Grasshopper's treasures - Part II

A guest post by Grasshopper

Hi everybody, here is the next installment in the Native American auction I recently won. Some of you may recognize this photo Regina posted on that old blog called Palingates (Remember her?). Anyway, I've had these for about 40 years, they were given to me by a family friend who knew I loved all things Indian (except for the scalping). They are 9" from wrist to forearm. I asked a few knowledgeable people about the cuffs and they said they were local, meaning the Wisconsin/Illinois area, but nobody knew which tribe.

I knew the cuffs were included in the auction lot from their photo, but when I got to see them close up at the preview, I was amazed at the similarities to the ones hanging on my wall all these years. Same colors, same type of beads, similar flora and same white background. So similar yet completely different. They are smaller, at 6" from wrist to forearm, perhaps made for a woman or a child. With a little research and some help from Cowans auction house, I'm now quite certain they are from the Ojibwe tribe in the Western Great Lakes region.

I cleaned the one on the left to show the condition at the time of the auction.

Sometimes I try to figure out what flowers or plants or critters they were trying to apply to their beadwork. Perhaps after smoking a Peace Pipe they began embellishing and creating new variations of the nature around them with their imaginations?

The fringe on this pair is much longer and are very dried out and stiff. I'll have to figure out a way to oil them without damaging the beadwork. By all accounts they were probably made between 1840 and 1860. Pretty good condition for that age. For all I know, they may have been sitting in an old chest for the last hundred years. I'm sure there's more history to these beauties but this is all I have to share with you for now. Thanks, Dances with Grasshoppers.

Here are some links about the Ojibwe:

Ojibwe People
Ojibwa Indians
Clothing and beadwork
Photos of Ojibwe beadwork

Children...

Many years ago our boys were invited to pose for a Dorling Kindersley catalogue and earned the princely amount of £30 each. Their school days bring back many memories...

When Paul (on the right) was about eight years old, he made his teacher laugh with something he wrote. They were learning words ending in "ight" and had to make sentences using them. Paul wrote:

"My mom and dad never fight."
"My mom is always right."

Isn't that just adorable?

Billy, on the other hand, used to alarm his teachers (and us). I was called to the school many times because Billy had banged his head doing something daring and had to be taken to hospital for a check. Concussion was a regular ocurrence.

He managed to get into some kind of trouble very often. In Brazil, when he was eleven, he managed to go through the roof of a milking shed. He wasn't injured, but very shaken. Then he made a ramp for bike stunts and tried it with a bike that had slightly flat tyres. Following an almighty tumble, we had to rush him to hospital with an enormous gash on his thigh. While he was being stitched, with all of us in the room, the nurses had to abandon Billy to see to Paul, who had passed out.

When they were teenagers, back in England, they came across a baseball bat and decided to go to a local park for a practice. Baseball is not an English game, so they didn't have much of a clue. The practice didn't last very long. While swinging the bat, Paul cracked Billy's forehead open. More stitches...

The pub where Paul worked

A few years later, Paul was working at a nearby pub and used to ride his bike to work. I received a phone call from his cellphone, but from a stranger. Paul had a close encounter with a tree and this kind stranger had stopped to help. My car was in for some repairs, so I grabbed my first aid kit and rushed to the spot on foot. When I arrived, completely breathless, there was an ambulance. Paul had injured his elbow and a devastatingly handsome paramedic greeted me with a laugh: "Good job you brought your first aid kit, we didn't have one!" I didn't know the stranger had called an ambulance, but the humour was very reassuring. Paul had a fractured elbow, but was otherwise OK.

There are many other stories, not all of them about disasters. They will have to wait for another post...

Gabby Giffords will get better and stronger

Considering her present difficulties, Gabby has a very positive attitude. What a refreshing contrast from the shallow, vitriolic attack dogs unleashed by the GOP and the Tea Party!

(H/T to Shapeshifterbelly.)

A purrfect birthday treat

Hey Ripley, happy birthday! Many hugs and kisses!

Nautical humour

My friend Hilary sent me these, they're very creative and funny.

Why dogs bite people

Shapeshifterbelly sent me some photos of dogs made to look silly by their owners. They're quite funny and the dogs have not been harmed, but I think that if we had owners who dressed us in silly costumes just for fun, we would surely bite them!

Thank you, Shapeshifter.

The elephant in the room

I feel a rant coming. Watching the news can have that effect...

The western economy is tanking. America is in turmoil and the Eurozone is a mess.

Earlier this year I wrote a post about it on Palingates, where I looked at the games being played by politicians, the big corporations and the banks. They dominate the economy in the West, playing with monopoly money while the Chinese expand their manufacturing industry... and their wealth.

We wanted cheap goods and China obliged. In a country with no unions or any protection for the workers, labour is cheap and plentiful. There are no environmental regulations either.

In the West there are many millions of people unemployed. Where are they going to find work? What industries are left? Can the existing sectors create wealth or just the illusion of wealth? Manufacturing is almost dead. We have the brains to advance technology, to move money around, to make day-to-day life easier. But the real work is being carried out elsewhere. The sector that creates wealth is gone and we are left with the sectors that came into existence to service the complexities of that once flourishing, wealth creating manufacturing sector.

In the US and in Europe, there's much talk about austerity measures. The banks created an almighty mess, countries are going broke, so the solution is to replace governments with technocrats. Who are they? Bankers! How neat...

I named this post "The elephant in the room" because for all their talk about job creation, western leaders make no mention of reviving or strengthening the manufacturing sector. Nobody wants to upset the Chinese because they're the only ones in a position to bail us out... with real money.

We gave them the crown jewels of capitalism and now we have to pretend we're still wealthy. All we have left is a pile of pretend money and a bunch of technocrats deciding the fate of a pretend economy.

Watching the news these days is like watching a perverse reality show.

Rant over.

Texan funnies

Mrsgunka sent me two jokes featuring Texans.

A drunken cowboy lay sprawled across three entire seats in the posh Amarillo Theater. When the usher came by and noticed this, he whispered to the cowboy, 'Sorry, sir, but you're only allowed one seat.'

The cowboy groaned but didn't budge. The usher became more impatient: 'Sir, if you don't get up from there I'm going to have to call the manager.'

Once again, the cowboy just groaned. The usher marched briskly back up the aisle, and in a moment he returned with the manager. Together the two of them tried repeatedly to move the cowboy, but with no success.

Finally they summoned the police. The Texas Ranger surveyed the situation briefly then asked, 'All right buddy what's your name?'

'Fred,' the cowboy moaned.

'Where ya from, Fred?' asked the Ranger.

With terrible pain in his voice, and without moving a muscle, Fred replied,

'.....the balcony...'

********

As the bus stopped and it was her turn to get on, she became aware that her skirt was too tight to allow her leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus. Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, she reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little, thinking that this would give her enough slack to raise her leg.

She tried to take the step, only to discover that she couldn't. So, a little more embarrassed, she once again reached behind her to unzip her skirt a little more, and for the second time attempted the step.

Once again, much to her chagrin, she could not raise her leg. With a little smile to the driver, she again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to take the step.

About this time, a large Texan who was standing behind her picked her up easily by the waist and placed her gently on the step of the bus.

She went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and yelled 'How dare you touch my body! I don't even know who you are!'

The Texan smiled and drawled, 'Well, ma'am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I kinda figured we were friends.'


Thank you, Mrsgunka.

Something unexpected from Paraguay

I searched for Paraguayan Harp and found something that took me completely by surprise...

Grasshopper's treasures - Part I - UPDATE

A few weeks back Grasshopper mentioned an auction that was going to take place near him. He even offered to bid on our behalf if anything caught our eye and ship it to us, as long as it wasn't a car. Peter wouldn't settle for anything less than a Packard, so it didn't happen (ha ha ha). Joking aside, our friend was successful in securing the lot that had captured his imagination and sent me many photos of his treasures. Grasshopper put his experience in context:

Hi Regina, as you know, I can be an excitable boy and not a very materialistic one at that, but as soon as I heard "arrowheads" (as a gardener and digger of many holes, I was always half looking for one) and laid eyes on this auction display photo, 6 weeks ago, I knew it had to be mine. I became obsessed, lost sleep and when I finally got to examine everything close up I thought it would be way too expensive. At the preview there were 4 people with a magnifying glass hovering over MY stuff for about a half hour, taking notes and pictures so I figured they KNEW. Apparently not. Not knowing what the auctioneer was even talking about I just held my card up in the air and magically the bidding stopped at a very comfortable level for me, so my heart soared like an eagle (much like the one on the root club). Needless to say, I'm just about as happy as a grasshopper can be.

Grasshopper's treasures

We decided to show the photos in batches and here's the first one, of a couple of carved root clubs:

The intricate handle "chip" carving may mean that these belonged to a chief, or shaman/medicine man.

They're made from the root ball/burl of a young birch tree and the carvings release the spirit of the sacred animal and then they go out and club the crap out of each other with it for fun on Saturday nights. The two I have definitely have battle scars.

Well done and thank you for the colourful description of the clubs, Grasshopper!

There are more photos to come, stay tuned for future posts.

[Please click on images to see all the details in full glory.]

UPDATE

Grasshopper has been doing some research on various items and found something fascinating about the root clubs HERE.

Living architecture

View_From_Here sent me this inspiring video:



Thank you, View. This shows humans CAN work with nature...

Euro fun and games

Dominique, our former next door neighbour, sent me this photo:

Angela Merkel babysits Sarkozy 

Perhaps it was taken during a break in the Eurozone discussions?

Murmuration

HelenNPN sent me the link to a lovely nature story:

This is one of the most spectacular animal phenomena known to man.

A murmuration, which this is, consists of thousands of tiny starlings (birds) collectively flying and swirling about. The mesmerizing act is typically seen at the beginning of winter, right before dusk, as the birds look for a place to roost for the night.



Read more and see some photos HERE.

Thank you, Helen.

Laughing is the best medicine...

We haven't had jokes for a while. Here's a treat: Two cartoons from mrsgunka, a joke from Hunnybee and another from Shapeshifterbelly.

*****

Grandma and Grandpa were visiting their kids overnight.

When Grandpa found a bottle of Viagra in his son's medicine cabinet, he asked about using one of the pills.

The son said, "I don't think you should take one Dad; they're very strong and very expensive."

"How much?" asked Grandpa.

"$10 a pill," answered the son.

"I don't care," said Grandpa, "I'd still like to try one, and before we leave in the morning, I'll put the money under the pillow."

Later the next morning, the son found $110 under the pillow. He called Grandpa and said, "I told you each pill was $10, not $110.

"I know," said Grandpa. "The hundred is from Grandma!"

*****

A woman found out that her dog could hardly hear, so she took it to the veterinarian.

The vet found that the problem was hair in the dog's ears.,He cleaned both ears, and the dog could then hear fine.

The vet then proceeded to tell the woman that, if she wanted to keep this from recurring, she should go to the store and get some "Nair" hair remover and rub it in the dog's ears once a month.

So she went went to the store to buy some "Nair" hair remover.

At the register, the pharmacist told her, "If you're going to use this under your arms, don't use deodorant for a few days."

The woman said, "I'm not using it under my arms."

The pharmacist said, "If you're using it on your legs, don't use body lotion for a couple of days."

She replied, "I'm not using it on my legs either. If you must know, I'm using it on my Schnauzer."

The pharmacist said, "Well, in that case, stay off your bicycle for about a week."

*****

Thank you, girls!

Quitting pays off

UK's Daily Mail:

Rebekah Brooks received a £1.7m cash payment, a chauffeur-driven limousine and a London office after quitting as chief-executive of News International, it was revealed today.

The former News of the World editor stood down at the height of the phone hacking scandal and was arrested days later.

Ms Brooks, 43, resigned as director of 23 companies related to News International after standing down from her post in July but received a bumper payout, the Observer revealed.

As part of the deal she was also given use of a limo and an office in the centre of London for the next two years. Its location has not been revealed amid fears for her safety.

She started out as a secretary at the News of the World and is a favourite of Rupert Murdoch.

Quitting and then making vast amounts of money... Rupert Murdoch... A recurring theme?