Just Mine Now

This is what it must be, somewhat smelly as well.  I noticed a great expanse of this at Bolsa Chica Wetlands yesterday while walking early in the morning.  It wasn't there last week.  In that slim expanse of water bordered on each side by the algae, herons and another kind of bird were looking for breakfast. Something else a bit later on was watching a very large white heron (thinking of the title of a Jewett short story now in hindsight) dunking its head under water, grabbling it's morning breakfast.  

Reading a novel, which we all know is fiction, but then I think about the old adage often used in the classroom - all fiction is based on fact.  The following quote comes from The Round House by Louise Erdrich that has caused me to stop and think.  Maybe someone out there will see the same thing I do. Take Johnson v. McIntosh.  It's 1823. The United States is forty-seven years old and the entire country is based on grabbing Indian land as quickly as possible in as many ways as can be humanly devised. Land speculation is the stock market of the times. Everybody’s in on it. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. As well as Chief Justice John Marshall, who wrote the decision for this case and made his family’s fortune. The land madness is unmanageable by the nascent government. Speculators are acquiring rights on treaty-held Indian land and on land still owned and occupied by Indians—white people are literally betting on smallpox. Considering how much outright grease is us...