Summer Days
We have just returned from a weeklong family vacation near Nederland, Colorado, one of the garden spots of the universe.
We rejoiced in each other’s company, greatly enjoyed poking in town, even did some hiking (despite the National Park Service’s insane policies on trailhead reservations in the back country).
The photo shown here actually is a view from our cabin’s deck last year, but I did such a poor job of taking photos this year that I don’t have much to show.
I can remember coming back from Colorado vacations with hundreds of photos of mountains and trees and streams and moose. Are we seeing less these days, or have memories become more important to me than photos of them?
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I have been busy, though you wouldn’t guess that from my blog output. In the last year I wrote a book, titled Change of Heart: A Wesleyan Spirituality. I think it’s a needed look at our Wesleyan roots in this time of turmoil in Methodism.
It’s already been rejected by Abingdon Press, the United Methodist publishing house. It says it has other similar works already in process. I’ve always given Abingdon the right of first refusal on all my book proposals, and I’ve always been rejected. I think it’s time to put some other publisher at the top of my query list.
And, in fact, my latest has now been accepted for publication by Wipf & Stock. Stay tuned for developments!
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Three KU profs are under fire for allegedly faking their Native American ancestry. Kansas City Star columnist Yvette Walker confesses that her family also had unconfirmed stories about a Blackfoot ancestor.
“For as long as I can remember, I believed I had Native ethnicity,” she writes. “I even thought I knew which tribe I supposedly belonged to because it was a part of my family’s oral history.” To test the family memory, she took a Family DNA test. Turns out family oral history was wrong.
My family also has an oral tradition that a woman several generations back was Native American. Not exactly the classic “Cherokee princess” story, but close enough.
I’m about all who’s left to carry on family oral tradition, and my searches on Ancestry.com have found nothing to corroborate this story. I once assumed that it was because racists in my family conveniently “forgot” about the Indian ancestor until it became more socially acceptable to claim her, but by then all details were lost in time. Maybe it was a myth all along.
I did have an uncle who was Native. He married into the family. Sadly, he died relatively young as an alcoholic.
Whether I have any “Indian blood” in me matters less than how I view and treat Native Americans. Since childhood I have been fascinated by various Indian cultures. The more I learn about the genocide campaign against Native tribes, the more I am appalled by the tragedy of racism.
If you’re interested in learning more, I suggest reading The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk. Actually, I wasn’t capable of reading all of it. I had to skim parts. It’s well written, but many parts will simply break your heart.
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Back to school time nears already. Where did the summer go? Weren’t summers longer back in the “good old days”? Granted, summer child care can be a chore for busy parents. Maybe advancing age fools me on the passage of time, but I wonder if today’s kids suspect they’re being cheated of days in the sun.
Linda and I just bought school supplies for a Spring Hill 9th grader. We deliberately did not keep track of how much it cost. I can’t imagine the expense of having two kids in high school right now, let alone one. Tell me: Why does any high schooler need five two-inch three-ring binders?
