The Pack Meets Again

Roger and Maddy are pretty well established in their new little home on Grand Lake.  Maddy is leaving her teaching position here in Tulsa to take a part management part charge nurse position in the lakes area.  Mike and Jodi are back from Hawaii.  We all had tales to tell.  

We had agreed to meet at Asiana in Claremore last night but I suggested we move it back to Tulsa at the last minute because of the possibility of icy roads. Roger and Maddy were already in Tulsa and could have spent the night if the roads had iced before they left. So, we wound up at one of our usual haunts, Beijing Gourmet at 61st and Memorial

The Chinese lady who serves as maitre' de gave us a big smile when we showed up and showed us to an out of the way table where we could chat and not be in the way.  The food was good as usual.

It seems that Mike and Jodi did not enjoy their Hawaiian cruise as much as the last one.  It rained most of the time and they encountered heavy weather at sea.  Mike has sworn off of cruise ships but I suspect we will be able to win him over in time for the next Pack Cruise in January, 2015.

As we were chatting, one of the folks guessed that I heard a lot of heartbreaking stuff in my profession.  I do.  I don't talk about most of it because I have a duty of confidentiality to my clients and at any rate most of it is anything but good conversation material.  The saddest part of that is that much of that heartbreak is self inflicted. Sometimes, a huge part of my job is getting my client to step outside of the hole they have dug for themselves and look at their situation as the rest of the world sees it.  I didn't share this all with the pack. Being a downer is no fun for anyone.

We had a good chat and several good laughs.  We broke up early and went home before the ice set in.  And a good time was had by all.    

A Tale From the Hood - The Tabby Cats

Last night, we let our twin orange tabby "yard cats" sleep in the house because of the cold.  I guess there was a certain amount of mercy involved in that decision on my part but I also thought a lot about having to locate a dead cat by smell from someplace deep in my storage building where they normally sleep.

The way that we "acquired" those cats is a story.  A while back, the guy who lived next door at the time was letting a pair of teen-aged lesbians crash in and probably work out of his house.  (Sheila literally chased the next girl that stayed there out of the neighborhood when she began working the corner in front of our house.)  This pair had a newborn baby with them and a pair of identical twin orange tabby kittens.  Once, they left the baby with their host/landlord with nothing to feed her.  The neighbor knocked on my door and told me he was broke, the baby was crying, there was nothing to feed it and he didn't know where the mom's were.  I kind of lost it. I went up the street and bought a box of very

expensive formula for the baby and then warned him if he didn't call DHS I was going to. The kinky young beauties were gone within hours never to return BUT they left their twin kittens.

At first the neighbor fed them but soon he went to jail.  Then his parents fed them for a while but that eventually stopped.  We pestered everyone we met trying to find them a home to no avail.  In the meanwhile, I used them for moving target airsoft practice in the back yard to encourage them to find another home in somebody else's yard.  Before you animal lovers go nuts about the airsoft practice be advised I used a low velocity, spring powered pistol that modern kids regularly shoot each other with.  It just stings a little.  No permanent damage.

I couldn't figure out why the cats didn't move on until I caught Sheila feeding them on the sly.  I demanded she stop.  I might as well have saved my breath.  She just did it anyway.  It's me and Rodney Dangerfield all the way on some issues with Sheila .... like feeding stray animals.  I soon had to lock up our cat door to prevent our one cat  house from becoming a three cat smellathon. Soon, they spent a lot of time begging for food or entrance at the cat door.  I ignored them.  But, the fact that it was VERY cold last night and I didn't want to try to recover a dead cat carcass from somewhere deep in our stored furniture convinced me temporarily call a truce.

Ironically, the truce may have accomplished all that I wanted.  Once they were in the house last night, I locked the cat door to keep them in.  They tried to escape multiple times and I just ignored them.  When one sneaked up on to the bed, I shot my empty airsoft pistol in his general direction.  This one makes a LOUD pop from the CO2.  He disappeared instantly.  Today, they are no place to be seen.  I haven't heard a peep out of them.  I've left the cat door unlocked all day and haven't seen hide nor hair of them.  Maybe one night in the house was enough.  Who knows?  But stop and think about this.  What other neighborhood can you imagine where someone as boringly normal as Sheila and I would be recounting a tale like this?

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A postcript.  They were back as soon as Sheila came home from work this evening.  They shot in the front door as soon as she opened it.  They know who their friends are I guess.

My Great Grandmother Was A Cherokee Princess

You would think that after the recent Elizabeth Warren controversy, folks would learn to think twice before making a dubious claim to Native American heritage.   Perhaps the most dubious is the claim to be the descendant of a "Cherokee Princess."

I was sitting at lunch at a very swanky country club a few weeks back when my host's wife made one of those statements that makes any Okie and particularly a Cherokee Okie want to laugh in their face.  This lovely, polished, otherwise classy lady said with a perfectly straight face, "My great grandmother was a Cherokee Princess but we can't prove it."  Proving that would be a problem.  All Things Cherokee makes an interesting statement on this subject: ".... many Indians consider "my grandmother was a Cherokee princess" to be the mantra of the wannabe. There is no faster way to lose credibility and respect from an Indian than to speak these words." Link The photograph below is the header of a very well written and pointed blog that addresses this issue. Link I think the photo itself pretty well tells the story but this same writer has also written an excellent post on the subject. Link

The statement that you are a descendant of a Cherokee Princess is a common urban myth.  First, Cherokee leadership was not hereditary. Cherokee leaders were almost always elected or appointed when there were any leaders at all outside the clan.  So, without hereditary titles, the "princess" concept becomes somewhat problematic.  Further, it was common for Cherokee men to refer to their wives in the linguistic equivalent of the term "princess."  It was a statement of affection and respect not title.  Finally, in later years before statehood, it was common to publish the title "Cherokee Lady of Quality" when a white man married a Cherokee woman.  This was to let the ignorant readers in other states know that this man had married a civilized woman who was not an uneducated barbarian.  

Another commonly held myth about Cherokee's is that there is a "Cherokee Reservation" in Oklahoma.  The relationship between the Federal Government, the State of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation has always been murky and is seldom understood by outsiders.  The Cherokee Nation was never a "reservation" but rather a constitutional republic which occupied approximately the northeastern quarter of the State of Oklahoma.  When people from out of state ask to be taken to the "Cherokee Reservation" I am tempted to drive them to Catoosa, point out the Casino complex and then say, "Here you are.  It continues to the Arkansas state line east and the Arkansas River south."  Trying to explain checkerboard Indian country to an outsider is usually not worth the trouble unless they are a lawyer.

I am a blue eyed and fair skinned with only a small blood percentage. There were two branches of my father's family, the predominantly white and the predominantly Cherokee.  I never knew the white side.  But, my Cherokee great aunts and uncles were wonderfully gentle and kind. I have very fond memories of meals in their homes and get togethers at their churches and cemeteries.  They were almost all stalwart Baptists, honest to a fault and very family oriented.  But, some of the fondest memories of my childhood are from time spent with my half blood great aunt Ada Miller who raised my all but orphaned father.  Aunt Ada and her full blood husband John Miller were remarkably kind people who took in a sickly, orphaned boy and raised him as their own.  I am honored to have known them.