Another Nice Essay By Jessie Veeder, A North Dakota Original

In The Dickinson Press. 

And some days it rains, like a 48-hour torrential downpour, and the dust turns into sloppy red mud as the water pools and makes rivers and rivets in the country roads.

And the Bakken Truck Parade slows down to chain up, wait it out or, you know, get stuck sideways across the road you take to get to your mailbox and up the hill to town where you have an appointment you would have been late for even without the rain and the 1-ton roadblock that, if you consider the physics and geometry of the situation, looks like it’s going to be a while.

Yes, some days not even four-wheel drive can help you get the groceries.

And then some days that four-wheel drive goes out on you in the middle of a similar monsoon-style thunderstorm at the beginning of the three-hour obstacle-course-style trip to Bismarck and you find yourself sliding sideways on what you were certain was a road yesterday but now, clearly, is a swamp.

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A New Martyr In America

A Note To The Granddaughters

There has been a lot said and written about the Zimmerman/Martin shooting/killing, and there will be more. I assume some of the middle school students I taught as a substitute teacher will come to school attired in tribute to Mr Martin, American martyr.

When I read the essay by Jessie Veeder, I remembered again the thought I had while driving into Starbucks this morning: there seems something "wrong" about the African-American community raising Martin -- a pot-smoking, high school dropout (or expelled) -- to sainthood.

Right, wrong, or indifferent, Trayvon Martin now becomes the face of the disenfranchised. Somehow, I think they (the disenfranchised) could do better.

I don't know how the neurons in my brain are so screwed up in wiring that somehow Jessie Veeder makes me think of the Zimmerman/Martin killing, but the killing has certainly become part of the my consciousness, if not the American consciousness.

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One nominee, I suppose for "face of the American disenfranchised, might be Mr Bojangles."  From The Los Angeles Times:

Among the dozen cars the Petersen [Automotive Museum] has already sold is a Duesenberg once owned by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the African-American dancer and actor who often starred with Shirley Temple in pre-World War II movies. The museum plans to sell off an additional 107 vehicles worth millions of dollars in auctions that start Aug. 1.

"It was our decision that the car was not important to our collection," Meyer said when asked about the sale of Robinson's car in a brief interview. "We have other Duesenbergs to select from."

"Other Duesenbergs to select from."

I guess "they" missed the point. I could be wrong, but I believe the only African-American connection in this incredible automotive museum is the Bojangles-Duesenberg connection, and that was one too much.

Mr Bojangles, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band