Zachary

The band

The other band

Cooking stuff (temporarily inactive...)

 
[Wednesday of our vacation]
It’s been so long now, I wonder if I can remember what we did our last day of vacation. Let’s see. We were happily reunited with J.T.’s mom who had stayed in the same hotel we did our first night. By the time we showed up, we were ready for lunch. (Did we do lunch first?) We ate at a yummy Chinese restaurant – a nice change from hospital food I’m sure.

Our only tourist activity of the day was checking out a Phoenix Indian museum. It was started by some philanthropist buying up lots of crafts from local Native American artists. The couple acquired so much work they spawned a separate house, which has evolved into the museum of today. They had some really impressive art work, especially the clay bowls and pots. Amazing, amazing stuff. They also had some work that was not so impressive, but that was not the majority. Lots of history and stories wrapped around the pieces and the museum tour guide had good knowledge to share. She did fine until we got to the section on boarding schools. They have small wing/room display dedicated to the boarding schools many Indian children were forced to go to. Native Americas were pushed around, moved around, killed and just plain overtaken by the new settlers. In time, the children were forced to attend boarding school for assimilation into the society. While many European immigrant parents wanted this for their children, most Native American parents did not – they were not given the choice. Some died, some thrived. Most ended up totally confused, unable to relate to the people in their village, and unable to relate to other Americans. The museum tour guide was of the opinion it wasn’t bad or good, but just was, and that the intentions were good.

I struggled with this. It boils down to the old saying, “the means justify the ends” which in most cases is B.S.

After our museum tour, it was off to the airport for a leisure boarding. J.T. was stopped again at the security gate for something in his pocket, but I don’t remember what anymore. I do remember giving him a hard time…
posted by hbt at 11:08 AM