Forgiveness by Leonard Peltier

 Let us forgive the worst among us

because the worst is in ourselves,

the worst lives in each of us,

along with the best.

 

Let us forgive the worst

in each of us

and all of us

so that the best

in each of us

and all of us

may be free. 

 

Excerpt from Prison Writings by Leonard Peltier:

"[Nelson Mandela] is living proof that the edict of the people outweighs the  verdict of the government...Government must be by, of, and for the people, not by, of, an for the special interests... If building more prisons for those of us who are unlike yourselves is to be your strategy, then, I promis you, you cannot build enough prisons to hold us all."

Excerpts from Prison Writings: My Life is my Sun Dance by Leonard Peltier

     "I would like to say with all sincerity- and with no disrespect- that I don't consider myself and American citizen.  I am a native of Great Turtle Island.  I am of the Ikce Wicasa- the Common People, the Original People.  Our sacred land is under occupation, and we are now all prisoners, not just me."

     "Even so, I love being an Indian, for all of its burdens and all of its responsibilities.  Being an Indian is my greatest pride.  I thank Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery, for making me Indian.  I love my people.  If you must accuse me of something, accuse me of that- being an Indian.  To that crime- and to that crime alone- I plead guilty."

 "When you grow up Indian, you quickly learn that the so-called American Dream isn't for you.  For you that dream's a nightmare." 

"White man's books will tell you there are only 2.5 million or so of us Indians here in America.  But there are more than 200 million of us right here in this Western Hemisphere, in the Americas, and hundreds of millions more indigenous peoples around this Mother Earth.  We are the Original People.  We are one of the fingers on the hand of humankind.  Why is it we are unrepresented in our own lands, and without a seat - or many seats- in the United Nations?"

"This was during the last years of the Eisenhower administration, when a resolution was passed by Congress and signed by President Eisenhower to "terminate" all Indian reservations and to "relocate" us off our lands and into the cities.  Those suddenly became the most important, the most feared, words in our vocabulary: "termination" and "relocation."  I can think of few words more sinister in the English language, at least to Indian people.  I guess the Jews of Europe must have felt that way about Nazi words like "final solution" and "resettlement in the East."  To us, those words were an assault on our very existence as a people, an attempt to eradicate us."  ..."It's no accident that the BIA started off back in the 1800s as part of the Department of War.  They're still waging war on us today." 

"To implement their inhuman policy, the federal government in the late 1950s cut off the reservations' already meager supply of food and commodities- the pitiful little "payment" they'd promised us in those treaties to recompense us for all the vast and holy continent they'd stolen.  Hunger was the only thing we had plenty of; yeah, there was plenty of that to go around, enough for everybody.  When frantic mothers took their bloated-bellied children to the clinic, the nurses smiled and told them the children just had "gas."  A little girl who lived right near us on the reservation died of malnutrition.  Sounds like "termination" to me.   

"One night in 1958, a few friends and I sneaked out to watch the Sun Dance at Turtle Mountain, which was held secretly because piercing went on, which was illegal at the time...I envied them and vowed that someday I would be a Sun Dancer.  Then, my friends and I were actually arrested by BIA police as we came out of the Sun Dance grounds.  They claimed we were drunk- a total lie- and jailed us overnight.  They were afraid to arrest the Sun Dancers, who would surely have put up a fight, but we young teenagers were there, and we were Indian, so why not arrest us?  They did.  Here I was, not yet fifteen, and already I was getting firsthand experience in government-fabricated criminal charges and false imprisonment.  I began to realize that my real crime was simply being who I was- an Indian."

"So speaking my language was my first crime, and practicing my religion was the second.  When I was also arrested that winter for siphoning some diesel fuel from an army reserve truck to heat my grandmother's freezing house, I was arrested again and spent a couple of weeks in jail.  That was my first stretch of hard time.  So trying to keep my family from freezing was my third crime, the third strike against me.  Henceforth, I would be considered "incorrigible." My career as a "hardened criminal" was already well on its way." 

I am everyone by Leonard Peltier

 I am everyone

who ever died

without a voice

or a prayer

or a hope

 or a chance...

everyone who ever suffered

for being an Indian,

for being human,

for being indigenous,

for being free,

for being Other,

 for being committed...

 

I am every one of them.

Every single one.

Yes.

Even you.

 

I am everyone. 

The Injustice and the Lies

 Excerpts from Where White Men Fear to Tread

"We decided that Yellow Thunder Camp would become a spiritual youth camp, a live-in school where orphans and so-called troublemakers could learn to live as free people. Instead of teachers and classrooms - a sixth century Roman Catholic invention that rips people from their families and community to isolate them by age group and turn them into robots- we agreed that the whole community would participate in teaching. Our classroom would be the breast of our sacred Grandmother."

"Just as the FBI had found Louis Moves Camp to fill huge gaps in its case against Dennis and me, Myrtle suddenly appeared to supply what was missing to show that Dicky was the killer...Later when the feds needed someone to say Leonard Peltier had bragged about killing two FBI agents near the Jumping Bull's home, Myrtle was trotted out again. As implausible a witness as she made, in front of a white jury, the result was the same: Both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison."

"In 1979 revolution came to Iran. Because of our Geneva conference and our friendly ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization, AIM had some credibility in that part of the world. Like the PLO, we are vitally interested in regaining our country and our sovereignty. John Thomas, known as John T., a witty, loveable guy who gets along with everbody, served as our roving ambassador, visiting Lebanon, Iran, and Egypt. When the Revolutionary Guards took as hostages everyone in the US embassy in Tehran, we sent John T. there to see what he could do. We didn't tdrust the phones, I'm sure the CIA and the Iranians listened to every call, so he flew back to New York to confer with Bill and me. John T. had incredible news. "They'll allow the hostages to send letters and packages home through us," he said. "But we must deliver each one ourselves, we can't just drop them in a mailbox." ... "From the start, the hostages were daily front-page news in every US newspaper. Each network aired four or five hostage stories a week...Legions of men and women from dozens of nations had offered to bring letters from the hostages, but the Iranians allowed only us Indians to carry them. Expecting a lot of media attention, we called a press conference in an airport VIP room...The other local stations and newspapers jumped on the story. The networks ignored us. We contacted them all, as well as Time and Newsweek, calling each several times. I'm sure the State Department, which has less clout at the local level, must have pressed the national media to spike the story because it was bad PR to call attention to the government's inability to deal with the crisis." 

"I walked with Sisseton Sioux named Sydney Kitto, into the yard for morning exercise. Something was strange. There were no guards in sight...Suddenly a kid came running up with a big pipe wrench and whacked the back of Kitto's head...When I turned back again, there was a guy I had never seen before. He stabbed me just below my left nipple with shank... I chased him back around the kitchen and into the cellblock. A wall of guards standing shoulder to shoulder parted to admit him, then closed ranks. when not one guard tried to disarm him, I shouted, "What are you doing? Why are you protecting that punk?"...The man who had attacked me held his shank until Vincent Bad Heart Bull broke through the line of guards to kick him in the face and then in the groin. Guards surged forward. IN the heartbeat before the brawl blossomed into a full-scale riot, Dicky jumped in front, yelling, "Wait! Stop! It's a setup!"

"A Sioux Falls grand jury investigated the incident. I was subpoenaed to testify, and said all I knew was that I had turned around and been stabbed. The assailant, a man named Schillinger also testified, along with several others. An all-white grand jury decided that I was at fault - in effect, that my chest had attacked his knife. Bad Heart Bull was sent to solitary for having thumped Schillinger. IN contrast, although he admitted to having a deadly weapon, my attacker wasn't even punished. He was transferred from maximum-security Sioux Falls to Oxford, a medium-security federal pen in Wisconsin. The man who had attacked Kitto, Schillinger's constant companion, became a trusty and was moved to a cottage outside the walls."

"After the rally, Milo Goings, the AIMster who had been wounded in the knee at Wounded Knee, assigned himself as my bodyguard. In the ensuing week, I learned quite a bit about the pig who had stabbed me. He belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist prison group, and a few years earlier had allegedly knifed other inmates in other federal prisons. The most curious thing about Schillinger was that he was a federal prisoner serving time in a state prison. He wasn't the only such in Grantie City. THe Untied States reimburses the states of those convicted of federal offenses who request transfers to be close to their families (they didn't do that for Leonard Peltier). Schillinger, however, had never been in South Dakota before and had no kin there. There was no legitimate reason for his transfer to Sioux Falls just before I began to serve my time . Although he was a recent arrival who had killed or injured three other dark-skinned prisoners, authorities immediately made him a trusty. IT seems that with Schillinger's history, there could have been only one reason for him to be in the South Dakota State Penitentiary- to kill me. If he had succeeded, I'm sure he would have been freed or otherwise rewarded." 

 

"After reading those alleged philosophers who knew nothing about human liberation, I made up my mind that I was no longer a militant but a born-again 'primitive.' I would rely on the wisdom of my ancestors." - Russell Means

 

"Chief among Brightman's concerns was an insidious new form of genocide- the forced sterilization of Indian women, which had become commonplace. IN 1969, despite and infant mortality rate worse than in any country in the Western Hemisphere- about one death for every three live births- Indians had become the fastest-growing ethnic minority in America. That apparently was unacceptable to the U.S. government. IF we didn't'follow the buffalo into near extinction, it would be harder to seize the rest or our land. Between 1972 and 1976, the Indian Health Service sterilized 42 percent of all Indian women of childbearing age. The sterilization program affected practically every fertile Indian woman who walked or was carried into an IHS hospital. Pregnant women who came to deliver their babies were tricked or forced into signing release forms. When they came out of anesthesia, they had had tubal ligations. Even women who went in for appendectomies or sore threats were told that if they did not submit to sterilization, their children would be taken away from their families would lose welfare benefits." -Where White Men Fear to Tread

 

"Columbus did not set out of find India but a country known to the Eurpoean as Hindustan. Look at the maps he had in 1492 and it's obvious! He wrote of the people he encountered in the New World as 'una gente en dio,' literally, 'a people in with God'... who were 'so peace-loving and generous as if to a fault. Therefore, they would make excellent slaves.' We were enslaved as 'Indians,' we'll gain our freedom as Indians, and then we can call ourselves any damn thing we please!" When he had finished, everyone agreed that all indigenous peoples of our hemisphere would be known as Indians until we could regain our freedom.

 

"Accepting the lesser of two evils, I waived my right to a jury and let Judge Braithwaite, son of a founder of the Sioux Falls Ku Klux Klan chapter, decide my guilt or innocence."

 

"I got the most votes- 534- and Wilson was second with 457. He controlled the election machinery and we knew he would do anything to steal the February 7 runoff, so we asked the BIA and the Department of Justice to send poll watchers. That is entriely within the government's responsibilities as "trustees" of the Indian people. Under U.S. law, we are all wards of the nation. But the same government that had sent observers to Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia and to Vietnam, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and other countries around the world-refused to send them to south Dakota on the ground that it had no right to interfere in the internal workings of a sovereign entity. Of course, the Untied States invokes the facade of Indian self-determination only when it serves its own purposes." 

 

"In1973, 1974, and 1975, more than twenty-five hundred agents were assigned for some significant period to the Rapid City office. In that time where were never fewer than two hundred agents and other FBI personnel there. In one six-month period, there were more than 350- far more than in San Francisco, Seattle, Cleveland, and Atlanta. Yet the FBI never solved any murder of an AIM member or supporter, or even an alleged supporter." It seems to me that their pre-paid government number scam worked, anyone who was contacted with those numbers was now an alleged supporter. "69 AIM people were killed and more than 350 others were shot, stabbed, stomped, burned by arson fires, beaten with tire irons or baseball bats, or seriously injured when their cars were run off the road. Those acts are covered by the Indian Major Crimes Act, which gives the FBI exclusive jurisdiction over felonies on Indian reservations. The feds refused to investigate any of those incidents, claiming a lack of manpower."

 

"I had even more urgent matters on my hands. I had to do something to end Dick Wilson's reign of terror on Pine Ridge. By that time, he had illegally transferred and eight of our reservation-Sheep Mountain Gunnery Range- to the U.S. Department of the Interior and organized his goons into crews of ten or twelve men to keep each community under control." - Where White Man Fears to Tread

 

the "Twenty Points" from the Trail of Broken Treaties, sent and insulting note. It said, in part, "The days of treaty making with the American Indians ended in 1871;... only Congress can rescind for change in any way statutes enacted since 1871..." "Once again, we Indians had accepted the white man's promises -just as our ancestors had. Once again, the government of the United States of America lied." And then what does the federal government do during trial? Do they act as Christians and humble themselves confessing their faults and sins as Jesus said? No! As Russell Means says, "I spent a lot of time that summer working on my legal defense with Mark Lane, Bill Kunstler, Ken Tilsen, Larry Leventhal, and the other lawyers at the WKLD/OC headquarters in Rapid City. Once day Mark and other WKLD/OC people noticed that several men in business suits had moved into an apartment house next door. Marke went there with everybody else, THREW OPEN THE DOOR, AND EXPOSED THEM. The "suits" were FBI agents who had bugged the WKLD/OC offices. They were breaking the very laws they had sworn to uphold (but weren't fired and still got their retirements). Our lawyers went ot Judge Bogue and got a restraining order to prohibit the FBI from installing bugs or tapping our phones." 

 

Gordon "Wilson wanted to buy the loyalty of more people than his own family could provide. The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, a Nixon-era program to urn America's police departments into paramilitary organizations with tanks and other heavy weapons gave Wilson millions of dollars, all channeled through a highways-safety program. Wilson used the money to hire goon squads. With hundreds of armed men, he began to act like Haiti's Duvalier or Nicaragua's Somoza. Wilson became a tin-pot dictator who sought to exterminate all political dissent on the reservation, especially in Pine Ridge Village. Anyone whom Wilson or his henchmen thought opposed them was beaten up, often along with their families. Car windows were smashed or tires slashed. Threats and intimidation were used to extort money. People were thrown in jail on the most ridiculous charges." -Where White Men Fear to Tread 

         

    

Adopting a Cat with Paralysis (we use cat first pronouns here)

       It was the best of times and it was the worst of times...well actually it was summer of 2024.  I had just sold my house and moved back into my friends house in the upstairs bedroom he kept for me.  I had rescued cats from Saudi that I helped re-home the previous summer and was glad that they had all found homes with the help of rescues including the Specialty Breed Cat Rescue in Wisconsin and the Whole Cat Caboodle in Seattle, Washington.  Enjoying lets felines to clean up after I had become familiar with a cat in Saudi that a Filipino had rescued who was paralyzed after it was run over on the street.  I wasn't sure if I should adopt it, after all I had never had a paralyzed cat before nor had anyone I'd known but I inquired curiously anyways.  The rescuer, knowing no one else was interested and feeling overburdened with other cats with paralysis, special needs, or deformities was eager for me to take her.  "But what if she has kidney problems and has to be put down eventually?" I asked as my research had shown that was a strong possibility.  She assured me that was alright and she was just happy for her to have a home.  So, along came Primrose.  This time I didn't have to fly to Saudi to get her but rather another Filipino transported her to the U.S. along with some other cats and I picked her up in Washington, D.C.  

       Initially I kept her in a live-in cat condo, not sure if she would ever live outside of it.  She was apprehensive of my dogs at first who were too eager to be her friends but eventually she proved she wanted to live outside of the cat cage.  So....I transported her to the cat room upstairs where she could crawl around freely, use a litter box that was low to the ground on her own and prove to us all that she was eager to live a live full of cat happiness.  Primrose would climb up and down the cat stairs, pull herself up cat trees, and one night when all was calm and the pups snored away, Primrose snuck through the puppy gate, climbed down the stairs and pulled herself up the ramp to the second tier of the cat tree.  I was astonished to find her down there the next morning and that soon became her routine.  She even meows at the bottom of the stairs when she wants to come back up as it's a bit too many for her to climb.

      It's been two years since I've adopted Primrose and it's been quite the learning experience.  It's not the same as having other cats as she does seem to treat me like her personal handmaid, expecting me to open the puppy gate for her so she can go inside (although she will slide through the bars on her own as well), but I've never regretted adopting her for a moment.  She's loving, kind, spoiled, mischievous, adventurous, overcoming, brave, and strong (literally, that's some serious upper body strength to pull herself the ramps and stairs).  In fact, I love her so much that had it not been for some unknowns with my job I would have adopted another special needs cat this past January.  All in all, I hope that people know that special needs isn't a death sentence.  Her rescuer was shocked that she didn't need diapers.  Nope...Primrose will use her litter box and even has learned from the dogs how to use puppy pads (although I don't recommend it b/c she drags them with her).  I love Primrose and it's only too obvious that she loves me.  

 

 

Primrose soon after arrival to the USA

 

 Getting comfy

 

Smells are good

 

A new hiding spot

Fun times with friends

Cat scratching discovery

 

 I can do stairs

 

Meant to be a seamstress

 

 Pin cushions are really cat toys

 

 Do you need help with that?

 

I can do anything they can do and...

 I can go anywhere they can go

 

My favorite cat pose...

One bed 

 Two bed...

 Three bed..

 

Four

Note: Dog beds are really cat beds in disguise.

The Lies We're Taught in History Class

 Excerpt from Where White Men Fear to Tread

"In the Europe of his time, it was against church law to enslave or murder human beings, although such canon rarely prevented wholesale murder . To enslave Indians for his own enrichment, he had to convince the Church that indigenous people were subhuman, and therefore could be slaughtered or enslaved with impunity.  To persuade the church that they were subhuman, Columbus accused the Indians of such unnatural acts as cannibalism - a lie.  Later,  Cortez accused the Aztecs of human sacrifice- another lie, but my own recent conversations and experiences with Aztec medicine men convinces me that their ancestors, aided by a masterful understanding of plants which temporarily slow the body's functions to near-paralysis, performed open-heart surgery.  This has been partly confirmed by recent archaeological and pharmacological research.  In order to conceal this truth and sell the lie of human sacrifice, the Franciscans who accompanied Cortez burned every Aztec book.  The church policy of genocide was the basis for European colonization of two continents- and as the 1994 revolt in Chiapas illustrated, nothing has changed."  

The Birth of Tatanka

 Excerpt from Where White Men Fear to Tread

"I wiped the blood from his face, ears, and eyes and held him close.  I wouldn't let the nurses have Tatanka back.  I began to sing to him.  One of the white women in the delivery room ,perhaps and anesthesiologist of the head nurse said something like, "I suppose we'll have to listen to these savage chants now."   

 

It was these very white nurses who worked alongside white BIA medical doctors as they sterilized Indigenous women after giving birth, often without their consent or knowledge, and who also tried to convince new, Indigenous mothers to put their children up for adoption. 

The U.S. Government's Aim to Impoverish

Excerpt from Where White Men Fear to Tread by Russell Means p. 451-453

"Anaya worked for Tom Lubban, who represented the Western Shoshone.  Their research had confirmed what the Shoshone had been saying for generations- because their only treaty cession in 1851 to the United States was a right of way to the California goldfields, the tribe still posessed aboriginal title to all land in Nevada.  Although the few remaining Shoshone raise horses and cattle, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had illegally claimed jurisdiction over all their land.

Many Shoshone ranchers refuse to pay grazing and usage fees for their own land, so the BLM periodically raids their ranches and confiscates their livestock.  When that happened to two elderly women, The Dan sisters, they sued for the return of their herds and for punitive damages.  While their case worked its way through the courts, the BIA, without the tribe's knowledge, hired attorneys who went before the Indian Claims Commission with a claim for wrongful appropriation of their Nevada land.  The commission awarded the tribe $27 million dollars- a few cents an acre. Very surprised to learn about the settlement, the Shoshone said, "We didn't ask for this money and we don't want it, because we never agreed to sell our land."   

When the Dan sister's lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the government twisted the law, ducking the larger issue of land ownership and turnign the case into a personal claim.  THe high court refused to hear their appeal, thus upholding lower-court rulings, which held taht the Dan sisters must pay grazing ees and penalties- and would never get their cattle and horses back.  In yet another example of the white man's justice, the BLM was given a license to steal Indian livestock.  The fial irony of the case is that Shoshone lands are not being used by non-Indians- so it was a clear-cut case of theft, among the most blatant by the federal government in this century.

When I heard about all that from Anaya and lubban, I conculed taht uthe U.S. government wanted toforce all Indians to become welfare recipients.  There are very few Western Shoshone.  THey ahve no tourist attractions and live in remote corners of the states, so they are largely out of sight and out of mind.  Why not leave them alone?  Because the U.S. government's policy is to impoverish all Indian people, including those who for centuries have been self-sufficient and productive, even by the standards of white society...I knew that the white man couldn't let those Indians have their rights because then other Indians would demand the same."

My Love for Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone asked me why in the world I would want to go to Afghanistan? After all they said, it's nothing but a deserted, sandy place, where men oppress women. Here was my response: 

 

 

Well I suppose that might be the view of people who have never been there. But I’ve met people in the mountain villages who invite me to their homes and have their daughters stay home from school just to meet the foreigner and sing me a song. They offer you food, let your dogs in their house and then when you leave say, “come back to my village” as their daughter takes a picture with me before heading off to school. I’ve seen plateau gardens much like the Aztec and Mayans had on the hillsides and irrigation canals running snake like through their planting systems along a stream. Long dirt pathways and ladder bridges to cross where you meet women with their burqas off eating w/ their male family members under the apple trees and women singing and dancing and complementing my clothes, asking if I want to trade. Spending the night in the downstairs of a family's home w/ all the women and a ten year old boy who slept alongside his mother while the men slept upstairs and when I leave they give me their jewelry . I tried to decline but they insisted, then when it fell in the sand and I didn’t want them to think I threw it away I tried to tell them I lost it and they tried to give me more but I had to decline. I met a man who found me on the streets of Kandahar and helped me find a hotel only to have him invite me to his home the next day and his wife ask him “why did you take her to the hotel? you should have brought her here.” I’ve met curious young farmers who would watch me as I played in the stream w/ my dogs and when I asked where water was to drink and they pointed to the stream only i was concerned about drinking that they brought me a bottle full of water that clearly was not from the store, I hoped I wouldn’t get sick and my some miraculous blessing I didn’t. I met another elderly farmer w/ his foot amputated and a prosthetic who invited me for tea in the fields only my dogs kept stepping on his tomato plants so I had to sadly decline. I rode my bicycle home from school passing two boys riding on the same bike heading home from school in their school uniforms. For some reason I looked down and I noticed that both feet of the boy on the back of the bike were prosthetics. I found myself riding home one day w/ one boy racing me on his bicycle and the only reason I had to stop mid race was b/c there was a giant steel industrial trash can in front of me and if I gotten in his lane he might get hit by a car. I found myself walking home only for Afghan women holding infants to invite me in their house. I bought food from a shop made of mud and sticks where an old man sat curiously watching me as his 10 year old daughter sold me goods. I wondered if I would be able to teach her English, if there was somewhere I could have school. I met boys in an orphanage sponsored by an American ER doctor who would write down the English I taught them, one of them mimicking me saying “copy” when he finished until I was told I could no longer go back b/c the Taliban might attack the orphanage. I worked with women who never went to school until 4th grade when the Americans invaded and graduated when they were 24 from university only to send me emails after the Taliban take over saying they weren’t allowed to do anything, could I help? I met a Kuchi woman who was paralyzed w/ a urine bag in Afghanistan living in a house of mud and clay that I built for them that they were grateful for. I paid for her surgery b/c apparently the NGO’s have decided to forget about Afghan suffering all because of the state of female education. I paid for a tutor for a few months for the Kuchi children who didn't have a school and was told only boys could go and then I found out later on that girls were going too. I saw women in Kandahar walking around in pink and purple abayas and then wondered why I couldn’t do the same? Why did the Taliban suggest I need to wear dark colors when they weren’t? I met an Afghan woman married to a Talib in Helmand who asked me to take her son to America to go to school. I asked her Talib husband whether he would let his daughter go to school. He replied, “she will go to university if the Taliban leadership allows it” as his infant daughter bounced on his lap playing with his beard while he recited Quranic surahs. I met the Taliban in Helmand who upon me arriving to the ministry after it closed b/c I had gotten very sick in Kandahar decided to call the chief to come back to give me a permit rather than make me wait another day. When it turned out I needed another document from another office elsewhere he called his Taliban friend and told him to return to work, that my guide would drive there to get it. I met Talibs who stared out me curiously, even asking if they could come to America to see our historical sights like I saw theirs. I met Afghans both who worked with the Americans and those who fought against them curiously intermarried and eating under the same roof determined to bring their country together and make it successful. I saw hope. I met people whose hope would never die even in a pile of rubble and who despite how little they had would insist on giving me, an American, whatever they had. That is the Afghanistan I know and love, a place where you can get lost in the mountains and find yourself surrounded by dozens of friends you never knew you had willing to invite you into their home. That is why I love Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

 

Street children I bought a meal for. Later I bought them shoes.

Ainsley; a puppy I found on day on the way to school laying on the side of the road bleeding after being run over by a car.  I paid a taxi drive to rush her to Nowzad clinic who helped save her life and then I had to run off to school down different streets arriving late.

Puppy Fashion Amongst the Northern Lights

It's Minnie wearing a Minnie Mouse dress!  I can't wait for her Minnie Mouse ears to come in the mail.

 

And here's Mickey the Chunky Monkey, he has Mickey ears

 coming in the mail as well.

    My puppies have gotten so BIG!  In fact Mickey is officially 3.5 lbs overweight at a hefty 21.5 lbs versus the 18 lbs max he should be.  Minnie on the other hand is a slim 13 lbs which is why their nick-names are Chunky Monkey and Skinny Minnie.  As you can see they are looking utterly fabulous in their new doggies clothes.  So fabulous in fact I've already ordered more.  I had to buy Mickey a larger sweater, this one was a little too snug but it doesn't stop him from looking absolutely adorable in it.  He also needs a larger snowsuit as he can hardly move in his he's so pudgy but when I went to look I found that his is already the LARGEST size!  Oh MY!  Well so far they're fine going out with just a leash and collar despite me needing 2 coats, snow pants and a face mask on just to walk to school.  Minnie in the mean time is waiting on her fabulous new red coat and 5 more dresses to add to the 3 she already has.  Soon enough I'll have the most fashionable dogs on the Slope.

    

A Pasta Dyed Thanksgiving!

        I understand that I have been neglecting my blog.  I wanted to upload videos of my classroom but poor internet bandwidth seems to inhibit that at my residence and thus allocate that as a solely "once in the school activity."  Obviously one would be able to tell once watching the videos why I suddenly forget to do that at school as I'm far too busy constantly decorating and improving my classroom.

I have been busy creating a Hungry Caterpillar section for my classroom.  Thank you to all the parents who donated Pringles cans!  I can't wait to turn them into Hungry Caterpillar jars and allow the students to feed them with green bottle caps depicting foods the Hungry Caterpillar likes to eat.  Yuuummm...did someone say munchies?

 

As you can see pasta dying for Thanksgiving crafts is no mess-free activity.  

 

Thanks to everyone who donated pasta and hand sanitizer.  I can see I should have plenty of pasta for the rest of the year.  

 

A Thanksgiving craft already complete, ready for a few more?  That reminds me, I hope those coasters arrive in time.

 

And of course, what would Thanksgiving be without a Thanksgiving poem to go along with it?