Famous Last Words Week 10

Here's a thought for you.......

Night Sower

Most of us are either graduating in a month or on our way to graduating. I only bring this up because I am probably one of the oldest people in this class. I’m surrounded by young people all the time so naturally I feel young, well that is till I look into the mirror and I see this old dude staring back at me. I just wanna say to the younger people, congratulations, you are what we call “Ahead of the Game.” Now if I could give any of you some advice, and please forgive and old man for becoming a bit preachy, it would be that along your journey into the real world you are going to come across a ton of people that will look at you with jealousy and envy. They will attempt to make you feel bad about your success and pity their lack of success. Don’t let them do that. You have worked hard to get to achieve your goals and a college education is just one step in that direction. That is what makes you different than other people you will meet in life.

See I have been extremely lucky in life. I have never had a hard time finding and keeping a job, and at most of my jobs I was lucky enough to be given plenty of opportunities. For the most part I took advantage of these opportunities as best I could. I say as best I could because I wasn’t prepared for success all of you will be, so I was only able to fake it as long as I could before my lack preparedness showed me the ceiling on my room of success.

 I have had a high paying job as a Manager for one of the largest Chevy dealerships in the nation when I lived in Chicago. I have owned a small town restaurant. I was a bartender that saved his money and when the moment came was able to purchase the lease on a failing bar and turn it around. I had a mid paying job as a front of the house manager at a steakhouse. Those are just the highs of my work. There have been a ton of lows. I have worked in a nursing home, at the service desk at Wal-mart, and even now I just work as a server for a restaurant. What all this has taught me is that there is a ceiling. For the jobs I had there was no requirement other than a high school education and a willingness to put in a ton of hours each week. Even though a few of those jobs did pay well, once they were gone there was no guarantee that another similar paying job would be available. That is why I went to college, so that I never have to worry about that night to night, pay check to pay check life again. Even if the jobs we get out of college are low paying, at least there is a direction for our lives, a path to happiness.

What I mean by people detracting you along your way is that the person you are today, is much different than the person you were, and while people will see you with a nice house, car, and job and may think that you had it easy, what they will never be able to understand is all the hard work and sacrifice you have made to achieve those things. They will look down on you and think that you don’t have the same hard work ethic they do, when in fact, not only do you have a great work ethic, but you also have self control. Because as a young person it is easy to want things, and to chase that money so that you can have those things. Who doesn’t like to go out and enjoy life? But the truth is that you have put all those things on hold so that you can not only have those nice things, but also insure that those nice things will never be taken away from you. I have to commend you because as a young person I was one of those people that showed less than respectable self control. I wish I had the same mindset as you younger adults. Being here at this GREAT UNIVERSITY has taught me that you truly are an amazing group of people.

Two last bits of advice, not wisdom, but advice and then I will be done with this rant. Never allow someone’s excuse for their failure force you to make an excuse for your success. You have earned it. Remember these four words wherever you go in life….. I, LOVE, YOU, AND SMILE.

As I look back at that man in the mirror with the aged face and gray hair I am flooded with memories of my youth. And really, while a great job, money, and nice things are important, the most important thing is the memories. Some memories make me sad, and they will always be there, but what overwhelms them are the memories of when I told people “I LOVE YOU,” and all the times  when life made me SMILE…….






Picture Attribution
By OUkid (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 us (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Essay Week 10

Apache Girl

Apache Tales

For this week I did the reading unit Apache Tales in the untextbook. I did not have a good experience with this unit and I would recommend that this unit be replaced. I am not advocating that tales from the Apache people be removed just replaced with a more readily understandable version. This unit was translated in what appears to be a very literal word for word account of the story, the problem with that is that these units are hoping to serve the purpose of bringing the stories and culture of different groups of people to other people that have no understanding or point of reference for these cultures. So the translation of these stories is great for English speaking Apache that understand the culture, but they are not for people that don’t. I found these stories to be jumbled and hard to understand. Even after a second or third reading of the stories I was still unable to connect with them in a way that gave me insight to the Apache people and culture. I was highly disappointed by this because Native culture is something that I have found great interest in since first discovering the Native folklore a few years ago. I understand that each time one of these stories is changed that some of the culture is lost, so there is a fine line between updating these stories for the masses and completely rewriting them so that there is no hint of Native culture remaining. I just feel it would have been better to try to seek out other stories in the Apache culture that would first open the door to the reader to give a basis to understand some of the motifs in the folklore then they would be able to better understand these stories.

Picture Attribution

By Pierce, C.C. (Charles C.), 1861-1946 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Man, The Eagles, The Panther, The Hornets

Hornet

There was a man that lived in New Mexico. He was an Apache, but was alone without his tribe. The man was taken in by the Pueblo Indians. They took care of the man as if he was one of their own. This man however was poor, and was unable to repay the Pueblo for anything that they did for him, so he did his best to help out with duties around the camp. The Pueblos didn’t mind that the man was poor and could not pay. They were content to take care of the man for no other reason than they were just good people.

One day the man was on a hunt with the Pueblos and they came across an eagle’s nest. In the nest was two baby eagles. The man wanted a closer look at the eagles so the Pueblos lowered him down into the nest with a rope. When the man got down to the eagles he realized that they were unprotected and decided to stay with them so he took off the rope. The Pueblos lowered the rope each day and each day the man would not leave the eagles.

When an eagle returned it saw that the man had been watching the baby eagles and saw that this was a good man. The eagle could see that the man was without food or water so the eagle gave the man a small piece of ice. The man was so thirsty that he did not believe that the ice would satisfy him, still he drank it and found that he was satisfied. The eagle then removed a stone and invited the man into it’s house. The eagle could see that the man was hungry so it gave him a piece of fish. The man saw the fish and thought that it was too small and that he would never be satisfied. After eating the fish the man was satisfied. The eagle then gave the man a pair of wings to wear so that he could fly with the eagles.

When the man flew around the cave with the eagles he became tired and began to fall. The other eagle pushed him up to a hole in the ceiling of the cave. A panther that lived there lowered his tale and the man grabbed it and pulled himself up. The panther told him that they were at war with the hornets. There were black hornets that lived in black houses and there were yellow hornets that lived in yellow houses. The man could see the hornets killing the eagles and became angry.

The man fought the hornets for the eagles and killed them. When he killed them he would place their bodies on a stick. One of the eagles that had now come to look at the man as one of their family said “look at my grandson, he has killed so many of the hornets to protect us, he has two sticks full of hornets.”


Author Notes
This is from the Apache Tales Unit. It is the story of “The man who helped the Eagles.” This is a pretty close retelling of the story. I chose not to change much in the story because it was somewhat confusing. Most of the Apache Tales Unit was like this for me. So instead of updating it or putting my own spin on it I felt it was best to just take the straight forward approach to retelling this story.

Bibliography

"The Man Who Helped the Eagles" from Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico, collected and translated by P. E. Goddard

Picture Attribution

By Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Reading Diary Part A Week 10

New Mexico Mountains

Apache Tales


This creation story is a bit confusing, it seems like it was translated exactly word for word which makes it a bit hard to follow. I think it would have been better if the author had expanded on the story a little more to give some context to the story and the characters. The first war is a bit confusing also at the beginning, but the story settles in and it becomes more of an easy story to follow. Though the story still seems dry and should be spiced up with some details. It is just too straight forward. These stories seem to be focused on the same character, Naiyenesgani.Naiyenesgani is almost a mesiah figure. He even leaves and promises a return, this is very similar to the story of Jesus returning one day. These stories don’t seem to have the same type of depth and richness as the Cherokee stories that I have read. They do begin to change once Naiyenesgani leaves his people and then the influence of western culture is somewhat seen in the stories, but these stories still come across as very dry. This is too bad because these stories really have a great potential for expansion.



Bibliography
Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico, collected and translated by P. E. Goddard

Picture Attribution

CC BY-SA 3.0
File:New Mexico Mountains.jpg
Uploaded by Atsme
Created: March 30, 2012