Changing Woman, Artistic Women And Indigenous Usage

 July 5, 2024

   One of my favorite Navajo goddesses is Changing Woman who supposedly not only changes the seasons, but she also changes day into night and turns girls into women.

Daily Reworked Scratchboard Whip Out: "Changing Woman"

   Speaking of Indigenous People, here is a newspaper example of frontier usage of that term which James B. Mills sent me:

The Pickens County Herald

And West Alabamian, November 6, 1872

   So, although the term "indigenous" sounds modern to my ears, there it is in usage in the 1870s. On the other hand, Paul Andrew Hutton makes the claim that he has never seen this term in usage among military reports from the frontier period. Interesting debate and development to say the least.

   Shifting gears, still working on a big feature for the next issue of True West.

A Spirit of Spite

   The Jayhawker War of 1855-56 set the bar for unbridled barbarism between Americans on American soil. Undisciplined Union troops who had personal scores to settle and a trail of looting and barbarism marked their progress.

Daily Reworked Whip Out:

"Redlegs On The Move"

"This was a war of stealth and raid, without a front, without formal organization, with almost no division between the civilian and the warrior."

—Michael Fellman, "Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict In Missouri During the American Civil War"

Fine Art Women

   I had an art teacher at the University of Arizona back in 1967 who was a bearded, full blown hippie. He was fond of coming in the drawing room and booming out almost facetiously:

"Work! Work!"

—Bruce McGrew

    Two art students from my fine arts college married well. One of them was Linda Eastman and the other was Aline Kominsky. Linda left the program the semester before I got there, but I actually had a drawing class with Aline.

   Linda is the inspiration for this classic line, "JoJo left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some California grass. . ." because she married Paul McCartney. Aline moved to San Francisco and married R. Crumb. Two fine arts U of A women who married well, fine.

Aline portrait by R. Crumb

    Myself, I failed to graduate. Three units shy of a degree. Scattered and easily distracted. Hey, I was in a band! On the other hand I ran into a fellow student twenty years later and he claimed only two of us from the Fine Arts program from that era (1965-1970) were still active in the arts.

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"Solo Vaquero"

"Get back to where you once belonged."

—Paul McCartney, riffing on his new love and her old alma mater