March 16, 2016, Prescott- I’ve had an affection for things Celtic, since long before things Celtic became trendy. My half-English mother forbade the playing of Irish music in the house, but she’s come around to at least allow its play, on the music channels of her cable service.
My own affection for such is part of a lifelong connection with those who are close to the soil. So, I feel bonds with the indigenous- not only my Penobscot ancestors on my paternal grandmother’s line, but all Native Americans, Inuits, Siberians, Hawaiians, Australian aboriginals and those whom I called, in my childhood ignorance, “the natives” (tribal Africans).
I associate Celts, ancient Teutons, Slavs and the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe with the land, also. It seems they ravaged one another, in wave after wave, and usually just as the one group was settling into sedentary life, there came the next horde.
That’s been the way of humanity, since we headed up, out of Africa, and wherever else we may have mastered the art of upright mobility, and spread across the continents. We have so often looked to the other’s yard, for prosperity- or at least for a change of scene. Indigenous people had these conflicts, too, though when the Europeans came to these shores, with visions of commerce and gain, the American peoples were in the process of establishing a peaceful network of trade routes, from southeast Alaska and the taiga of Canada, to Tierra del Fuego, and so many points in between. It is highly likely that there was trading between the Aleuts and the people of Japan; between the Greenland Inuit and the peoples of Scotland and Norway (even before Iceland was settled); and, possibly, between the seafaring people of what is now northeast Brazil and the kingdoms of western Africa. Then, too, nobody could hold a candle to the masters of the ocean: Those who went east, from the Malay Peninsula, and became the Micronesians and Polynesians, or west, and became the Malagasy.
We face, possibly in my lifetime, if not in my son’s, a decision about the proper use of the resources on our planet’s Moon, then those of at least the near planets of our solar system. Green- the colour of many of our wardrobes, tomorrow, will continue to have different connotations to different people. Mean green, or gentle green? Commerce, at any cost, or careful stewardship? It seems this has gone on, since Croesus minted his first coins, or even since the nations that pre-dated the Great Flood, if one believes in such things.
Where are you, in this debate? (My Xangan friends, in particular, please know that I don’t take umbrage at contrary opinions, even if I get a little spirited once in a while.) Express yourselves, and Erin Go Bragh!
A Sagittarian Seeker 