Algebra 10-12 assignment; Feb. 18

Yesterday was a holiday, so there was no school and no assignment.  We spent today continuing to work on linear inequalities as the students worked on getting the equations in the correct form before graphing them.


Assignment:  Graphing linear inequalities worksheet #2

Wasicu at Chankpe Opi: A White Man at Wounded Knee III

Here we are. Look around. If you stand on this promontory in the summer, the heat can be oppressive; but on a good day you might be surrounded by a couple dozen tourists. That’s all. Wounded Knee doesn’t exactly border the Black Hills, and it’s not on the way to Yellowstone. It’s not on the way to anything, really. Right now you’re in the heart of fly-over America, many millions of Americans never coming closer to this shallow valley than, say Chicago. Any time of year, the twisted vapor trails of jets on their way to LAX or LaGuardia float like ribbons in the genial sky.

In the late fall or muddy spring or cold mid-winter—like that December day in 1890—it’s likely you’ll stand very much alone at Wounded Knee. Cars and trucks navigate the reservation roads that cross almost directly at the point of battle, but for most of the year a visit here is unlike a visit to any other North American historic battlefield.

Gettysburg National Military Park offers an aging but impressive Cyclorama, a remarkable circular painting, 356 feet by 26 feet, that puts visitors at the heart of the battle. Little Big Horn’s visitor’s center sells helpful interpretive audio tapes to use as you tour several miles of battlefield from the air-conditioned comfort of your mini-van. But if you want to know what you can about Wounded Knee, the only storyteller there, all year round, is the wind.

Just imagine the encampment before you, and keep in mind the despair, the poverty, and the hopelessness of the dancers. “To live was now no more than to endure/The purposeless indignity of breath,” says John G. Neihardt in The Twilight of the Sioux. Millions of buffalo once roamed here, the staple of existence for thousands of nomadic Native people, the soul of their culture and faith. By 1890, they were gone.

In North Dakota’s horrible winter of 1996, while thousands of cattle died in the monstrous cold, it is reported that only one bison perished. Once the buffalo ruled here. In all the openness all around you, the Great Plains stretching out almost forever in every direction, try to imagine what it must have been like to stand on this promontory and look over herds so large you could see the mass ripple as they shifted slightly when detecting human scent, almost like watching wind on water. That’s what’s gone. To the Sioux, the hunt was a not only manhood’s proving ground, but a celebration for the family, often opened and closed with prayer. Few 19th century wasicu could understand that the disappearance of the buffalo seemed, to many Plains Indians, almost the death of god. I don’t believe I still can, try as I might.

But if I stand here on the promontory at Wounded Knee and remind all that is white within me of grinding poverty, the exhaustive dissolution of a way of life, and the seeming death of god, I can, perhaps, begin to understand the frantic hope inspired by the Ghost Dance.

Today, right behind you, you’ll see fenced-in enclosure where a granite monument, nine feet tall, lists the names of a few of those killed here. “Chief Big Foot,” it says, and then lists “Mr. Shading Bear, Long Bull, White American, Black Coyate, Ghost Horse, Living Bear, Afraid of Bear, Young Afraid of Bear, Yellow Robe, Wounded Hand, Red Eagle,” and just a few more. Estimates vary on the number of dead buried where you’re standing, but most think 150 or so frozen bodies were dumped into the mass grave beneath the cordon of cement. No ceremony—Native or white. Just a dump.

On the other side of the stone there’s an inscription, still visible seventy years after the marker was placed where you’re standing.

This monument is erected by surviving relatives and other Ogallala and Cheyenne River Sioux Indians in Memory of the Chief Big Foot Massacre Dec. 29, 1890.

Col. Forsyth in command of U. S. Troops. Big Foot was a great chief to the Sioux Indians. He often said “I will stand in peace till my last day comes.” He did many good and brave deeds for the white man and the red man. Many innocent women and children who knew no wrong died here.

As Harry W. Paige says in Land of the Spotted Eagle, this isn’t the grammar, the syntax, or mechanics of an Oxford don. What it is, he says, is “writing that weeps.”

_____________________

Tomorrow:  What really happened at Wounded Knee

Geometry assignment; March 18/19

These days are designated HSPE testing days, so not all the classes meet each day.  We continued our work with arcs in circles today, going over more complex problems involving angles both inside and outside of circles.  After a few more examples that we went over in class together, the students then got a start on their homework in class.


Assignment:  Other angles in circles worksheet  #1-20

Algebra 10-12 assignment; April 15

We continued working with factoring by grouping today.  The concepts that we added were factoring out negative terms and factoring out GCF from the final factored answers.

Assignment:  Factoring by Grouping worksheet #2

Morning Thanks--Sabbath on Spirit Mound

It's an aberration really, a odd little mole on flatland prairie, a strange little pile of glacial till, I guess, from which, bountifully, you can see for miles.

Spirit Mound get its name from the Yanktons, who insisted a whole tribe of devils lived on top that hill, little guys no bigger than a foot tall, who were regularly unkind to anyone who dared venture up where they were kings of the hill. The Yanktons told Lewis and Clark about these pint-sized menaces, so when the Corps of Discovery was here just about exactly 210 years ago, they left the river behind for an excursion and hiked a half-dozen miles north or so to check out the demons.

What they found was a great place from which to scope out the territory, which they did--and to their delight, they spotted buffalo, the American bison, probably in the hundreds or thousands, the first time they'd see them on their river trip west. But no little demons filling them with arrows. Nary a soul--not a one.

All of that happened not that far away from where we live, just across the river and tad south. Today Spirit Mound is a historical site and sweet place to hike on a sweet day like yesterday.  So we went. 

My father used to tell me that growing up in the preacher's house made him dislike every terminally-boring Sunday because there was so much the kids--and the preacher and his wife had ten--couldn't do. True story. 

Still, when I was a kid, if I'd play ball somewhere on Sunday afternoon, I'd have to sit for a half hour to stop sweating enough to dare walking into our house, lest it become sinfully clear that I'd been playing ball somewhere on Sunday. I'm sure Sundays were less straight-jacketed in our house than they were in my father's, but he was hardly an apostate.  

Somewhere in Stages of Faith, James Fowler claims that some of the spit and vinegar believers may have lived by and with during their earlier adulthood eventually dissipates. We get a little more, you know, "hey, whatever. . ."

I'm embarrassed to admit that our Sabbath on Spirit Mound yesterday might well have been something I wouldn't have undertaken years ago--after all, there was church at night. It's hard for me to believe that I would have been agin' such a hike up the mound, but I likely wouldn't have done it, on a Sunday afternoon because. . .well, I'm not sure why, maybe just because. 

And, of course, after church at night, I had to work, to get ready for school, correct a few papers, read a chunk of the Scarlet Letter maybe, figure out how I was going to navigate my Monday classes. It's more than mildly ironic, but I probably wouldn't have spent a Sabbath as I did yesterday because I had too much work to do.

Yesterday, the September air was dry and clean but still warm in a way that says summer is already a couple days' journey south. Harvest has yet to start so there was no dust to speak of, endless fields still enrobed in emerald. Seriously, there were no devils atop Spirit Mound, and you could see almost forever. No buffalo either, but with that much open space all around you could see how they might just be there, a couple of thousand maybe.

I'm a child of my parents' way of life. It's in me for as long as I live. If yesterday they were there seated on a couple of heavenly lawn chairs, watching us hike, I don't think they would have disapproved. They would have smiled.

After all, they're the ones who taught me sabbath.

Geometry assignment; 8/29

We worked on another activity (geometry in a 2 x 4) in class today that dealt with describing and locating various figures (points, lines, and planes).  The periods were shortened due to a welcome-back assembly, so the students didn't complete the entire activity in class.  The rest of the questions were assigned as homework.

Assignment:  complete the 2X4 activity questions

Hot, hot air

I get what John Boehner says, and he's likely right: the Democrats are using this silly impeachment talk to recharge their base and ring up the bucks. He's right, and it's worked. He says the Democrats are the ones doing all the talking, not him, not them. 

That's where he's wrong. Ms. Sarah Palin probably didn't start it, but she didn't let the Democrats do all the talking. She's the one who made headlines; and, lest we forget, should John McCain have won the 2008 Presidential election, Ms. Sarah, who didn't even complete her first term as Governor of Alaska, was just a heartbeat away from being POTUS, as they say in Washington. How does this sound? "President Sarah Palin." 

Here's the ex-gov:  

It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment. The many impeachable offenses of Barack Obama can no longer be ignored. If after all this he’s not impeachable, then no one is.

Last time I checked, Ms. Palin wasn't a Democrat.


And then there was Rep. Steve Scalise's (R-La.), who, it seemed, even when pushed, would not answer the question Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday kept asking--"Will you consider impeaching the president?" He, like Boehner, kept telling Wallace that it was a Democratic ploy. But he never really said no, which means, of course, that he kept the notion alive--and he's the new House Majority Whip, not an also-ran.

Republicans have been talking impeachment--and big-name Republicans too.

And now my own rep, Steve King, promises Breitbart kick-starting the impeachment process if Obama does anything to change the status of undocumented workers, including, I guess, doing something about all those kids who've come across the border. King, you might remember, says lots of them are drug runners and you can tell because they have calves like cantaloupes. But then, he thinks of the headlines he gets as virtues, as do lots of Iowa voters, I guess, 80-some per cent of Sioux County.

And now it turns out that yet another Iowan, Joni Ernst, this one not yet in the House, several months ago already told a like-minded Des Moines audience that impeachment was definitely a way of dealing with Obama and actually called him a "dictator." Really? It's nice to know that our reps are unified, I guess. She and King will make a great pair, working for all of Iowa in Washington. 

It's nutty, and it's awful. It's a combustible mixture of hate and hot air, and I honestly don't get it. 

Recent poling determined that 57 percent of Republicans, a clear majority, would like to impeach President Barack Obama for what the constitution labels 'high crimes and misdemeanors."  More than half. Of course, what percentage of Republicans believed he was born in some foreign country and therefore ineligible to be President?  Wasn't that number somewhere in the forties too? Dream on.

I never was a Clinton fan, but I thought his impeachment process regrettable. "I never had sex with that woman" was a bald-faced lie, but impeachable? The Republicans ended up losing big-time, just as they'll lose big time on this one.

Besides, catting around with an intern is small potatoes when compared to what we've lost in Iraq--thousands of Americans, many thousands of Iraqis, gadzillions of dollars. A case can be made, and has, by those who don't have political leanings, that our invasion of Iraq upset the Middle Eastern apple cart even more fully than it was. There's dominoes there, and they're spilling all over the region.

If anyone committed some kind of national travesty, George W did. But nothing he did was either high crime or misdemeanor. He had the Congress on his side. He and his VP developed the case, and, for the most part, we all bought it. Maybe the American electorate--me included--should be impeached.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that political life in this country could get any worse. It's not hard to worry nowadays; if, as some say, tragedy unites and politics divide, then we are going to have to suffer big-time before somehow we learn once more to get along.