Running Strong for American Indian Youth Needs Runners

Running Strong for American Indian Youth Needs Runners

Greetings!

Have you ever wanted to meet Billy Mills, run a marathon, and make a difference?

You can, as part of Team Running Strong! Run in the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday, October 25, 2009 as part of our team! General registration for the race has sold out! But, Team Running Strong still has a few available spots!

Team Running Strong is the only group in this Marathon running for American Indian Youth. It can help you cross the finish line! Hear Billy's inspiring message at a unique team honoring ceremony. Be a part of the only team making a difference for American Indian kids. These children grow up knowing poverty and hunger. Be a hero to American Indian kids with your marathon effort! You can do it and we'll help you.

Don't forget, you have to register by August 30!

For more information,

email us [mailto:marathon@indianyouth.org]

or call 1-888-491-9859 today.

Running Strong for American Indian Youth

www.indianyouth.org

Birthday Wishes

Today Thursday 25th of June is my son Richard's birthday, he is 28 years old.
Richard is my favorite music in my heart.

Hiawatha Insane Asylum Canton, South Dakota

Hiawatha Insane Asylum
Canton, South Dakota

>From the announcement for the Tenth Annual Memorial Prayer Ceremony in Canton in 1998:
"In 1898, Congress passed a bill creating the first and only Institution for insane Indians in the United States. The doors of the asylum, located just over the Nebraska border in Canton, South Dakota, were first opened for the reception of patients in January 1903. Department of Interior investigators revealed that during the time the asylum housed patients, many died because they were denied medical care. According to Harold Iron Shield, founder of the Native American Reburial Restoration Committee, patients were "traditional spiritual people or teenagers who misbehaved or people the Indian Agent didn't like." A 1933 investigation conducted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs determined that "a large number" of patients showed no signs of mental illness.
Land was set aside for a cemetery, but the Indian Office decided that stone markers for graves would be an unwarranted expense. Today, the cemetery (121 names) is located in the middle of a golf course in Canton. No one knows the cause of death of the incarcerated or why they were even at the asylum. The National Park Service has recently added the cemetery to the National Register of Historic Places."

-courtesy Historic Asylums
A Haunting Legacy
Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians
By Elizabeth Stawicki
December 9, 1997

A page is missing from most history books - the story of the federal government's Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians. Located in the tiny town of Canton, South Dakota, it was the first and only federal asylum created solely for American Indians. During its 32 years, it would house more than 350 Indians from tribes throughout North America.
The Indian affairs commissioner under President Roosevelt called reports of the asylum "reminiscent of the terrible indictments Charles Dickens leveled against English poorhouses and schools."
Documents show some who were confined at Canton had no mental illness at all but were confined there because they fought with a white man or an agency.

CLOUDS LOOM LARGE LIKE PHANTOMS
over South Dakota's flatland. In the state's southeastern corner: the town of Canton, population 2800.
On the town's east end golfers play the city's Hiawatha course. This course contains 121 graves clustered between the fourth and fifth fairways. These graves hold the remains of Indians who died in the federal government's Canton insane asylum.
Just how these men, women, and children buried here lived and died at Canton remains a mystery. What does remain of their lives is listed on a beige stone on the burial ground's west side. That stone holds a dark plaque which lists their names and dates of death.
Clara Christopher worked at the asylum since its inception. In 1979 when she was 91, a graduate student recorded Christopher's memories of the asylum.
Christopher: The first patient in...what was that? what month was that? the first patient that arrived, I remember, was on the first of December in 19-2.
Christopher worked at the Canton asylum for 25 years in a variety of jobs ranging from cook to head of supplies. She remembered new patients:
Christopher: Some would see that sign "asylum" and it hurt 'em; some were heartbroken. I always felt for em. I felt for them as I would anyone. I could never stand to see them someplace and hold my ears so I couldn't hear 'em. Sometimes you know out on the reservation they had something against an Indian, and he was vicious or something like that, and they'd scribe "insane."
The bulk of information about the asylum's operation, patients, and staff comes from the writings of Dr. Samuel Silk - Clinical Director at then the country's premier psychiatric hospital, St. Elizabeth's in Washington, DC. Silk inspected the Canton asylum in 1929 and filed a report:
Silk report: Three patients were found padlocked in rooms. One was sick in bed, supposed to be suffering from a brain tumor, being bedridden and helpless...a boy about 10 years of age was in a strait jacket lying in his bed...one patient who had been in the hospital six years was padlocked in a room and, according to the attendant, had been secluded in this room for nearly three years.
32-year-old Frank Hart is a living link to the asylum's history. While researching his family tree he discovered his great grandfather had been held at the Canton asylum. Hart, an Ojibwe who lives in Calgary, Alberta sifts through a small file he's collected about his family; all that remains of his great-grandfather's life are a few government documents. Hart says his great grandfather Marcus served on the Red Lake Tribal Council of the Minnesota Ojibwe:
Hart : His Indian name was (Missee-way-guh-noo) which means "like a war eagle flying all over the place in the sky." He was a leader, he was a warrior and he was a good man. He'd tell you just how it is right to your face and doesn't care how it's going to affect you but he wouldn't lie to you.
Federal records show a Red Lake Reservation superintendent committed Hart to the Canton asylum after he showed symptoms of senile psychosis during a hospital stay. The records indicate Hart was a heavy drinker who one night lay down in a fire and suffered second- and third-degree burns. Frank Hart says his relatives have never talked to him about alcoholism and his great-grandfather.
Records show Indians such as Marcus Hart were stripped of their Indian identities upon arrival at the Canton asylum. authorities would have spoken to him in a language he would've struggled to understand. Hart would've gone from the open woods of northern Minnesota to being locked in a ward where sealed windows held in the stench of un-emptied chamberpots filled with human waste.
At night, the only light flickered from an attendant's lantern passing occasionally on rounds.
Golfer Arne Lunder is one of the asylum's last living witnesses. He's lived in Canton for 84 years. Today he plays the course's sixth hole. To his left is the Indian burial ground. He remembers accompanying his mother on visits there.
Lunder: The women were all in the front laying around on the grass out in front there. One of the head nurses came out and said "Bring her back in." She was laying on a blanket so they took one on each corner (he laughs) and drug her up the steps. It really impressed me; I thought it was kinda cruel.
Even for its time, the asylum did not meet minimum standards required of an institution treating the mentally ill. Gerald Grob, a professor of history and medicine at Rutgers University is a leading authority on the history of US mental health policy.
Grob: What you had here was an institution you could only define as deviant. It wasn't doing what a lot of other hospitals if you go through state's records, the person running it had no contact with psychiatry.
During a subsequent investigation, St. Elizabeth's Dr. Silk concluded many of the Indians confined at Canton were locked up because they had clashed with white men, a school or an agency - not because they were mentally ill.
Silk's report: Would not the United States, if it could be held liable at all, be liable in these cases for enormous damages? The records of the asylum itself show them to be perfectly sane. They are known to be perfectly sane, to the director of the asylum Dr. Hummer. But he assumed the position that these people were below normal - mentally deficient - and they should only be discharged after they were sterilized, and as he did not have any means of doing this, there was nothing left but to keep them there.
Canton staff restrained many asylum patients in metal wristlets, camisoles, and shackles with iron chains. Silk noted that one girl who suffered from epilepsy miraculously escaped severe burns even though she was chained near a hot water pipe during her seizures.
University of South Dakota history professor Herbert Hoover says the creation of the asylum most likely grew out of an ignorance of Indian culture; not an organized plot designed to confine sane Indians.
Hoover: The great fault was not in investigating how native Americans dealt with insanity prior to the arrival of whites. So we took western European strategies of dealing with insanity. It really was a well intentioned desire to accomplish cultural imperialism without killing Indian people. And this was a part of it.
The Canton asylum was created in 1902, a time when the United States' official Indian policy was assimilation. Hoover's University of South Dakota colleague Leonard Bruguier says whatever the intent behind the asylum, it was a convenient tool for reservation agents. Bruguier is a member of the Yankton Sioux and director of the Institute of American Indian studies at the University of South Dakota.
Bruguier: So in order for the agent to feel more comfortable being surrounded by yes-people, it would be very easy for him to say "This person's insane," and have him shipped to Canton to be administered by a whole different set of rules. Basically you'd just be able to get rid of 'em.
John Collier, the commissioner of Indian Affairs in the Roosevelt administration ordered the Canton asylum closed and the patients sent to St. Elizabeth's in Washington DC. In response, the residents of Canton waged a federal court battle to keep the asylum open. The asylum was a major contributor to Canton's economy in 1933; a time when the country was plunged deep into economic depression. Members of the nearby Rosebud Sioux also opposed Canton's closing. They didn't want their friends and relatives in the asylum sent thousands of miles east.
The fight generated national news coverage from New York to Montana.
Collier prevailed in court and closed the Canton insane asylum in December, 1933. Dr. Samuel Silk immediately sent 17 Indians home. Some who were freed had been confined at the Canton asylum as long as 16 years. Another 69 including Frank Hart's great grandfather required hospitalization and were sent by train to St. Elizabeth's hospital. Most of them would spend the rest of their lives institutionalized.
A decade after the asylum closed, the federal government sold the property to the city of Canton for one dollar. The county attorney at the time was Craig Brown. Brown says none of the local officials at the time thought it unusual to build a golf course on the land, even if 121 bodies were buried there.
Brown: We didn't think a whole lot of it; it was the Indians who found out about the cemetery and they started their religious exercises out there and of course it became a topic of discussion before we did something about it.
Harold Iron Shield, a member of the Lakota nation's Yankton tribe, holds ceremonies at the grave site each May remembering those who lived and died at the asylum. Iron Shield believes the federal government used the Canton asylum to jail Indians who wouldn't conform:
Iron Shield: These people were victims of the fed government as usual because of their involvement with spiritual ceremonies, because kids didn't really understand the kind of conformity they were to abide by. They didn't understand why they couldn't speak their tribal languages. They didn't understand why they had to go to church. They didn't understand why they had to change.
Some representatives of tribes contacted by MPR said privately they didn't want to talk about the Canton asylum because doing so might create more conflict with the federal government. But Leonard Bruguier of the University of South Dakota has another theory why many native people won't talk about the Canton asylum: shame. Bruguier says the Canton asylum attacked a core Indian value that those who were considered different - mentally ill or otherwise - contributed to Indian society:
Bruguier: We took care of them, and then all of a sudden we have this insane asylum, and they say this Indian's insane and we're going to move him to Canton, and he's going to be with people like him. A lot of Indian people are ashamed they let this happen to their relatives. That they let someone come in and take 'em away, basically, and in many cases they were never heard from again.
The legacy of the Canton asylum exists today, here at the Hiawatha golf course where the graveyard of 121 Canton patients exists between the fourth and fifth fairways.
Moving the graves isn't an option. Doing so would be costly and some Indian elders say moving the graves would disrupt the spiritual journeys of those buried here. Meanwhile, the course has moved the fifth hole's teebox 20 yards further away from the graves.
On this day, 10 American Indian men including Harold Iron Shield crouch at the base of the stone. They burn sage, smoke tobacco, and pray for the spirits here.
Iron Shield has petitioned the state of South Dakota to declare the land a historic site.
In the past, Hiawatha golfers sometimes hit balls off the graves. But now they've adopted a rule that if a ball lands on a grave, the player will take a free drop and play the shot outside the cemetery.


courtesy - Gail Boke

courtesy - Gail Boke
Hiawatha Insane Asylum - an American Gulag
The perverse history of governmental-Lakota/Dakota relations took a more sinister turn when in 1900 (ten years after Wounded Knee), the Hiawatha Insane Asylum was built. It operated for over thirty years, then was torn down. The bodies of those native people who died there are buried under what is now a golf course in Canton, South Dakota.
After the wars against native people, the battle for their hearts and minds moved relentlessly forward. Even in death, the 121 buried on the former grounds are mocked as golf balls whiz over their heads and the president of the Canton Area Historical Society Don Pottranz refers to their bizarre grave as, “It’s something that people are aware of but it’s ancient history now.”
With no knowledge whatsoever of native cultures, languages, customs, and spiritual life, South Dakota Senator R. F. Pettigrew introduced Congressional legislation in 1899 to create the nation’s first native insane asylum. Congress appropriated $45,000.
In 1900 construction began after U.S. Representative Oscar Gifford (former Canton mayor) arranged for the purchase of 100 acres of land two miles east of Canton.
In 1902 the first patient was received and in 1908 Gifford was forced out when a physician charged that the superintendent refused to allow him to remove gallstones from a patient, who later died. Gifford was replaced by Harry Hummel, a psychiatrist. That same year, Hummel was charged by thirteen employees with mistreating patients.
In 1926, the matrons who had staffed the asylum were replaced by professional nurses. In 1929 Hummer was finally ordered to be removed. U. S. Representative Louis Cramton intervened and Hummel stayed. In 1933, patients were transferred to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., and in April 1934, Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier closed the asylum.
In the interim, Canton and South Dakota congressional delegates fought to keep it open. Hummel had been charged with malfeasance and misfeasance in 1933. He was subsequently dismissed.
Averaging four deaths a month over the thirty some years of its existence, the asylum did not seem able to maintain the patients’ physical health very well. Dr. Hummel, famed for his hair-trigger temper, ruled the institution for 25 years.
Now, freelance investigative reporter Harold Ironshield has been researching the former asylum and the inmates whose known names are listed as buried at the site. Ironshield is requesting native publications to list the names in the hopes that living family members will recognize them and come forward. He would like to know what the families might want to do about the grave and whether the remains should be moved. He also wants more information on the history of the asylum published, particularly the explanations of what was supposed to constitute insanity and why the individuals were selected for incarceration. From the reports of those who remember the asylum, according to Ironshield, the reasons had to do with not following government rules, and not behaving in school. He suggests that the asylum was more gulag than governmental response to the mental health of natives.

The names of those buried in the Hiawatha Asylum Cemetery are:

1. Long Time Owl Woman
2. Juanita Castildo
3. Mary Fairchild
4. Lucy Reed
5. Minnie La Count
6. Sylvia Ridley
7. Edith Standing Bear
8. Chur Ah Tah E Kah
9. Ollie House
10. Asal Tcher
11. Alice Short
12. Enos Pah
13. Baby Ruth Enas Pah
14. Agnes Sloan
15. E We Jar
16. Kaygwaydahsegaik
17. Chee
18. Emma Gregory
19. Magwon
20. Kay Ge Gah Aush Eak
21. Kaz Zhe Ah Bow
22. Blue Sky
23. Louise McIntosh
24. Jane Burch
25. Dupue
26. Maggie Snow
27. Lupe Maria
28. Lizzie Vipont
29. Mary Peirre
30. Nancy Chewie
31. Ruth Chief on Top
32. Mary G. Buck
33. Cecile Comes at Night
34. Maud Magpie
35. Poke Ah Dab Ab
36. Sits in it
37. Josephine Wells
38. A.B. Blair
39. Josephine Pajihatakana
40. Baby Caldwell
41. Sallie Seabott
42. Selina Pilon
43. Mrs. Twoteeth
44. Kayso
45. Josephine De Couteau
46. Jessie Hallock
47. Marie Pancho
48. Ede Siroboz
49. Kiger
50. Mary Bah
51. Cynia Houle
52. Drag Toes
53. Charlie Brown
54. Jacob Hayes
55. Toby
56. Tracha
57. Hon Sah Sah Kah
58. Big Day
59. Fred Takesup
60. Peter Greenwood
61. Robert Brings Plenty
62. Nadesooda
63. Taistoto
64. James Chief Crow
65. Yells at Night
66. John Woodruff
67. George Beautiste
68. Baptiste Gingras
69. Lowe War
70. Silas Hawk
71. Red Cloud
72. Howling Wolf
73. Antone
74. Arch Wolf
75. Frank Starr
76. Joseph Taylor
77. Amos Brown
78. James Crow Light en ing
79. John Martin
80. Red Crow
81. James Blackeye
82. Abraham Meachern
83. Aloysious Moore
84. Tom Floodwood
85. James Black Bull
86. Benito Juan
87. Seymour Wauketch
88. Anselmo Lucas
89. Chico Francisco
90. Roy Wolfe
91. Matt Smith
92. Two Teeth
93. Pugay Beel
94. Merbert Conley
95. Jack Root
96. Charlie Clafflin
97. John Hall
98. Amos Deer
99. Ne Bow O Sah
100.Thomas Chasing Bear
101.Dan Ach Onginiwa
102.Joseph Bigname
103.Falkkas
104.Steve Simons
105. James Two Crows
106. F.C. Eagle
107. Andrew Dancer
108. Apolorio Moranda
109. Harry Miller
110. Herbert Iron
111. Fred Collins
112. John Coal on Fire
113. Joseph D. Marshall
114. Willie George
115. James Hathorn
116. Ira Girstean
117. Edward Hedges
118. Omudis
119. Guy Crow Neck
120. John Big
121. A. Kennedy

Native people from all over the country were placed in the asylum. The records show that the physical conditions were horrific. Besides being shackled to beds and pipes, the patients were made to wallow in their own body wastes and clean sheets were not a regular issue. In Dr. Hummel’s opinion, insanity was increasing among natives, and he was perhaps right in the sense that the well documented starvation on reservations during that historical period was causing pain and suffering, and people torn from their cultures were being pushed down narrower and narrower corridors of forced “civilization” and “assimilation.”
The full truth about this chamber of horrors may never be fully known, but it was clearly a case of medicine and politics making a most poisonous mix.

....Time stands still for no one......

Time stands still for no one, we continue to discover what it has to offer,
therefore we should enjoy the pleasures of what we have.

....Excitment and Thrill....

Presently being is my excitment and a thrill whatever I do.
Future is my greatest wonder ahead.

Living Abroad

Living Abroad Boosts Creative Skills

By LiveScience Staff posted: 23 April 2009 01:44 pm ET
www.livescience.com/culture/...road.html

Living in another country can make people more adept at solving creative problems, suggests a new study involving several tests.

In one study, master of business administration students at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University were asked to solve the Duncker candle problem, a classic test of creative insight. Individuals were presented with three objects on a table placed next to a cardboard wall: a candle, a pack of matches and a box of tacks.

The task is to attach the candle to the wall so that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax on the table or the floor. The correct solution involves using the box of tacks as a candleholder — one should empty the box of tacks and then tack it to the wall placing the candle inside.

The solution is considered a measure of creative insight because it involves the ability to see objects as performing different functions from what is typical (i.e., the box is not just for the tacks but can also be used as a stand).

The longer students had spent living abroad, the more likely they were to come up with the creative solution.

The research was done by William Maddux, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, a business school with campuses in France and Singapore, and Northwestern's Adam Galinsky. The findings are detailed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In another study, also involving Kellogg School MBA students, the researchers used a mock negotiation test involving the sale of a gas station. In this negotiation, a deal based solely on sale price was impossible because the minimum price the seller was willing to accept was higher than the buyer's maximum. However, because the two parties' underlying interests were compatible, a deal could be reached only through a creative agreement that satisfied both parties' interests.

Here again, negotiators with experience living abroad were more likely to reach a deal that demanded creative insight.

In both studies, time spent traveling abroad did not matter; only living abroad was related to creativity.

Maddux and Galinsky then ran a follow-up study to see why living abroad was related to creativity. With a group of MBA students at INSEAD in France, they found that the more students had adapted themselves to the foreign cultures when they lived abroad, the more likely they were to solve the Duncker candle task.

"This shows us that there is some sort of psychological transformation that needs to occur when people are living in a foreign country in order to enhance creativity," Galinsky said in a statement today. "This may happen when people work to adapt themselves to a new culture.'

Although these studies show a strong relationship between living abroad and creativity, they do not prove that living abroad and adapting to a new culture actually cause people to be more creative.

"We just couldn't randomly assign people to live abroad while others stay in their own country," said Maddux.

To help get at this question of what causes someone to be creative, the authors tried a technique called "priming." In two experiments, they asked groups of undergraduate students at the Sorbonne in Paris to recall and write about a time they had lived abroad or adapted to a new culture; other groups were asked to write about other experiences, such as going to the supermarket, learning a new sport or simply observing but not adapting to a new culture.

The results showed that priming students to mentally recreate their past experiences living abroad or adapting to a new culture caused students, at least temporarily, to be more creative. For example, these students drew space aliens and solved word games more creatively than students primed to recall other experiences.

"This research may have something to say about the increasing impact of globalization on the world, a fact that has been hammered home by the recent financial crisis," said Maddux. "Knowing that experiences abroad are critical for creative output makes study abroad programs and job assignments in other countries that much more important, especially for people and companies that put a premium on creativity and innovation to stay competitive."

World's Worst Cultural Mistakes

World's Worst Cultural Mistakes
at Yahoo! Travel
Don’t let blowing your nose or taking off your shoes land you in hot water when you travel

By Sallie Brady

Touching Someone

Where It’s Offensive: Korea, Thailand, China, Europe, the Middle East.

What’s Offensive: Personal space varies as you travel the globe. In Mediterranean countries, if you refrain from touching someone’s arm when talking to them or if you don’t greet them with kisses or a warm embrace, you’ll be considered cold. But backslap someone who isn’t a family member or a good friend in Korea, and you’ll make them uncomfortable. In Thailand, the head is considered sacred — never even pat a child on the head.

What You Should Do Instead: Observe what locals are doing and follow suit. In Eastern countries remember that touching and public displays of affection are unacceptable. In places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, men and women are forbidden from interacting, let along touching.

Knowing Your Right from Your Left

Where It’s Offensive: India, Morocco, Africa, the Middle East.

What’s Offensive: Many cultures still prefer to eat using traditional methods — their hands. In these cases, food is often offered communally, which is why it’s important to wash your hands before eating and observe the right-hand-is-for-eating and the left-hand-is-for-other-duties rule. If you eat with your left hand, expect your fellow diners to be mortified. And when partaking from a communal bowl, stick to a portion that’s closest to you. Do not get greedy and plunge your hand into the center.

What You Should Do Instead: Left-handed? Attempt to be ambidextrous — even children who are left-handed in these cultures are taught to eat with their right hand — or at least explain yourself to your fellow diners before plunging in.

Keeping Your Clothes On

Where It’s Offensive: Scandinavian countries, Turkey.

What’s Offensive: Wearing bathing suits, shorts and T-shirts, underwear, or any other piece of clothing into a sauna, hammam, or other place of physical purification. In some cultures, a steam room or a sauna is considered a place of purity and reflection, where the outside world (i.e., your clothes) should be left outside. In some Scandinavian countries it’s common for entire families to sauna together in the nude.

What You Should Do Instead: Sitting on a folded towel is considered acceptable. If you’re too modest to appear naked, strip down, but wrap yourself in a towel.

Getting Lei'd Off

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii.

What’s Offensive: Refusing or immediately removing a lei.

What You Should Do Instead: Leis in the Hawaiian Islands aren’t just pretty floral necklaces that you get when you check into your hotel or show up at a luau. They’re a centuries-old cultural symbol of welcome, friendship, and appreciation. Never refuse a lei — it’s considered highly disrespectful — or whip it off in the giver’s presence. If you’re allergic to the flowers, explain so, but offer to put it in some place of honor, say in the center of the table, or on a statue. Note that closed leis should be worn not hanging from the neck, but over the shoulder, with half draped down your chest and the other half down your back.

Looking Them in the Eye … or Not

Where It’s Offensive: Korea, Japan, Germany.

What’s Offensive: For Americans, not making direct eye contact can be considered rude, indifferent, or weak, but be careful how long you hold someone’s gaze in other countries. In some Asian nations, prolonged eye contact will make a local uncomfortable, so don’t be offended if you’re negotiating a deal with someone who won’t look you straight in the eye. If toasting with friends in a German beer hall, your eyes had better meet theirs — if they don’t, a German superstition says you’re both in for seven years of bad luck in the bedroom.

What You Should Do Instead: Avoid constant staring and follow the behavior of your host — and by all means, look those Germans straight on.

Drinking Alcohol the Wrong Way

Where It’s Offensive: Latin America, France, Korea, Russia.

What’s Offensive: Every culture has different traditions when it comes to drinking etiquette. Fail to consume a vodka shot in one gulp in Russia, and your host will not be impressed. Refill your own wine glass in France without offering more to the rest of the table, and you’ve made a faux pas. In Korea, women can pour only men’s drinks — not other women’s — and if you want a refill, you need to drain your glass. And if you’re in Latin America, never pour with your left hand — that’s bad luck.

What You Should Do Instead: Until you’re culturally fluent, leave it to your pals to pour.

Blowing Your Nose

Where It’s Offensive: Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, France.

What’s Offensive: Some cultures find it disgusting to blow your nose in public — especially at the table. The Japanese and Chinese are also repelled by the idea of a handkerchief. As Mark McCrum points out in his book Going Dutch in Beijing, the Japanese word hanakuso unpleasantly means nose waste.

What You Should Do Instead: If traveling through Eastern and Asian countries, leave the hankies at home and opt for disposable tissues instead. In France as well as in Eastern countries, if you’re dining and need to clear your nasal passages, excuse yourself and head to the restroom. Worst-case scenario: make an exaggerated effort to steer away from the table. Let’s hope you don’t have a cold.

Removing Your Shoes…or Not

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii, the South Pacific, Korea, China, Thailand.

What’s Offensive: Take off your shoes when arriving at the door of a London dinner party and the hostess will find you uncivilized, but fail to remove your shoes before entering a home in Asia, Hawaii, or the Pacific Islands and you’ll be considered disrespectful. Not only does shoe removal very practically keeps sand and dirt out of the house, it’s a sign of leaving the outside world behind.

What You Should Do Instead: If you see a row of shoes at the door, start undoing your laces. If not, keep the shoes on.

Talking Over Dinner

Where It’s Offensive: Africa, Japan, Thailand, China, Finland.

What’s Offensive: In some countries, like China, Japan, and some African nations, the food’s the thing, so don’t start chatting about your day’s adventures while everyone else is digging into dinner. You’ll likely be met with silence—not because your group is unfriendly, but because mealtimes are for eating, not talking. Also avoid conversations in places a country might consider sacred or reflective—churches in Europe, temples in Thailand, and saunas in Finland.

What You Should Do Instead: Keep quiet!

Road Rage

Where It’s Offensive: Hawaii, Russia, France, Italy, around the globe.

What’s Offensive: Honk on Molokai or fail to pay a police officer a fine, a.k.a. bribe, on the spot when you’re stopped for speeding in Russia, and you’ll risk everything from scorn to prison time. Remember, too, that hand gestures have different meanings in other countries — a simple “thumbs-up” is interpreted as an “up yours“ in parts of the Middle East.

What You Should Do Instead: When driving abroad, make sure you have an international driver’s license; never, ever practice road rage; and keep your hands on the wheel.

....Please do not judge me....

....Spirit In Time....
As I am in this physical shell here on Earth Mother,
there will be many experiences for me to conquer and climb.
We all travel our paths at our own paces,we are here to learn,
not to travel on our paths in races.
My path I travel,I travel like no other.

I see and feel many things like no others,I am entitled
to these illusions,realities and dreams.
No one has the right to take this from me no sister or brother.
For all of these things make up my spirit here while
on Earth Mother.
I am unique as each and every individual sun or moonbeam.

I will take these experiences back with me to the
Great Campfire and share these experiences with others
there that went before me.
One day I will shed this shell and once more be free
and on that day I will fly and soar higher and higher.

I am A Spirit In Time many understand,many do not.
What I am...I am me....This is of no crime...
What I have inside me can never be stolen,sold or bought,
I do not ask anyone to understand how I feel and why
I am to be forever free.

Each of us travel our paths the way we are shown,
just as the way the clouds in the sky are to be blown.
What I search for now my heart will reveal to me,
just as the flower slowly reveals itself to the honey bee.

We each have our responsibilities in life,
mine is what is revealed to me when it is time,
this does not mean we have the right to push or shove our ways
and thoughts onto others, for that is the crime.
We can not hurt each other with words as if cutting through
fog with a dull or sharp knife.
All have a special life of learning here on Earth Mother.
All of my sisters and brothers.

So you see my brothers and sisters...Please do not judge me...
Just think of me up in the sky as a single star helping and
making up one of the many stars of clusters.
For I will soon be free once again.
For I am A Spirit In Time.

~ Written by an Unknown Author ~

Obama appoints ND tribal member to post

Obama appoints ND tribal member to post

www.kxnet.com/getArticle.asp

Feb 6 2009 6:05PM
Associated Press Eds: APNewsNow.

Bismarck, N.D. (AP) President Barack Obama has appointed a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe to serve in his administration.

Jody Gillette was selected on Friday to be the deputy associate director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, where she will help oversee tribal, local and state relationships with the federal government. Gillette is the director of the Native American Training Institute. She also served as Obama's North Dakota vote director during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Information from: Bismarck Tribune, www.bismarcktribune.com
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APNP 02-06-09 1756CST |

Dear Dogs and Cats

Dear Dogs and Cats:

To be posted VERY LOW on the refrigerator door-pet nose height.

The dishes with the paw prints are yours and contain your food. The other
dishes are mine and contain my food. Please note, placing a paw print in the
middle of my plate of food does not stake a claim for it becoming your food
and dish, nor do I find that aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

The stairway was not designed by NASCAR and is not a racetrack. Beating me
to the bottom is not the object. Tripping me doesn't help because I fall
faster than you can run.

I cannot buy anything bigger than a king sized bed. I am very sorry about
this. Do not think I will continue sleeping on the couch to ensure your
comfort. Dogs and cats can actually curl up in a ball when they sleep. It is
not necessary to sleep perpendicular to each other stretched out to the
fullest extent possible. I also know that sticking tails straight out and
having tongues hanging out the other end to maximize space is nothing but
sarcasm.

For the last time, there is no secret exit from the bathroom. If by some
miracle I beat you there and manage to get the door shut, it is NOT
necessary to claw, whine, meow, try to turn the knob or get your paw under
the edge and try to pull the door open. I must exit through the same door I
entered. Also, I have been using the bathroom for years -- canine or feline
attendance is not required!

The proper order is... kiss me, THEN go smell the other dog or cat's butt. I
cannot stress this enough!

To pacify you, my dear pets, I have posted the following
message on our front door:

To All Non-Pet Owners Who Visit & Like to Complain About Our Pets:

1. They live here. You don't.

2. If you don't want their hair on your clothes, stay off the furniture.
That's why they call it 'fur'niture.

3. I like my pets a lot better than I like some people.

4. To you, they are an animal. To me, he/she is an adopted son/daughter who
is short, hairy, walks on all fours and doesn't speak clearly.

Remember: Dogs and cats are better than kids because they:

1. Eat less

2. Don't ask for money all the time

3. Are easier to train

4. Normally come when called

5. Never ask to drive the car

6. Don't hang out with drug-using friends

7. Don't smoke or drink

8. Don't have to buy the latest fashions

9. Don't want to wear your clothes

10. Don't need a gazillion dollars for college.

AND......

11. If they get pregnant, you can sell their children!!

Come visit us at. "Keeper of Stories".
newkeeperofstories.com/