Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washinton, D.C. (mitsitamcafe.com)
Indian Country Today Media Network Staff
The best dining option on the National Mall is Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian, according to a review of all dining options on Capital Hill by Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times.
Steinhauer tells visitors to avoid food at the newly constructed Capitol Visitor Center, “and head to the National Museum of the American Indian, which has the best food on the Mall.”
Mitsitam Native Foods Café is no stranger to praise. Last summer, it was honored by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington with a Rammy Award on June 24. It was the first museum restaurant to receive a Rammy nomination. The eatery also recently put out an award-winning cookbook.
The Zagat-rated restaurant showcases a refined, seasonal menu of foods that have been grown, raised and harvested in North and South America for thousands of years, from Peruvian ceviche to pork tacos. Mitsitam means “let’s eat” in the Piscataway and Delaware languages, and the café stays true to its Native focus, drawing on tribal culinary traditions.
Did Mother Damnable—aka Mary Ann Boyer, Seattle’s original hard-ass—really turn to stone after her death in 1873?
By Bess Lovejoy, The Seattle Stranger
Mary Ann Boyer was a foul-mouthed woman of the sea. In the 1850s, she sailed with Captain David “Bull” Conklin on his whaling ship off Alaska, until he got tired of her nagging and abandoned her in Port Townsend. She made her way to the tiny village of Seattle and began running the Felker House, Seattle’s first hotel, a two-story structure at Jackson Street and First Avenue South whose pieces had been carried here in the hold of a ship. And after she died, Boyer’s bones soaked in the flooded earth of the old Seattle Cemetery. When they dug her up, the undertaker discovered that her body had turned to stone.
FELKER HOUSE That woman in the doorway on the second floor—a stout figure in voluminous petticoats—might be Mother Damnable, but we don’t know for sure.
That’s the legend, anyway.
The real Mary Ann Boyer exists only in the scrawls of old census records, scattered accounts from early historians, and the reminiscences of an old admiral. The woman peering out from the balcony of the Felker House in a photo taken around 1868—a small, stout figure in voluminous petticoats—might be her, but we don’t know for sure. The Felker House, which some say was also a brothel, burned down in the Great Fire of 1889. Today, the city’s only mark of her is a grave in Lake View Cemetery, a flat headstone placed close to a road, supposedly because the men couldn’t carry her petrified body any farther.
They say she kept rocks in her apron to throw at people, and that she cursed constantly in five languages—English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, plus a smattering of German. That’s partly how she earned her nickname: Mother Damnable.
There are two main stories told of her life, and both involve her yelling at men. In 1854, Seattle’s territorial government held a lynching trial at her hotel, transforming her rooms into a makeshift court. They racked up a large bill for food and lodging, but when the prosecuting attorney demanded a receipt, Boyer flew into a rage. She filled her arms with wood for her stove and began hurling pieces of it at the lawyer, shouting, “You want a receipt, do you? Well, here it is!” As the pioneers told it, no one ever asked her for a receipt again.
The second story dates from the days when the US Navy’s Decatur was anchored in Elliott Bay, protecting settlers from hostile Native Americans. As part of their efforts to defend the settlement, the men of the Decatur tried to clear a new road through town. But every time they passed the Felker House, trouble met them in the form of Mother Damnable. (Some say the bushes they tried to chop down were essential for protecting the privacy of her establishment.) In his memoirs, the lieutenant of the Decatur, Thomas S. Phelps, called Boyer a “demon in petticoats” and “a terror to our people, who found her tongue more to be dreaded than the entire Indian army recently encamped in our front.”
Phelps describes his encounter with the “demon” this way: “The moment our men appeared upon the scene, with three dogs at her heels, and an apron filled with rocks, this termagant would come tearing from the house, and the way stones, oaths, and curses flew was something fearful to contemplate, and, charging like a fury, with the dogs wild to flesh their teeth in the detested invaders, the division invariably gave way before the storm, fleeing, officers and all, as if old Satan himself was after them.”
After several aborted attempts, the ship’s quartermaster, a man named Sam Silk and “a veritable old-time salt,” according to Phelps, confronted Boyer. When his speech about the necessity of the road was cut short by a torrent of abuse and a piece of wood aimed at his head, he changed his tack.
“What do you mean, you damned old harridan, raising hell this way? I know you, you old curmudgeon,” he said. “Many’s the time I’ve seen you howling thunder around Fell’s Point, Baltimore. You’re a damned pretty one, ain’t you?”
As Phelps tells it, “The effect was magical. With one glance of concentrated hatred at Silk, she turned and flew like the wind, scattering sticks and rocks on all sides, and, with her yelping dogs, disappeared within the house, never again to be seen by one of the Decatur‘s crew.”
This anecdote is one of the better pieces of evidence that Boyer was indeed a madam (she didn’t exactly keep public records). An article in the Pacific Northwest Quarterly by MOHAI’s public historian, Lorraine McConaghy, notes that Fell’s Point was then Baltimore’s red-light district. McConaghy also points out that Phelps compares Boyer to “a prototypical Madame Damnable, a Frenchwoman living at Callao, a seaport in Peru, who seems to have run a bordello there.”
In fact, while historians usually say Boyer’s nickname stemmed from her filthy language, the truth is more complex. The phrase “Mother Damnable” dates back at least to the mid-17th century in England; there’s a ballad called “Mother Damnable’s Ordinary” recorded by the London Stationers’ Registry in July 1656. According to the folklorist Steve Roud, a “flurry of mentions” of Mother Damnables occur around that time, and the term always refers to a madam or a witch. (It’s worth noting that settlers referred to Boyer as “Mother” or “Madam.”) When the settlers of Seattle dubbed Mary Ann “Damnable,” they probably weren’t just making reference to her foul mouth, but placing her within a particular tradition of unpleasant women.
Boyer’s unpleasantness, of course, is part of why everyone loves the story of her turning to stone. It seems like divine retribution, proof that God has a sense of humor. And yet the transformation also seems to prove that her stubbornness, her hard-as-nails attitude, carried on past the grave. While the rest of the city’s pioneer dead fell victim to worms, she grew ever more impenetrable.
And the tour guides, guidebooks, historians, and librarians who repeat this story aren’t making it up.
The tale goes back to undertaker Oliver C. Shorey, who founded what later became the funeral home Bonney-Watson, now the city’s oldest continually operating business. In 1884, Shorey got the contract to dig up the bodies from the old Seattle Cemetery, which was being turned into Denny Park. (The cemetery was known for flooding, leading the coffins to bob around in the ground and turning the bodies black.) In a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article from August 22, 1884, Shorey describes what happened when he dug up Boyer:
We discovered that the coffin was very heavy, weighing at least 400 pounds and it took six men to lift it out of the grave. On removing the lid to the coffin we found that she had turned to stone. Her form was full sized and perfect, the ears, finger nails and hair being all intact. Her features were, however, somewhat disfigured. Covering the body was a dark dust, but after that was removed the form was as white as marble and as hard as stone.
Shorey’s description makes no mention of the smile that some say beamed from Boyer’s face, and which makes her preserved body seem like that of an incorruptible saint. It’s also worth noting that he describes her coffin as weighing at least 400 pounds, not the 2,000 that is sometimes recorded. But the real question is, could she really have turned to stone?
It seems highly unlikely, given that she was underground for only 11 years. It’s more probable that her body was coated with adipocere, a substance sometimes called “grave wax” that can develop when fat decomposes in wet soil. Adipocere is not uncommon, and is often described as gray or white, although it’s usually a bit softer than stone—more like clay, plastic, or cheese. Yes, corpse cheese.
Shorey’s description of what he saw might also have been influenced by a peculiar 19th-century craze. When his shovel bit into the dirt of the Seattle Cemetery in 1884, reports of petrified corpses had been in the newspapers for years. The most famous case came in 1869, when two laborers discovered what appeared to be a 10-foot-tall stone giant buried on a farm in Cardiff, New York. (“I declare,” one of them yelled out, “some old Indian has been buried here!”)
The 3,000-pound “giant” was in fact a hoax perpetrated by a New York cigar maker named George Hull. An avowed atheist, Hull had recently gotten into an argument with a Methodist revivalist who claimed that giants had once walked the earth (hey, it’s in the Bible). Hull had decided to create his own giant out of gypsum, telling the men who cut the stone from a quarry near Fort Dodge that it was for a memorial to Abraham Lincoln. He swore everyone else involved to silence, and buried the figure on his cousin’s farm.
Sure enough, after the discovery, the townspeople beat a path to the farm, and Hull started charging admission. Before long, he’d sold the giant to a group of businessmen, who successfully fended off interest from P. T. Barnum. (When his offer was refused, Barnum made an exact copy and exhibited it in a New York museum. The new owner of the real fake giant, one David Hannum, supposedly coined the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute” in reference to those who paid to see Barnum’s copy.)
Supposedly, Barnum even eventually tried to buy Boyer’s body.
A rash of copycat petrified corpses followed, made of substances such as limestone, concrete, and hardened gelatin. Even Mark Twain got into the act. The October 4, 1862, issue of Nevada’s Territorial Enterprise carried an article by Twain (then Samuel Clemens) “reporting” the discovery of a petrified man in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford. Apparently, every limb and feature of the fossilized man was perfect, “not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one during the lifetime of the owner.” Even though the “stony mummy” was described as having his “right thumb resting against the side of the nose” (that is, thumbing his nose), most of the newspapers that reprinted the story gave no hint that it was a hoax, encouraging the discovery of other petrified people across the land.
Such tales may go back to an 1858 hoax in the Daily Alta California, in which a letter from a local doctor described the misadventures of a prospector named Ernest Flucterspiegel, who turned to stone after drinking the fluid inside a geode. (Apparently, the man’s heart resembled red jasper.) Even newspapers of the early 20th century described petrified corpses, although, strangely, it’s not something you hear much about today. The 1860s were a time of intense interest in human origins (Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859), and many of the early petrified corpses were described as mind-bogglingly ancient. One, with the stub of a tail, was even briefly thought to be evolution’s “missing link.” Embalming also started in earnest in America only after the Civil War, and it’s possible that some undertakers weren’t used to seeing the condition of embalmed remains. In any case, Boyer’s petrifaction story reads vaguely like a fairy tale, and it secured her an immortality she might not otherwise have enjoyed.
Yet another story has it that Mary Ann Boyer was never moved at all, and she still rests beneath the grass at Denny Park. However, Shorey’s yellowed reburial register (kept at the Seattle Municipal Archives) records her removal in his careful cursive. Other records show that Boyer’s body was moved to the old Washelli Cemetery—which later became Volunteer Park—and then in 1887 to Lake View Cemetery, where she continues her slow decay today.
That is, unless she really did turn to stone.
Bess Lovejoy is a writer and researcher in Seattle. She reads from her new book, Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, on Tues March 12, Rendezvous JewelBox Theater, 2322 Second Ave, 7 pm, free, 21+.
The animator who’s made films about drones, plagiarism, and talking whales turns his sights on guns. Guns, guns, guns.
By Charles Mudede, The Seattle Stranger
Drew Christie hates guns. He didn’t grow up around them, he doesn’t understand why so many people love them, and he doesn’t want them in his house. Guns just kill people. That’s what they do best. And if you own one, it’s more likely to harm you or someone you love than protect you or someone you love from some burglar. Christie (beer in one hand, sketchbook in another, sun in the sky) was saying these things to me as we sat on the porch of his Central District home. The house is yellow and huge, and it was first owned in the old times by a tobacco merchant. In the 1960s, it became a home for nuns. Now it’s where he sleeps, eats, and does art.
But who exactly is Christie? He is a local filmmaker and animator whose work appears regularly in the New York Times‘ Op-Docs series. A short film of his, Song of the Spindle, screened at Sundance in 2012. Also in 2012, he was a finalist for a Stranger Genius Award in film. Because his films involve a lot of historical, social, and scientific facts, Christie is constantly researching this and that neglected or forgotten part of American culture. His current but not complete animation project about the cultural history of guns—working title: The Haunting of America—was under way even before Newtown returned gun control to the center of mainstream politics.
Three things in his research so far have caught Christie’s imagination: One, the NRA’s idea of Second Amendment rights actually came from the Black Panthers. Two, many of the towns in the Wild, Wild West actually had more gun-control laws than cities do today. And three: There is no more potent symbol of the United States today than Sarah Winchester, the heiress of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, who kept adding rooms to her mansion because she feared its completion would fatally expose her to the ghosts of people killed by the guns her family manufactured.
The Black Panthers Are the Forefathers of the Right-Wing Gun Nuts
This is not an exaggeration. Look at the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” For most of American history, the “well regulated militia” part was not ambiguous or ignored, as it is today. Gun ownership was really about the mobilization of a citizen army. But, as Adam Winkler and other historians have explained, it was the Black Panthers who first really confused this understanding by claiming that the Second Amendment was about private rights rather than the rights of militias. On May 2, 1967, the Black Panthers showed up at the California statehouse with their guns. In 1968, Ronald Reagan, with the support of the NRA, signed the Gun Control Act in response to the Black Panthers’ boldness. (The NRA’s motto at the time was “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.”) It was not until 1977, when the old NRA was replaced by the gun-nutty one we have today, that the Black Panthers’ position on gun ownership was adopted by the NRA, by dropping the “militia” bit. The NRA’s motto became “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.”
Dodge City Guns
During our conversation on the porch, Christie explained that whenever you talk to a gun nut, he or she eventually begins to go on about the good old days, the days of the Wild, Wild West, when citizens had lots of gun freedoms. But this is a complete fantasy. It’s not how it was at all. Towns like Dodge City, Kansas, actually had signs that ordered visitors to “leave your guns at the sheriff’s office.” The police and town officials knew that guns in a populated place, a place with lots of bars and gambling, was a recipe for disaster. Christie’s point? The gun laws we have in our cities today are actually more relaxed than the ones they had in 19th-century boomtowns.
Sarah Winchester and the Ghosts
Poor Sarah Winchester. Fearing that her gun-manufacturing family had been cursed after the untimely deaths of her husband and child, she turned to a psychic in Boston for advice (this was in the early 1880s). The psychic confirmed her fears. There was indeed a curse on her family. The ghosts of the people who had been killed by Winchester rifles would kill her if she did not move west and build a house that perpetually confused them. Sarah moved west and began building this house, room after room, to keep the murderous ghosts away from her life. The construction only stopped with her death in 1922. Christie sees this terrible story as a metaphor for American society today. “We profited from all these guns, we made all this money,” he explained as he drank beer, “and now the guns are everywhere. Now we can’t get rid of them. Now they are turning on us. Now they are killing our children, our friends, our families. We all live in Sarah’s haunted house.”
A sign that winter is not yet over, Varied Thrushes are still present on PAWS campus. In the spring, these birds head to their breeding territories in the fir forests of the mountains and foothills. Photo: Kevin Mack, PAWS
By Kevin Mack / PAWS
Although winter officially lasts a few more weeks, many wild animals on the PAWS campus are already feeling the approaching spring. Small birds are still foraging together in their winter feeding flocks, but there is palpable tension within the groups. Formerly content to feed side by side with one another, some of the male birds have begun to squabble when they feel a fellow flock member has come too close. They have also begun to tentatively sing their trilling territorial calls.
Visit the wildlife section of the PAWS website if you would like to discover more about the organization’s work. Also check out the common problems page as we are about to enter the time of year when wildlife conflicts are most likely to occur.
Jimi Hendrix recorded everything. More than 40 years after his death, though, the tape is finally running out.
By Chris Talbott, AP Music Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jimi Hendrix recorded everything. More than 40 years after his death, though, the tape is finally running out.
“People, Hell & Angels,” out Tuesday, will be the last album of Hendrix’s unreleased studio material, according to Eddie Kramer, the engineer who recorded most of Hendrix’s music during his brief but spectacular career. That ends a four-decade run of posthumous releases by an artist whose legacy remains as vital and vibrant now as it was at the time of his death.
“Jimi utilized the studio as a rehearal space,” Kramer said. “That’s kind of an expensive way of doing things, but thank God he did.”
The 12 tracks on “People, Hell & Angels” were recorded in 1968-69 after the Jimi Hendrix Experience disbanded. There’s a changeable roster of backing musicians, including Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, who would briefly become Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies. Stephen Stills, recently of Buffalo Springfield, even popped up on bass on one track.
It was a difficult period for Hendrix as his business and creative endeavors became entangled, and he retreated to the studio to seek inspiration.
“Jimi used that time in the studio to experiment, to jam, to rehearse, and using this jam-rehearsal style of recording enabled him to try different musicians of different stripes and backgrounds, because they offered a musical challenge to him,” Kramer said. “He wanted to hear music expressed with different guys who could lend a different approach to it. And as part of this whole learning curve, what emerged was this band that played at Woodstock in `69, that little concert on the hill there.”
Many of the songs have been heard in different versions or forms before, but the music here is funkier than his best known work – at times sinuous, at times raucous. Horns pop up here and there. He’s a cosmic philosopher riding an earthbound backbeat on “Somewhere.” He’s a groovin’ bluesman enveloped in a bit of that purple haze on “Hear My Train a Comin’.” He challenges a saxophone to a fist fight on “Let Me Move You.” Then he channels James Brown on “Mojo Man” and ends the album as if shutting down an empty cinder-block club on a lonely stretch of dark highway with “Villanova Junction Blues.”
Hendrix died not long after making the last of these recordings. He’d already disbanded the players and was working with the Experience again in 1970 when he died of asphyxia in September 1970 at 27.
The last of the studio albums was timed for the year he would have turned 70. But in the 43 years that have passed since his death, he’s remained a fixture in American popular culture in much the same way Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash have endured. Still a radio staple, his image and music pops up often in commercials. There’s a biopic on the way with Andre Benjamin tackling the lead role. Even his out-there sense of fashion remains relevant.
Driving that image is the continued importance of his music, inspiring entranced young guitarists to attack his work in an endless loop of rediscovery over the decades. Tastes and sounds may change, but Hendrix always remains close at hand.
Maybe it’s because he was so far ahead of his time, we still haven’t caught up.
“He was a psychedelic warrior,” said Luther Dickinson, Grammy-nominated singer-guitar of the North Mississippi Allstars. “He was one of those forces that pushed evolution. He was kicking the doors down. He was forcing the future into our ears.”
For Dickinson and his brother Cody, it was Hendrix’s post-apocalyptic psych-rock epic “1983 … (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)” that blew their minds. But he means different things to different musicians. He played the chitlin circuit in the South before being discovered as a rocker in Europe and his music was also steeped in the blues, R&B and jazz.
“As a songwriter, he had the thing like Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top) and a few current guys like Dan Auerbach or Jack White,” Dickinson said. “They have the ability to take a near-cliche blues guitar lick and turn it into a pop hook. Hendrix had that. That was one aspect. Also, he wrote some of the most beautiful guitar melodies. His ballads, there’s nothing to compare them to. Obviously he learned a lot from Curtis Mayfield and R&B music, but he took it so much farther.”
It’s that soulful side that first inspired Michael Kiwanuka, a young singer-songwriter who grew up in London thousands of miles away from Dickinson’s home in Hernando, Miss., yet was seized by Hendrix just as forcefully.
He first saw Hendrix in a documentary that was paired back to back with his performance at Woodstock. Kiwanuka was 12 and new to the guitar. He experienced a lot of sensations at once. First, there was the music. He wasn’t drawn to the rip-roaring psychedelia the Dickinsons favored, but the R&B-flavored classics like “Castles Made of Sand” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” The child of Ugandan immigrants also was amazed by Hendrix’s natural hairstyle, which closely resembled his own.
“I’d never seen an African-American, a guy of African descent, playing rock music,” Kiwanuka said. “I was listening to bands like Nirvana and stuff at the time. That’s what got me into rock music – the electric guitar. Every time I saw a modern black musician it was like R&B, so I’d never seen someone play electric guitar in a rock way that was African. That inspired me as well on top of the music. And you think, `Oh, I could do that.'”
“People, Hell & Angels” will likely continue that cycle of discovery. And though it may be the last of studio album, it won’t be the last we hear from Hendrix.
“This is the last studio album, but what’s coming up is the fact that we have tremendous amount of live recorded concerts in the vault,” Kramer said. “A lot of them were filmed, too, so be prepared in the next few years to see some fabulous live performances, one of which I’ve already mixed. We’re waiting for the release date – God knows when – but at some point in the future there’s a ton of great live material.”
This vintage Burberry hat is one of the items for sale at the Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale. Photo: Lauren Robinson
It’s time for the fourth annual U District Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale, March 8-9, 2013. High-end goods for bargain prices will be available for both men and women.
Source: Seattle Times
Goodwill’s Designer Accessory Sale
Nothing adds zing to spring like some dandy accessories. (Can’t go to the Easter Parade without a hat, right?) Goodwill can help — specifically, at the fourth annual University District Goodwill Designer Accessory Sale. Bargain-hunters can browse among real and faux designer shoes, handbags and more from the likes of Dooney & Bourke, Coach, Betsey Johnson, Marc Jacobs and Steve Madden. Men aren’t left out; staff will stock ties, hats, shoes and other man stuff.
The sale takes place 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday-Saturday at the U District Goodwill, 4552 University Way N.E., Seattle (www.seattlegoodwill.org).
Net proceeds benefit Goodwill’s free job-training and education programs.
The 11th annual Everett Home and Garden Show returns to Comcast Arena at Everett this weekend.
2013 Everett Home and Garden Show – 11th Year
Multiple Shows – Friday-Sunday, March 8, 9, 10
Hours: Friday: Noon to 8pm. Saturday: 10am to 7pm.
Sunday: 10am to 5pm (On Sunday a Day Light Savings Time Special) – Everyone to arrive between 10am and 11am will get in FREE.
Tickets available At Comcast Arena doors day of show.
Adults: $6.75. Seniors $6.25 $2 off Admission Coupons on our Website EverettHomeGardenShow.com
Free Parking in the Snohomish County Garage on Saturday and Sunday sponsored by BECU
Free parking in the Everpark Garage, 2815 Hoyt Ave on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Now in its 11th year the Everett Home & Garden Show has grown into the largest and only Home & Garden show in Snohomish County. It is “Your Home Improvement Source”, this year featuring the perfect opportunity to shop and compare the finest companies in the Snohomish and enjoy the numerous special features presented, plus everything you would need to make those lawn, garden and home transformations you’ve always wanted.
Guest Speakers •Bob Barca
• Northwest Master Gardener on growing berries in the Northwest, The Butterfly-Hummingbird Garden, water features and March garden activities.
•Steve Smith – The Whistling Gardener of Sunnyside Nursery
•Robert King – The “Deck King” with new deck products and demonstrations
•and more!
WSU Extension Service will have their Master Gardeners on hand to answer your questions.
Special interactive exhibits featuring: •Whispering Pines Landscape
•NW Quality Deck & Remodeling
•American Patio Covers
•WALP – Snohomish County Chapter of the Washington Association of Landscape Professional.
Wine Tasting sponsored by Dunn Lumber on Friday evening 5:30p to 6:30pm
EVERETT — Veterans of Foreign Wars Old Guard Post 2100 is inviting veterans and their families to see what the VFW is all about during its St. Patrick’s Day Open House on March 17 from 1-6 p.m. at 2711 Oaks Ave. in Everett.
Post 2100 Cmdr. Donald Wischmann explained that visitors can tour the post and talk to its members, as well as to representatives of not only the VFW, but also the Ladies’ and Men’s Auxiliaries, the Veterans Administration and a number of other groups.
“Our main concern is helping veterans and their families, but to do that, we need more members,” Wischmann said. “Post 2100 has more than 840 members, but about 700 of those are folks who served in World War II and Korea, and within about 10 years, we’re not going to be doing much as a post if we can’t replenish that membership.”
Wischmann touted the VFW as a means of connecting service members both past and present with a number of useful resources, whether they’re deployed or retired. He noted that his post has even “adopted” the 477th Transportation Company at the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Marysville, and has sent word of the open house out to 46 commands around the area, so he expects quite a bit of turnout for the event.
“We know people will be coming armed with questions about their VA benefits,” Wischmann said. “We know that our veterans are concerned about the amount of time it takes to get their claims processed and approved, which is why we’ll have representatives of the VA here to answer those questions.”
Wischmann worries about the membership of the VFW because he wants to ensure that the group will retain a strong voice in Washington, D.C., to keep veterans’ concerns on the forefront of legislators’ priorities, but if too many older members pass away without younger members stepping in to fill their roles, he sees difficult times ahead for the organization and those whom it seeks to serve.
“I’m a Vietnam veteran,” said Wischmann, who retired from the U.S. Navy. “I’m 60 years old, and I’m one of the youngest members of this post.”
Wischmann recognizes that certain stereotypes may exist in the public’s perception of VFW posts, but he assured veterans and civilians alike that VFW Post 2100 is active in the surrounding community, seeking out ways to benefit cities and towns in addition to those who have served.
The Post 2100 St. Patrick’s Day Open House will feature not only a meal of corned beef and cabbage from 4-6 p.m., for a $10 suggested donation, but also a guest appearance by Edmonds’ Michael Regan, whose portraits for the Fallen Heroes Project showcase military men and women who have given their all.
“They’re just sketches, but they look like miniature wallet-sized photos,” Wischmann said. “He just finished drawing the kids and teachers who lost their lives in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.”
Children at welcome at the St. Patrick’s Day Open House, and for more information, you may contact Wischmann by phone at 425-252-2100, or via email at VFWpost2100@yahoo.com.
The Hall of Plains Indians exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Source: amnh.org
Katherine Abu Hadal, Indian Country Today Media Network
Natural history museums—they are all over the US and abroad too. They house amazing dinosaur fossils, exotic hissing cockroaches, and wondrous planetariums—right next to priceless human-designed art and artifacts created by Native peoples of the Americas.
Like me, you might wonder why these designed objects are juxtaposed with objects of nature such as redwood trees and precious metal exhibits. Yes, of course art is part of the natural world that we live in—but then, why are there no Picasso paintings or Degas sculptures on display in the American Museum of Natural History?
How is a Haida mask different from an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus in its precision and intent? They both belong to the category that we call art and they deserve to be exhibited in a similar manner.
When Native American, Pacific, and African art and artifact is lumped in with natural history exhibits, it sends a message that these groups are a part of the “natural” world. That the art they produce is somehow less cultured and developed than the western art canon. It also sends the message that they are historical, an element of the romantic past, when in reality these peoples are alive and well, with many traditions intact and new traditions happening all the time.
Another thing we don’t need in order to look at and understand Native American art are dioramas of Native Americans in the actual exhibit. Dioramas only serve to confuse the public and enforce already present stereotypes. It’s offensive and demeaning and it detracts from the art. There are no dioramas of Greek or Roman life in fine art museums. Dioramas can muddy the experience by placing a contemporary interpretation of a life that we do not have firsthand knowledge of. Furthermore, they are simply tacky, taking an art display into the realm of Madame Tussaud’s .
How exactly the museum acquired its collections is another important question and one not answered by my research. The museum website does note the following about its anthropology collections:
“The founding of the Museum’s anthropology program in 1873 is linked by many with the origins of research anthropology in the United States. With the enthusiastic financial support of Museum President Morris K. Jesup, Boas undertook to document and preserve the record of human cultural variation before it disappeared under the advance of Europe’s Industrial Revolution. Their expeditions resulted in the formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries of the core of the Museum’s broad and outstanding collection of artifacts.” (American Museum of Natural History, retrieved 2.15.2013)
Let’s consider other ways Native American art could be exhibited to the benefit of the public and Native peoples themselves. First, ancient art and artifact could be displayed next to contemporary Native art in order to show that Native cultures are not just a thing of the past, but are in fact living and dynamic. Or curators could more deeply consider the way these objects were used in context—that is, elaborate on the significance of the pieces to their makers; certainly they were not designed for the purpose of one day sitting in a natural history museum. As another option, the pieces could be placed under the control of contemporary Native groups who would decide how they should be exhibited. That has been met with controversy in some cases.
I know that it will not be easy or convenient to redesign the exhibition of Native art, but the current state of display at the American Museum of Natural History is embarrassing and ineffective in communicating the complexity of non-western art. The American Museum of Natural History and its collections are a product of an era much different than the present day. It’s time that the collections reflected the wishes of their creators and also current aesthetic and ethnic discourse.
