Cardinal

Birds have been restless the last week or so… Good news, went outside, sunny and nice, and a beautiful voice filled the air…I looked and saw a bright red bird in a tree...Mr. Cardinal (wayinye-shuje) is singing his courtship song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9LNexIoCW0

Feeling Like Something Isn't Right?

Feel like something isn't right? The study of societal cycles and collapse is a major theme of the blogs I've been reading for the last 10 years or so (although apocalypse has really been a theme for children of the Cold War), blogs like those by John Michael Greer, Dmitry Orlov, James Howard Kunstler, Guy McPherson, and Morris Berman. Some important books that could be read in association: Kohr's "The Breakdown of Nations" (1957), Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies" (1988), Diamond's "Collapse" (2005). Each has a POV and its own strengths, focus, and weakness, so all are worth checking out. Here is a basic WIkipedia article as a gateway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse

Societal collapse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of human societies. Societal collapse broadly includes abrupt societal failures such as that of the Mayan Civilization, as well as more extended gradual declines of cultures,...

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

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  Lance Foster Plus, as an archaeologist, learning about this stuff is just something that is part of our discipline, as much as money is for accountants.

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  Lance Foster It's an occupational hazard of being trained as an archaeologist, and reading history and biology and geology...everything that is born must die, and that includes everything, like civilizations, species, planets...
  All scholars and others can do is a salvage for the next cycle, even if the salvage is imperfect, like the Greeks did of the Egyptians, and the Romans of the Greeks, and Islam did of Classical civilizations, etc. The question is then, what shall we salvage of ours? If the lessons are true, we cannot, but we can record the best we can, perhaps establish some schools or libraries, and the NEXT cycle will see either a group that will salvage from what we save…or burn what we save to the ground like the Library at Alexandria.

Some of my Art

Nyisoje: Missouri River: The Smoky River

"Smoky", as in cloudy waters from the silt, riled up waters… A view of the Missouri River from the Four State Lookout above White Cloud… a 180 degree panorama looking north (upriver), and east, and south (downriver). The four states are Nebraska (same side of river, north, left) to the land of the Otoe and Omaha… way way north across the river, the southwest tip of Iowa, the land of the Ioways before the treaties… across the river, Missouri, Ioway and before us the Missouria…and to the right, on the same side of the river, and where we are standing, Kansas, the aboriginal land of the Kaw or Kanza, and our treaty reservation lands…

Kipuka

Snow last night and this morning, about 1-2 inches.

Kipuka. kee-POO-kah When Pele does her thing in Hawai'i and the lava flows out across the land, wiping out forests, it flows around places that are a little higher in elevation, leaving islands of greenery in a sea of lava. After the lava hardens and cools, these little places, called in Hawaiian "kipuka" (a puka is a hole) serve as seed banks to, over decades, over hundreds of years, to re-seed and regenerate the land. 

 That's really all we can do in cities and land that has been devastated by the actions of human beings who destroy forests and the natural places. The lava of development and destruction, of pavement and buildings can be interrupted by kipuka you establish and maintain in parks, in backyards, in vacant lots, in waste places. These can be seed banks, kipuka, for when the Land takes back, and re-establishes itself. 

 No city, no farm, no development lasts forever. The Land does, though it may sleep, it may get sick. Tend your kipuka.

TV Show

Looks like I am going to be on a TV show in about a month. My interview on the Ioway story about the Shunka Warak'in will air on the program "True Supernatural" on the Destination America Channel at 9 p.m. ET on Friday, January 2, 2015. That is 8 pm Central and 7 pm Mountain Time. Yikes!

What Goes Up

"What goes up, must come down
What must rise, must fall
And what goes on in your life
Is writing on the wall

If all things must fall
Why build a miracle at all
If all things must pass
Even a miracle won’t last

What goes up, must come down
What must stand alone?
And what goes on, in your mind
Is turning into stone

If all things must fall
Why build a miracle at all
If all things must pass
Even a pyramid won’t last

How can you be so sure?
How do you know what the earth will endure?
How can you be so sure
That the wonders you’ve made in your life
Will be seen
By the millions who’ll follow to visit the site
Of your dream?

What goes up, must come down
What goes round, must come round
What’s been lost, must be found"