Touring Day

Wed. June 22: Today dawned sunny and breezy. Teams 1-6 were “Touring” so after breakfast we all loaded in to the flat nosed Blue Bird Pine Ridge Bus and headed to our first destination, Red Cloud Indian School. Those who had seen it before were given a tour of the High School. The rest of us were given the history of the school by Tina, an alum turned staff member, who met with us in the lovely, lofty sanctuary that was rebuilt a few years ago after the original 1893 building burned down. Their chancel area is made from bricks and the cornerstone from the old building. We learned that Red Cloud demanded that the “Black Dresses” that had treated him well be included when they formed the school and that is why it is Catholic. They are a Preschool through high school and 92% of graduates go on to College. They have a high number of Bill Gates Scholarship recipients. There is no tuition charged but students must “test into” the school and they offer no Special Education Services. After her presentation we went to the cultural center to see the Art Show and purchase crafts made by students, if desired. From there we drove around the town of Pine Ridge. They made a quick stop at the gas station and then we proceeded to KILI radio station to look around. The DJ who was featured in the video we had seen Sunday was there and we had a good chance to talk with him. The view from the station is really beautiful and it was a good chance to enjoy the lovely day with temperatures in the 70s. The Reservation is very large and everything is quite a long drive so we spent a great deal of time riding in the bus between stops. Along the way I saw several magpies and an antelope lying in a field which was still there half an hour later when we passed it again. Everyone was really ready to eat lunch when we arrived at Betty’s Kitchen. Great Granddaughter of Black Elk, Betty serves preordered lunches at her double-wide on a hill side, eaten outside under a pine bough shelter looking over the rolling countryside. We both had a turkey sandwich that turned out to be much like what we had been eating all week. But it had hearty potato salad and pork and beans with it too. We also bought a piece of Betty’s chocolate cake for dessert. Many people made the steep climb up the hill behind Betty’s to enjoy even better views. But I was having trouble with vertigo and just couldn’t make it up. That was a first for me and I found it very discouraging. From Betty’s the bus took us to Singing Horse Trading Post. It is a small place under a log house with a variety of items for sale but we didn’t buy anything there. Our final stop of the day was at the cultural center at Oglala Lakota College. They played an audio guide to some of the paintings, photos, and maps that gave a history of the area. We were hurried out of the center before we could watch the video that was supposed to follow. But the group mutinied a bit and did manage to stop at the College Bookstore, where I finally found postcards and Marv bought a t-shirt. We arrived back at Re-Member just about exactly at dinnertime and had hamburgers. Kari’s group continued working for some reason and they arrived an hour late for dinner. They were pretty exhausted! Several Lakota artists were invited to bring their work for us to peruse and I finally managed to buy Dreamcatchers for the grandchildren and we bought a painting by a “ledger artist” named Joe Pulliam who, like some other artists, is doing paintings on old ledgers pages, the way Lakota artists had to do when they couldn’t get any other paper for their artwork. The evening presenter was a dancer who worked with the US Park Service named Corbin Conroy/Good Man to Walk With. He explained his Regalia and dressed one of the young volunteer men in most of it, telling the history and story behind the pieces. He had a dry sense of humor and made it very enjoyable but the whole presentation took about an hour and a half. Our group had hoped to climb the hill behind the dining hall to watch the sun set but it was too late for that. So we returned to our Kiksuya for Prayer Partner presents and to practice our song for which Kari had written a verse. While trying to work on pictures on the camera Marv inadvertently erased everything on the card, deleting about 200 Pine Ridge pictures and our anniversary dinner pictures as well. It was a sad note to end the day on as we wearily got ready for bed.

Second Work Day

Tue. June 21: This was another cloudy, breezy day that threatened rain; cooler but with only a bit of drizzle. The same three groups went with one of the same Project Managers (Marissa) to continue a different skirting job with a different Construction Manager (Dave). The big van got stuck in the mud going down the wrong driveway but a man came out of the trailer and masterfully backed it up and got it out. Dave told us to forget everything about how Matt does skirting and do it his way. He proceeded to give us much more instruction and we got more done. Four kids came out and spent the rest of the day with us, playing with volunteers and sharing our lunch. We only stopped skirting when we ran out of fiberglass insulation batting. We began making a deck for the same trailer and then made the nearly one hour drive back to Re-Member. We ate spaghetti for dinner and then had my favorite speaker thus far. Larry Swallow/Cetan Tanka Tokahe Kin Ye/Hawk Who Flies First used song, words, drum, and projected slides to tell The Lakota Creation Story. He is a gifted and mesmerizing story teller and I enjoyed it immensely! Marv & I bought a copy of his DVD where he does his presentation in his Ceremonial Regalia. After practicing the song and getting our Prayer Partner gifts we tried to do a better job of getting lights out on time at Kiksuya.

First Work Day

Mon. June 20: Although we were well prepared for hot, sunny weather we were less so for the cool, breezy, rainy day that greeted us. After a quick breakfast of hot and cold sweetened cereal all 50 or so people went down to the Workshop to unload lumber across the deeply rutted, muddy lot. It seemed best to do by “Bucket Brigade” and took about an hour to finish. We then took some of the lumber just unloaded into the Workshop and semi trailer and put it BACK onto two of the trailers to take to worksites. Groups 1, 2(mine), & 3(Marv’s) went together to put a skirt on a mobile home about a half an hour drive from Re-Member. The highway is being redone along our drive and, especially right where we needed to turn off, it was pretty dicey as we dealt with the slippery mud. We settled into diverse roles of varying expertise only-sort-of guided by an Oglala construction leader named Matt. There was no safety equipment and many half-charged power tools and there was a great deal of standing around wondering what we should do. But despite the nearly all day drizzle we managed to get nearly half finished before it was time to go back. The van and trailer became hopelessly mired in the mud as we tried to pull away, but a helpful 4-wheel drive pick-up came along and managed to give enough assistance to get it up the drive, onto the new but unpaved roadbed and back on the temporary highway. Along the way we found out that, along with not having a director this week, the Cook hadn’t been seen for 2 weeks so the kitchen was being managed by the Project Managers with help from the volunteer teams. The potatoes hadn’t adequately cooked for a potato bar so they creatively put out chips instead and it became a nacho bar. The evening’s speaker was a Lakota musician named Will Peters/Ta Canku Luta Waunspewicakiya/Teacher of the Red Way who wanted to mainly talk to the Youth about respecting themselves and others. He spoke for about an hour, sang one song, and gave us the opportunity to buy jewelry and his CD, made with his son. I bought a turtle necklace and Marv bought the CD. Afterward the Edgewood group returned to Kiksuya for “Thorns & Roses”, to work on our “group” song, and to get Prayer Partner gifts.

Our First Full Day

Sun. June 19: HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!! Today only we got to “sleep in” until 7:00, as opposed to our usual 6:00. My team was on Breakfast Prep so I went up early to cut oranges and put out milk. All the cereals are sweetened, underscoring that Re-Member is really more geared to Youth Groups than intergenerational groups such as ours. One of the staff read verbatim, in a stumbling monotone, the Wisdom of the Elders quotes, which was pretty disappointing. (We would hear many times through the week how wonderful the Wisdom of the Elders and the Reservation Tour are when presented in context by the missing director.) We left right after that for Wounded Knee. The rain was spitting a bit but we stayed mostly dry under a shelter of pine boughs as a young man named Dakota welcomed us and gave us the history “as he learned it from his elders”. It was pretty much the story as Marv & I have learned it, since we have both done extra reading and study, but it was sobering and moving to hear it from Dakota at the sight. He did a nice job and then sent us up to the graveyard to look around for a while. Kari suggested we also go down to the Museum at the bottom of the hill, which dealt more with the problems in the 1970s. It was raining harder and harder as we drove on to the White Cloud Visitors Center for the south part of Badlands National Park. When this part was added to the Badlands National Monument it was put under Oglala Lakota management with native Rangers and Interpreters. The Lakota people had access to this land until it was procured for bombing practice during World War II. They call it not “Bad” but White Land, for the light color of the rock formations. They allowed us to eat our picnic in their “basement” as the rain picked up. After a bit more time in the Center we climbed back on the bus, thinking we were going to hike in the Bad Lands. To my great disappointment, we learned that the rain caused the roads and trails to be too slippery to proceed on, so we just drove back to Re-Member. After killing some time, we watched an interesting documentary about the reservation radio station, KILI, called “No More Smoke Signals”. After chicken for dinner, we had a speaker whose Lakota name, Inila Wakan, means Quiet Spirit. He first blessed us each individually with burning sweet grass and then offered an ancient prayer-song, turning us all to the directions of the four winds. In a VERY quiet voice, which unfortunately some people were unable to hear, he told us about the history of the White Land/Wilderness. He is a land acquisition leader in the Oglala Lakota nation and has taken back his own family’s lands, where he lives with three generations “off the grid” with no plumbing or electricity. His is the only one of his extended family that hasn’t succumbed to alcohol and drug abuse and the ramifications of them. He held us mesmerized for over an hour. When we returned to our building we got our Prayer Partner packages, talked about the growing bed bug problems and went to bed.

A Journey to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation: Time with Re-Member

Friday, June 17—Saturday, June 18: We left Edgewood Church for Re-Member at about 8:00, half an hour later than planned due to late arrivals. Marv & I are riding with Ed & Jackie, and the other 14 people are in two minivans and a truck. Friday was a VERY long day of driving, with brief stops for lunch and dinner. We arrived in North Sioux City, SD, barely inside the state line out of Iowa, about 10:30 “our time”. The Comfort Inn & Suites was very nice, with an indoor pool, cookies, and a large room for Marv and me to share. After a good breakfast we got back on the road. We saw a lot of evidence of the record flooding of the Missouri River in the area and even had to take some detours to get around closed roads and exits. Most of today’s driving was on highways, not freeways, and we had little traffic and only a few small towns across Nebraska as we made our way to Pine Ridge. When we arrived we found we were all staying in the smaller, “extra” building called Kiksuya. There is more than enough room for us there and it gets us away from the bustle of the main building, where they are dealing with an infestation of bed bugs. At our orientation we were warned about that and also learned that the Director is gone this week, fetching his family to come live with him here. That leaves about 60 volunteers, mostly youth, in the hands of about 6 college-age workers. We had dinner then went to a Pow-Wow, held at the nearby Oglala Lakota College (Associates, Bachelors, & Masters Degrees). It was interesting and entertaining to see all the dancers in their Regalia and some of our group joined in on the dancing. Marv and I especially enjoyed going from Drum Circle to Drum Circle and watching them. We got back to Re-Member late enough that we met only long enough to get our Prayer Partner gifts and go to bed. With a fan in the window making white noise and ear plugs in my ears I was soon asleep in a room with 4 other women.

To Summarize...

Summary: The Shuttle got us to Heathrow with plenty of time (2½ hours) before the flight. We are the breakfast the hotel had put together for us and killed time until 8:45 boarding. We were on a plane with individual touch screens in front of each passenger offering an array of TV, movies, music and games. Other than a male flight attendant with a bad attitude it was an easy, uneventful ride home. Detroit had a light layer of snow and temps in the mid-thirties. Quite a shock after the fine weather we had for the trip! After all, in the two and a half weeks we were gone we had only had a bit of light rain while driving to and then from Mont St. Michel and the temperature stayed mainly in the sixties and seventies. We breezed through customs and had an hour and a half wait before we could take the Michigan Flyer back home. This had been a wonderful trip with no glitches to speak of at all. We saw and learned so much covering over 3000 years of history. The Euro was about $1.43 most of the time and the Pound was $1.65. We paid €1.52 per liter for gas for two fill-ups of the rental car in Normandy. We left things undone and places not visited in Nice, Paris, Normandy, and London so, should we ever have the opportunity to return, we will have plenty to do.

An interesting addendum: While we were gone it was bothering Marv that our Federal Income Tax refund, which we had filed before we left town in March, never got deposited to our account. He checked on it as soon as he could only to see that we hadn’t actually submitted it after we printed it and the Michigan form. As luck would have it, the IRS gave us until midnight TONIGHT to submit since the 15^th was on a weekend. Disaster averted—we have now filed it for real and have the paperwork acknowledging it. WHEW!!

Our Journey Draws to an End

Sun. Apr. 17: Palm Sunday. After another hearty Continental Breakfast, our plan was to get to Westminster Abby, which is closed to tourists on Sunday, in plenty o time to make the 10:00 Matins Service. But they had a new schedule up by then and directed us to the smaller St. Margaret’s church next door for what had been changed to a 9:30 service. So we attended it with a small group of worshippers and enjoyed the cozy service but thought it would have more music than it did. We regretfully decided we didn’t have time to wait for the big West Minster Abbey Palm Blessing and Processional at 11:15 and went to Westminster dock to take in our ”free” boat ride on the Thames. It proved to be interesting with some new information and some new views of London from the top deck, sitting in the sunshine. They were holding the London Marathon (after the Paris Marathon last Sunday!) and things were pretty crazy with streets cut-off by crowds and the race path. We got off at the Tower of London and decided not to spend the £40 (over $60) to tour the Tower. Marv had seen it and I didn’t care that much, especially since there were other things we wanted to see on such a beautiful day. In effect, we traded his not seeing Versailles for my not seeing the Tower of London and we’re both okay with that. After wandering around St. Katherine’s Dock area, looking for a “loo” and trying to get a good shot of the Tower Bridge in the sun, we fought the Marathon crowds and got to the starting point of our final Rick Steves Podcast walking tour, “Historic London”. This took us through the square mile of twisting streets and alley ways of the true, 2000 year old, City of London, which has only about 7000 residents! The area had been devastated in the 1500s by the Black Plague, in 1666 by the Great Fire, and in the 1940s bombing raids of the German Blitz s, but it has always come back, bigger and better. A highlight of the tour was when he led us to “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese” the favorite haunt of Dr. Johnson, the eccentric who wrote the first English dictionary, and Charles Dickens, who described the tavern on page 147 of A Tale of Two Cities, an original copy of which they have on display. That seemed the perfect place for us to have a Sunday midday dinner. Marv had Bangers and Mash and I had a buttery sauced chicken breast. We each had a pint and for dessert we shared warm pudding (Butterscotch and Ginger, not Dickens’ favorite Spotted Dick) with custard sauce. The whole experience was just perfect!! We finished in time to dash to the nearby St. Paul’s Cathedral for the 3:15 Evensong, which was quite simply spectacular. It was a Stations of the Cross service with the full choir, many clergy carrying a 20 foot rough hewn wooden cross to the four points of the nave and the amazing organ playing with all the stops out, quit literally. The leader of the processional was swinging a large incense ball and the fragrant smoke floated ethereally up towards the towering dome. Part of the time the sun shone through the windows, showing its rays through the smoke. As we all faced west for the beginning of the Processional, a full length purple cloth was suspended over the railing of the whispering gallery 30 meters above our heads, reaching to the floor behind the altar. It hung there waving slightly in the air currents during most of the service. The service was a mix of readings, anthems, hymns and prayers that took us through Passion Week until the crucifixion, with a “glimpse” of the joy of Easter Sunday. During the part of the crucifixion, the purple cloth was released, so it fell with a loud whoosh to the floor of the nave. Later it was draped all over the cross that was now leaning on the later, so that it covered the cross, strongly invoking the image of a covered body. The choir was amazing, with their beautiful sound echoing through the cathedral. It was a very moving and powerful service that ended with a thundering organ postlude. I thought of how much my dad would have enjoyed the postlude and hope that at some point he had a chance to listen to that organ. Back out in the sunlight we completed the Historic Walk, ending with a visit to Christopher Wren’s Monument to the Great Fire. The fire had destroyed more than 70 churches in London and he had designed 50 churches to replace them, 23 of which remain today. Enough time remained for us to find our way back to the Cartwright Garden area where Marv lived the summer he studied Humanities in London with Maury Crane, who told them, “You might as well study Humanities in London because the English have stolen all the artifacts and brought them there.” Much had changed but Marv managed to recognize the dorm where they lived and a bit of the neighborhood. It was getting cooler but was a nice evening so we bought a sandwich (again at Pret) and a salad to share and took them to eat on a bench in Green Park. There were many people enjoying the end of the day, lots of soccer balls being kicked, and even a football being tossed around. The sun was setting as we made our way back to Earl’s Court to buy Cadbury Fruit & Nut Bars (Don Filcek’s recommendation) and pack for our 5:50am pick-up Monday Morning