Meandering Thoughts (#17)

I made that! Well, with a lot of help and patience
Though, now I'm wondering if the text should be bigger...

I almost skipped tonight's post. For five hours this morning, a group of women and I worked on t-shirts for my daughter's dance team. It was my first time weeding vinyl and ironing it to fabric. My creative mind was in overdrive, filled with so many possibilities. My middle-aged eyes and fingers, however, were tired and numb. And my social battery needed recharging.

It was fun and informative, but I am now exhausted.

Yet, a voice said, "Sit down and blog, even if you're simply explaining why you don't want to do it."

So, here I am, writing away. But it will not be about excuses.

This will not be a long post. Nor a deep one. Instead, I am going to share a moving historical documentary, and an interesting non-fiction book, both of which I discovered last week.

I can still remember the first time I watched a Ken Burns' film. It was his Civil War series, and my US History teacher was showing it. I have already discussed,  in an older blog post, his documentary on the American West. Well, his most recent one, the first part of which I have been watching this past week, covers the near extinction, and current recovery efforts of the American buffalo. It was beautiful, moving, haunting, and revealing. The buffalo, which numbered in the tens of millions, for centuries, roamed a vast area of land, conditioning and fertilizing it on an unimaginable level. It fed and inspired countless tribes of nomadic people. Yet, within a decade, millions of buffalo were slaughtered each year, not just for profit, but to tear apart the Native Americans' cultural and dietary connections to these creatures, and force them to settle and farm inhospitable land. The US government sought to subjugate both nature and people in order to make way for white settlers. In the process, it destroyed an ecosystem that covered an area from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, and nearly wiped out the buffalo forever.

While dropping off Killers of the Flower Moon at the library last Tuesday, I had decided to some time and wander about, looking for books to read. Well, as I made my way through the history section, my eyes caught sight of a particular title: Revolutionary New Jersey: Forgotten Towns and Crossroads of the American Revolution. I had read two good books about the American War of Independence a few months back, so my mind was excited. Yes, things like this thrill me. I am such a dork. Since I live in New Jersey, and recognize some of the places listed in the chapter headings, I checked out the book, and began reading it during my daughter's orthodontist appointment.  While I have only read the first two chapters, so far it has been been fun and enlightening. The book covers a lot of material that is never discussed in classrooms. Stuff that makes you realize that the generalizations and overviews covered in elementary and high school history lessons are only half the story, or worse, not true. And, yes, I love uncovering this kind of knowledge.

And that is all I am writing for tonight. I am sorry if it is nothing special. Some of these posts will end up merely an exercise in capturing meandering thoughts, and putting them into words. But others will be something more. I promise.