Spirit of the Thunderbird

I had a good weekend. I stayed at my mom & dad's on Friday and went with dad to the Spirit of the Thunderbird powwow at Cahokia Mounds on Saturday. Mom had to work, the boys had an Army group thing (they spend a weekend a month experiencing Army life or something to that effect), and Lar had to work, so it was just the two of us. JR and Drac were going to go with us, but got there soon after we left.

I hadn't been to a powwow in a few years, so it was good to go again. I could probably fit all my Native American blood into my pinky finger, but I liked being able to connect, in a way, to that part of my heritage. They had all sorts of neat art, music, drums and flutes (very tempting!), shirts and other clothing, and a myriad of other objects. I found a t-shirt with the founding fathers on it, and one woman had the design on a totebag, but I didn't see it being sold anywhere, and I didn't ask her where she got it. Oh well. Two t-shirts had us laughing. One was similar to this. We also got a kick out of this one.

I also got to meet Bradford Smith, which was really cool. Dad bought me his third cd Dream Your Dream a few years ago, which I really like. He had a sound system set up with all his cd's, and I got his new cd Spirit of the Wind after he played me a sample of the third track. I've already listened to it a couple times since, and I love it. Forever is my favorite song. ^_^ (Thanks for making great music, Mr. Smith!)

All in all, it was fun. It was really hot and my allergies were killing me, despite the allergy pill I took before we left. Dad wore a t-shirt that he made the night before. He had the name of our tribe (Kaskaskia) on the front, with "Illinwek" underneath, and the meaning underneath that. On the back was a picture of the Piasa bird with the word "Piasa" underneath. So if you saw a guy wearing that shirt, then you probably also saw the cute girl in the red shirt with him. ^_^ If you did, nice to see you there!