New on Mansions of the Mind:

The Sooner State (from Growing Up Stories )

Quite often on the farm plowing, digging postholes or just herding cattle we’d find ammonite fossils. Our black dirt farm ...

http://mansionsofthemind.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-sooner-state-from-growing-up.html

Happy Holidays!

Very enjoyable....a true "miracle" you survived the Okalhoma Bible Belt with brain intact. I recall seeing two kirk of Xtians across the the road from each other...one supported music the other thought the musicians were damned
My sister went to university in Enid so I have a few memories of trips down their often via the Blue Ridge Parkway and then to Virginia to visit relations and then across to Enid.

Might be neat to start a thread in the Social and Fun sections for some "growing up stories" from members.

I assume you've read Lonesome Dove and the associated books. He can really invoke a period.

The Trail of Tears story is certainly a black marked episode in American treatment of indigenes ( Canadians are no saints either ) and has invoked a lot of art.
Perhaps the most iconic being this one.

"End of the Trail" is Waupun’s most famous sculpture. Created by James Earl Fraser, the sculpture was commissioned by Waupun-area native Clarence Addison Shaler and donated to the city in 1929. Photo By Chelsey Lewis

representing all the displaced native Americans.

We had a a patially coloured representation of this on the wall and it continues to haunt, one of the few things I missed keeping in my first divorce. The lack of colour on the front portion gave an impression of both moving into a whiteout and perhaps into oblivion...it was well done by a local artist.

The accounts of that journey from the east are horrific especially for the Seminoles who were ill equipped materially and culturally to survive....

This was the artist in his studio with the originals



Funny you are enamoured with ammonites as well. I love them and being single for a while found a lovely one from South Africa that was sawed in half and polished as they are generally presented.

A few years later ..one half resides in my sweet tart's bedside table the other in mine as we live apart for half the year. She's worse geek than me and loved the symbolism......just have to treat her nice so she doesn't give it back Doing okay so far.

Thanks! Interesting idea about 'Growing up Stories' -- maybe I'll start a thread.

Trail of tears....native americans....etc. Having grown up in Oklahoma, even though as a 'whiteman' I've always felt closely connected to the native americans....there are many stories there as well.

Great - we have a pretty international crowd here. Might be some gems.

Macdoc wrote:Great - we have a pretty international crowd here. Might be some gems.

Dun: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/fun-g ... 47914.html