I used to be a terrible bigot. I still am too, but not racially. My bigotry is a total dislike of ignorance when a peson has the ability to be and know more, but chooses neither. And bigotry makes me smolder when I bump into it. A 67-year-old Caucasian male, I encounter various kinds of bigotry aimed my direction, some intentional, other unintentional; or, should I say, unknowing. Still it's all bigotry, still discrimination, and I rankle every time I bump into it or it bumps into me.

I used to make beaded jewelry. I supported my family for a few years with it and we traveled a lot to arts and crafts fairs where we sold my work. Sometimes, my work was juried, but most often not. I went to a couple of powwows and had no problem being accepted by the tribes who allowed me to show my work. A lot of Native Americans bought my work and told me how much they liked it even though I didn't follow known Native-American designs and/or color schemes. A few even told me that it was some of the best bead work they'd seen.

I stopped doing bead work some eight to ten years ago. I became discouraged for a number of reasons, not the least from being able only to eke out a basic living and constantly having to scratch to make ends meet. So, I haven't done bead work for at least eight years with any regularity or seriousness. I did try again this last year and found a small market where I was able to make a few dollars rather quickly. I was excited enough by the success to start putting in some serious time at my beading table again, but, over a period of a few weeks, discovered that my eyesight has gotten bad enough that I can no longer do the work. So, again, stopped.

Two years ago, someone set up a bead shop in town within a few miles of our home. I'd thought about going in and looking around, but was never attracted to the place. Why? Well, I was following my feelings which all to often prove to be very accurate. Over the last couple of years, I've gotten tired of looking at my beading supplies sitting around collecting dust I've frequently felt that I could and should sell them for whatever money I could get for them and be done with that period of my life. Yet, I've been loathe to, for some reason, go into that store and offer my merchandise for sale. I vacillated and procrastinated. Then, this summer, I set up my merchandise near another powwow in Oklahoma. Taking inventory there just of the merchandise displayed, I toted up around 6,000 dollars in retail value. I have a back stock of beads that adds to that value, so the total probably runs close to 10,000 dollars. I figured that the owner of the store would probably be interested hearing my asking price. I was wrong. He wasn't. He told me that he and his wife don't buy from non-Native Americans. Hmmmmmmm.

My ancestors were here almost five hundred years ago. Doesn't that make me a Native American? Yes, his ancestors came to this continent some seven thousand years ago. So what's the difference? Well, a matter of a few thousand years, it seems. It's this attitude that's causing most of the problems between Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Israel didn't remain an identity throughout history. It was shoved down the throats of the countries of the Middle East at the end of WWII. There might still have been strife if this hadn't happened. But it wouldn't have occurred on the scale and with the intensity it does today and since the new Israel was formed. The new Israelis are not "native" to the region. And the warring to remove them is the most extreme form of discrimination.

The problem with that word, discrimination, and its use today is that it has taken on a primarily negative connotation. As a result most people understand and use it almost exclusively in racial and ethnic issues. Yet discrimination use to be used to mean the ability to discern and choose. A person of discrimination at one time meant a person of good judgment as well as someone who could keep confidences. A discriminating person used to mean someone who made good choices or had good taste as well. To be discriminating used to be complimentary.

What most of us don't realize is that we discriminate countless times throughout the day everyday. To discriminate means to discern differences and to make choices based on one's attitude toward those differences. My wife and I like peas so . My wife likes beets and we buy them for her. This is type of discrimination--choosing between things based on values, likes, dislikes, or emotional response. We discriminate when choosing anything in actuality.

We discriminate in making friends. We may choose to associate with someone because his interests are similar to ours or his personality is one we respond to positively. We like someone's hair, smile, mannerisms, or way of dressing or speaking. We choose the streets we drive for any number of reasons just as we choose where we live, where we shop, where we eat, where we take vacations, and how we travel. We choose throughout the day everyday, and that is discrimination in action.

So, what's the point of all of this? I guess it's about venting my frustration with having been blindly and ignorantly discriminated against due to the narrowness of someone else's ethnic identification. But, it's only my due I suppose. After all, I am a member of the white race which did, and still does, discriminate against every race of any other color. And I've simply been given a taste of what they go through everyday.

Walk in Peace and Love.

http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/

http://www.nmoga.org/

http://albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/othercities/boston/stories/2009/01/12/daily28.html

Many things make little sense to me in today's society. Money ranks high on the list and I've often wondered about it, why it came into existence, why its use is so widespread, why we struggle so hard for it.

The first thing that strikes me about money is that it makes no sense. Today, more than ever, it's strictly an illusion. The value of money lies in its exchange-ability. By this I mean that, if enough people were to refuse to accept money for their goods or services, the value of money would fall and the government would lose power over the populace. We're told that the primary reason for the money's devaluation is that the government prints too much. It's a distinct possibility, even a probability, but the primary cause for money to lose its purchasing power, called inflation, is the unwillingness of the public to accept it in exchange for services and products. The lack of confidence in money which causes people not to accept it in exchange for their wares or services is caused by various factors, one of which being the government's pumping too much of it into the money cycle.

Think about this: The government, ours specifically--but also most other governments on the planet--has set itself up as the sole provider of money for the country. In doing so, it cured a couple of problems. First, it made a uniform medium of exchange nationwide and this was important because, when the original colonies formed, each had its own currency. Sometimes, between rivaling colonies, money from one wouldn't be accepted in the other. For the country to unify and to work, the founders established the right of the federal government to issue the sole currency of the land. In unifying the country through standardization of the system of currency, a huge degree of power was placed into the hands of the federal government. Ultimately, this is what money has been about throughout history. Power.

With the control of a nation's money in its grip, any government has the means to levy taxes as well as to have another aspect of control over the populace. It can demand, and has done so, that records be kept on business incomes and profit as well as on individual incomes. Where people are honest, the control is obvious. Where they are not above board with their incomes, their is little control.

At one time, income taxes were voluntary in this country, but now are so controlled that employers are required to deduct them from employees' wages and pay them to the government on a regular basis. Then the employee is allowed to reclaim any overage at the end of the year which the government was paid in excess. Most people who pay taxes will say that they pay out of patriotic duty, but I will guarantee that, were the tax collection system made voluntary tomorrow, the influx of payments would stop as soon as those which were in the mail or in the banking system at the moment were processed. If they didn't cease, then they would diminish from a huge tide to a rivulet in the desert.

Then there are the property taxes. I have an apple orchard of, let's say, five hundred trees. One day along comes Mr. Tax Assessor and lays claim to fifty of my trees and tells me that in the name of the government, all of the produce from those trees belongs to the government and shall be given delivered to it at the end of the harvest season. What do I say? That this is a blatant form of robbery in the guise of government? No, I simply send my apples as required and hope that somehow next year the tax will be lower and I'll have a better crop and, and,....

Rulers and monarchs figured out many many centuries ago that the easiest way to pay for themselves was to make the populace pay their way and living for them. Some proclaimed themselves divine. Others proclaimed their might. But once someone figured out that a bit of shining metal could be exchanged for goods and services, governmental control became tighter and tighter from then on.

Money is only an advanced system of barter. It is a system of "I'll give you this for that" until both parties reach an agreement as to what is to be exchanged for what. Instead of exchanging a hog for a good dress for his wife, for example, a man can now lay down paper and metal, or plastic, and take the dress home, having simply exchanged the idea of numbers with the seller of the dress. The same goes for anything wherein money is the unit of exchange--houses, jewels, cars, drugs, etc. This is why its use is so widespread. It's easier than hauling wares to exchange or working at some trade or chore for someone to be able to take home the item or items one wants. It's a facilitator. And it fills the role well. But it also hinders in that now one has to work exclusively for the illusion of having this bargaining power. Consequently, everyone caught in the system of the money cycle, except for a niggling few, struggle just as the poverty-ridden masses of ancient times did in order to eke out a basic level of living compared to the society surrounding them.

We struggle so hard for money because of the illusion everyone has accepted regarding its necessity. We are so deluded into thinking it necessary for our lives that we no longer fare for ourselves as did our ancestors. We want the things of the moment, the toys and products that make us feel as though we are accomplishing something. We want material things and not emotional or spiritual fulfillment and this is where money's power reigns supreme. As long as we want things we will struggle with the illusion of having to have money to fulfill our needs. And the Earth will continue to be polluted by the waste of our consumerism.

Walk in Peace and Love.

Will Quietwalker

I belong to a site named Care2 where people are struggling via petitions to try to have laws enacted that will restrict, prohibit, or punish certain behaviors or practices such as child abuse and whale hunting. I've thought much about the effect of law on our society and the rest of the world's societies as well. After many years of thinking it over, I've come to the conclusion that no law has ever rid any of mankind's proclivities. Murder is still here despite thousands of years of applying the death sentence. Theft is still here in spite of cutting off people's hands or throwing them into dungeons and prisons. Even in Hong Kong where, if my memory is right, the crime rate is one of the lowest in the world, criminals are caned for theft and all kinds of crimes, yet theft and all kinds of crimes still exist. It is clear to me that no form of crime has ever been eradicated due to the making of or the application of law designed to punish. Even the law makers become swindlers and thieves, not to mention pedophiles. So, with law dealing with the external symptoms and failing utterly, why do we persist in demanding more and more laws?

At Care2, today, I received a request to sign another petition. I pretty much ignore them, occasionally lending my support to this or that one when it seems mete and reasonable to do so. But the one I received today was one which strikes at the core of what my topic deals with--trying to deal with external symptoms and not the root of the problem. It was about child abuse.

A very charged term that--child abuse. Child abusers are so hated that they have one of, if not the, lowest positions possible among the prison population in U.S. They are reviled and run a serious risk of not living to serve out their sentences, especially if convicted of child rape or murder. Still, the prisoners are reacting to external symptoms and not the internal cause. I didn't sign the petition because yet another or a stricter law will not change the situation. Neither will stop child abuse and no law ever to be written will stop crime or misbehavior because, as I said before, the cause is being ignored.

What is the cause? It's whatever drives a person to commit the crime or crimes. The act is a symptom of psychical, emotional, or spiritual pain which is caused to each and every one of us by our fathers and mothers. They too were inflicted with their pains by their own parents, and so on back probably to Adam and Eve. The story of Cain and Abel? Cain slew Abel out of jealousy because his parents seemed to dote on Abel and ignore him. He wanted their attention and couldn't get it, so he removed the object of their attention and his competition. The cause of the murder was an interior problem caused by Adam and Eve and acted out by Cain. It was jealousy.

Not law can cure that. No law can teach understanding and forgiveness of oneself. This is where the solution to all human incorrectness lies. We must understand ourselves first, then forgive ourselves of all of those things inside of us which we see as ugly and unforgivable. After that, we must learn to love ourselves without reservation so that we can forgive everyone else and love them equally also. Then and only then will we ever achieve peace on this planet.

"Late again," the third-grade teacher said to Sammy.

"It ain't my fault," Miss Crabtree. "Blame this on my Daddy. I'm three hours because he sleeps naked!"

Depsite having taught grammar school for thirty years, she asked Sammy, "Can you explain that?"

Always truthful--and a little mischievous, he answered, "You see, Miss Crabtree, we got this here lowdown coyote on the ranch. The last few nights he's done et six hens and killt Ma's best milk goat. Last night, Daddy heard a noise out in the chicken pen, so he grabbed his gun and said to Ma, 'That coyote's back again, I'm a gonna git him!' He yelled to all us kids to stay back.

No boots, no pants, no shirt--naked as a jaybird, he crawled out to the hen house, just like a snoopin' Injun. Then he stuck that double barrel through the window of the coop and stared into the darkness, lookin' for the coyote. Our old hound dog Zeke done woke up by then. He come sneakin' up behind Daddy and stuck that cold old nose of his right in Daddy's crack!

Miss Crabtree, we been cleanin' chickens since three o'clock this mornin'!"