FROM MIKE SPENCER IN NOVA SCOTIA
Re: Ultra-rich gettingricherwhile middle class stagnates
reh> The lifeboats are the huge increases in cash accrued by today's
reh> wealthy....The ship is not sinking for them. They think of
reh> themselves as the Aristocracy did in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Right, like that.
I think that in addition there are a lot of people, not truly wealthy
but merely modestly affluent, who simply don't believe that anything
the size of the earth's ecosphere or of the magnitude of global
commerce & industry could possibly be in kind of serious trouble other
than locally and transiently. It's not just doubt or even
pathological denial. If their finances weren't shingled out onto the
fog a couple of years ago and they haven't lost their jobs/incomes,
they just don't believe it.
Muttering in my beard....
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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COMMENT ON THE ABOVE:
There were people sitting down to dinner in their affluent houses in the old
Cherokee Nation when the troops entered and demanded that they get up and
leave immediately, not being allowed to take even a pot or a baby's blanket.
They couldn't believe it! Then to go to camps where there were no toilets
and to die by the thousands and then to walk to Oklahoma in the worst winter
in memory while the capitalists stole what they had and harassed them along
the way.
I almost didn't happen except my family didn't wait around for the soldiers.
We jumped in the wagon with a pregnant mother, nine children and a tenth on
the way:
HOW SIM RUNNELS BECAME SIMEON REYNOLDS
dedicated to Dr. Herndon Ray
1838 Tsali's Birth in the East
Ten little Indians
In a wagon to Mississippi.
(after midnight)
Arrive at a Doctor's home
In Yalobusha County.
Nine naked children, a man and
A fecund woman gravid in distress
Reach out to a Yoneg (White) Doctor.
Three adult Fires that hold the future of my family
In that quiet, dangerous moment.
Dr. Herndon Ray
Opens the door
He sees only Indians.
"What are they doing here?"
(1838 was not a good time for Cherokees)
Runaway slaves brought the Sheriff.
Runaway Indians brought the Army.
The woman's dress was wet
The Doctor?
A child of Hippocrates.
(to a true Southerner that mattered.)
In that moment
The Doctor bequeathed to the child
A professional integrity
That would be carried with pride
Even down to my present.
As she carried her tenth child
The healer brought her into his house.
Thirteen hours later "Tsali" Runnels
Entered into a predatory world
Known only
To the darkest of Tsalagi witches.
The parents were young-mature,
Mid-twenties
Now with eleven children.
Yet there was "something about"
This wagon full of human bodies.
This wagon of Heart-Spirits
Somehow escaped
Cross the Mountains of Tennessee
Cross the hills of Alabama
To Coffeeville, Mississippi,
Yalobusha County
>From 1830 to 1838 it was:
The Choctaws of Mississippi
The Creeks of Alabama
The Chickasaws from in between and
Finally the Cherokees of Tennessee
Ripped from their home
Dying in concentration camp sewage
Freezing in the exposure of laughing "Aliens"
As they stole Cherokee property.
The Runnels family escaped across
The homes and graves
Of those who had chosen
The path to "Civilization"
And paid for it with betrayal.
Escaping,
Sim Runnels pleaded
At the home
Of the enemy
To survive.
Aided by the ancient trickster,
The Mississippi Doctor plotted.
"The father could pass for Black Dutch"
The operant word was "swarthy."
But the mother was too
Indian to pass.
He wondered how hard
That wagon
Must have been for a woman
Who had to hide
Because of the gift
Of her dark beauty.
Dr. Ray had known Indians,
The prosperous and elite Choctaw,
The Spartan Chickasaw protectors
Even a few Cherokee
Had come to him.
They said it was for "White" illness
To be cured by "White Medicine"
That only a "White" man
Could "doctor".
Whether he got the joke
Is unknown but
He was a man of traditional faith,
And he treated them with respect.
Little was known in the Yonega community
About the Underground Railroad
That had a terminal
In the house of Dr. Ray of
Yalobusha County, Mississippi
His attitudes would carry forward
To his children,
Down to the present but
"Honest decency"
Dared not breathe in those times.
These were the entanglements
That would lead to the black hole
That destroyed generations in war
That resonates down to the present.
But my family remembers Dr. Ray.
My father carried his name as do I
For without him
We would never have been.
1840-1860 Childhood in the South
One day a curious patient asked
about the children
who came to the door
to see the stranger.
The family met with Dr. Ray,
The entanglement grew.
Mother became a half-breed
Sim Runnels traditional member
Of the Ani-gituwagi
Became Simeon Reynolds
Black Dutch Caucasian.
Little Tsali stayed with Dr. Ray
The other children
Were sent to live with other
Partisan families who would
Protect them.
Today we see through the eyes
Of the movies and television
Stories created by another people
For the purpose of entertainment
And a way of dealing with guilt.
But then it was surviving,
Like the Jews of Germany in WW II.
My ancestors did what was necessary
To be born.
Ray Evans Harrell (copyright 2006)
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