strange, unexpected delights

www.leelanaunews.com

posted on October 14, 2007 at 1:06 am,

S-B icon heading to Columbus Zoo

Anna, the maternal primate who has "watched over" pedestrians in Suttons Bay for the past eight years, is moving south...Now, she’ll have a new home at the Columbus Zoo.



I've had quite the eventful month, due to a much needed and appreciated transfer at work, an upteenth change of living situation (affecting both roommate and neighborhood association), and; I've met someone.

Dee and I went to flamingo gaze at the local fair and it slipped my mind to ask her whether she liked the poison dart frogs, or otters, or chatty monkeys best. (Prime example: "Mama--possibly another office worker deciding to take a breather, and realizing the joys of bringing an easily amused date--look at the gorilla. He's dead.""No, honey, he's sleeping. Watch his belly [move up and down]. See, he's resting.")

Positively nauseating, eh?

Love me some straight dope

Dear Cecil:

I've always wondered where the wonderful American expression "Indian giver" originated.  Is an Indian giver one who: (1) as an Indian, gives you something and then takes it back, (2) gives things to Indians, or (3) gives away Indians?  Your insight is greatly appreciated.

--Michael W., Jacksonville, Florida

(September 16, 1988)

Dear Michael:
This whole thing is so ironic it's an instant cure for pernicious anemia.  "Indian" was once used by the white man as an all-purpose adjective signifying "bogus" or "false", owing to the supposedly low morals of the red man.  Thus you had "Indian summer," false summer late in the year; "Indian corn" and "Indian tea," cheap substitutes for products the original colonists had known back in England; and "Indian giver," someone who gives you something and then takes it back.

But of course Europeans were the real Indian givers, repeatedly promising the Indian reservations by treaty and then stealing them back once valuable farmland or minerals were found.  The term has thus inadvertently become an acid commentary on the character of its inventors.  I think it's poetic.


Dear Cecil:
You appear to be under the impression that Indian reservations were provided by the United States to Indians in treaties, and that the whites later "took back" the reservations. In fact, in the majority of cases, reservations are areas of the tribes' own homelands, usually very small by comparison to their original territory, which the Indians kept to themselves, while giving up the balance in the treaties. In legalese, the Indians "reserved to themselves" a portion of their lands, while granting the rest to the government.

While this distinction may seem like nitpicking, it is important, because most non-Indians perceive the special status of Indians tribes and their lands as gifts from the benevolent white father in Washington (at the resentful taxpayer's expense). In fact, neither their special status, which is sovereignty retained by the tribes, nor their reserved lands are gifts in any sense of the word.
--Anthony C., Mill Valley, California


Dear Anthony:
Point well taken. Thanks.



Dear Cecil:
I'm afraid you've goofed again. In a recent column you wrote, "The whole thing is so ironic it's an instant cure for pernicious anemia." I'm surprised you didn't know that pernicious anemia is caused by a deficiency in a protein called intrinsic factor which carries Vitamin B12 to the ileum, the last segment of the small intestine, where the complex binds to a receptor and is absorbed into the blood. No amount of iron would cure it but a good shot in the arm of B12 would do a lot of good. Would you please set the record straight?
--Larry G., junior, Northwestern University Medical School, Evanston, Illinois


Cecil replies:
Go away, kid, you bother me.

122
Emily Dickinson

A something in a summer’s Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer’s noon —
A depth — an Azure — a perfume —
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer’s night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see —

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle — shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me —

The wizard fingers never rest —
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes it narrow bed —

Still rears the East her amber Flag —
Guides still the sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red —

So looking on — the night — the morn
Conclude the wonder gay —
And I meet, coming thro’ the dews
Another summer’s Day!

FYI

Zanne plans to spend the summer months haunting my on-campus retreat as she hunts down public radio gigs in the city. Hence, my latest technicolour obsession features Worldly Redheads.