I was rereading through the journals and history of the Lewis and Clark Expeditions. When Lewis and Clark had essentially traveled upstream of the Missouri River to a point they could no longer go by boats, they had yet to meet up with the Shoshoni Indians. While the bulk of the expedition troop camped at “the forks”, I believe it was Lewis, with a small contingency of men, set out to meet up with the natives.

Of course they did find them and an interesting part I was reading was about how the Shoshonis devoured meat from deer and elk that the hunters of the L&C expedition provided for them. They devoured most everything in rapid fashion, including entrails, and didn’t bother to take the time to cook it. Yum!

What I discovered as I read on was that where the Shoshonis had decided to spend their summers was buried deep in the mountains in areas where there was little to eat, i.e. deer, elk, moose or any kind of wild animal to speak of. They mostly tried to subsist on fish and salmon from streams that were mostly part of the Columbia River watershed – obviously they had crossed the Continental Divide by this time.

Essentially, when Lewis and Clark found them, while not starving to death, they certainly were far from being well nourished. But there was a reason they hid out in the mountains. They feared the Minnetaree Indians. They had warred with them over the years and suffered greatly as a tribe. It was only during winter when the Shoshonis moved down out of the mountains nearer where the buffalo roamed.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition spent a fair amount of time around where the Shoshonis hung out and day after day, L&C sent their hunters out for food and came back empty handed. At times they had to dig into their “emergency” supplies of dried foods. They finally had to move out of this area and at the same time send the hunters far away from camp to find food. Interesting. Later events recall serious issues with finding food.

One has to wonder if perhaps there is a bit of tail wagging the dog going on in the world or at least a lot of posturing that has people in a stir. My brother readily uses the analogy of “watching the hand”. He illustrates by overtly waving one of his hands in my face while hiding the other behind his back. The intent is to get you to pay attention to the waving hand in front of your face while the other hand does something deceptive that he doesn’t want you to know about.

Well, there’s an awful lot of hand waving with attempts at getting people to have a look at all the commotion, but what is really going on? Is this clamor a diversion away from events at home while in the middle of a republican presidential primary? Or perhaps it’s deflecting attention toward Iran and Israel in order to be drawn away from some other sinister event.

Everything happens for a reason and the other day when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced troop withdrawal from Afghanistan one year early, there had to be a reason other than “gee I thought it would be cool”.

Today, the chatter is about Israel may attack Iran in the spring. Some reports seem to not be discussing if but when.

Keep an eye on the hand but don’t take your eye off the other hand either. Something is working out of our sight.

Professional sports has sunk to such a disgusting level that even so-called sports reporters can find nothing more to talk about for the upcoming Super Bowl than to call Tom Brady childish names while picking on his wife and revealing an email she sent to close friends and family. What a slime ball this reporter is. And I think Mrs. Brady better reexamine here “close” friends and “family” and see who was dumb enough to share the email.

I forget who the genius political pundit was who warned us all that leading up to the election the Obama Administration would play games with the unemployment rate so things wouldn’t look so bad. While it is a good thing that supposedly 243,000 people got jobs last month, it’s not a good thing that over 2 million people have just disappeared off the jobless radar – they’ve either given up trying to find a job, or perhaps went to work on their own, etc. Regardless, they are off the unemployment rolls and therefore no longer counted. At this rate by November unemployment numbers should be down to 7% and still the same millions of Americans not working.

Now that only a handful of brainwashed global warming cultist still cling to the lies that the earth is warming, I was hopeful. I was actually look forward to some global warming. Less severe winters, better crop production, lower heating costs, etc. However, now we are being told we are heading into a global cooling trend. I think it’s deja vu all over again.

Tom Remington