Sometimes you just need to read some Yeats:
The Stolen Child
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can
understand.
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can
understand.
Thanks, Penny.
Tony Tross of abuddhas memes has moved from Whitehorse to America. Can the world’s end be far behind? Is it possible he read my post from two days ago and is embracing the other in order to create a trans-continental raising of consciousness? Synchronicity is alive and well and among us everywhere in the blogosphere it seems…
Best of luck to Tony in his new chosen land.
The other day someone mentioned to me the story of the Dutch buying Manhattan for $24 worth of trade beads. I’m sure most people know the story. Here is just one of the many sites (and this one should know better) that perpetuate the myth.
The story IS a myth. For something closer to the truth, check out this site (which includes sources). It turns out that the original inhabitants of Manhattan were the Weckquaesgeeks who lived somewhere north of the Dutch colony. They were not especially happy about the Dutch living on Manhattan, but they lived far enough away that the Dutch were able to live peacefully there for a year or more. When things seemed to be getting a little nervous, the Dutch decided to head off a possible alliance between the Weckquaesgeeks and the neighbouring Canarsies who lived on Long Island, where present-day Brooklyn is now. So:
…the Dutch were happy to have bought Manhattan from the wrong tribe because they weren’t really buying Manhattan but the right to Manhattan in the eyes of other Europeans. In short, they were buying respectability – in their own eyes too…
The purchase also made allies of the Canarsies, who otherwise might have joined with the Weckquaesgeeks, the Indians who lived on Manhattan and owned most of it. The Netherlanders didn’t try to buy off the Weckquaesgeeks, a more difficult task since they knew, loved, and made their homes on Manhattan. Instead, they waited as a succession of inter-Indian wars, some instigated by the Dutch, and a series of epidemics weakened the Weckquaesgeeks. Then in the 1640s, with the aid of the Canarsies and other Native Americans on Long Island, the Dutch exterminated most of the Weckquaesgeeks.
I mention this story because there is a disturbing trend currently in British Columbia and Canada generally for not giving First Nations credit for being able to develop and run our own governments, economies and communities. From the federal government’s First Nations governance Act (pretty unpopular in Indian Country) to the provincial government’s recent referendum on treaty negotiations (see my own analysis), there is a pervasive mistrust in Canadian culture of the capabilities of First Nations people and communities. When I hear stories like the selling of Manhattan it reminds me that this sentiment is deeply embedded in the story of the “New World.”
So the next time you hear the myth of Manhattan, do us all a favour and give the Weckquaesgeeks some credit. The truth is always more complicated than it seems.
Lynn Sislo is a blogger I have a lot in common with, despite the fact that at some moments we might seem to have a lot to disagree about. She is passionate about her politics, a music lover, interested in engaging the world and she is generous enough to first of all keep a blog, and secondly respond to email. I like to call her out when she posts something that seems “reactionary” or reductionist, and she like to let me have it right back. I am probably the exact opposite politically of her (i.e. soft left to her soft right) but that hasn’t stopped me from reading her blog regularly and learning from it.
Recently, in a discussion on weapons of mass destruction, I pleaded my case that the US was taking the world’s support for granted. I talked about how the US asked for (and received) our support, troops and commitments for the “war on terror” but then slapped massive (questionably illegal) duties on our softwood lumber exports just before the Iraq invasion began. Our country chose not to participate in that military exercise, and many Americans openly wondered why we would abandon a neighbour in a time of need. Truth be told, many of us here wondered the same thing about them, but softwood lumber just doesn’t hit the radar when there’s a war on. To the devastated communities in coastal British Columbia though, it seemed a strange reward for helping out in Afghanistan.
Lynn has quoted me in a post today on this adding:
Anyway, the point of all this is that the U.S. should really treat our friends much better and of all nations we should be especially concerned about maintaining good relations with Canada. Canada is like a shy, quiet sister, always ignored and taken for granted. It is difficult to even think of Canada as a separate country. It ranks slightly higher than North Dakota in our thoughts. It’s there but it doesn’t give us much trouble so it never occurs to most of us that we should give it any thought. We ordinary Americans should be as concerned about politics in Canada as we are about politics in California, even if they’re usually not quite as entertaining.
That’s nice to see.
My friend Michael Herman (definitely an American!) has described conflict as “passion that hasn’t yet grown to encompass the whole.” North Americans are pretty passionate about the countries they have scraped out on this continent. But it’s a big place and sometimes that passion doesn’t get big enough and “anti-Americanism” breaks out or some haywire fundamentalist American preacher calls us “Soviet Canuckistan.” Then we lose our heads and things get ugly. But when we can extend our passion to encompass the whole, wonderful things happen, as I have found working and learning with the many Americans I am privileged to call friends and colleagues. We cannot on the one hand say “I like you as a person” and then say “your country sucks.” We can learn from the constructive and peaceful dialogues between us and imagine extending that to our common future. We don’t expect Americans to worry too much about our politics, nor do we expect the American government to be everything to everyone. But a little courtesy and consistency goes a long way, in personal relationships as well as in the highest diplomatic realms. That’s the kind of thing I learn from reading and engaging with Lynn.
Some images just speak for themselves. This is the current cloud cover and sunlit portions of the earth at 2248 PDT today. The World Sunlight Map website updates this image every time you check it.
Thanks to KIPlog for the link.