• About

northierthanthou

northierthanthou

Monthly Archives: November 2016

The Difference Between Being Drunk and Being a Drunk

27 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Native American Themes

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Acoholism, Alaska, Alcohol, Anchorage, Confirmatin bias, Drinking, Flagstaff, Perception, prejudice

15168788_10211285138429310_1895936641296381200_oI just walked into my hotel. Its almost 3:00am here in Anchorage. I immediately walked into the gift shop and grabbed two sodas, a bag of Cheetos and package of skittles. Perhaps it was my clumsy movements. Perhaps it was the hour. My tunnel-vision stare, perhaps? Either way, I’m sober enough to know the night clerk had me pegged for drunk. He had that particular air of one who is humoring the completely addled for just so long as it takes to get them on their way. Fair enough, I thought. Yes, indeed, I did just close down a bar, and I’m at least 2 sheets (if not 3) to the wind. Perhaps I deserve the condescension.

Fair enough.

I recall once, when I briefly worked at a cabin resort, a particular school teacher used to come and stay with us. She would down a fair bit of wine and then fail to use out one pay-phone correctly. We were in the middle of Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona, and Cell Phones simply didn’t work there, so that pay-phone was her only option. Having been told that the pay-phone wasn’t working, I would ask her what message she received on trying to dial out. If she could remember it accurately, I could tell what the problem was; whether it was her card,  a wrong number, or something else entirely. I knew the messages, and I knew what they meant. What I didn’t know what how to get her to take the message seriously in her state. She would just tell me the card didn’t work. When I asked what the specific wording of the message had been, she would look at me, weaving a little, and say; “It says it didn’t work.” In the end I let her use the house phone, because I just couldn’t unscramble the problem she had without her at least telling me what the message had been. I could clearly see that she thought me an illiterate ass for asking her questions she thought she had already answered. I, for my own part, wondered if should would even understand me when she was sober.

Mutual contempt is a mutal solace, I suppose.

Anyway, I reckon I thought about her much as the man at the hotel desk must have thought about me.

But I’m not just a drunkard! I’m so much more!

So, must many people have thought to themselves as they were treated as just another drunk by someone somewhere. It’s easy to consider yourself worth more than your own slurred speech and your blurred vision, but it’s a bit more difficult to think of a complete stranger who is clearly exhibiting such conditions as anything more than the sum total of his drunken idiocies.

It’s an odd thing. Those of us that do drink are bound to drink to excess at some point in our lives. And drinking in excess, none of us are particularly dignified. Yet some get pass, and others don’t. What makes the difference?

I can think of nights playing beer frizbee in grad school, vomitting in the sink of the basement beneath my friends apartment complex. Or was that another friend that did that? I don’t remember really. It’s been 20+ years and quite a few amber ale’s since that night. Still everyone was a friend there that morning. We were drunk, yes, but we were human. We saw each other home and we called to make sure everyone was okay the next day. We would never have mistaken each other for mere drunks.

My Dad drank a glass or three of Christian Brothers’ Brandy every night since pretty much the age at which I was old enough to notice (Okay, sometimes it was E&J). I never thought of him as a drunk, net even the night that he drove home at the wee hours of the morning and sat in the car inexplicably as I waited for him to come in. I finally went out to find him crying. He’d blown a bit more on the slot machines than either he or Mom normally allowed themselves to do that evening, and it bothered him a great deal. “I think I’m an alcoholic,” he said. I could hardly believe my ears. It was a couple hundred dollars he’d lost that night, hardly enough to blow the mortgage, but Dad was genuinely disturbed by the night’s events. That he’d driven home was another cause for concern, but I never could tell just how far under the influence he had been that night. Perhaps I didn’t want to. I can still count on one hand the number of times I thought my father was actually drunk, and I never thought of him as a drunk, but that night he called it himself. Perhaps, the nightly brandy mattered more than any of us thought it did.

…at least until the next day when the conversation that night was simply forgotten.

Whatever the damage done to our bank accounts, father had worked out a solution. Whatever had frightened him about his own drinking, he had worked out a solution to that too. He was prepared to face the day squarely, and I saw none of the doubt from the night before. I think I talked to him about it, but I don’t remember the details of the conversation. I suspect I was all too happy to find my way past the memory of that night. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw him drunk again.

Though I certainly did see the brandy. Just a glass or two every night.

If I cut my father an ounce of slack, I certainly didn’t cut that same slack for my neighbor. She too had a glass of something on the rocks every night after work. I recall her telling me about how her ex-husband stank of alcohol even when he was sober. She added this to the list of complaints about his abusiveness and general worthlessness. She told me all of this as she drank her own nightly glass of hard liquor, and you bet your ass I noticed. I thought of her as a worthless drunk, someone who buried herself in a glass every night.

Harsh, I know.

A double standard, I also  know.

I knew my father. I knew his goals and his values as well as his frustrations, and I knew his weaknesses as anyone who has ever loved another knew them of those they loved. Falling down drunk, he would always be the man I most admired in life. Of my neighbor, I knew mostly frustrations. I knew her to be a pain in the ass at best and a complete fuck-up at worst. I of course knew this mostly from the talk of my parents, and from my own encounters with her. It was easy to think of her as a mere drunk

I also knew that she had a Masters Degree in Archaeology, that she had raised two daughters despite an ugly divorce and who knows what else the woman had dealt with in her life. I think about that now and realize I should probably have found my way to giving her a little more credit than I did at the time. That she was capable of serious study was a mystery to me, and I never saw any of her struggles with a trace of empathy. She would always be a drunk to my eyes, even if she were sober, and my father never would be, not even when he was in fact quite drunk.

So what makes the difference between a drunk and a person?

I reckon that’s a good deal of the distinction itself, knowing the person in the first place, or at least having enough in common to imagine the person in the first place. Without that, it’s all too easy to think of someone who is actually drunk as someone whose drunkenness is a fairly complete personal account.

My neighbor in Fort Defiance always struck me as a drunk. I could recount the many irritations he inflicted upon me during my time on the Navajo Nation, not the least of them being his threats one afternoon to burn down the house with me in it. I learned of these the next day when his brother forced him to apologize to me. All I had noticed was that he was shouting something at me from outside. I had already written him off that day. Didn’t even realize the drama that was unfolding out there.

That same neighbor once told me that he was going to hitchhike to Flagstaff and get a job. This was well into the morning. He had awoken me on a work night, quite drunk and very depressed, and somewhere in the midst of telling me all his woes, this neighbor announced his great plan for turning his life around. I can’t remember what I said, but apparently I did express some doubt. He was quite offended. Asked what I meant by that,I felt fairly flat-footed for a moment. I fished around in my brain and finally came up with one thing which while very true was not nearly as judgemental as the thought that probably led to the comment in the first place. I knew that strategy wouldn’t have worked for me. I wouldn’t be able to just hitchhike into a town, totally broke, and land a job just like that. So, I said so. My neighbor was happy with that response. He took it as a sign of respect, and in a sense it was, albeit one which was quite consistent with the disrespect that had triggered my skeptical comment to begin with.

I did notice that he never actually hitch-hiked into Flagstaff and got a job.

Neither did I.

Not like that anyway.

I always thought of that neighbor as a drunk. I knew him to be a person, even cared about him, I suppose, but I never quite shook the sense that his life had been claimed by liquor. That neighbor used to sober up from time to time, and then he’d REALLY be a pain the ass. Mostly, he’d need a ride to work, because when he was sober he would inevitably get a job. When his brother (who lived next door) stopped giving him rides, the man would turn to me. I remember one summer, I would return from an effectively 16 hour day, starving, with a couple chapters yet to read so I could teach the next day and sure enough he wanted a ride to work. Oh how I wished his brother would give him a ride.

…or that he would go back to being a drunk.

Now there is a damning thought!

But I had it just the same.

And sadly, that wish did come true.

Damn me anyhow for wishing it!

Years later, I lived in Flagstaff. I used to go to a bar named Charlie’s once every week or two, mostly to watch a bluegrass band named Second Harvest. Loved their music! A friend of a friend once sneered at the place, describing it as a gay bar. I always figured it was a place where gay people would be welcomed, but not so much a dedicated gay bar. Just the same, it was my drinking establishment of choice.

I recall one night watching as a brand-new security guy glowered at two men dancing together. It was a spectacular display. Not them. HIM. The look on his face was one of utter contempt. I could just imagine him thinking of reasons to eject them, reasons he never quite acted upon. He did, however, find cause to eject one elderly Navajo man, an individual who though quite drunk had been sitting harmlessly in a corner. As the ‘drunk’ was escorted out and onto the street, I couldn’t help but wonder at the numerous college students boisterously enjoying their own states of inebriation throughout the bar. Some of them were even native, but they were dressed as college kids. They fit, so to speak. Many of those still in the bar were well past the drunkenness of the man put outside, but they were young and they were middle class.

They weren’t drunks. They were just drunk.

He was a drunk, at least as far as security was concerned that night.

They would probably think of him the same way if he had been sober.

Years earlier, I had already encountered that same privilege one weekend when I was doing research in Farmington, New Mexico. I came out of an Arby’s one afternoon to find an empty six-pack of beer in the back of my ‘tribee’ (tribal vehicle). It was a good thing I noticed before someone else did, but I couldn’t help wondering at the thought process of whoever put it there. Did he think he was going to get a Navajo in trouble? Would he have done it had he realized it was a white guy driving the truck? Or maybe it was someone who noticed the white driver, and thought to generate some trouble for the guy clearly out of place. I believe this was the same weekend a waitress invited me to a bar. She made a point to tell me it was where “our kind of people” hung out. I still wonder if she would have invited me had she knew where I lived, where I worked, or what kind of vehicle I was driving?

On a side note, I once walked into a random bar in Farmington. It was a short walk from my hotel, so I thought I’d skip over and drink a beer or three before going back for the evening. No sooner than I entered when I realized I was the only white guy in there, and several people where staring at me in not so friendly ways. Had I been with someone it would have been different. I would still have been a white guy, yes, but I would have been their white guy. I’d done that once or twice before. It works. In this instance I was alone and feeling very much like an intruder at that particular moment. What was I to do? Try to tell people I’m one of the good guys? Hell, I wouldn’t have listened to me. Why should they?  I also figured if I turned around and headed out immediately that would set off all kinds of red flags. If I stayed too long I figured someone would cause trouble. Maybe I could talk my way out of it; maybe I couldn’t. So, I sat down and ordered one beer.I drank it and left. As I headed out, I could swear I saw the bartender nodding, as if to tell me I played that one right.

Okay, that last story is probably all manner of confirmation bias, but anyway, that’s how I felt at the time. And I’m still feeling a little buzzed, so I’m leaving it on the page, against my better judgement of course.

My better judgement begins on the other end of a long sleep.

I lived briefly on the south-side of Chicago. By briefly, I mean 3 years, minus the summers. In any event, it was long enough to begin to recognize some of the homeless people in the area. Maybe it was my long hair but one fellow always insisted on trying to sell me incense. I bought a pack. (Think I gave it to a friend of mine.) It should come as no surprise of course  that many of these people appeared quite often to be under the influence of something or other. It would be easy to think of them as mere drunks.

One moment stands out particularly in my mind. Some young men in their twenties were talking to one of the homeless individuals. This one was often very drunk. In fact, he was often incapable even of asking for change. When he was that far into his liquor, the man would simply hold out his hand and groan, or mumble something he might have thought of as speech but which no-one but him could really parse. Anyway, the young men, were chatting and laughing. It was almost friendly, but not quite.

One of the young men asked quite loudly; “Do you remember me?”

Swaying a bit, the man slurred out a ‘yes’.

“Who am I.”

His answer? “YOU!”

Now THAT was a mike drop if I ever saw one.

So, what do all these stories add up to? Hell, they probably add up to porridge as far as I can tell. I’ve been drinking. Remember! But if I may take a moment to try and sense the make of the matter, I would guess they start with one obvious fact that drinking begets all manner of foolishness. All manner of terrible things happen once people start tipping those damned bottles. I’m fortunate enough to be one of those people who can stop after 2 or 3 beers and simply call it a night (many can’t), else I might have a lot more interesting stories.

…or perhaps others would have the stories about me.

More to the point, I’m often struck by the perception of drunkenness. Where drunken behavior is concerned, we can tolerate an awful lot from our own kind, however we choose to identify them. Strangers get far less patience. Cross a few social boundaries and the benefit of the doubt wears thin very quickly. Often as not, race and class can provide all the boundary one needs to think of someone not just as a drunk person but as nothing but a drunk, someone whose total value as a human being can be summed up in their smell, their slurred speech, and in whatever other foolishness they have brought with them.

Sometimes, you don’t even need that kind of boundary.

A few hours ago, I sat next to a man about my age, my ethnicity, and near as I can tell about the same economic status as my own. He was eating soup and struggling to get his head under control while the house band at Humpy’s played its last tune of the night. He was chatting quite a bit, though I couldn’t make any sense of it. Nobody else was in ear-shot. I still don’t know is he meant to be talking to me, or if he was talking to an old love, an imaginary adversary, or perhaps even his own guardian angel. Either way I thought of the man as a drunk. He was a bit further into his cups than me, to be sure, but I don’t figure that quite explains the distinction. To me, meeting the man under such circumstances, he was simply a drunk, no more and no less. I on the other hand was just drunk, and there was a difference.

At least until I hit the hotel desk.

 

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Ocean Wants to Be More Firm

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Bad Photography

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Arctic, Ocean, Photography, Photos, Sea, Sea Ice, Sunrise, Winter

15055704_10211157809206159_5684896551570056852_nThe sunrise brought a couple sun-dogs with it this morning. By this morning, I actually mean almost noon, but the point is I went out with a camera to see if I could get some nice doggie pics. I wouldn’t say the picture does it justice, but anyway, here is what I got.

Cute little puppies, aren’t they?

Afterwards, I remembered that the ocean has been flirting with solid form lately, so after playing with the sun dogs I turned around and headed the other way for a block or two. Kinda slushy right now, but definitely not my flavor. I expect it will get properly solid soon. In the interim, my hand has suffered enough for my amateur camera games. I think I’ll stay inside and write a bit now.

Might as well add a few more pics from the last month or two. As always, you may click to embiggen.

Nuther pic of the Sun Puppies
Nuther pic of the Sun Puppies
The windows at NOAA make good picture frames, but all this sciency stuff gets in the way.
The windows at NOAA make good picture frames, but all this sciency stuff gets in the way.
A barge and heavy equipment at dusk
A barge and heavy equipment at dusk
Patterns of erasure
Patterns of erasure
Little Junkmail stays inside when the northern lights are out. Smart Junkmail. She gets to keep her head!
Little Junkmail stays inside when the northern lights are out. Smart Junkmail. She gets to keep her head!
Sun Puppies
Sun Puppies
Colorful dusk
Colorful dusk
A snow fence at sunrise
A snow fence at sunrise
More northern lights
More northern lights
Just ocean. (I think this is an old one. I cheats!)
Just ocean. (I think this is an old one. I cheats!)
Sunset a few days back
Sunset a few days back

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Milagro Bagpipe War?

03 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by danielwalldammit in Movies, Politics

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Capitalism., Development, Donald Trump, Film, Globalism, Globalization, Milagro Beanfield War, Scotland, You've Been Trumped

mv5bmjizmje3mdcwm15bml5banbnxkftztcwmjk0mjg4ng-_v1_sy1000_cr007071000_al_John Nichols, the author of Milagro Beanfield War once gave the keynote speech at a conference I attended in Colorado. If I recall correctly the name of his presentation was; “Everything I know about the West I Learned in New York.”

…something like that.

Anyway, the point of the speech was that the sort of problems he wrote about in work like Milagro Beanfield War simply weren’t really unique to the western states. They were much the  same as they were anywhere else. Big money can be a terrible danger to small communities. That is as true of an inner city neighborhood facing gentrification as it is a small town in northern New Mexico facing a major development project.

I thought about this last night as I watched You’ve Been Trumped (2011), the story of Donald Trump’s efforts to develop a golf course in the community of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Conflict between Trump and his team, on the one hand, and a small group of locals who want to hold onto their own homes and their own community provide the central theme of the film. At least one Youtube channel describes this film as a David and Goliath story, which seems fair enough to me. Perhaps, that’s Milagro Beanfield War was too, a David and Goliath Story. The same could be said of Local Hero (a film referenced in You’ve Been Trumped). We could certainly find other such stories if we looked, but whats most striking about this one is that it’s real. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help thinking it was as if someone had taken Nichols book and reworked into a movie script based in Scotland. That someone would have to be Donald Trump himself. It’s almost as if he took that former story of a heartless developer stomping all over a local community and said; “Yep! That villain is what I want to be.” The rest of the plot seems to flow smoothly from there.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not the most balanced documentary I’ve ever seen. If there are arguments in favor of Trump’s development, this film makes little effort to present them. The story-line focuses squarely on the conflicts with those living near Trump’s development project.I do wonder just how representative those individuals may be, and just what the overall balance of support and opposition to Trump may have been in the local community. The movie leaves a definite impression  regarding such matters, but it doesn’t answer them squarely. That said, what this film does show is damning enough in its own terms. Within the narrow scope of Trump’s relationship to those resisting his project, the film reveals enough to condemn the man. Whatever might be said in favor of Trump’s development, the actions covered in this film are truly abysmal in their own right.

It’s fascinating to see how much of the ugliness we’ve seen from this man during his presidential campaign appears in this film from 2011. His abusiveness is on full display as Trump repeatedly describes one hold out (Michael Forbes) as a filthy man living a disgusting life amidst his own trash. His penchant for simply telling the most convenient story regardless of the facts at hand can easily be seen as Trump brags about his wonderful contributions to the environment by stabilizing local dunes even as the film repeatedly shows construction tearing up the land, diverting waterways, and disrupting the natural cycles of the local ecosystem. It’s also present in Trump’s claims to be serving the people of Scotland even as he wages a heavy-handed campaign of harassment against those Scots interfering with his plans for a business clearly aimed at tourists. And of course his easy dismissal of journalism can be seen in his demands for questions from ‘real journalists’ at a press conference, effectively dismissing those who might not support his business. We here in America have seen all this time and again over the last year. The people of Aberdeen had already seen plenty of it by 2011.

Of course others have seen similar treatment in countless places where Donald Trump has done business. This is just one of many instances in which one of Donald Trump’s grand schemes for development fell like a boot-stomp of a local community.

…which brings me to another interesting feature of this film. It helps to illustrate some of the foibles of popular right wing theories about the power-relations between government and big business. As with other populist candidates, much of Donald Trump’s appeal seems to be rooted popular resentment about elites. How such resentment could lead to support for a man who so clearly asserts aristocratic privilege over the mere peasantry is something of a mystery to me. Still, he does draw a great deal of his appeal from messages systematically distorting  the modern political economy all across the media. At least a portion of this can be seen in the movie.

Let us start with libertarianism! This school of thought generally counsels us to avoid government entanglement with business, and with people’s personal lives. In principle this applies to any number of things, but in practice, the message is more likely to carry the day when the issues at stake are progressive taxation, welfare programs, or any number of government regulations tying the hands of big business. It’s a school of thought that consistently tells us we should not look to government to resolve questions of economic inequality. Central to the force of this message is a vision of equity in which government officials treat all people with equal regard and government programs afford equal rights to all of us. You’ve Been Trumped presents us with countless situations in which the Trump organization uses  official power to defeat the mere peasants who stand in his plans. Those people suffer loss of electricity, water, and destruction of their property, to say nothing of a deliberate effort to block their view of the sea for the sake of doing just that. At each stage in this process officials are slow to listen to complains or respond to requests for assistance and quick to enforce rights claimed by Trump. It might be that particular disputes can be sorted out in the courts, but Trump’s organization clearly has the upper hand at stage in this process. The notion that this system is consistent with any formal sense of fairness is at best a laughable proposition.

Libertarians might object that they too wouldn’t support Trump’s use of municipal authorities to abuse local enemies, assuming of course that the abuses shown in this film stand up to critical scrutiny, but that hardly addresses the problem. What this film shows is the leverage that monied interests do get over every level of government authority in existence. It isn’t enough to moralize the issue, to stand on the sidelines and shout; “Hey stop, don’t do that.” The point is that this is exactly what happens when we allow substantial disparities in the distribution of economic resources. Those with more at their disposal WILL use those resources to skew government authority (something Donald Trump appears to have done throughout his long career as a public menace). Despite this fact, libertarian narratives continue to focus on the problems of aid to the poor. They offer no solution whatsoever to the sorts of problems shown in this film, but libertarians continually present themselves as underdogs hard at work fighting against ‘statist’ power. In practice that fight is virtually always a fight to take away what little help and what little protections those in need may have.When an actual aristocrat takes it upon himself to destroy the life of a man he deems to filthy to accord even the most minimal respect, libertarians are simply silent on the matter.

Anti-globalists provide one of the more consistent sources of support for Donald Trump in this election campaign. Alex Jones of Info Wars would have to be counted among his most visible supporters.  He and his own fans often speak of Trump’s detractors as globalists, thus framing the whole election in terms of support for, or opposition globalism. Trump’s support for Brexit, combined with promise to build a wall on the southern U.S. border would seem to have earned him a great deal of points with this crowd. But of course this only counts if you have a really myopic view of globalism. It is one thing to stop people at your borders, which is what Trump is happy to offer the anti-globalist crowd, but of course money and power can easily flow right over those same borders. Yes, Trump has also declared his opposition to a number of international trade deals, but this is a man who has also taken advantage of opportunities on the other side of the border throughout his career. Simply put, big money doesn’t need a special trade deal to take advantage of foreign workers and foreign markets, and this movie illustrates that very clearly. It is Donald Trump’s wealth that enables him to go to a foreign country and simply have his way with a small local community. Nothing in Trump’s political agenda suggest that he intends to stop such things, and a good deal suggests that he intends to continue them.

Trump is happy to control borders, precisely because restricting the movement of workers is critical to optimizing profits under global market conditions. A world in which cheep labor can be found to the left and rich buyers are over to the right is not a bad deal for people like Donald Trump. In this respect, he is the perfect candidate for the anti-globalists. He will make a show of national boundaries, one they can be proud of, but he will never actually challenge the power relations at stake in the global economy. Neither Donald Trump nor Alex Jones really want to see anything truly revolutionary happen there. That might disrupt Jones’ sale of dietary supplements or keep Donald from demolishing coastal communities for his jet-set customers.

In the end, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that Donald Trump could run as a populist candidate. He isn’t the first pampered elitist to pose as the hope of the common man. Still, he does seem to be one of the most clueless, and it does scare me that he could easily become our President. I’m not a fan of Hillary either, to be honest, but I worry that the whole nation may soon hand the keys to a problem child with a history of wrecking most everything he touches. More than that, his candidacy helps to illustrate precisely why the underdog themes of those on the right always ring so hollow for me. Time and again, they consistently seem David for Goliath, or perhaps the David of later years, the one who steals another man’s wife at the height of his own wealth and power for the David of David and Goliath, the one who actually does face down a more powerful opponent. Time and again, the right wing plays the underdog to government power, all the while ignoring real questions about who is really putting one over on whom. It’s a bad habit that some have fallen into. It’s a habit that may soon cost us all.

Just ask the people of Aberdeenshire.

 

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Top Posts & Pages

  • About
    About
  • Master and Commander Kinda Queered
    Master and Commander Kinda Queered
  • An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
    An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
  • Great Movie Villains, Vol. III: Nevermind the Nazgûl, Fear the Fellowship!
    Great Movie Villains, Vol. III: Nevermind the Nazgûl, Fear the Fellowship!
  • The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
    The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
  • Time Heals All Wounds ...Unless it Doesn't
    Time Heals All Wounds ...Unless it Doesn't
  • Epithets and Implicatures, and History as Damage Control
    Epithets and Implicatures, and History as Damage Control
  • Oh Come On!
    Oh Come On!

Topics

  • Alaska
  • Animals
  • Anthropology
  • atheism
  • Bad Photography
  • Books
  • Childhood
  • Education
  • Gaming
  • General
  • History
  • Irritation Meditation
  • Justice
  • Las Vegas
  • Minis
  • Movie Villainy
  • Movies
  • Museums
  • Music
  • Narrative VIolence
  • Native American Themes
  • Philosophy
  • Politics
  • Public History
  • Re-Creations
  • Religion
  • Street Art
  • The Bullet Point Mind
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Uncommonday
  • White Indians
  • Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

Blogroll

  • American Creation
  • An Historian Goes to the Movies
  • Aunt Phil's Trunk
  • Bob's Blog
  • Dr. Gerald Stein
  • Hinterlogics
  • Ignorance WIthout Arrogance
  • Im-North
  • Insta-North
  • Just a Girl from Homer
  • Multo (Ghost)
  • Native America
  • Norbert Haupt
  • Northwest History
  • Northy Pins
  • Northy-Tok
  • Nunawhaa
  • Religion in American History
  • The History Blog
  • The History Chicks
  • What Do I Know?

Archives

  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • April 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011

My Twitter Feed

Follow @Brimshack

RSS Feed

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 8,099 other subscribers

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • northierthanthou
    • Join 8,099 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • northierthanthou
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: