Legacy Fund -- April, 2024, Deposits

Locator: 46866LEGACYFUND.

Legacy Fund

Monthly deposits.

Legacy Fund data here. 

North Dakota budget: probably easiest to read is at Ballotpedia.

North Dakota state office of management and budget.

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The Book Page 

I'm probably the only one that doesn't know / didn't know the meaning / origin of "Manitou" -- that is, until tonight. 

Wow, how many times have I see that word, how long have I known that word, or variations thereof, how many times have I mentioned the Manitou oil field on the blog, and hard-to-believe, I've never thought of looking up the word?

Then tonight, while reading "Rip Van Winkle" in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories or, the Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Washington Irving, introduction by Alice Hoffman, c. 2001.

"Rip Van Winkle" was the third story in the "anthology," and in an appendix to the story as it were, a posthumous note by Diedrich Knickerbocker, mentioned "Manitou," p. 41. While discussing the Catskill or Kaatsberg mountains along the Hudson River north of NYC, Knicerbocker: 

"In old times say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and vexations upon the red men."

Pretty cool, huh?

One can confirm the meaning of "manitou" by looking it up, but yes, indeed, it is an old Algonquin word for a specific spirit living in the geographical location as noted.

I've had the book on my shelves for twenty years, I suppose, but only recently had an interest in reading about Washington Irving and this stories again. 

"With "Rip Van Winkle," and the "Sketch Book," Washington Irving is believed by many to have created the genre of the short story in America, mixing superstition and history, the European tradition of fairy tales and folktales, and local Indian legends." -- Alice Hoffman.

"Rip Van Winkle" was published in 1819. Interestingly, these stories of superstition and ghosts were a big deal in England at the time. Exhibit A: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. More contemporaneously, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1818.

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An Allegory