Folklore

VA Tech’s Garuda

I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so, myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data.Charles Fort Credit: Gary Varvel I cannot ignore the tragedy that happened yesterday. This week opened on April 16, with Patriots’ Day in New England and Holocaust Remembrance Day throughout the world. Now, forever, also this date will be recalled for the horror and evil that visited Virginia Tech. I will not spend too much time here, as I have posted my initial thoughts on my Copycat Effect blog about this awful [...]

Shunka Warak’in’s Cultural Landscape

Remember the Shunka Warak’in? In 1995, Lance Foster, an Ioway (Hotcâgara) told me: We had a strange animal called shunka warak’in that snuck into camps at night and stole dogs. It was said to look something like a hyena and cried like a person when they killed it. Its skin is said to be kept by someone still.Lance Foster Foster, who had heard of the mounted ringdocus, thought it was an example of the shunka warak’in, which he knew of from his own experiences and those of relatives in Montana and Idaho. The present location of the mounted Shunka Warak’in [...]

Laughing At Ghosts In Maine Woods

John Richardson followed up his earlier article on the eastern panther survey with a short column on March 24, 2007, entitled “Seeing ‘ghosts’ in the Maine woods.” Today’s commentary has the classic framework of beginning and ending paragraphs, which in typical journalistic style, are used to bring balance into the tone of the article: For an animal that’s supposed to be extinct in the eastern United States, mountain lions have sure been getting around the Maine woods….So if you think you’ve seen a mountain lion, you aren’t crazy. You may not even be wrong. And you certainly are not alone.John [...]