Yay!!!

I've been redeemed:

Reading Books Instead of Kindles Can Improve Your Memory, Concentration and Good Looks

I need all the help I can get in those fields.

Handwriting vs typing: is the pen still mightier than the keyboard?

Your paper brain and your Kindle brain aren't the same thing

Why you should take notes by hand — not on a laptop

I Don't Know What To Say...

...about this:

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

“King Goldenlocks”: A Newly Translated Fairy Tale

Cinderfellas: The Long-Lost Fairy Tales

Forgotten fairytales slay the Cinderella stereotype

Except to say that I feel cheated. I'll have to buy them for the grand kiddies and read them before I give them to them.

Holy Smokes!!

Winnie the Pooh is 100 years old.

I'm Baaaaack!

Had my 'puter in the 'puter hospital for several days. I actually started reading books again.

Bargain Bin, Here We Come

Justin Trudeau autobiography set for fall release

Don't ask Hillary for advice, Justin.

Ahhhhh!!

Too bad, so sad.

Political activities of PEN Canada under investigation

"PEN Canada represents more than 1,000 writers and supporters, including Canadian literary luminaries Margaret Atwood..."

Margaret Atwood is a luminary??!! If we weren't forced to read her garbage in high school, nobody would have heard of her.

Che

When I was living living in Alberta, not far away from Edmonton, I frequently would drive past the U of A and I was amazed at the number of students that I would see wearing Che T-shirts. On can only imagine what they were being taught by their professors.

I have Humberto Fontava's book Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him 

There's lots of YouTube Videos of Humberto here and here.

Oops

Disappointment for Hillary Clinton as sales for her memoir 'struggle in its first week'

Publishing Source: Hillary Book a 'Bomb'

Sources: Hillary Clinton book sells ‘strong’ 100,000

Sluggish sales for Hillary’s new book

Is Hard Choices a “bomb”?


Hard Choices, Soft Sales – Whoopsie – Week #1 Hillary Book Sales “A Bomb”… Hillary reportedly received a near-$14 million advance, a sum the publishing house will unlikely make back….

Hillary Clinton’s book selling well, but where’s the mad rush?

Yup!

French Trivia

More where that came from.

I especially like the one about Rudyard Kipling`s book, that saved a Frenchman`s life.

Must Get This...

...book.

From the description:

"In Noble Savages, Chagnon describes his seminal fieldwork—during which he lived among the Yanomamö, was threatened by tyrannical headmen, and experienced an uncomfortably close encounter with a jaguar—taking readers inside Yanomamö villages to glimpse the kind of life our distant ancestors may have lived thousands of years ago. And he forcefully indicts his discipline of cultural anthropology, accusing it of having traded its scientific mission for political activism." (Emphasis mine.)

Bingo!!

But then I'll have to find time to read it. (I think I might have told you, in one of my undergrad degrees I opted for a double major in Anthropology and History. Neither are particularly useful on their own, but at least History attempts to get at the truth and sheds light on real events. Anthropology? Not so much.)

I'm Baaaaaack...

Since October 6 my life has been  a textbook case of the principle that says "If something can go wrong, it will."

It all began on that long lonely road between Saskatoon and Regina, the day after the wedding, when my "check engine" light came on. That was all that happened.  There was no smoke; no strange sounds; nothing heating up; no smell; nothing. Anyway, $160+ later everything car related is tickety-boo.

Then my computer died, or rather the modem, died. I figured it was about time for a new computer, too, so I have been without one for several days (three weeks and a bit). I asked the techie at the computer shop to transfer all my existing documents, address book, bookmarks, etc. to the new one, but even so, everything is different!!...and that after waiting 22 days. (And there ain't no methadone treatment for computer withdrawal. But I did manage to get some books read.) Everything on this brand new computer is different. It will be like starting from scratch.

Somewhere in the midst of that, on an especially cold day, the boiler that keeps the place warm conked out. There was an upside to that, though. The company that I called to fix it sent two young pieces of male eye candy over.  So, I sat and chatted them as they went about their business.

But  ---  or should I say butt --- being plumbers, these young fellows also offered some man cleavage to look at.

Now my stereo system appears to have died. The manuals that came with it might as well be written  in Greek. I'll likely have to get someone from Regina to come out here.

To top it all off, it's been snowing off and on all day. This is the second time since I went offline. GGGGRRRRRRRRR!

Bottom line is, I am now in the poor house and am accepting donations. Gifts in kind, like computer  lessons, or a warm winter coat, will be accepted.

Okay. I Freely Admit....

...I've been ignoring this blog. I've been over at SNN's website shooting my mouth off on stories about Theresa Spence and the Idle No More movement. I've been presenting facts, which, quite naturally have been countered with the usual accusations that I am iiiiiiignorant and raaaaaacist, but no facts of their own.

In any case, I've been reading portions of a local history book which includes histories of many families in the area where I grew up, including my own. But this time, I was reading some general pieces from that book, which I had never read before.

Below is one of those pieces. It deals with Chief Sitting Bull and his brief foray across the Medicine Line into the Great White Mother's land, known as Canada.

I grew up in the Qu'Appelle Valley and went to school with several Metis kids.  One of the Metis (half-breed) families I went to school with were descendants of Cuthbert grant and within a 50 mile radius of where I grew up there are roughly 50 Indian reserves. These snippets, taken from this book, describe some things I did not know, most specifically about the presence of Chief Sitting Bull in the area. I will deal with the bits about Cuthbert Grant in a second instalment:

Two Visits of 1881

"The end of one era, and the beginning of another, are well illustrated by the contrasting stories of the separate visits of two famous people to our area in 1881. Sitting Bull, the noted Sioux leader, arrived in May, and stayed until late in June.  The Marquis of Lorne, Governor General of Canada, came by one day in mid-August.

Sitting Bull, with a pitiful remnant of fewer than a hundred of his followers, came to the Mounted Police establishment at Fort Qu'Appelle to make a final appeal for a reservation in Canada. As is well known, he had fled to Canada to escape  the wrath of the United States Army after the Indian victory over General Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn of 1876.  By 1877, an estimated four to five thousand Sioux refugees were congregated in and about the Wood Mountain area of present-day Saskatchewan. They were accepted on this side of the border as legitimate refugees, although with strict rules for their behavior. They claimed the protection of the British crown.  They claimed the protection of the British crown on the basis of allegiance of their forefathers to the British in conflicts with the U.S.A., generations before.  Also, they claimed that much of the plains country north of the border was  part of their ancestral hunting territory, and that some of them had been born here.

Under the watchful eyes of the NWMP their hunting parties ranged widely across the south country with an occasional forbidden foray across the 49th  parallel.  However, the hunt became progressively less productive year by year.  In separate  groups, large and small, most of the refugees returned to the United States, accepting the promise of amnesty of the American authorities.

By the end of the very cold, hard winter of 1881, only about 300 remained in Canada.  Sitting Bull chose the fittest of those to make the trek to Fort Qu'Appelle, travelling overland more than two hundred miles. The splendor of their previous proud position as masters of the plains had gone. This small group was described as "haggard, lean and unkempt",  with inadequate numbers of worn out horses.

They were disappointed to find that Superintendent James Walsh, their special friend and advocate in the Police, has left Fort Qu'Appelle and was not expected back.  Hoping against hope, they stayed on for over a month camping on the prairie above the police barracks.  From there they ranged far up and down the valley, hunting and digging roots of the wild Indian turnip.  Land surveyor Mr. W. T. Thompson reported meeting two of them near present day Sintaluta that summer. This would place them about 15 miles southeast of Katepwa.

Their distant relatives, the Sisseton Sioux of the Standing Buffalo  reserve at the northwest end of Echo Lake shared some of their food with them.  Later it was reported that a few of the men of Sitting Bull's group stayed on at that reserve, after the main party left.   Simon Blondeau, a well-to-do Metis, helped relieve their situation with a large supply of white fish he had on hand.  Father Joseph Hugonard of the Lebret Mission gave them flour and garden produce in exchange for a few horses and some other almost useless possessions.

But clearly they  were not welcome.  Most local Indians and the Metis, although perhaps sympathetic, resented their presence here.  White settlers feared them. The Hudson's Bay Company post at the Fort had an insufficient stock of provisions to supply them. The Police and Indian Department officials were charged with the responsibility of carrying out the policy determined by Ottawa, and urged them to return to the United States.

Eventually, late in June, they returned to Wood Mountain with a police escort, and soon after that crossed the border to surrender and accept their assignment to previously allotted reservations.  A handful remained at Wood Mountain, where their descendants live to this day, on a small reservation which was granted to them by the Canadian Government many years later (1913).

When he surrendered to the U.S. Army on July 9, 1881, Sitting Bull asked that it be recorded that he was the last of the Sioux to lay down his rifle. "

In 1881, as Sitting Bull was laying down his rifle, my ancestors took up homesteading in the Qu'Appelle Valley, about 30 miles east of Fort Qu'Appelle, most likely on land where Sitting Bull and his "haggard, lean and unkempt" followers had desperately tried to make a living. Shit happens in history.

This same local history book records the building of a little school and a small Anglican church, both with the help of some of my great-great uncles. Some of my ancestors are buried in that little churchyard.

A short few years later, two of my uncles headed north to help put down the second Riel Rebellion. At the foot of the valley, near the original homestead, stand two tall fir trees that those two had brought back with them from Batosh.

Now for the other 1881 visitor:

"In contrast, the Marquis of Lorne arrived in splendor. This English nobleman, scion of a distinguished family, was married to the Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria [Ed: no relation]. As Governor General of Canada, he travelled to the West to see at first hand this frontier country, in order to assess the conditions for immigration and settlement.  Leaving the railway at the end of construction, a few miles west of Portage la Prairie, he travelled by steamboat on the Assiniboine River, reaching Fort Ellis five days later. The viceregal party then proceeded overland following the well travelled south trail that brought them down into the valley  just east of present day Ellisboro.  Following this, they came along our north shore on August 17 on the way to Lebret.  They were welcomed there by Father Hugonard and his parishioners, after passing under an archway of green boughs, erected for the occasion. An even larger welcome awaited them at Fort Qu'Appelle.  There the police and settlers were augmented by many hundreds of Indians.  After a two-day stay, they pressed on with their trip, which took them to the northwest to visit Fort Carlton, Prince Albert and Battleford, then to present day southern Alberta.

The Governor General's entourage which passed along our shore included some 40 members of the NWMP and a number of horse drawn wagons, including three army ambulances.  His Excellency's personal staff included a chaplain, a surgeon, a military secretary, three aides-de-camp, an artist to record the trip, a French chef and six servants.  As well, there were correspondents along from the London Times and the Toronto Globe."

What a difference!  Definitely the passing of an era. I think this is where my interest in history is rooted. It was all around me, as I was growing up.

Tomorrow, the Metis history and the connection to Cuthbert Grant.

Listen To It

That is all.

Yet another book I have to buy and try find the time to read.

Europe Rising?

Good luck to them.

Wanna read a good book on the topic?

Try Anti-Americanism, by Jean-Francois Revel.

Oh Yeah!!

But sometimes I spend too much time reading books, and the rest of the time I'm sitting in front of this small boob tube.

OMG, I've Done It Again!!!

I wonder if there's a Twelve Step program for compulsive book buyers?

In case you're wondering, the titles I just ordered are:

Ruffled Feathers by William Wuttunee

Dictionary of Legal Terms by Stephen H. Gifis

Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Indian Property Rights by Tom Flanagan

At the same time, I'm also, finally, plowing through some books that I've had for quite some time which have been sitting on my bookshelves collecting dust. If I could just tear myself away from this little boob tube. And on the weekend I was performing duties my sister imposed on me at the annual Indian Head Horticultural Society's garden show, and counting money raised for the raffle there at. I'm a certified CA, I'll have you know (that's Can't Add).

Reading Habits From Mars

As promised a while back, here is the blog entry about my strange reading habits. I'll dive right in, then give you a list of some of my books.

First of all, I never, ever read fiction. I find it extremely boring. And although I am a librarian, I never borrow books from a library. I want to own the books I read. Besides that, my habits don't fit with the necessity of returning books on time, even if there are one or two renewal/extension periods provided by most libraries. Some librarian, huh. (And no, I don't wear my glasses down at the end of my nose and I don't run around telling people to shush up. Librarians generally don't do that. We tend to be people who love books and value knowledge and learning and are driven by a desire to help other people acquire knowledge and the habit of life-long learning. Heck, when I was in library school at the U of W O, the library students (mostly women) had the reputation for being the rowdiest bunch at the Graduate Student's Society's pub, which made us quite proud. Always eager to shatter myths, those crafty librarians.)

I normally have several books on the go at the same time. My favourite topics are history, social/political issues and science. I never seem to have time to read them in a timely fashion and I often don't finish them.

I have three thick books about history on the go right now. It is the thick books that I often don't finish. I often quit about 2/3rd of the way through and start another one, or read a thin book, another reason I prefer to buy my books rather than borrow them.

Examples of books that I have started and then put aside in the past year or so:

1. Heaven and Earth: Global warming, the missing science;

2. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

3. The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee.

I started the first one, many, many months ago, put it down, and just last week, picked it up again and decided to finish it. The second one I bought from either Amazon.ca or Chapters.Indigo.ca (can't remember which) many, many months ago and the third I picked up at a library book sale. Libraries, at least public and academic libraries, have to get rid of old books that are no longer being borrowed in order to make room for the new stuff that people/professors are demanding. The discarded books go really cheap. And if you work in a library, discarded books can sometimes be yours for the taking. (Secrets of the trade.) In any case, I will get back to all the three thick books that I have started recently and abandoned.

Although there are usually book reviews on the two "bookstore" websites next to the description and the ordering info for their books, I know that they will not include any unfavourable reviews, so it's obviously slanted and meant to sell more books. But I order the books anyway, just because the subject matter deals with one of my favourite subjects and the description sounds interesting. Besides, if a publisher considers a manuscript unsalable, they won't publish it, so if it's good enough for the publisher, it's good enough for me.

But I also have numerous thin and thinner books. (Bet you didn't know librarians describe books by their physical properties, did you? Thin, thick, red, blue, green. These are all highly technical terms from library science, as much (or more so) as classification and call numbers.) Frankly, I think the thick books are just poorly written. The thinner ones are written with great precision and no wasted words. There is little or no repetition, as there sometimes is with the thick ones. Heaven and Earth is especially bad on that count. It must have been written in a hurry. The author is a scientist, not a professional writer. But that's what editors are for. Publishers should make sure their books are properly edited. But I digress.

Anyway, some of my favourites are:

Plagues and Peoples (William H. McNeill): This book is about the role played by epidemics in the course of history. Very interesting.

Pox Americana: The great smallpox epidemic of 1775-82 (Elizabeth A. Fenn) A similar theme to Plagues and Peoples, this one deals with the effects of a smallpox epidemic that raged during the American Revolution.

Mapping Human History: Discovering the past through our genes (Steve Olson); This book describes how the history of homo sapiens and their migrations can be revealed by the genetic code found in human populations today. Very interesting.

American Alone (Mark Steyn) Steyn's classic work on the decline of Western Civilization (except the only place where it isn't in decline).

A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an age (William Manchester) The title suffices to tell you what the book is about. One of the most interesting feature in the book is a narrative about the voyage undertaken by Ferdinand Magellan, the first man to circumnavigate the globe, proving to his contemporaries that the earth was, indeed, round, along with several other things about the planet.

The American Revolution (Edward Countryman) This is more a social history than anything else. I did find it a bit hard to understand because it makes frequent mention of events and individuals that I am not familiar with. I think some basic grounding in the topic would have prepared me to better understand it. But, nevertheless, I still found it very interesting and learned a lot about the significance of the American revolution in the broader world.

Anti-Americanism (Jean-Francois Revel) A great little book by a Frenchman, that picks apart, and leaves shredded on the floor, many of the memes promoted by European leftists with their ethnocentric, snobbish, phony contempt for America. A fascinating read.

What's So Great About America (Dinesh D'Souza) Same thing.

But seriously, not all my books are about the US. I just happened to grab a bunch off my bookshelves and carted them downstairs to my computer room.

Left Out: Saskatchewan's NDP and the relentless pursuit of mediocrity (John Gormley) The title is a play on words. John Gormley is a talk-radio host of the conservative persuasion. His book is a finely crafted evisceration of Saskatchewan's NDP. There's not much left of them, by the end of the book.

The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures 1504-1700: A study in Canadian Civilization (Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey) This is an excellent account, relying heavily on the Jesuit Relations, of the first encounters between, as the title says, European and Indian cultures. It was written long before political correctness entered the scene and made truth-telling verboten.

The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (James Axtell) Another book in the same tradition, Axtell tells the truth about contact between Europeans and native Americans. One of the best essays in the collection is about the history of scalping and the preponderance of evidence relating to its North American origin.

Scalping and Torture (Frederici, Nadeau, Knowles) A skinny little book (my favourite kind) that documents clearly and proves that native North Americans practiced both of these techniques (now a taboo subject, of course, but this book consists of three essays first published in 1906, 1940 and 1941) long before the current PC nonsense arose.

The Ecological Indian (Shepard Krech III) This is also a gem of a book that completely skewers the notion advanced by the Indian Industry, that, contrary to Europeans, Indians lived in harmony with nature.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of human societies (Jared Diamond) A massive tome that handily explains why some peoples created advanced, highly technological societies while others never left the stone age.

The Little Ice Age: How climate made history 1300-1850 (Brian Fagan) This was published twelve years ago, before the AGW crowd reached their feverish and hysterical peak. The title says quite clearly what it's about; that most recent period in history that AGW scammers pretend never happened.

The Paleolithic Prescription: A program of diet and exercise and a design for living (Eaton, Shostak, Konner) A very interesting books about what early humans ate as they evolved and why we should try to eat the same way, today. Oh, and how early humans maintained a superb state of fitness. But since I don't have access to wildebeest and wild turnips, I have an excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

The Road Less Travelled: A new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth (M. Scott Peck) Oh, man! This book has been the single most important read in my life. I've read it several times and could read it again. If your head isn't screwed on right (and whose isn't) this book is indispensable for getting you unmessed-up.

Don't Know Much About The Bible: Everything you need to know about the good book but never learned (Kenneth C. Davis) Just an interesting book chock full of info, often humorous, about what's in the Bible. And, unlike the Bible, it's written in modern English, so I was actually able to read it!

The Trouble With Islam: A wake-up call for honesty and change (Irshad Manji) You've probably heard of this one and of her. This very brave young woman dared to write about the religion of Islamism and, as if to prove her right, has had to live with body guards ever since.

Saddam Hussein: A political biography (Karsh, Rautsi) A detailed account of his rise to power and his legacy, once in the president's office. Lot's of blood and mayhem along the way.

What Went Wrong: Western impact and Middle Eastern Response (Bernard Lewis) A mercifully small book on a very large topic.

There. That's a sampling of the books I own. Now you know what sort of stuff I like to read.

Note To Self...

I must get this book and read it:

Civilization: The West and the Rest

Just the fact that it makes leftards squirm, is enough to ensure sales will be brisk.

"The Harvard historian’s book has become a bitter bone of contention in his native Britain. Critics, quite prepared to single out the West for its particular crimes—racism, colonialism and imperialism—nonetheless object, reasonably enough, to a catchy subtitle that lumps everybody else into “the rest,” making improbable bedfellows out of, say, the Aztec empire and Ming-dynasty China. The larger problem, though, is that neither critics nor supporters seem able to distinguish between a culture’s technical and moral merits—for those on the political left, even Ferguson’s attempt to do so is simply disguised Western triumphalism. Yet the plain facts of Western hegemony are hard to argue." [Emphasis mine.]

"American-Like" Musings

After reading American Myths: What Canadians think they know about America and having a bit of a conversation in the comments attached to a previous entry, I decided to pick up another book that I acquired along the way: The History of American Wars: From Colonial Times to World War 1 by T Harry Williams.

(I'm a compulsive book buyer. At least 2/3 of the books I own are still waiting for me to read them. One of the best places to buy books is at public library book sales. They periodically try to dispose of books that no one is borrowing or reading any more, and they go really, really cheaply.)

But anyway, back to my musings. On the top of page 22 of this tome are the following two paragraphs, in reference to what is known as The Seven Years War, or, in America-speak, The French and Indian War (Emphasis mine):

"Because it was a new kind of war and because the Americans were a new people and not as bound as Europeans by old rules, the conduct of the war departed in significant ways from the eighteenth-century pattern. This was most apparent in the American's disregard of accepted rules of war, in part a legacy of their experience with the Indians [Ed. who broke all the rules, or rather, didn't know such rules existed and would probably have laughed at them anyway and maybe did.]. They occasionally embarked on winter campaigns, at the time a practice almost unheard of -- partially because of the logistical difficulties involved but also because by the prevailing leisurely standards there was no need to fight in disagreeable weather.

The Americans performed in ways the British considered savage or treacherous. Their riflemen aimed at and shot officers, who as gentlemen were not be be fired at deliberately, a least not by common soldiers. A British officer stigmatized this American practice as showing a lack of "modern good breeding." [Ed. Maybe therein lies the source of Canadian anti-Americanism. Pretentious notions about superior "breeding". LOL!] Americans often resorted to unprecedented trickery. At the battle of Bennington a rebel militia force opposed British regulars who had been joined by Loyalist militia of the area. Neither militia group was in uniform, of course, but each wore distinguishing rosettes. A body of patriot militia fashioned Loyalist rosettes and infiltrated the British flanks and rear and from these vantage points poured in a devastating fire when the battle was joined. The result was a slaughter of the British and a shocking blow to feudal notions of honor in war."

Okay. What's the point of quoting these passages here? Well, quite simply, war tactics change over time. The pre-revolutionary wars, at least in Europe, were fought on open fields with lines of soldiers facing each other, picking each other off. It's a scene more likely to cause laughter today.

Likewise, our obsession with the Geneva Conventions and with modern "rules of war" may be our undoing. While it's perhaps not necessary to dispense with all of that good stuff, it may be helpful to understand that these conventions and rules were crafted based on, what was then recent, war-time experiences.

Terrorists and their sponsoring states do not play by those rules. To win, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that we are superior (of superior breeding) if we don't stoop to their level. Military innovation is often what gives the winning side the advantage. And that innovation appears in more than just the hardware used on battlefields or in the air. It also appears in rules and customs of combat. I mean, really, why wouldn't or shouldn't officers be shot? So too, why shouldn't captured terrorists be subjected to waterboarding, to name just two examples. If someone can release a worm like Stuxnet and cripple Iran's nuclear program, you know the conduct of war has evolved. And if a drone can eliminate in one shot three big al-Qaeda ringleaders, then hallelujah!