Ishjinki and the Bathing Girls

Ishjinki grew into adolescence, and he began to think a lot about girls as young men do. He began to get sexual feelings. He also began to wander about, in this way learning about the world and people. Although very foolish, he began to learn he had some interesting abilities, including having a long penis that could lengthen even more, like a snake, out as far as he wished.

One day when Ishjinki was traveling around some of his friends told him that there were some girls from the village across the river swimming in the water. Ishjinki went down to the riverbank and peering through the trees, saw several girls out in the water splashing around and playing. One was very pretty. He began to want this girl and got an idea.

Ishjinki hid himself in the willows by the water and unwrapped the coonskin that covered his penis. He submerged his penis and began to direct it like a water snake under the water towards the unsuspecting girls. He found the prettiest one and pressed his penis up inside her.

The pretty girl was shocked to feel something lodged inside her and cried out to the others for help. The other girls screamed and swam to the other bank, wading as quickly as they could. But no matter how the poor girl struggled, she could not get the organ out of her, and was trapped there in the river. She could only stand there and weep. The other girls ran to get help from the village.

“Oh, so this is what they call pleasure,” said Ishjinki. “No wonder people like to do this. This feels good. I like this! I wonder why that foolish girl is crying when this obviously feels so good!” He just sat there happily in the willows, enjoying himself at the expense of the weeping girl.

The girls returned with a crowd, but when the people saw the poor girl out in the water, unable to move, crying and fixed in place by some underwater force, they became afraid. They thought perhaps she had been seized by an Underwater Spirit, and none of them had the power to fight such a Being.

So the people went to find the village wise woman, Hinsainge Waxobri, who had a reputation as a witch and seer. They told her about it. The old woman followed them to the river. She waded out into the river to where the pretty girl was. The people looked on with fear.

The old wise woman reached under the water and felt around the girl’s legs to figure out what was going on. She finally found the problem. She called to the people, “Oh, a bad underwater spirit has the girl. Go and bring me my stone corncrusher and my bone awl!”

The people ran and fetched these implements, and one of the men brought them out to the wise woman. The woman placed the point of the awl against the penis and struck the awl hard with the stone tool as a hammer.

Ishjinki felt pain and pulled his penis back out of the girl and back underwater to him in the bushes. “That silly old woman has interrupted my pleasure,” he laughed to himself. “I was only helping the girl feel pleasure as well.” The people still had not seen him. “Oh well,” he said to himself, “That was good, and I cannot wait to get more pleasure again, as much as I can. There can never be too much pleasure!” Then he snuck back out of the willows into the woods and headed home, looking for more girls along the way.

The pretty girl was helped ashore by the wise old woman, who doctored her and helped her heal. The people of that place were afraid to go swimming in that spot for a long time, because they thought an evil spirit lived there in the water.

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

Most of our local authorities, when they sit down to plan for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years of a community still start by assuming that there will be more energy, more cars, more housing, more jobs, more growth, and so on. What does it look like if that's not the case? And how can we embrace that and actually come up with something that was actually more likely to sustain everybody?

The host said, "Well, if I held you by your feet over the edge there dangling you above the streets, then you would have a problem."

The indigenous guy thinks for a minute, then he says:

"Well, if you pulled me back up, I wouldn't have a problem. But you would.

And if you dropped me, and I died, I wouldn't have any problems at all. But you would."

Climate for Helena, Montana

Home : Climate Graphs: Montana : Helena

Average Temperatures for Helena

Helena's coldest month is January when the average temperature overnight is 9.9°F. In July, the warmest month, the average day time temperature rises to 83.4°F.

Average Rainfall for Helena

The driest month in Helena is February with 0.38 inches of precipitation, and with 1.82 inches June is the wettest month.

Monthly Sunshine Hours

Sunshine hours refers to the amount sunshine there is during the hours of daylight. A higher percentage means there is more sunshine through the day and a lower percentage will indicate that it is probably cloudier. Sunshine hours are important when you are planning your vacation.

(http://www.rssweather.com/climate/Montana/Helena/)

I also found a good site to keep tabs on Montana Climate Change: http://www.montanaclimatechange.com/learn.php

It is the right and nature of all things to survive and perpetuate the life within. I eat the deer which eats the grass which grows on the grave of my ancestor who ate the deer's ancestors...and my ancestor is eaten by tiny things that make the soil that grows the grass.

The idea of a soul's worth being greater or lesser is a human question, based on an anthropocentric view.

Anthropocentrism= "Humans are the beings which have sentience, will, personality. Attributing sentience, will, personality to nonhuman animals, plants, winds, rocks, rivers is anthropomorphism."

Animism= "All things have sentience, will, personality. Attributing sentience, will, personality to only humans is anthropocentrism."

In an absolute external view (if there could be such a thing, perhaps God has such a view) everything is a flow over geological ages of existence. One human life/soul is a mote of dust floating in the sunbeam of eternity. But to that soul/life, its existence is naturally central.

To a species, its view is naturally central, thus anthropocentrism is also natural to us as a species. So anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism are natural and good as human views, but they are not the truth in an absolute worldsystemic view...or in a deercentric view or a wolfcentric view.

People talk about the end of the world and are frightened about it. Of course, the world will never end, but only transforms like a shapeshifter. And the reality is, if I step off a curb at the wrong time and am hit by a bus, the world HAS ended-- in my own view.

I will not go peacefully to death. I have almost died several times and I know I will go fighting my death, as insane as it is, and as natural as death is, I will gasp for every bit of air as I expire, trying to live just a second more. This is the way of all healthy things with enough life in them to want to preserve it. But death is inevitable for all living things of course.

I just found it - and I adore Nathan.

I mean, really.

The thing I'm wondering - and my Brit friends can, perhaps, clear this up - they're doing things with accents in this show, and while I can say yes that's a different way of speaking, I have no bleeding clue what it means.

But, on the other hand, if people want to watch a consistently awesome show where people really don't want to be heroes and have to deal with it anyway? Then, yes this is it.

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Current Location:	Jumping out of a perfectly good plane
Current Mood:	dirty
Current Music:	Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction

When I worked in Hawai'i, people were always interested in offering their mana'o. The office and its staff were always saying, "we would like your mana'o" on such a matter. There were flurries, blizzards, of mana'o. I used to think mana'o meant "insight," but then realized all it meant in reality was "opinion." But what I needed was not mana'o in most cases, but 'ike, "knowledge." Everyone would offer their mana'o, but when I asked for 'ike, all fell silent, but for the VERY few who knew what they were talking about...and had the experience to prove it. Of course some poor folks inevitably confused their mana'o as being 'ike.

Too much mana'o, not enough 'ike. Sounds like a Hawaiian proverb almost!

Archaeologists, living history folks and re-enactors are always researching lost knowledge. Stuff you can't even imagine that was once commonplace, but that now we don't even suspect existed. The Hawaiian renaissance of the 1970s and 1980s revived much of a culture which was almost gone. The Hawaiians showed the rest of us what was possible: traditional navigation, canoe construction, healing, agriculture, fish pond restoration, language revival, and more. 'Ike kahiko -- the knowledge of old.

Some people say, big deal, things change. Get over it. What if you didn't have the money for a dentist and you had a toothache? Lots of people have lost their jobs this last year. No money for such things. Teeth rot and fall out-- and the pain and suffering is horrible. What is worse, rotten teeth affects the rest of your health, and can even kill some folks with existing heart conditions or other ailments. What if not only could you not afford a dentist-- there weren't any more dentists, period? Would you know what plants to apply for pain and swelling? How to properly pull an infected tooth? How to care for the bleeding gum afterward to ward of infection and provide for proper healing? Neither would I.

Our culture is soaked by hubris today. The idea that we know it all, and our knowledge and civilization will continue forever.

The Romans thought the same thing, and we still had a thousand years to get through the Dark Ages before we began to recover much of their knowledge. The Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground. People could not read the Egyptian hieroglyphs until the last century and only within the last decades are people really beginning to understand the Mayan glyphs. There is so much knowledge lost-- we don't even know about all the things archaeologists find in medieval contexts. So much of our own society's knowledge is based on digital media (and we can't even read some of that from the Apollo space program!) or pulp paper that rots very quickly (unlike vellum, parchment, clay tablets, etc.).

We cannot sustain hubris. Knowledge of the most common things is lost all the time. Including the most taken-for-granted knowledge of today.

That's because societies and empires collapse-- without exception. Including our own. The Native Americans are often quoted as saying, "Only the Earth and Sky last forever." And the geologists and cosmologists dispute that as well!

What knowledge, skill, art, would YOU conserve? One place to begin thinking about such things is the Cultural Conservers group, and there are others who smell the winds of change and who are beginning to prepare in their own ways, so that all will not be lost.

Once I found "my spot" in a strange place, I slept there all night peacefully in the middle of a lawn on a campus...and in the morning the night security guy asked where I had been, as he had tried to find me...he heard my snoring but could not see me anywhere. It was open lawn with no bushes. That's what I mean by "your spot."

My preference to get out either is in inclement weather: storms, rain, snow, lightning, hail, winds...any conditions like that...or times when the sky has odd clouds, sunrise or sunset, rainbow, the gloaming/dusk, when the stars are out and sharp in the black skies. Sharing food or water with the place and its "people" is also one of my things.

I am an inhabitant of an intermontane valley of the Middle Rockies ecoregion/bioregion, the Helena valley. I have lived here most of my almost 50 years. I see it as a bowl, with the mountains the sides and rim of the bowl. The shapes of the mountains are as familiar as the faces of people. I mark the year by what mountains the sun touches as it comes up and goes down.

Although I have connections with many of the inhabitants, I feel personal connections especially with the meadowlark, white sage, and the cottonwood tree, balsamroot and beebalm, as well as lilac and sparrow, honeybee and kestrel...too many to say...

This was just a little first-year patch on hard clay soil. I dug in some lawn clippings, as the only soil amendments. All the crops were of heritage varieties; the corn, beans and squash were varieties grown by my Indian ancestors. The native varieties of corn were bushier and shorter than the more familiar types. Someday it would be nice have my own yard, so be able to grow food, medicines, and have some chickens. Economics and lack of fulltime employment makes that unlikely for now. But you do what you can with what you have.

According to the 2001 Weather Almanac, Helena's growing season runs from April through September. (http://www.weatherexplained.com/Vol-4/2001-Helena-Montana-HLN.html)
The Montana Garden Guide (http://gardenguide.montana.edu/pdf/Montana_Climate_Summary.pdf) says:

Helena
May 2 through Oct 2: 153 days
Precipitation: 12.54 inches

East Helena
May 14 through Sept 22: 131 days
Precipitation: 9.39 inches

These are approximations, with actual growing seasons varying from year to year by 2 week or so. And of course it also varies by site microclimate. The variations in the Garden Guide are also interesting, since East Helena and Helena are only 5 miles apart! It must have a lot to do with the actual site selection of the stations. Of course these are all figures for sites within the valley itself; the mountains' growing season will be much, much briefer!

Helena is in Zone 4 according to the USDA's Hardiness Zones system; the Sunset magazine system lists it in Zone 2. Yes, the systems are quite different; the Sunset system is more detailed and is considered more authoritative for gardening.

Comparison of USDA and Sunset: http://www.backyardgardener.com/zone/index.html
The Sunset system: http://www.sunset.com/garden/climate-zones/sunset-climate-zones-northern-rockies-00400000036338/

1. Late May-June: BITTERROOT (Lewisia rediviva)

The season of gathering roots and berries started with the Bitterroot, which is also Montana's state flower. The Montana Salish (Flathead) called May the Bitterroot Moon. Bitterroot was western Montana's most important root crop. The Bitterroot Valley and Bitterroot Mountains were named for this plant.

There was traditionally a First Roots Ceremony which had to be held in early May before any of the first bitterroot plants were gathered, and this ceremony was led by the women. Women were in charge of the plant gathering cycle, as men were in charge of the hunting. Special tools were used to dig the roots. They had to be dug before they bloomed in early June so they were hard to see unless you knew what you were looking for (see the rosettes, above; by the time it blooms, it is too late).

Bitterroot, like its name indicates, was not very palatable to Euro-Americans, including Lewis and Clark who found it nauseous and bitter. But it was very tasty and valuable to the Indians. One fifty-pound sack was the ration for one person to get through the winter, and was worth one horse. They were eaten boiled or steamed, and also were used for medicine.

Bitterroot was probably the most important indigenous plant food in the Helena area, as it preferred the dry rocky soil of hills and valleys.

2. June: CAMAS (Camassia quamash)

The Montana Salish (Flathead) also relied on camas, much like their Coast Salish relatives. But camas was much larger and more common further west in moister areas, west of Lolo Hot Springs. I have seen them in some of the higher elevations around Helena. Lewis and Clark ate camas, and found it more palatable than bitterroot.

Camas plants have a bulbous root that is usually ready for harvest in June. Camas bulbs are baked with black moss in earthen pits for three days. After baking, the bulbs were dried and stored for later use. Baked camas is delicious and has a licorice like flavor. During this time people would also be making bark baskets from cedar and birch trees. The baskets would be used for berry picking. Tipi poles would be cut now, as the bark would peel easy. When the wild roses were in bloom, the people would know that buffalo would be nice and fat. Salish hunting parties would then travel to the plains country for their summer buffalo hunt. http://www.anamp.org/culturally/pdf/elem_weather.pdf

I have seen a June field of camas up on the Continental Divide, in moist meadows on one of the passes that the Salish people used to use, back when I worked for the Helena National Forest as an archaeologist in the 1990s. I saw some of the places where they roasted them in stone-lined pits but I have never tasted camas, nor bitterroot.

CAUTION!: It is very easy to confuse Camas with its poisonous relative Death Camas; the Indians are often said to have waited for the flowers, as this is the most certain way to distinguish the two, which often grow right next to each other (camas has blue flowers, death camas white flowers).

3. Late July-August: CHOKECHERRY (Prunus virginiana)

Now I have eaten a lot of chokecherries. The fruit is pretty good but the seed is what makes you "choke," as it is so bitter. It makes really nice jelly. But you really don't eat many raw as they just aren't sweet enough to balance off the bitterness of the pit.

The fruit of choke cherry is edible, raw or cooked. Very harsh, it is normally used in pies, jellies etc. Dark and juicy, it is sometimes edible raw when fully mature. The seed can contain high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide, a poison that gives almonds their characteristic flavor. This toxin is readily detected by its bitter taste. It is usually present in too small a quantity to do any harm, any bitter seed or fruit should not be eaten. In moderate to larger quantities hydrogen cyanide can cause respiratory failure and even death. The bark and twigs can be used as a tea substitute. (http://montana.plant-life.org/ - Prunus virginiana

Chokecherry is also medicinal and we used the wood to make tripods for tipi backrests when I was little. It grows in various places in the neighborhood and people don't seem to make much use of it, as there are plenty of "cherries" to nibble on when it is the season.

4. May-June: ARROWLEAF BALSAMROOT (Balsamorhiza sagittata)

I have written about the Balsamroot before, but you learn by repetition, so I want to mention this plant-ally again.

While primarily medicinal, it was also used for food: the inner part of the young immature flower stems; some roasted and ate the roots, and some ate the seeds as well. I can personally vouch for the astringent "turpentine-y" balsam flavor: edible but stout, and more medicinal than tasty.

5. August-November: PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS (Opuntia polyacantha)

Our valley was named the Prickly Pear by Lewis and Clark when they passed through the area. One of our two major creeks is still called the Prickly Pear. The season of the "pears" themselves is in late summer through early winter. I have not eaten them. Some people make jelly from them.

Pricky-pear cactus fruits were widely used for food, either raw or dried for storage. Most of the spines were removed by sweeping piles of fruit with sagebrush branches or by burning the spines off. The spines that remained were picked off with fingers protected by deerskin tips. The fruits were first split to remove the seeds, and then eaten raw or cooked in stews and soups, which they thickened. Raw cactus stems taste like cucumber, but they were usually eaten only when there was a shortage of food. Settlers boiled them to remove the spines, and then fried the pulpy interior. They were also dipped in a syrup made from boiling sweetcorn seeds and then eaten. The seeds can be dried, parched and ground into a meal, then added to flour and used in making cakes etc. When forage was limited, the spines were singed off and cactus stems were fed to livestock. (http://montana.plant-life.org/species/opun_poly.htm)

When I was growing up, there was a large tract of undeveloped land behind us down by Custer Ave. that we called "the Field." Walking through it at night or running carelessly, many is the time I was jabbed by the prickly pears there. Although it was painful, I soon learned to mostly avoid them, almost by instinct in mid-flight. It was a glorious place to run, with the company of meadowlarks and kildeer who nested there, along with "gophers" (actually ground squirrels), white sage and rabbitbrush.

Now the Field is mostly gone, carved up by streets, gas station-casino, laundromat, liquor store, ranch supply, and residences, including public housing. All the prickly pears are gone, true, but I wouldn't mind being jabbed once in a while if it meant hearing the meadowlarks singing again, which are also gone from the "ex-Field."

SOURCES:
http://montana.plant-life.org/
Montana Native Plants and Early Peoples, by Jeff Hart. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1976/2007.
Credit for online images to original posters