A BIG GAME HUNTER WAS THE FIRST ENVIRONMENTAL PRESIDENT!
Overheard at Pipestone, Minnesota.
Husband: “It’s about time you came out
of your own little world
and remembered
there’s other people in the party.”
Wife: “I don’t read minds.”
The first white man, one George Caitlin,
reached Pipestone in 1836. The white government soon
appropriated the sacred Indian ground,
a preserve for future generations of tourists.
Later, they paved a few acres for parking.
The white men put up photographs
of the noble dead savages
with some sage native commentary.
“When we Indians kill meat,
we eat it all up…
Everywhere the White Man has touched
the Earth,
It is sore.”
Admission is one dollar for adults.
Children, seniors and
Native Americans enter free.
The first words in the slide show are
“Made Possible By Phillips Petroleum.”
Next door to Pipestone
is the Dakota Mercantile
where you can buy coyote pelts
for $39 and white arctic fox for $69.
Souvenir whips made by Indians.
From India. Really.
Chief Luther Standing Bear on a wall
hanging: “Men must be born
and reborn to belong.”
Out in the middle of nowhere,
a village, rare sight indeed,
we passed an old house
with a tombstone-shaped sign:
Here Lies The Last Salesman....
The Sioux have a saying,
EACH ANIMAL HAS THE BRAINS
TO TAN ITSELF.
In the Badlands,
early settlers said the water was
too rich to drink,
too thin to plow.
On “Listener Supported Radio of the Lakota Nation.”
Native American News suggests
the Indian Wars are still going on.
God bless them.
Later some cowboy is singing
“Custer Died For Your Sins.”
Free parking.
God Bless America.
Would Mount Rushmore
even pass zoning today?
I look at the Monument,
dedicated to our Founding Foreskins,
America’s Shrine Of Democracy.
I see a memorial
to white men in charge.
Carving mountains in their own image.
with power chisels and nuclear hammers.
If you stare long enough
at Mount Rushmore,
you can see anybody’s head on that butte.
Thinking of holograms.
Buy a hillside,
project some faces,
four faces up there.
Who truly really
represents the best of us?
Currently leaning toward Elvis,
Rin Tin Tin,
the girl from Flashdance
and Bob Cousy.
There’s no line
at the men’s room
and a no-longer-than-usual line
at the ladies’ room.
I believe long waiting
lines
for women’s lavatories is a
national tragedy;
that’s why I have called
for a constitutional amendment
requiring all bathrooms
to be co-ed.
IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES SENSE.
Inside the visitors center.
Shot in the theater in the head,
Lincoln’s quote said,
“Let us have faith
right makes might
and in that faith
let us to the end
dare to do our duty
as we understand it.”
Lincoln was the one who freed Negros
forced to move from the plantations
to the ghettos
And buy big radios.
Jefferson, wig-wearing slave owner
and slave lover, said,
“I carry with me the consolation
of a firm persuasion that
heaven has in store for
our beloved country
long ages to come
of prosperity and happiness.”
We should be so lucky.
Under Teddy Roosevelt’s photo.
“Far better is it to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those
poor spirits
who neither enjoy much
nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight
that knows not victory
nor defeat.”
It takes a certain kind of white man
to charge uphill
on horseback
into a hailstorm of bullets.
On purpose.
“Don’t put your hands on that!”
A father cautions
his reaching young daughter.
In a herd at Mt. Rushmore.