When you visit our dental offices, your care is our top priority. Dr. Geoffrey Berg and his entire team are dedicated to providing you with the personalized, professional care you expect.

http://mid-valleydental.com/

When you visit our dental offices, your care is our top priority. Dr. Geoffrey Berg and his entire team are dedicated to providing you with the personalized, professional care you expect.

http://mid-valleydental.com/

Saludos,

A lady contestant was asked, “What next holiday comes after Flag Day?”

She didn't answer with “Independence Day.” She said, “The 4th of July.”

Well, on the calendars of every county where the primary spoken language is English, there is a 4th of July. The name of the holiday is “Independence Day.” It is NOT the 4th of July.

In reality, “Flag day” is not really a Federal Holiday. The Federal Holiday before Independence Day is Memorial Day.

I am a US Army Veteran and a Vietnam Conflict Veteran (it was not a war). “Veterans' Day” was originally “Armistice Day” to celebrate the end of World War I.

Does this mean Native Americans were the first creators of the suburbs in America? It's their fault!!

I'll start praying for Rush too. And don't worry, I'm not “adopting a conservative.”

I could get into the idea that we should all celebrate one another as God's gifts to each other though – to put it to the test, how do Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Minister Farrakhan and Al Franken sound for starters? I won't mention some others until we can come to love even those first!

All of those often on Columbus Day celebrate the conquest of North America; and for those, it can often have a religious and patriotic cast: the Pilgrims and Puritans, setting “God's City” upon a “hill” – the pre-eminent and dominating high ground from which all the world is now ruled, according to Manifest Destiny.

It's another thing to be an American Indian; to be a conquered people, shrunken to reservations originally set up to be concentration camps for those slated for extinction.

It's demoralizing to be an American Indian man; America's troops roam the globe and there's no serious chance that they will actually ever need to defend the “homeland” from any of their far-flung foes conquering it or taking it over the way that American Indians had it done to them.

But American Indian men cannot defend their lost nation. No wonder that so many submerge this into becoming the ethnic minority with the greatest participation in America's armed forces: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. In this way the sense of failure at being unable to defend one's people is sublimated.

Yet everyone is God's child. The prescription for having suffered victimization is not to victimize in turn, even in one's heart or wishes.
The victim is superior to the oppressor, until he takes up bitterness. Evil is not conquered with thoughts of evil.

What would God have us do, by the example of Jesus?

Americans who've profited from this oppression need forgiveness. They will never be whole until they realize what truly happened and how contrary to God's will it has been. For this to occur, they need to be confronted with the loving forgiveness of those oppressed, with it clearly stated what they are being forgiven for.

Many Americans are now suffering personally – financially, spiritually and in personal sacrifice in endless battles – for the wrongs that have been done. The inevitability of the consequences for what has been done that's wrong, multiply as the same errors continue, writ larger and larger. Not realizing fully what has been done, many Americans have taken the wrong lessons as to how to proceed in the future, and we compound error upon error.

America needs to listen to its American Indian voices. It needs to hear and heed their voices of forgiveness.

For it is a rare and unusual native people Americans have in their midst – a forgiving and loving people, who can model the behavior Jesus wants us all to show to each other.

“U.S. Can’t Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas” NYT

“United States,” “Foreign,” “Visas,”…………….

These are loaded terms. They are laden with a historical narrative of the nation and the world. Who belongs. Who doesn't belong. etc. etc.

Our ability to converse is laden with culture. The fact Randy writes in English is admission to a dominant, exploitive, conquering culture. Or is it due to a world that loves and desires benefits developed by English culture???

Just as our conversation and today's events must be couched in a cultural context, laden with all kinds of understandings–so too is every historical narrative.

Randy's narrative could as easily focus on the cruelties, oppressions, and evils of “indiginous peoples.” The concept of “indiginous people” rests on a notion that there was some pristine moment of human history in which the people that were supposed to rightly inhabit Hispaniola resided there free of disease, sin and conflict. Everything since then was corruption.

I think we ought reflect on places like Palestine and consider how long and deeply we want to debate alternative historical narratives.

For the moment–I side with Randy. But I become suspicious when language that is presented as an appeal for a corrected narrative begins to sound as a desire to simply establish a new dogma.

Christopher Columbus has a certain stature in our cultural narrative–and we frame him in different ways. The explorations were significant with significant consequences.

I think the 'invisibility' of indiginous peoples in our overall narrative is profoundly wrong–factually and as a matter of perspectives and values.

The day does not need to be one of treating him as saintly hero or demonic enemy. What I see unfolding (and is what I fear) is simply another opportunity to wage a new war of historical frameworks. And the victim becomes any attempt to simply be a bit more honest and complete. It becomes a fight.

Dr MLK was killed 41 years ago. As far as I can tell, the public narrative about who this man was, and what he did (and a whole movement), continues to evolve. And it does not evolve towards a better, more complete, more appreciative understanding–even though we have tens of millions in the nation who remember him.

We still, in these United States, have many nations, many broken treaties, and much unfinished business in being a nation that lives out its promise instead of its curse. We have choices to make today. Simple honesty about the world Columbus bumped into would be wonderful. We don't need a political fight over whether the day should be–as if we could take care of our business by obliterating our memory of a twisted memory.

According to some internet information, Columbus' 3rd voyage took him to the coast of South America and his 4th voyage took him to Central America which is on the North American Continent.

The Cherokees and other tribes celebrated their “Green Corn Festival” and that was when the corn on the cob was sweet and just perfectly right to eat. That was actually a Thanksgiving Holiday Period and it was not in November.

Mind you, I don't really care…but you guys can be downers!