I uploaded all my footage from yesterday on my computer last night. This morning I reshot a few things. From what I’ve gathered so far I still think the video I’m making will be a ‘day in the life’ storyline. I’m planning on using subtitles rather than a voice over.
Yesterday it rained all day and it was dark. Today it’s still raining but it’s not that dark so I don’t want to reshoot too much. I really like the footage I got yesterday. It was pretty bleak at times, but when I shot scenes in the living room I had lights on which warmed it up quite a bit. I’m hoping I can get at least a 12 minute video in the end.
Yesterday and today I started some paintings that I’m doing as Christmas gifts. They’re small so they shouldn’t take too long. I follow a lot of painters who paint small and I’ve always wondered why. Now I get it. You’re finished in two sittings, if that.
I’ve got two projects I’m currently working on, the I-10 and Fredericksburg intersection and Thomas Jefferson high school. I will spend the next few weeks on them before I leave for Christmas. I’m flying out to Denver for a few days. Not long, about four days. I signed up for a meditation course in January but still haven’t heard if I’ve been accepted. I will email them today and see where I am on the waitlist.
I’m reading the classic book, The Last of the Mohicans. It was written in 1826, almost one hundred years ago, about the French Indian War. The book is set in 1758 around the massacre of Fort William Henry. Even for a one hundred year old book it’s a page turner. I’m usually not interested in books about adventure, especially if there’s fighting, but I’m enjoying it.
I’m familiar with Plains Indians and what happened to a lot of the tribes that existed in the midwest, but I’m not very familiar with the tribes that existed in the North East. Most of the American History I studied was about the Revolutionary War and the battle against Britain; about how we rose up against our perpetrators. But I didn’t study much about the offenses we perpetrated against others.
Both the French and the British involved Native tribes in the wars they waged against each other, and if this book is based in any kind of reality, both countries exploited them as well as blamed them. Native Americans and Europeans had different ways of engaging in warfare, and when Natives didn’t agree, Europeans blamed them (savages). It’s pretty ridiculous when you think about it: How we kill and destroy is more civilized (ie, moral) than how you kill and destroy. Duh.
It seems as if I’ve been on a Native American theme lately. It started with discovering one of my ancestors was kidnapped by Natives in the 1700’s She was in Missouri and taken for 6 months. Then, a relative of mine suggested I read a book called Captured, about several settlers who were kidnapped as children in the Texas Hill Country. I have to say, after reading Captured, it’s hard to imagine anyone surviving the trauma of it. Some of those kids were kidnapped during violent raids against their families. The most interesting thing about it was that none of the kids wanted to return to their families. One of them was so upset about being returned that he died within a year from a failure to thrive. The ones who did return were never the same. Many of them couldn’t live indoors, couldn’t sustain relationships or jobs. They were lost, neither European settlers anymore nor Natives.
I don’t now if that happened on the East Coast. I’d be interested to know. My current novel has a Native American theme. It’s actually about current political issues and how some white Americans are so resistant to change, to accepting other races and cultures. I hope my argument is respectful of both sides, which isn’t popular these days, but clear that acceptance is the only way. I believe it’s possible to find self-acceptance and acceptance of others at the same time. I hope it can stand as some kind of amends for the past. That’s my goal.