Native American Heritage Month 2015

I finished while I was on blogging hiatus, and that actually led me to add a book that I had nearly given up on.

That was only one way in which the reading did not go according to plan. I had initially selected a list where I was sure the library had them all, and I was wrong. Then I was scrambling to find any book that I could. If you notice that my Amazon wish list suddenly has several titles with Native American themes, they are all books that the library system does not currently have. If you would like to give me some, I won't really need them until November, but I don't turn down books.

In the process of searching I found that I could get a free electronic copy of the book that I nearly gave up on. Having it downloaded is one reason I was able to decide to stick with it. Anyway, I read in roughly reverse historical order, and I will review them in the reverse of that, starting with the last one read.

The Myth of Hiawatha and other oral legends, mythologic and allegoric, of the North American Indians, by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1856.

I wanted to know more about the historical Hiawatha, and looking in a folklore book to start didn't bother me, but the foreword was so condescending that I was getting really angry with the book. I decided it would probably get better once it got into the actual stories, which was fairly true, but then he conflated Manbozho (a trickster character, but not Coyote) with Hiawatha, apparently copying someone else's error, and the condescension crept out in other places.

Learning later that, after his half-Ojibwa wife Jane Johnston died, Schoolcraft married a woman who wrote pro-slavery fiction and became estranged from his children with Jane, well, it made a lot of sense. Cannot recommend.

Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through Indian Territory, by Paul VanDevelder, 2009.

This was pretty good. It gives the legal history of the policies that ended up being used in Indian treaties, which sometimes is very dry, and the history of specific treaties and land grabs. There are heartbreaking stories, with one especially literal one, when a man who worked tirelessly for his tribe at heavy personal cost was killed when "his heart just unzipped" (those were his son's words), but there is also a glimmer of hope. There are times when judges say "no", and law is upheld.

One of the most interesting things I learned in this book is that the Louisiana Purchase was for waterway rights and rights to make treaties with the Indians, not for the land itself. That's kind of important. The other point it really brought home is that whenever anyone talks a lot about states' rights and federal overreach, they want to do something horrible. They seem to have enough authority on their own for anything that isn't grossly wrong.

Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII, by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila, 2011.

This was a great book. There is an easy flow to the reading, it gives the settings well, and you learn a lot. It totally makes sense to read it for Native American history, but WWII history buffs should love it. I have already blogged about this book a couple of times. Links are at the bottom to avoid redundancy, but I want to make the point that there was a lot of food for thought here.

Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks and the Rise of the American Indian Movement, by Dennis Banks and Richard Erdoes, 2004.

This was also pretty good. Some of that is in comparing it to Russell Means' autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread, because there is so much more clarity here. That may be partly due to this book being much shorter, but also Banks does a better job of providing context and keeping things moving along. There is the big picture of AIM, but also trivia that is interesting, like Marlon Brando's support and the role Banks played in trying to get Patty Hearst released.

That makes two really good books and one pretty good book available through the library system, and one kind of horrible one with information that could surely be found elsewhere and better, but at least I didn't have to pay for it or worry about getting it back on time.

And also lots of thoughts. Some of them here:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/12/convergence.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/12/history-repeating.html

It's Black History Month again

I haven't started my reading yet, as I am finishing up some reading related to dementia, but I have books on the way.

I am writing now because of a question that was asked on Twitter for recommendations on a Black History Month reading list. That is a question I take seriously. I did end up making a few recommendations.

Most of them came from the lists I had assembled for previous months. I can think of books that would be good that I read for different reasons, or before I started doing this. Still, I believe that doing this every year has made a difference for me.

I also noticed a trend in which books felt most important to me.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A Blackmon

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle L, McGuire

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (2007 edition), Lerone Bennett Jr.

Mainly it's that they are things that are not commonly known.

Blackmon's book is important for everyone who thinks that slavery has been over since 1865, and so there are no excuses for the families who haven't caught up financially since then. There are other factors in that, which Ta-Nehisi Coates covers in "The Case for Reparations", which could also be excellent reading for this month:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

On this particular continuation of slavery there is an article by the author that I have seen being passed around as well. I haven't read it yet, but it would be a good introduction, and then the book is still there if you want to read more:

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/souths-shocking-hidden-history-thousands-blacks-forced-slavery-until-ww2

When people object to the existence of a separate history month (often disingenuously), saying it should be taught and integrated all year long, Bennett has the book for you. He not only goes over what was going on with black Americans, from colonial days on, but also the impact on all of society, which was important. You understand the United States better after reading it.

All of that is important, but one of the most important things is that it shows people doing things who are often forgotten. We read about black abolitionists and journalists before we even think of abolition happening. So often we only remember what the white people did, and what was done in a certain period; that's an incomplete picture with gaping holes.

That is a huge part of why McGuire's book is so important. It is much easier to remember the male faces of the Civil Rights Movement, but so much of the organizing and research came from women, and it was going on before it started being televised.

When we erase the work of any group - whether intentional or not - it can perpetuate the notion that only some people can contribute. If enough people accept that it becomes easy for the marginalized individuals to believe it's true. Don't believe it.

Even with Harriet Tubman, whom we remember as a black woman, we frequently forget that she had disabilities: first seizures and sleeping disorders from a head injury, and then arm and shoulder problems from an attack by the conductor and passengers on a train. Her first injury happened because she was a slave, and her second because she was black. There are reminders in knowing that, but also in seeing how much she accomplished anyway.

I could recommend other books too, but those might be the most important ones for right now.

And, since I was thinking about it, here's the full list since I've been doing this.

2010

Time On The Cross, Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman

The Slave Community, John W Blassingame

Beloved, Toni Morrison

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou

2011

Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Tony Martin

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

Ralph Bunche: An American Life, Brian Urquhart

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Ralph Abernathy

2012

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, James H Jones

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Adam Hothschild

Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, Raymond Bonner

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, Wes Moore

Black Like Me, John Griffin Howard

2013

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey, Ana Maria Spagna

Mirror to America, John Hope Franklin

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A Blackmon

For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf, Ntozake Shange

The American Experience: The Abolitionists (video)

The House I Live In (video)

2014

The Quest of the Silver Fleece, W. E. B. Du Bois

Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves, Art T Burton

Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson

To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells, Linda O McMurray

Countee Cullen: Collected Poems, Major Jackson editor

The Harlem Hellfighters, Max Brooks and Caanan White

Spies of Mississippi, directed by Dawn Porter (video)

Black Indians: An American Story, directed by Chip Richie (video)

2015

At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, Danielle L, McGuire

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

Black Panther: The Complete Collection, Christopher Priest and others

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010, Lucille Clifton

Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory, Gregory R Nokes

Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (2007 edition), Lerone Bennett Jr.

Back from hiatus

It feels right to come back now.

I did not get everything done that I would have liked to while I was out, but things did get caught up at the day job, and that is a big relief. Even when the length of time you spend at work is the same, some time takes a lot more out of you.

I am not finished with the one hundred pages of self-examination that I am referring to as "Everything Else", though some good progress has been made. I really meant to be finished with that.

I have told these stories before, but it's been a while. Everything Else has a counterpart, "Everything", that I felt similarly moved to work on once upon a time. When I finished it I had a dream that became my first screenplay. When I finished the very long fan fiction writing, I had a dream that became what initially looked like just my seventh screenplay, except I hadn't written a new feature length screenplay for a while at that point, and now we know it was the foundation for a series of novels.

Based on that, I have been hoping that finishing Everything Else would send me forward again, and this time it would be to the project that would sell. I'm eager for that. However, even without finishing, I have had another dream that's sticking with me.

I do love having something I am excited to work on. Currently, that's actually four things that I am excited about.

The next two books are going to have to wait. I had sort of wanted to get Lisa out by Valentine's Day, but I am not really positioned as a romance writer now, so that's not a huge lost opportunity.  Nonetheless, for that series it will be the first one based in Portland instead of Eugene (there are a couple of OHSU students in it), and I am looking forward to working on it.

I never get the Family Blood books out at their corresponding times. Set from October 31st through November 3rd, Family Blood came out in mid-December. Covering November 3rd through the day after Thanksgiving, Family Ghosts went out on March 31st. And set in June, Family Reunion was published on November 18th. Therefore, with the next installment happening over spring break, it seems very unlikely that it could come out in March, no matter how perfect that might be. (But it will go back to Spruce Cove, and introduce a multi-novel arc that will take us to other countries.)

That's okay. Right now I have one feature screenplay to write, and one television pilot. Doing that means working out characters and fictional communities. For one setting up the rules of magic for this particular setting, but I am also looking at the workings of colleges, and the habits of suburban fathers and rock stars, plus maintaining the daily blogging again and remaining civic-minded.

When I started the daily blogging initially, it was intended to meet a need in terms of covering all of the things I wanted to write about, but it was also to see that I could do it. That was important to see, but this time it was important to see that it is okay to take a break. I'm glad I did it. Nothing broke because of it.

I am going to be really busy for the next couple of months, but I am feeling energized again, and it's a nice change.

On hiatus

I have known for a while that as I am trying to accomplish so many different things, I might find I need to take a break from blogging, and I think I am there. It might have made more sense to do it earlier, but I do wait too long to give myself a break. That's one of the things I'm trying to change.

I don't anticipate it going much longer than a week, but we'll see.

Band Review: Blinking Underdogs

The holidays are over, but I am once again reviewing a band that is not current, because it kind of fits with the Star Wars theme of the week. I read a reference about Oscar Isaac's former band, Blinking Underdogs, and then I liked what I heard, so I'm going for it.

Blinking Underdogs is a ska-punk band formed by students at the University of Miami School of Music. They released their first full-length album independently in 2001. There is also a note from 2001 on their archive page that Oscar has gone off to Julliard so they are taking a break, and Alan (Mills, trombone) has gone also, and it isn't really the same band without horns (it wouldn't be) so they are going to be a different band.

Before I get into the music, I want to say some things about that note. It sounds so familiar, remembering my college days and how every time you ran into some people their band name had changed because of member shifts. These things happen, but also the existence of an archive seems brilliant to me. There are so many bands that I wish I could go back and listen to again, where I am lucky if I happened to pick up the cassette tape back then, that finding that this music has been captured saved is a good thing.

I enjoyed the music overall. My favorite tracks were "Away", "Blue Alishia", and "Trailer Park". "Blue Alishia" may actually be the better song, but I am drawn to the class consciousness and loyalty of "Trailer Park".

Some of the tracks seem to lose strength by being too experimental. I love the intro on "Salvation", and it has some other elements that are really good but feel mismatched in their almost cacophonous blend. Still, these are music students, so some experimentation would be almost mandatory, and with the track that seems to be called "artist", while it sounds very different from the other songs it goes to interesting places. (Some tracks show a strong jazz influence.)

There are more links available that you would expect for a band that has not been together since 2001, though some of them seem hastily thrown up by Star Wars fans. The most useful sites were the archive and AllMusic.

Those are listed below, but I have also done some searches to try and find out the whereabouts of other band members. I got the idea after seeing an interview where Isaac said that the bass player, Nick (Speck, also the one who write the note on the archive) plays for Orgy now. Checking them out, that is a pretty good band, and I may want to do a full review of them later. (With some names you need to be careful on your search parameters.) Anyway, this is what I could find. I hope I got the right people.

Oscar Isaac (vocals, guitar)

Okay, we kind of know what he is doing now, but there is a fan page with a section on music and you could start there, or maybe watch Inside Llewyn Davis:

http://oscar-isaac.com/multimedia/music/

Nick Speck (bass)

Apparently Orgy isn't his only other band. I will probably get back to him.

http://www.runrunrunmusic.com/band/nic-speck

Bill Sommer (drums)

Apparently also an author now.

http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Sommer/e/B019JCVIV4

Alan Mills (trombone)

All I could find was that he was also in a band called The Know How, but that came before Blinking Underdogs.

Keith Cooper (sax)

There is a nice bio here with his endorsement of a reed.

http://www.bariwoodwind.com/site/keithcooper.html

Matt LaPlant (guitar)

It looks like he might be doing sound mixing now. Some similar names made finding information on him more difficult.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/matt-laplant-mn0000918921

And here are the Blinking Underdog links:

https://archive.org/details/iuma-blinking_underdogs

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blinking-Underdogs/286931361424804

https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/blinking-underdogs

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/blinking-underdogs-mn0001930572/biography

Rey does stuff

"Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male." - Simone de Beauvoir

The other big complaint I have seen about The Force Awakens - though I have seen more people refuting the complaint - is that Rey is a Mary Sue.

You can make good arguments for why she is not, but then other people were arguing that the term should be done away with completely. Having thought about the term at length previously, I couldn't agree with that, but people are definitely applying the term in ways that are not appropriate. I think I may have a great deal to say about Mary Sues and Strong Female Characters at a later date, but for now, let's stick to this movie.

The complaint is that Rey is too good at too many things, making her unrealistic, and then if you really hate that plus hate Finn being black then the real problem is that this is a fan-servicing Social Justice Warrior favoring movie, and how dare they pander like that?

Given that this type of complaint looks suspiciously racist and sexist anyway, it's tempting to simply ignore it, but this stuff in between, that people miss when they are looking for reasons to be offended, is exactly what interests me, so I shall blog on, and there are going to be some real spoilers here.

We see Rey being good at three things: mechanics, piloting, and the Force. In some of those cases, "good" can be relative. Also, we see that she is strong, smart, and scrappy - not terribly surprising for someone who has been surviving as a scavenger.

The scavenging of mechanical parts makes her skill with mechanical repair more plausible. I'm sure you can scavenge without knowing a lot about parts, but knowing more will help, and there is something else that we see when she is discussing the Falcon with Han Solo later: Rey loves this stuff.

She could have grown up merely trying to understand which parts would be most valuable, and probably many of her fellow scavengers are more like that, but she likes this stuff, so she has learned more. I've worked with computer geeks, and I have seen that light that goes on when there is a new problem that requires unraveling. That doesn't happen for me when the issue is a computer problem (for other things, yes). The majority of her waking hours are spent crawling around on old vehicles; with the interest and inclination she has in them, it's no shock that she gets to be good with them.

And they don't have to go together. Poe is presumably a better pilot than Rey, because he is a better pilot than anyone, but he probably is not a mechanic. I believe one of the reasons X-wing pilots have droids with them is for diagnostics and repairs. That's okay. There are probably also good mechanics that don't care much for vehicle operation.

Personally, I am good at more than one thing. Some of them are things that I do because I have to - they are associated with a job or some type of responsibility. Some things I am good at because I love them and I pursue them even when I don't need to. However, my sisters and I share an ability that is almost mystical, in that we are quite good with claw machines. Other people don't understand it, they send us articles on how they are rigged, but we just keep on accumulating prizes and then giving them to toy drives. That "force" is strong in our family.

Before I get into Rey's quick adaptation to the Force, I'm going to take a detour. Among the many storylines that I have thought of occurring in the Star Wars universe, there was a planet where those who followed the Force were not Jedi. They mainly used it for agriculture and understanding the balance between man and nature. Some of that came from Qui-Gon not disintegrating at death, when Obi-Wan and Yoda did. Like maybe they learned if from the farmers, who took "dust-to-dust" a little more literally. (Okay, I didn't like those movies, but I thought about them.)

My point with that is that if the force is always there, the Jedi can be one discipline for understanding and harnessing it, but not necessarily the only one. If the Force exists independent of the Jedi, and some people can be inclined toward it before training, then it should be possible to gain at least some traction with it without formal training.

So, in the process of being interrogated by Kylo Ren, Rey learns how to resist and pulls something from him. It is only a beginning, but it is a good beginning and plausible. Have you never been going toe to toe with someone and things come out you didn't mean to? Didn't that even happen with Harry Potter and Snape?

Practicing it, she is able to get a storm trooper to obey her. It doesn't work on the first try, but she doesn't give up. Also, storm troopers are conditioned for obedience, which probably doesn't hurt.

If Rey had defeated Ren on her own, that might be hard to swallow, but there are a few key points there. Ren was injured, and I hope there was some emotional toll going on there. And frankly, I'm glad we got to see the injury because the way he dealt with it by hitting the injury, like it was a nuisance instead of a serious medical problem, was super creepy and really gave insight into him. (And he is not villain that Darth Vader was. He doesn't have nearly the level of control, and while his training is not complete yet, you have to wonder what his personality will allow.)

In addition, Rey and Finn tag-teamed him, and they were both seriously injured. Rey was unconscious while Finn was fighting him. Actually, another good thing about the fight is that the side flares on Ren's light saber seemed foolish to me before, like you would be more likely to injure yourself than your opponent, but okay, I saw their purpose during the combat. Sorry about your shoulders, Finn.

Finally, it was not a definitive defeat. They kept the fight up long enough to have a chance to get away, which was greatly helped by the planet starting to fall apart.

Those are fascinating things for me: how we learn, how we become the people we are, what gives the edge in a fight. You have to ignore all of those mitigating factors if you want to declare that Rey is unbelievable, but doing so also ignores that at least in the past it has been common to have heroes who were good at everything and it wasn't questioned. Those types of characters can be boring, and we don't see them as much now, but did people find it implausible that James Bond was good at shooting and gambling and mixing drinks and strategy, not to mention good with the ladies? Oh well, I guess he had really good training.

I think it is reasonable for Rey to accomplish what she does based on the resources she has available. Even if that does not make her extraordinarily gifted, some human beings are, and some of these human beings are women.

If that sounds too terrible to be accepted, I do have one other quote from Simone de Beauvoir:

"No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility."

Really makes you think.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/09/things-that-were-not-automatic.html

The moral philosophy of Star Wars

There may be some spoilers here, but nothing major.

I've really only heard one person mention this issue, and that was in the Feminist Frequency review by Anita Sarkeesian:

http://feministfrequency.com/

She had a point. On her larger point that a lot of these things fall apart if you think about them, I am going to disagree on that, because as I think about them I can find ways that they work, whether that requires a fair amount of fan effort or not. However, clearly not all lives are valued equally.

When I first saw the original movies I thought the Storm Troopers were robots. Actually, I think I thought that Darth Vader was a robot too. Their only visible humanity was when the two troopers were talking about the new models of some kind of ship (or something, it's been a while), but it went right over my head then. (Remember, I was five.)

Even under that viewpoint, I'm sure I would have been upset about the death of C-3PO or R2-D2, and there were plenty of non Storm Troopers on the Death Star as well, all of whom would have died (not too mention that poor Dianoga), so yes, we are accepting the deaths of the bad guys with no thoughts of moral complexity and I went along with that.

Later we find out they are clones, but there is no reason that having identical genetic material would prevent the development of unique personalities. My younger sisters are identical twins. Their DNA is identical, and they were raised pretty much the same too, but they are still their own people. So, if the source of future troopers later becomes seized children and conditioning, I suspect there was a lot of conditioning with the clones as well.

I don't see a conflict that someone who balks at mowing down unarmed villagers willingly shoots people who are coming to kill him. What the movie doesn't get into is that there probably would be guilt later, especially for Finn who has not previously only been moved by the death of one storm trooper, but who also spent so much time with them as a unit. There would be an emotional toll, no matter how much sense it made to shoot in the moment.

The other thing that is interesting to me is that some of the early interactions give us a way of viewing the basic conflict beyond good versus evil.

The Empire/First Order were big on conformity, no matter how it was accomplished. Signs of deviation get you sent to reconditioning. The very uniforms are designed to hide the wearer's humanity, because humanity is a foolish and treacherous thing.

In contrast, our first contact with Rey shows her coming to BB-8's aid, and her complaint against the attempted captor is that he doesn't have regard for anyone. It is easy to believe she will refuse to sell BB-8 later, and that she will see Finn for a person when he comes along.

In addition, Poe Dameron also sees Finn's humanity. He won't call him by a serial number, but gives him a name. (This reminded me of Geordi and Hugh from a different franchise.)

One interesting thing about that is that while the Rebellion/Resistance is primarily humanoid, I don't recall any other life forms on the other side. Yes, Vader was willing to hire various others as bounty hunters, but only humanoid Boba Fett got to ride along with him.

You can view the struggle as one of individuality versus conformity. The state wanted to crush the individuals, and then when they were no longer the state they still tended in that direction. The Rebellion has room for individuals; when they become the state, do they lose that? Historically it happens a lot.

One of the most interesting ideas I have seen about the movie comes from Gail Simone, who suggested that psychologically Kylo Ren is a school shooter. Seeing his blowups, that makes sense. It makes him a different sort of villain from Darth Vader and perhaps one that makes more sense for our time period.

That sort of personality could easily fall on either side of a dispute, but one thing about being open to individual differences is that it makes it a lot easier for you to feel peace. If you don't trust that others can vary and that it can be all right, that tends to inspire fear. It can even inspire hatred.

Fear is the path to the dark side.

I saw Star Wars!

Sure, if she's so excited, why is she posting so late? Just swamped right now, is all.

Nonetheless, I do have some thoughts, and now is a good time to post them. I don't intend to post any real spoilers, but I guess it depends on your definition of spoilers. Like, if knowing that two characters have a scene together is going to ruin it for you, maybe you should avoid reading this week.

The first thing to say is I really liked it. I wasn't initially sure I wanted to see it. I loved Star Wars - and was influenced by it - more than I can even explain. I ended up thinking of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi together with it, like they were all one thing, but the big hit was Star Wars (which I have never thought of as A New Hope).

I remember being really keyed up to see it and I'm not even sure why. I was five, so everything I watched on television was on PBS, with no commercials, but even before the movie I was so excited I could hardly stand it.

Anyway, I loved them, and as I got older I become aware of their imperfections without diminishing the love, but episodes 1 and 2 really killed that. I still haven't seen 3. I know people say it's good. I might care someday.  

With that, and with Hollywood overdoing it on remakes and sequels and reboots, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to see this one, but the word of mouth was good, and I went for it, and if it didn't erase 1-3, it at least numbed them.

There are a few specific things I remembered going wrong with The Phantom Menace. One was the scene with the fish, where they were not realistically sized or shaped. I get that CGI allows you to be unrealistic, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. That leads to the next thing; the most exciting sequence in the movie had no CGI, but quick camera cuts, a fake-out, and yes, some really fake looking dolls. I know those were not the most common complaints, but they seemed to illustrate most how the love of technology had taken away the heart of the previous series.

One thing I appreciate about The Force Awakens is that it has a love and respect for the original trilogy but maintains a healthy sense of balance. The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel went overboard with references to the original, to where it took me out of the picture. Here I could see similarities to the original, but it didn't kill the current story.

That allowed me to remember things and enjoy them. My affection for Han Solo never dimmed, but I forgot how awesome Chewbacca was. It was fun to see him again.

Also - without naming any instances where previous movies fell short - this movie had some pretty good actors.

My favorite interaction was the early one between Poe and Finn. Where Finn is just starting to come alive to how life can be and what he can do, Poe is so good at enjoying everything that there couldn't be anyone better to come alive with.

I have read some very high praises of Oscar Isaac from other movies, but this is the first chance I have had to see him, and okay, I get it.

So I'm going to have fun with it this week. There have been a few complaints or concerns about the movie that I have thoughts on, and that theme might even make it into the band reviews.

And every single post might be late.

Band Review: Christie Front Drive

One of my big goals for this year is to finish listening to all the bands in Nothing Feels Good. It's not really that it necessarily takes that long, but I do too many other things and forget about it. It feels like I have been in Chapter 4 forever.

Chapter 4 has some good stuff. This is where we get into Jimmy Eat World, whom I liked then, and The Get Up Kids, whom I saw perform a great show just a few months ago. Besides them, the band making the strongest impression on me is Christie Front Drive.

They already seem to have left a pretty big impression on others; I still see mentions of them in odd places, though part of the point of that time period is that these bands had a strong emotional impact that wasn't going to fade away. That led me to listen to them early.

My first thought was that I liked them, and so I didn't mark them off because I wanted to listen more. Then when I went back I didn't like them as much, but I wondered if I was wrong. That's why I decided to review them.

The issue appears to be that I like their later stuff a lot more than their earlier stuff. This may seem like splitting hairs when the lifespan of the band was really only about three or four years. Nonetheless, I still like Stereo best. From Anthology, I prefer the songs that were not on the First LP.

(The discography can be a little confusing because they did a lot of splits, but these are the titles used by Spotify.)

The sound is a little fuzzy, and reminds me of jangle in a way, though those two qualities don't get combined a lot. The singing is incomprehensible to me, and plaintive to the point of whining. That description does not sound likable, but there's something about it. This may make Christie Front Drive the quintessential emo band.

They have had a couple of reunions in the past decade. I don't know if they have plans for more, but I would take them up on it.

https://www.facebook.com/christiefrontdrive/

http://www.magicbulletrecords.com/site/bands/active/christie-front-drive/

Band Review: Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians

One of the books I wrote this year, Family Ghosts, has a dance that ends with "Auld Lang Syne". It's not New Year's Eve - instead occurring on the day after Thanksgiving, but it felt like the right ending, and it got me looking into the song more.

It turns out that it was a very common close to dances, especially in Scotland, home of the author of the original poem, Robert Burns. It is about remembering the past, not specifically the change from one year to another, but we associate the song with that largely because of an Italian-Canadian bandleader.

Guy Lombardo formed a band with his brothers and other local musicians in 1924. I don't know that they could have expected to become as big as they did, but for almost fifty years, first on radio and then on television, this was whom people listened to on New Year's Eve, and he always ended on "Auld Lang Syne".

I was born five years before Guy Lombardo died in 1977. (The group tried to continue but for another two years, but it was really his band.) For my generation, New Year's Eve belongs to Dick Clark, and I guess that is changing over to Ryan Seacrest now, but that broadcast always included "Auld Lang Syne" as the first song of the new year.

It was interesting looking and finding how that tradition went back. You roll back into London, Ontario, and further back into Scotland, but the history is strong. and I thought I should spend some time listening to their stuff.

There is a lot of holiday music, but he wasn't just an end of the year guy. There are a of classic old songs and standards, and it was good listening. I had heard many of the songs before, but there was one, "Blue Skirt Waltz" that was completely new to me and that I really liked.

So, that's not so much of a review really. It's more of an appreciation, and also a reminder to sometimes look back. That's also what the song is about, so it all works out.

2015 in review

This is my last regular post of 2015.

(There is a band review tomorrow, and you will never guess whom. Well, maybe if you check my Spotify.)

There are a lot of series of posts that I could start, but this feels like a time for endings and looking back. Plus, I have a lot of things I need to do today, so this is just a recap of some of the things that happened this year.

I wrote and published three books. They join the other two from the year before.

http://www.amazon.com/Gina-Harris/e/B00OC0N218/

They're not big sellers, but they are good. They have sold well enough that I should get a form 1099 this year, which is a step up from last year.

I went to Pennsylvania and Minnesota, and saw stuff. I was grateful for that. Even with the travel, I kept up my daily blogging. My camera also died on the trip, which is sad, but I am hoping to get one for my birthday.

I submitted more scripts to Amazon Studios. They were all rejected, but they are letting me know instead of letting the submission periods expire. I think that's progress. They could just be getting more organized. You know how I had that month of writing daily 6-page screenplays, and that month of reading a screenplay daily? The next month will be about reading through a project on Studios daily. I feel like my weakest skill is marketing myself, so I am going to spend some time observing how other people do it.

I didn't do as much reading, because the writing left less time, and because the emotional exhaustion has been pretty draining. Still, some of the books I did read have been really good, and there was recently a breakthrough with some of the family conflict that I think has improved things.

I am still poor. I think that will be the case until February. Honestly, if it doesn't go past February that will be pretty good.

I am getting more flack for having an opinion on the internet. It's still not a lot, but I've noticed. The primary lesson from this is learning when to let go. I guess it goes with setting boundaries. I will engage with you to this point, and then I will stop because my time is limited and I have to make good choices with it. This is important, because I am going to be sending out some strong opinions in 2016.

I can't swear that I've learned to value myself right yet, but I got a devastating glimpse of what not valuing myself does, and I am building up from that.

We picked up an additional cat when she showed up in our back yard, starving and scared. This  brings the total to three cats and one dog. It's not that long ago that it was the opposite, but we do still get both kinds of love.

I feel like curating the songs of the day has been more meaningful this year, and that my music knowledge is growing. I think playing the bass is going to become something really important to me.

Looking at the new year, I don't know what will happen. I can tell you that short term goals include writing and submitting two more screenplays. The next one will be a comedy, and I am excited about it. I have been wanting to pitch the Emo comic somewhere, and I am going to try Dark Horse because the have the easiest process for a writer without an artist. I don't think they will want this specific property, but I believe going through the process will still be good.

There should be two more books in the singles wards series (that needs a name), probably both out in 2016. There will be at least three more books in the Family Blood series, and I am not sure about the timeline. I had really meant to wait an entire year between completing Family Reunion and starting the next one, but I don't know if I will be able to stay away that long. I guess it depends on how busy the other projects keep me.

I will totally watch more movies from my Halloween list in October. At least one.

I hope to spend more time with friends. That's been the part that gets neglected the most, because I am trying to do so many other things that feel important, but spending time with your people is important.

My overall trajectory is trying to know myself better, trying to understand the world around me better, and trying to do good with that. That will not end.

And remember, once I get the new camera that will include daily selfies.

History repeating

I guess if I am talking about how different things read relate to each other, I should mention that my family has been reading the Old Testament together. Seeing how ancient rulers would carry off a conquered people, and send other people to take their place, shows me that destroying national identity, morale, and ties to home has been around for a while.

Chester Nez mentions two great Navajo tragedies in Code Talker. The first was The Long Walk, a 350-mile forced march from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner. Going to Fort Defiance in the first place was preceded by the slaughter of livestock, crop destruction, and uprooting of trees. Along the way hundreds died, not just because the journey was hard but because if there were any issues (like childbirth) the soldiers shot them.

There's still a lot I don't know, but I have yet to find a tribal history without a similar incident. Sometimes you hear about the "Trail of Tears", but it was more than one trail.

It may also be worth mentioning here that from both A Century of Dishonor and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, what you see over and over again is that tribes built schools and grew crops and raised herds, and then would lose it all in forced relocation. Sometimes they would have rebuilt two or three times and be sent on again. You could argue that it was simply due to their land being wanted, and not a conscious attempt to destroy the people, but there were enough conscious attempts at destruction, and enough assumption that the Indians were going to die out, that it makes you wonder.

Nonetheless, the people kept going. 8000 survived The Long Walk and started over. A treaty a few years later granted each family two sheep, one male and one female. They did well enough that seventy years later that there were concerns about the area being overgrazed. That led to the second tragedy, the Navajo Livestock Reduction.

The government came and dug trenches. Any family with more than 100 sheep or goats was subject to reduction. They herded they amount they deemed necessary into the trenches, then sprayed those extra animals with flammable material and set them on fire.

My first reaction is to be sick because I love animals, and that was the first reaction of the owners. They loved the animals, and the animals knew them. Nez remembers hearing the stifled sobs of his grandparents at night after that. Some families received some money at far below market value, but many received nothing. Some meat was preserved, but only a small amount.

I still feel the pain for the animals, and their owners, but I see another side, because again there is that destruction of efforts and labor, the attempts to destroy the people.

Other reading come in again, because I thought there was something familiar about it, and realized it had come from The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan.

The government did kill cattle owned by white farmers in the Dust Bowl, but this was different. The animals were being choked to death and blinded by dust, there wasn't good grazing for them, and the government paid the farmers between $1 and $16 per head and salvaging what meat they could for hungry people, which was not much. Mainly, the farmers had a choice.

There is another section in Code Talker where Chester talks about his first hunting trip, and things that they did to show respect to the deer, and that its death was not wasted.

These were healthy sheep and goats belonging to people who believed in living in balance and it was the Depression. Even if you accept that the reduction was necessary, it should have been possible to give those animals humane deaths where their meat and wool and skin became a great benefit to people suffering from hunger and cold, but that would have involved treating the Navajo with respect. It could have involved caring about animals; just that could be enough to make things go better. Even an aversion to waste might have helped. None of those factors mattered.

Now I want to quote Chester Nez:

"The effect on the Navajo sense of community was devastating. In the time before the massacre, friends and neighbors helped one another. When someone fell sick, neighbors pitched in to care for their animals. Medicine men and women were summoned to cure both people and animals. Neighbors and family assisted by gathering together at night and praying for the sick to recover.

The livestock reduction challenged this sense of community by pitting Navajo against Navajo. Those who kept livestock resented the Navajo exterminators who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Neighbors put up fences to enclose their pastures, saving them for the sheep they had left. The year-round migration from one community grazing area to another that had always been the norm as I grew up became impossible. As a result, ties between neighbors weakened.

The toll in self-respect was also huge. Families, unable to protect their own livestock, felt powerless. And nothing could have done more to erode the local work ethic. What was the point of working hard to build up wealth, a sizable herd, when the government just stepped in and destroyed it?

The massacre killed more than livestock. It changed the dynamic between neighbors. It changed the meaning of hard work; it changed everything."

(Code Talker, pp. 79-80)

Currently I am reading about tribes that were forcibly removed from land for the building of a dam, even though it was completely illegal according to their treaties. That happened in 1951

I don't know that I have a lot to add to that, but I think maybe for anyone who is upset about tribal "handouts", maybe if we could go without uprooting and destroying for long enough that there is no one alive who personally remembers it, maybe then it could be a good time to reexamine the issue.