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Jan. 31, 2010 This is my second attempt at a chapbook. The Web definition of chapbook remains the same: “Chapbook” is a generic term to cover a particular genre of small, pocket-sized booklets outrageously popular from the sixteenth century through the end of the nineteenth century. As early as 1553, paperbacked books were being peddled in taverns. Generally, the subject matter was scurrilous, which appealed to the general reading public, and the price was right – a halfpenny or a penny each. The general public treasured them from the get-go. In later times such books would have been categorized as Penny Dreadfuls, although the dreadful proffered a single story while the chapbooks contained a treasure trove of short articles, poems, stories and crude woodcut illustrations. Now, without any further preamble or crude woodcuts, here is Cate’s Second Chapbook. I happen to have a smidgen of Native American blood in my veins. My ancestors were Canadian First People living in the eastern parts of the country. They were called the Cree. They named the land they inhabited Nitassinan, now Quebec and Labrador. “Cree” is not their real name. It’s a French-based word shortened to “Cri” which morphed into Cree. Admittedly, I have never taken much interest in my Cree ancestry. Being a Minnesotan However, I have always been fascinated with both the Ojibway people and the fierce Sioux tribes, the Lakota in particular. A sub-category, or sub-tribe, among the Lakota is the Oglala. Another is the Brulé. Red Cloud, (1822-1909), half Oglala and half Brulé Sioux, famous soldier, intelligent chief and statesman, was the leader of the Oglala. In a last-stand event, Red Cloud managed to close the Bozeman Trail, thereby hindering the finish of the biggest buffalo herd in the US. The chief found himself, along with what was left of his people, on the Pine Ridge Reservation. While he lived there and until his death, he campaigned for a Jesuit-run school for the children on the Oglala reservation. Red Cloud obtained his heart’s desire in 1888, a “Blackrobe” school. The Jesuits and a group of Franciscan teaching nuns named their mission Holy Rosary. Only later did it become Red Cloud School I get their begging letters and have a difficult time turning down the Red Cloud Indian School.
The most recent request package includes some of the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. Written mostly by 10th graders in the high school, they express the hearts and souls of these incredible children. It is my conviction that Red Cloud had the right idea. Educate the children. Then they will educate you. I’m sorry I can’t send you anything this month, Father Klink, S.J. But thank you for the lovely gift. ***** This next story is in honor of the 2010 Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver, Canada. However, I want to go back in time to the 1932 Winter Games. It was only the third winter event in the history of the Olympics. On February 4th in Lake Placid, New York, the popular governor of the state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, soon to be elected President of the United States, opened the affair ceremoniously. 252 athletes from 17 countries participated in 14 events. 231 of the athletes were male. 21 of them were female. One of the women won the ladies’ singles. She was the Norwegian wonder, Sonja Henie, who went on to a career in Hollywood. She had wanted to be a Hollywood star since she was a tiny girl. Not only could the lovely Sonja skate, she was also a terrific swimmer and horseback rider. Plus, she won Norway’s only gold medal in 1932. Talk about having everything! If Sonja became famous, others drifted off the radar after the 1932 Winter Olympics. In 1932, Aleksander Merek Kowalski was thirty years old, a proud Polska citizen and a good hockey player. Not a classy puck-whacker, just good. Let’s put it this way: there were only four ice hockey teams in the 1932 Olympics – Canada, the USA, Germany and Poland. They each played 6 games. Canada won the medal with 5 games. The US won 4. Germany won 2. Poland won 0 and lost 6. One can only hope that they went home happy anyway. Aleksander had also participated as a hockey player in the 1928 Winter Olympics in San Moritz, Switzerland. The Polish team was placed in Group B with Sweden and Czechoslovakia. The Polish didn’t win a game that year either. The next we hear about Aleksander it’s 1940. Poland has already been overrun by the German Army in 1939. In June of 1940 Hitler thought he had already won his war. Dunkirk had happened to the Allies’ chagrin. Dunkirk however was hardly the end of World War II. Nonetheless, it did end for some 22,000 Polish citizens on March 5 or April 4, 1940. These people, ordinary civilians many of them, policemen, gendarmes, intellectuals, university students, alleged intelligence agents, and, of course, all the military officers captured during Russia’s incursion on eastern Poland in September, 1939. They had been prisoners of the Red Army at the Kozelsk Prisoner of War camp, about 12 miles west of Smolensk. Now they had been given a death sentence. They were to be executed on Stalin’s orders. History calls it the Katyn Massacre. What it was in actuality was a bloody mass murder. It occurred near Katyn, Russia in a quiet forest just beginning to wake up for Spring. Aleksander Kowalski, born in Warsaw, would have been 37 years old by then, probably married, possibly the father of children. We have no details on the hockey player’s personal life except what his family has been quoted as saying in sorrow. The last word they had from Aleksander was a postcard. It was dated February 11, 1940. As far as anyone can tell, the Katyn Forest Massacre occurred in April of that year, on or about the 3rd. This may not be the perfect illustration of a Chapbook, but I’d like to wrap up with a few quotes from a few quotable persons. Bruce Grocott (British Lord, member of Parliament, born 1940) I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves. Ralph Waldo Emerson: American thinker: What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. Molly Ivins: columnist, political commentator, Texan: What you need is sustained outrage . . . there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority.
Demosthenes: (384 to 322 BC) Greek statesman, orator;
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what man wishes, that he also believes to be true.
Writing was always my first choice in life. I began writing at the age of 8, small books about pioneers heading west. Little did I know then that I would be living in the most "western" of all the states, Texas. No one told the Texans that they are simply Southerners who, like Bugs Bunny, took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and wound up here.
I am sneaking up on 70 years of age and now own a vast store of useless knowledge. Happy to share any or all of it with you all.
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