Lakota Prayer Fine Art Poster

Lakota Prayer Fine Art Poster

Created from the original image "Indian Summer" with a prayer by the Lakota leader Yellow Lark.

Oh, Great Spirit Whose voice I hear in the winds, And whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me, I am small and weak, I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy - myself. Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my Spirit may come to you without shame.

Holiday Gifts - Images and products

Holiday Gifts - Images and products created with my images available here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mindscapeimages/

First Snow on a Larch Bog

New Hampshire Moose Poster

“The Distant Sound of a Different Drum”

Christopher Columbus

This Portrait was made by the Florentine painter Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (1483-1561). It was executed in the first half of the sixteenth century, after the death of Columbus. No portraits of Columbus during his life are known to exist.

Christopher Columbus
(1451 – 1506)
Navigator, colonizer, and explorer from Genoa, Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.

Columbus made four voyages attempting, among other things to establish a settlement on the island of Hispaniola.

It is quite likely that Columbus introduced smallpox into the America, unknowingly, resulting in a loss of over 90% of the population of Eastern Woodland Indians and indigenous peoples of the Islands where he stopped enroute, by the time settlement began in earnest more than 100 years later.

The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.

Holiday Cards

Holiday Cards made from award winning Moonlight on the Stone House image. Peace, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth themes. Click here.

The Wikipedia Conundrum

Many a teacher today forbid their students from using Wikipedia, yet it is arguably the richest information resource of all time. An encyclopedia which draws on users to expand the bredth and depth of the information contained "within" it.

The arguement of those teachers may be that it is "unreliable" , a lazy man's refuge. Yet in the end, how is that different from any other works of humans? The very act of committing words to paper is an act fraught with the perils associated with the human condition. . . that each of us brings the perspectives and prejudices of his/her own arc of experience to the task of conveying a "truth" or a set of "truths".

The physicist Stephen Hawking, in a speech celebrating the new millenium at the Whitehouse said ". . . common sense is just another name for the prejudices that we have been brought up with."

Wikipedia is no more or less useful than any other resource but it does provide an effective launchpad for exploring almost any idea, event, person or theory.

To deny students access to the rich resources contained within Wikipedia is tantamount to denying them access to the wisdom of their elders or their teachers. Instead they must be taught to appreciate Wikipedia and to be aware of its limitations - as Ronald Reagan put it to "trust but verify". Reagan was speaking of the complexities of the US-Russian relationship, but he could very well have been speaking about the task of researching, or in an even broader sense the process of learning.

A good teacher need not fear Wikipedia, unless the depth of understanding that he or she themselves bring to their discipline and teaching is so shallow as to grant Wikipedia the power of absolute truth. A good teacher will use this resource as a means of stimulating students to seek out pathways to greater understanding, a solitary brainstorming session where ideas, links and resources lead us to drill deeper into the resources that lie beyond the gates of the wiki kingdom.

The Pony's Trail - with ee cummings quote

Special Poster offer!
The Pony's Trail - with ee cummings quote




This poster is created from one of my favorite images and includes a quote from ee cummings: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." ~ e.e. cummings

Available in two different sizes and signed limited edition or open edition. Choose below.

Choose Size

Pony's Trail Poster 16x20 $21.00 USD Pony's Trail Poster  23.4" x 29" $35.00 USD Pony's Trail Poster Signed Limited Ed  23.4" x 29" $250.00 USD

 

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer from Genoa, Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Over the course of four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World".
Although not the first to reach the Americas from Europe—he was preceded by at least one other group, the Norse, led by Leif Ericson, who built a temporary settlement 500 years earlier at L'Anse aux Meadows[5]— Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans.
It is believed that on one of these voyages Columbus' crew infected the Northern woodland Indian population with smallpox - most likely by accident, although Columbus was not above using such tactics as a form of warfare. The ensuing epidemic wiped out over 90% of the population of Northeast woodland Indians within a period of only a generation leaving them severly weakened and unable to repulse the colonial onslaught that would begin a century after Columbus' maiden voyage.

Columbus' Voyage
An Eyewitness Account of the Landing