Thanks to everyone, here and abroad, who participated along with me in the protest against these bills that threatened our freedom of speech on the Internet.

Want to see the stats on the protest?  Here they are.

This “night message” was sent 121 years ago on this day, following the massacre at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.  Sioux Chief Big Foot was killed in the slaughter that marked the last great conflict in the Native American wars.

This eyewitness account appears in the book Black Elk Speaks (1932):

“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.” 

But what of the ponies?

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Horse and Rider by Leonardo da Vinci, work on paper with silverpoint

This portrait of man and horse is one of the first works to reveal Leonardo da Vinci’s interest in the horse.  It was a preparatory study for his Adoration of the Magi, housed in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, Italy.  The work was created in silverpoint, a technique in which the artist uses a silver-pointed instrument on paper that has been prepared with a coating of powdered bone or zinc white, realizing a fine and indelible line of metal fragments.

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Following up on yesterday’s post about reading, I thought it would be helpful to me and possibly useful for you to find out what books I’ve been busy recommending and referring to in my blog.

So I started a list.  You can find it in the header, to the right of “About” and “Best of the Blog.”

It’s comprehensive as far as the blog goes, and will be updated in concert with new posts.  It’s not intended to be a “recommended reading list” and it doesn’t include many of my favorites, but I’m surprised at how many of my favorites it does contain — and how long it is already!

If you’re curious, you can find out where the books were originally referred to simply by clicking on them, which will take you to the post where they first appeared.

I’d love to hear your comments and I feel safe in saying that so will my fellow readers.  I know I’m not alone in wanting to hear what others think, what has inspired, what has illuminated and what has befuddled.

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