “PBC” by Halluci Nation

I hope you enjoyed your Halloween. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/10/halloween-playlists.html