Jessica Crabtree

Mexican wolves are the rarest species of wolf in North America. They are a subspecies of the gray wolf, or timber wolf, with the most obvious distinctions being the longer ears, rounder head, and short tail.

They traditionally ranged through the American Southwest and northern Mexico. The surge of human population that accompanied white settlement and development of the region led to the decline of natural prey populations. When the wolves turned to livestock as a food source, they were essentially hunted to extinction. By 1950 none were known to exist in the wild.

Today about 300 exist in captivity. Attempts have been made recently to reintroduce them into the wild, but they remain a highly endangered species.

Lobos of the Southwest: The Official Site of the Mexican Gray Wolf http://www.mexicanwolves.org/
A beautiful website about a truly beautiful animal.

(Click for full-size)

This photo from Wikimedia Commons is in my opinion one of the best wolf pictures ever. The composition is perfect and I think it does a wonderful job of capturing the animal’s persona. Wolves are a favorite icon and images of them are a dime a dozen – but every now and then you run across a genuinely stunning shot like this one. Thanks to April King for this great photo.

My series on the color spectrum is complete! Click on the links to view each post.

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Purple

I’ll admit it – I’m a junkie for good little gadgets like this.

Copy the URL of any image viewed in your web browser to generate a color scheme (complete with hex codes, so no guesswork). Simple but effective – I can think of multiple ways this tool could come in very handy! Just off the top of my head:

1) Graphic design, web design/blogging – creating templates, identifying color codes, etc.

2) Art – use it to analyze colors in a reference picture, then select your paint colors. Or make choosing a mat color easy. Or use it with a color wheel to narrow down your color scheme.

Click the screenshot to see an example:

TRY IT OUT:
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

Click for larger view.
Image from Photos8.com – free stock photography
(yes, completely free – a highly recommended source!)

Indian Country Today: Uneasy in US, Iroquois believe survival’s at stake
By Samantha Gross, Associated Press Writer

This is an extensive and thorough news story by a writer for the Associated Press, detailing the history behind the recent passport scuffle for the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, and the sovereignty issues facing the Haudenosaunee. Highly recommended reading.

August 11, 3,114 BC: Beginning of the Long Count in the Mayan calendar

It seems everyone knows that the Mayan calendar is supposed to end in 2012. But the day it begins doesn’t get quite so much publicity.

Actually, both terms are something of a misnomer – the Mayan calendar doesn’t end, and doesn’t begin. The Western idea of time is quite linear compared with many of the world’s other systems of time keeping, which like the Mayan calendar move in a circle.

The Mayan calendar, or more properly the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, was used in various forms throughout Central America, including by the Aztec. Its unique counting system is based on 20 and 18, rather than 10 or 60, making it a challenge for many scholars to decipher.

WebExhibits: Calendars Through the Ages THE MAYAN CALENDAR

But even the term “calendar” itself is a little misleading, because what lay persons are actually referring to is a specific unit in this system known as the Long Count – a recurring period of approximately 5,125 years. It’s the current “great cycle” that ends in 2012 – not the calendar.

Each great cycle in the Long Count contains 13 baktuns, just as a year in our calendar contains 12 months. The winter solstice of 2012 will mark the end of this Long Count’s 13th baktun, and the beginning of the 14th. According to the Mayan calendar, that means we’ll be entering a new great cycle.

Why 5,125 years?

The Maya standardized the units of time for their calendar sometime in the 2nd century, when the early classical Mayan empire was at its height, in order to reflect the “revised history” of the empire, its creation, and its ruling dynasties. In other words, it was history in retrospect, because in the Mayan worldview, the cosmos revolved around their empire. They incorporated their vast knowledge of astronomy to bolster this worldview.

Many people have noticed that several ancient calendars begin close the same period – the Chinese, Hindu, and the biblical Hebrew calendar, among others. The end of the 3rd millennium BC also witnessed the start of construction on timekeeping monuments such as Stonehenge. This time in history marked a period immediately following dramatic environmental changes that turned the page on civilizations across the world. Apparently these changes were so significant that in some cases they marked that starting point of these early civilizations’ record of time.

The difference with the Mayan calendar, as with the Hindu, is that it does not begin with its current cycle; it actually records time much, much further back. And when one cycle ends it simply starts a new one, just as we would turn a century or a millennium. This misunderstanding is the partly the basis of the popular “Mayan doomsday hypothesis,” despite the fact that it doesn’t “end” in 2012 at all – it simply starts a new cycle of baktuns.

Apocalypse Soon? What the Maya calendar really tells us about 2012 and the end of time
by Anthony Aveni Archaeology.com

National Geographic: 2012 Countdown to Armageddon

Tulane University: The Sky is Not Falling

Wikipedia: 2012 Phenomenon

Even so, the 2012 Mayan doomsday prophecy is a popular topic these days, from old-fashioned diner gossip to New Age gurus to street prophets in the Bronx ranting about the end of the world.

Many people expect a planetary alignment within our solar system to work like some kind of cosmic combination lock, unleashing a wave of “higher energy” that will usher in a new era of existence (although, as historical and astronomical records can easily attest, planets line up all the time with no discernable effect on the earth — that is, outside of the hype generated by astrologers and wannabe mystics).

Yet others foresee in the Mayan calendar a dire prediction of a massive solar burst that will occur that fateful Christmas week, crippling our global infrastructure and invoking worldwide chaos.

But thinking that the start of a new cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 means the end of our world is about as logical as a modern person dreading the Ides of March because the Roman Empire fell.

“From time to time, as we all know, a sect appears in our midst announcing that the world will very soon come to an end. Generally, by some slight confusion or miscalculation, it is the sect that comes to an end. ”

    G. K. Chesterton

NatGeo Special Feature: Maya Rise and Fall
Saga of a civilization in three parts: The rise, the monumental splendor, and the collapse.

Photo from National Geographic.

“…The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself…”

- Chief Seattle

The famous oration by Chief Seattle is believed to have been made in 1854; the venue was supposedly a public meeting called by the governor in Seattle, Washington to discuss the transfer of native lands to the whites. There, the chief of the local Suquamish and Duwamish tribes stood up to deliver his eloquent final word on the massive changeover taking place in his world.

It’s been touted as one of the most compelling environmental messages ever spoken, a moving plea from an Indian watching his culture and his natural homeland disappear. Millions of copies have sold across the world; it’s been used throughout the media, from radio to movies to books (including an appearance in an Al Gore book). But a closer look may reveal a disappointing past to this iconic bestseller.

The speech with many faces

There are several versions of the speech in circulation, so obviously they can’t all be right. And each is littered with subtle anachronisms and other textual flaws that raise red flags about their authenticity.

The most popular (and most quoted) version was written by Texas professor Ted Perry as part of a screenplay for a 1972 film called “Home.” It was this version that soon became a war-cry for environmentalists – and the one that contains the biggest gaffs.

Buffalo and iron horses?

“…I’ve seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive…”

Readers will notice that Chief Seattle speaks of the “iron horse” or railroad. The first railroad in Washington was built by the Cascades Railroad Company in 1858 – several years after Chief Seattle supposedly delivered his speech. The Transcontinental Railroad wasn’t completed until 1869.

Above all, the “lament over the buffalo” is a dead giveaway. Chief Seattle lived in the Pacific Northwest – not the Great Plains – and never traveled beyond his homeland. We all know there are no buffalo anywhere near the Puget Sound. But I doubt it would have been as effective if the chief was quoted mourning over a diminishing seafood population. That just wouldn’t sell.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie Smoke Signals where Victor tries to teach his friend Thomas the “stoic” Indian look:

Victor: You gotta look mean or people won’t respect you. White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean. You gotta look like a warrior! You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo!

Victor: What! You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish? This ain’t “Dances With Salmon” you know!

This illustrates how much the stereotype of the Plains Indians has permeated the white view of Native Americans. In the perception of many people, Indians = vast herds of buffalo roaming the prairie, wild ponies running through the wind, and tepees silhouetted against the sunset. One image becomes a mass-scale stereotype of all Indians, everywhere. Then, out of sight, out of mind: no more buffalo, no more tepees = no more Indians – thus the “vanishing race.” Cut and dry, two-dimensional thinking.

This is the kind of thinking that is projected all through the Chief Seattle speech. And it’s perhaps one of the biggest indicators that it’s nothing more than a fake – well-intentioned, perhaps, but still a fake.

A troubled history (continue reading…)