Tag Archives: New Mexico

Coronado, Francisco

Coronado, Francisco: A Spanish explorer of the sixteenth century who traveled through the southwestern United States searching for the legendary “seven gold cities of Cibola.”

I don’t know whether people avoid studying history because they think it’s boring, or if deep in their hearts, they fear that if they have the funny wisdom on words that begin with a C
information of the mistakes done by others who lived before them, they become responsible for the knowledge.

History has always been one of my favorite subjects—mainly because, in the scope of a few paragraphs you can discover what one human being wanted to do, what they attempted and what happened.

Pretty impressive.

Otherwise you’d have to wait years to study the conclusions—but the history books honestly summarize human pursuit.

And universally, those who set out to find wealth and fame usually ended up in poverty, dying at the hands of those who were disappointed in following them.

But Coronado is particularly interesting. He heard the rumors from Indian tribes, telling him there were “seven lost cities” filled with gold and treasure, somewhere out there in the wilderness of what we now refer to as the Southwest United States.

You can imagine how doubtful his men would have been when they got to New Mexico and Arizona and saw nothing but desert and cacti.

What Coronado set out to do he never accomplished:

  • He never found gold in cities.
  • He never discovered wealth.
  • And his life seemed to be a great disappointment.

The only reason he is even mentioned in today’s history books—and also in this dictionary—is that while he was seeking that which could not be found, he stumbled upon something very significant which he was not seeking.

One day he and his men happened upon the Grand Canyon.

It certainly wasn’t golden and didn’t possess a treasure which could be carted off and turned into lasting wealth.

But it was certainly beautiful.

It was a carving which Nature had performed through millions of years, to give God a present for the raw material provided.

And it is a gift God gives to us—to remind us that treasure does not always glitter. Sometimes it just exists in natural beauty … to take our breath away.


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Ballistic Missile

Ballistic missile: (n) a missile with a high, arching trajectory, that is initially powered and guided but falls under gravity onto its target.Dictionary B

Speaking in the abstract is the most common way to end up with abstract thought.

Sometimes I am greatly confused how people who have absolutely no experience with some matter expound feverishly on the issue, displaying both intensity and ignorance.

That’s the way I feel about a ballistic missile.

As we deal with the many hot spots of controversy and conflict in our world, there are those wearing three-piece suits, ties, with freshly trimmed hair, sitting in Washington, D.C., who postulate on the need to aggressively launch air strikes against other nations to keep them from doing things which we have found unfavorable.

One day I found myself at a rally in Mobile Bay, at the coming-out party for a new battleship. I was not able to get on the ship since I didn’t have a pass, but stood about fifty yards from the vessel, as a dummy load of explosives was shot off into the air.

Once again, I was far away from the source of the explosion but the volume of that sound rattled my chest, giving me heart palpitations and leaving me unstable on my feet for the next half-hour.

It was terrifying.

So every time anybody mentions bombing, attacking or sending drone strikes to another country, I remember that sensation.

I often wonder how important it would have been for Harry Truman to have gone to New Mexico for the testing of the atomic bomb. Sitting in his office having it described to him made the decision to bomb Hiroshima too easy.

He had no idea exactly what he was doing. So when it came time to bomb Nagasaki, he rubber-stamped his decision and dropped a second annihilator.

It’s not so much that I question the wisdom of that move. Instead, I challenge the immaturity involved in making the decision.

If you’re going to pronounce death on a group of people, you should have an awareness of the power you’re unleashing.

I am tired of ignorant people talking about war like it’s a game of Stratego.

When a ballistic missile goes into the air, gravity brings it to earth–where it kills people who were once living.

 

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Apaches

dictionary with letter A

Apaches:(n) members of an American Indian people living primarily in New Mexico and Arizona. The Apaches put up fierce resistance to the European settlers and, under the leadership of Geronimo, were the last American Indian people to be conquered.

Sometimes I choose silence because speaking is such a minefield of “lip-slip-bombs.” It is difficult in this present age to know what to say or even what to call things without offending someone.

This is quite apparent with those original citizens who occupied the North American continent before the European settlers invaded.

(You see how carefully I worded that? Of course, I probably offended the Europeans, who would insist they “settled,” not “invaded.” Once again, you can’t win.)

But concerning these individuals, in my lifetime I have heard them called Indians, American Indians, tribal nations and Native Americans.

Even though I want to be as gentle as possible with the feelings of others, I think what we call them is not nearly as important as how we treated them, and how the treatment continues today with a sense of antipathy.

Yes, I think the American consciousness occasionally needs to be pricked by our approach to those who were here when we arrived and those we brought over from Africa to tend our fields.

We have two groups of people who have a vicious history with the white class, who continue to suffer under varying degrees of subjugation and prejudice to this day.

So I don’t know what you want to call them, and I don’t know whether it makes a difference if the Washington football team is called the Redskins or not. I think the true problem is does not lie in calling “Indians” and “Negroes,” or “African-Americans” and “Native Americans,” but rather, when you finish addressing them, the determining factor of your quality of life is in how you grant them equal quality.

  • What did the white man bring to the Apache nation? Disease, guns and whiskey.
  • What did the white man bring to the African? Slavery, punishment and the ghetto.

So I think it’s a bit pretentious to believe that simply because we choose the correct verbiage for greeting them that we’ve bridged the gap.

Actually, I would much rather call them Indians and Negroes, but love them as my brothers and sisters as opposed to referring to them by the popular lingo of the day … and sequester them in lack.

 

 

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