Totem Poles Quotes

Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket.

But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan. Overnight I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to the expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations. And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew.

Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end. Sadly, crime is the only spur that rouses us. We're fascinated by that "other world" where everything is possible.

it’s better to study under someone lower on the totem pole who actually wants to teach you something, than it is to study under the highest-up person who doesn’t want to teach you anything at all.

If you’re so far down the totem pole that someone considers it a favor to you just to have you in their circle (no matter how far outside the ring you are), you should probably cut them out of yours.

If you want to know what’s wrong with higher education, this reversal of traditional university priorities—with social justice now at the top and scholarship lower on the totem pole—is a good place to start.

doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilized. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of cosmic specialness, of ultimate usefulness to creation, of unshakable meaning. They earn this feeling by carving out a place in nature, by building an edifice that reflects human value: a temple, a cathedral, a totem pole, a skyscraper, a family that spans three generations. The hope and belief is that the things that man creates in society are of lasting worth and meaning, that they outlive or outshine death and decay, that man and his products count.

From your top lieutenant to the lowest person on the totem pole, you need to be able to articulate not only where you need that person to go, but also the steps they should follow to get there.

I'm of the age and immaturity level that I cannot give you my respect solely because you are older or ranked higher on an imaginary totem pole. I give you my respect because of your actions.

The Bumpuses were so low down on the evolutionary totem pole that they weren't even included in Darwin's famous family tree. They had inbred and ingrown and finally emerged from the Kentucky hills like some remnant of Attila the Hung's barbarian horde. Flick said that they had webbed feet and only three toes. It might have been true.

Got any good ideas, soldier?” “Lots of them. Somebody gunned Geiger. Somebody got gunned by Geiger, who ran away. Or it was two other fellows. Or Geiger was running a cult and made blood sacrifices in front of that totem pole. Or he had chicken for dinner and liked to kill his chickens in the front parlor.

I wanted to have my books around me, forming a totem pole of the narratives I’d visited.

I was surprised she'd heard us. When you're that low on the totem pole, you sometimes think you're so unimportant that no one can hear you. My sense of invisibility had made me loose-lipped.

This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole.

How much living have you done? From it the patterns that you weave Are imaged: Your own life is your totem pole, Your yard of cloth, Your living. How much loving have you done? How full and free your giving? For living is but loving And loving only giving.

Overnight, I became a good player. I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest Indian on the reservation totem pole - I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They expected me to be good. And so I became good. I wanted to live up to expectations. I guess that's what it comes down to. The power of expectations.

The nurse looked surprised. 'You're a bit high on the totem pole to be taking statements.' Carol debated momentarily how to describe her relationship with Tony. 'Colleague' was insufficient, 'landlord' somehow misleading and 'friend' both more and less than the truth. She shrugged. 'He feeds my cat.

The past is an inheritance, and how it reaches you depends on many things—how conscientious your family is, the presence or absence of public libraries, what they teach in schools, whether you’re from a caste whose privileges include owning their history or from a caste low on the totem pole, deprived of its own history along with so much else.

You bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation.

It was the greatest stroke of good fortune he had ever encountered in life. In other words, he had finally worked his way up to the lowest spot on the totem pole.

I’m sick of being the lowest one on the totem pole. And I need a win, goddammit. “Fuck yes?

The irony is that each time you step up, you have to start at the bottom. The king of grade school becomes low man on the totem pole the day he goes to middle school. When he finally climbs back up to the top of the ladder, high school starts and he’s back at the bottom again. Your career is going to feel similar: each time you advance, you’ll officially be at the bottom of the next level.

K-12 teaching is a low-status profession in this country, and in academia, teaching (what is already known) is less highly valued than research (expanding what is known). Teaching teachers is then the lowest of the low, totem pole-wise.

Yeah, he was a biker. Just another patch on a totem pole full of patched, leather-wearing bikers living as criminals, not for the money or even for enjoyment but because that was all they knew. It was how they survived, how they paid the bills and cared for their families. It wasn’t about greed or excess, it was about living a certain way, being a certain kind of man who didn’t have to bow down to laws and the government who enforced them. It was a brotherhood, a camaraderie. It was about really, truly living your life the way you wanted to live it. It was about . . . Freedom.

Carlos never shied from a mission, and if Mal wanted a howler, there was no alternative but to provide one. There was nothing he could do about it, AP Evil Penchant or not. He knew his place on the totem pole. First things first: a party couldn’t be a party without guests. Which meant people. Lots of people. Bodies. Dancing. Talking. Drinking. Eating.

It's time to stop thinking like an employee and become the business owner of your own career.

He knew once he stepped into that kind of environment, again, the options would be limited. He’d no longer have the freedom or control to make any important decisions. He’d be just another pawn to be used on the chessboard by the white shirt bosses, who would likely be making their decisions from a safe distant location and passing them along down the totem pole. It was just how his job worked.

Once the principals in their party are seated, with those lower on the totem pole left to grumble and move on to find another table, our once-cozy booth transforms into a damp fusion of vacuous wretchedness, with the three women all complaining alternately about their wet hair/clothes and their respective distance from Talon, while the man himself is trying to maneuver his Paul Bunyan frame way too close to me.

He was the youngest and newest member of a four-man team. Hence, low man on the totem pole. Except that calling a new guy the low man on the totem pole was completely ass-backward. Totem poles were what? Twenty, thirty feet high? Native Americans weren’t dumb. They put the most important guy at the bottom. At eye level. What important guy wanted to be twenty or thirty feet off the ground, where no one could see him? Like supermarkets. The eye-level shelf was reserved for the best stuff. The high-margin items. The big corporations hired experts to figure out stuff like that. Eye level was what it was all about. Thus the low man was really the high man, and the high man was really the low man. In a manner of speaking. A common misperception. A kind of linguistic inversion. Caleb Carter didn’t know how it had come about. Night watch was

Then you've got the kids who live within a mile of the school and can walk home. Although this may not sound glamorous, it still beats my place on the totem pole: the bottom. Yes, we of the bus routes find ourselves in a general throng outside the auditorium, where all who pass may mock us.We look forward to an hour-long ride of picking up and dropping off loud middle schoolers and louder elementary kids and peeling our hamstrings off the pleather seats over and over again in the heat.

From tender infancy Smith has been an early riser. He sleeps so little that Morpheus barely knows him by sight. When he dreams he only has time for a synopsis. He was the first man to discover that you can cut a sleeping pill in half and enjoy a nap.

Up until then I’d thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I’d lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn’t understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us.

When I was five years old I fell head downward into an empty cistern and was not found until six hours later, at which time I was quietly eating dirt. The year after that I fell out of a neighbor’s barn loft. These experiences constitute an adequate preparation for a career in journalism — the equivalent of four years in college

My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you’re doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I’ll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it’s lowlifes you’re looking after, not so much. And if it’s kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I’m chasing the big bucks now. Schoolteacher!

For she never grasped—not at any rate with her mind—what, with such incandescence, he tried to tell her on these Saturday afternoons. She could not find, between herself and the African statuette, or totem pole, on which he gazed with such melancholy wonder, any point of contact. She was only glad that she did not look that way. She preferred to look, in the other museum, at the paintings; but still she did not understand anything he said about them. She did not know why he adored such things that were so long dead; what sustenance they gave him, what secrets he hoped to wrest from them. But she understood, at least, that they did give him a kind of bitter nourishment, and that the secrets they held for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened her because she felt that he was reaching for the moon and that he would, therefore be dashed down against the rocks; but she did not say any of this. She only listened, and in her heart she prayed for him.

The subway was the great leveler—underground, the Wall Street titans stood in the shuddering car and clutched the same poles as the junior IT guys to create a totem of fists, the executive vice presidents in charge of new product marketing pressed thighs with the luckless and the dreamers, who got off at their stations when instructed by the computer’s voice and were replaced by devisers of theoretical financial instruments of unreckoned power, who vacated their seats and were replaced in turn by unemployable homunculi clutching yesterday’s tabloids. They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A’s and the C’s tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape. This was the plane where Mark Spitz lived. They were all him. Middling talents who got by, barnacles on humanity’s hull, survivors who had not yet been extinguished. Perhaps it was only a matter of time.

I rewrote and re-sent the email—not to the head of the school now, but to his boss, the director of Field Service Group. Though he was higher up the totem pole than the head of the school, the D/FSG was pretty much equivalent in rank and seniority to a few of the personnel I’d dealt with at headquarters. Then I copied the email to his boss, who definitely was not. A few days later, we were in a class on something like false subtraction as a form of field-expedient encryption, when a front-office secretary came in and declared that the old regime had fallen. Unpaid overtime would no longer be required, and, effective in two weeks, we were all being moved to a much nicer hotel. I remember the giddy pride with which she announced, “A Hampton Inn!” I had only a day or so to revel in my glory before class was interrupted again. This time, the head of the school was at the door, summoning me back to his office. Spo immediately leaped from his seat, enveloped me in a hug, mimed wiping away a tear, and declared that he’d never forget me. The head of the school rolled his eyes. There, waiting in the school head’s office was the director of the Field Service Group—the school head’s boss, the boss of nearly everyone on the TISO career track, the boss whose boss I’d emailed.

Our model was always the servant leadership model, meaning the higher your title, the lower you are on the totem pole -- and the more your job is to support the individual contributors and the customers above you.

Time and again, the most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have succeeded in creating new caste systems by triggering a collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole.

The poles were crude copies of his father’s totem pole out there near the point: grizzly bear, owl, wolf, beaver, all signifying descent and brave deeds of old. If you held to the old ways, the figures on a person’s totem pole were strictly his own. They were property as real as canoes and weapons and hunting grounds.

The phrase "low man on the totem pole" was coined by a White man in the 1940s to mean a person with no respect, status, or power. He clearly did not consult the Natives who carve the poles. They honor the figures they represent by immortalizing them in precious old-grown red cedar. Each member of the totem pole is significant, but the one on the bottom is often given the most reverence. They are the one who holds up everyone else; they are the one who starts the story.

The salmon is a symbol of prosperity and determination to the Coast Salish tribes, the band of tribes in the Pacific Northwest of which the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe is a part. She defies nature, swimming upstream to provide for the people of the land. Yet she must sacrifice herself to give that abundance to others. Her determination comes at a deep personal cost.

He supposed there had to be a God who took some stock in him being here. Who saw some use in splattering the sky in a million colors while he splattered Cole's suit with dust. 'Thought you was a might big man beneath the evergreens, did you, son? Well let me show you just how far down this here totem pole you really are.' Sounding always like the voice of Cole's father, because if God wasn't a Southern man, Cole just didn't know who was.

The benefits of simplicity, even for those who excel at their craft, is that it can help keep you grounded. This can be a good lesson to understand in all walks of life. People who earn the most money are likely to be higher up the totem pole in management positions at most companies. The problem is that the power and responsibility these higher-ups have can lead to overconfidence in other areas of their life.

Screw this sideways with a native totem pole!

In most large high-tech and near-tech B2B companies today, research and development (R&D) and sales own the two top “heads” of the totem pole (see Figure 1.6). Which one is on top and which one is in second position on any given decision is not what is critical.

Dusty beer bottles on both sides of the squishy steps vibrated and danced every time anyone descended down them. There were bottles on various ledges and within cases that were stacked like totem poles. The kids used a large wooden spool as a table and sat on seats torn from junk cars. They told jokes that everyone knew by heart, or stories that they could recite verbatim. The top of the spool was littered with ashtrays, full of snuffed butts, as well as empty beer bottles, or “dead soldiers.” At the bottom of the bottles, engorged cigarette butts resembled leeches, having been drowned in a lethal cocktail of backwash and saliva. Half the cigarettes inside the ashtrays had white filters, lovingly imprinted with Gail’s pink lipstick that she’d rubbed out in the ashtray. Of late, I was smoking more, sucking on the cigarettes that I bummed off the girls. Sucking in their essence.

Consciously or unconsciously, social dominance is always on our minds. We display typical primate facial expressions, such as retracting our lips to expose our teeth and gums when we need to clarify our social position. The human smile derives from an appeasement signal, which is why women generally smile more than men. In myriad ways our behavior, even at its friendliest, hints at the possibility of aggression. We bring flowers or a bottle of wine when invading other peoples’ territories, and we greet each other by waving an open hand, a gesture thought to originate from showing the absence of weapons. We formalize our hierarchies’ through body postures and tone of voice to the point that an experienced observer can tell in only a few minutes who is high or low on the totem pole. We talk about human behaviors such as “ass-kissing,” ”groveling,” and “chest-pounding” that constitute official behavioral categories in my field of study, suggesting a past in which hierarchies were acted out more physically.

Now I sit me down in school Where praying is against the rule For this great nation under God Finds mention of Him very odd. If Scripture now the class recites, It violates the Bill of Rights. And anytime my head I bow Becomes a federal matter now. Our hair can be purple, orange, or green, That’s no offense; it’s a freedom scene. The law is specific, the law is precise. Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice. For praying in a public hall Might offend someone with no faith at all. In silence alone we must meditate, God’s name is prohibited by the state. We’re allowed to cuss and dress like freaks, And pierce our noses, tongues, and cheeks. They’ve outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible. To quote the Good Book makes me liable. We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen, And the unwed daddy, our Senior King. It’s “inappropriate” to teach right from wrong, We’re taught that such “judgments” do not belong. We can get our condoms and birth controls, Study witchcraft, vampires, and totem poles. But the Ten Commandments are not allowed, No Word of God must reach this crowd. It’s scary here I must confess, When chaos reigns the school’s a mess. So, Lord, this silent plea I make: Should I be shot; my soul please take! Amen

As foreigners, we're totally out of the communication loop. We're really considered off the totem-pole in this status-obsessed culture. It's not that we're too low or too high-we're not even there to begin with. This cannot be changed. A foreigner in Korea will always be just that. No amount of language acquisition, soju tolerance, or chopstick dexterity will make up for it.

RELATIVE DIFFICULTY OF KNIFE-BASED ACTIVITIES FROM EASIEST TO MOST DIFFICULT, WITH SHARPENING A PENCIL REPRESENTING THE MEDIAN If you can REACH FOR A KNIFE then you can PICK UP A KNIFE If you can PICK UP A KNIFE then you can DIP A KNIFE IN A BATHTUB If you can DIP A KNIFE IN A BATHTUB then you can SMEAR JELLY WITH A KNIFE If you can SMEAR JELLY WITH A KNIFE then you can CUT A LOAF OF BREAD WITH A BREAD KNIFE If you can CUT A LOAF OF BREAD WITH A BREAD KNIFE then you can CUT A STEAK WITH A STEAK KNIFE If you can CUT A STEAK WITH A STEAK KNIFE then you can CARVE A TURKEY WITH A CARVING KNIFE If you can CARVE A TURKEY WITH A CARVING KNIFE then you can CARVE A TOTEM POLE WITH A CHAINSAW If you can CARVE A TOTEM POLE WITH A CHAINSAW then you can SHARPEN A PENCIL WITH A POCKETKNIFE If you can SHARPEN A PENCIL WITH A POCKETKNIFE then you can WHITTLE A DUCK WITH A POCKETKNIFE If you can WHITTLE A DUCK WITH A POCKETKNIFE then you can SHAVE A THREAD WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR If you can SHAVE A THREAD WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR then you can REMOVE A CORNEA WITH A SCALPEL If you can REMOVE A CORNEA WITH A SCALPEL then you can MAKE A LOT OF MONEY If you can MAKE A LOT OF MONEY then you can HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH YOUR SECRETARY If you can HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH YOUR SECRETARY then you can BE BLACKMAILED If you can BE BLACKMAILED then you can IMAGINE COMMITTING A CRIME If you can IMAGINE COMMITTING A CRIME then you can REACH FOR A KNIFE

Access as a playwright should never have devolved into levels of marginalization. If you were a woman of color, you were at the bottom of the totem pole, and Melina winced a little as she conceded that for all her complaining, it would have been exponentially harder to get a toehold in this business if she wasn’t Caucasian.

How did you get in?” he asked and then immediately shook his head and waved the question away. “Never mind. I really don't want to know. However, if on Monday I find that the walls have been spray painted, I'll know who to point the finger at.” “Paint is not my medium,” I sniffed, offended. “Oh really? What exactly is your medium?” He locked the door behind us as we stepped out into the night. “Wood,” I clipped, wondering why I was telling him. Let him think I was a graffitti artist. Who the hell cared. “You do,” a little voice taunted mildly. And I did. “And what exactly do you do with wood?” “I carve it.” “People, bears, totem poles, what?” “Totem poles?!” I was incredulous. “Is that supposed to be some kind of slam to my ethnicity?” “Your ethnicity? I thought you told me you weren't Native American.” “I don't know what the hell I am, but that still sounded like a slam, Sherlock!” “Why don't you know what you are, Blue? Haven't you ever tried to find out? Maybe that would make you less hostile!” Wilson seemed frustrated. He stomped ahead of me, almost talking to himself. “Absolutely impossible! Having a conversation with you is like trying to converse with a snake! You are vulnerable and tearful one moment and hissing and striking the next. I frankly don't know how to reach you, or even if I want to! I only said totem poles because they are usually carved from wood, all right?” He turned and glared at me. “Cranky when you stay up past your bedtime, aren't you?” I mumbled.

The Indian tribes living along the river valleys and on the offshore islands from northern Washington to Alaska are called the Northwest Coast tribes. They are noted for their wood-carving, particularly for their totem poles. These carved cedar poles were originally corner posts for the Indian houses. Later the custom of erecting one large pole in front of the house was adopted. There are several different types of totem poles. Some were erected to the memory of the dead. Others portrayed the owner’s family tree or illustrated some mythological adventure. The poles varied in height from about 40 to 70 feet. The larger ones were as much as 3 feet in diameter. The carver was an important person in his tribe. For his work he might be paid from one hundred to two hundred and fifty blankets, each worth about three dollars. The early poles were painted black, white, and red. Other colors were used when the traders brought in factory-made paints.

The place was horrible by daylight. The Chinese junk on the walls, the rug, the fussy lamp, the teakwood stuff, the sticky riot of colors, the totem pole, the flagon of ether and laudanum - all this in the daytime had a stealthy nastiness, like a fag party.

At Göbekli Tepe there is a creature, sculted in high-relief, identified by Klaus Schmidt as a beast of prey with splayed claws and powerful shoulders, its tail bent to its left over its body. A very similar animal is seen at Cutimbo [in Peru] with the same splayed claws and the same powerful shoulders, while the tail instead of being bent to its left is bent to its right. At both Göbekli Tepe and Cutimbo, reliefs of salamanders and of serpents are found. The style of execution in all cases is very similar. At about the level of the genitals of the so-called "Totem Pole" of Göbekli Tepe, a small head and two arms protrude. The head has a determined look, with prominent brows. The long fingers of the hands almost meet. The posture is that of a man leaning down through the stone and playing a drum. This is also the posture of two figures at Cutimbo, who emerge from a large convex block on one of the circular towers. They have the same determined features and prominent brow ridges as the figure on the "Totem Pole." The two serpents on the side of the "Totem Pole" have peculiarly large heads, making them look almost like sperm. So, too, does the serpent that emerges from the dark narrow entrance of the Temple of the Moon above Cuzco. Lions feature in the reliefs at Göbekli Tepe, pumas feature in the reliefs at Cutimbo and again the manner of representation is similar.

Then there's the pillar statue in the semi-subterranean temple at Tiahuanaco [Bolivia]. Like the Totem Pole of Göbekli Tepe, it is anthropomorphic. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, it has serpents writhing up its side. Like the Totem Pole at Göbekli Tepe, the long fingers of its hands almost meet in front of its body. The face is human not animal, however, and it's heavily bearded. Nonetheless, the figure of an animal is carved on the side of its head and this animal resembles no known species more closely than it does Toxodon, a sort of New World rhino that went extinct during the cataclysms at the end of the Ice Age around 12,000 years ago. This isn't pareidolia--the figure is definitely there. So there's only one question--and it's difficult to answer: is this a depiction of Toxodon, or is it some creature of the artist's imagination?

Having grown separately for millennia, the [orginal] Americans were a boundless sea of novel ideas, drea,s, stories, philosophies, religions, ,oralities, discoveries, and all other products of the mind....Here and there we see clues of what might have been. Pacific Northwest Indian artists carved beautiful masks, boxes, bas-relief S, and totem poles within the dictates of an elaborate aesthetic syste, based on an ovoid shapes that has no name in European languages.

If everyone tried to see the humor in many things, I believe that there would be less anger in the world.

Policing. You think you've got it tough. You don't have any idea how it was when I joined the force. The whole cake was divided down to the last crumb. The big boss got seventy percent, and the portions got smaller as you descended the totem pole. And no complaining. You learned to keep your mouth shut at all times - you wouldn't have survived the first week. You see, what nobody tells you about capitalism is that its warlordism in disguise. That leaves the only job in the jungle worth having an apex feeder - the rest is slavery at various levels of discomfort. Socially, psychologically, we're still in the rain forest." - Colonel Vikorn

Research has linked such feelings of powerlessness to the kinds of health problems plaguing Bayview and many other communities around the world. This research shows that members of poor communities do not merely experience higher levels of violence; they are also more likely to have high blood pressure and frequent periods of increased heart rate, which contribute to a higher mortality rate. What’s more, similar health problems have been shown to afflict the least powerful members of nonhuman primate species. Taken together, these and other findings suggest that the psychology of powerlessness can wreak havoc on people who sit low on the totem pole of any social structure. “Poverty, and the poor health of the poor, is about much more than simply not having enough money,” says Robert M. Sapolsky, professor of neurology at Stanford University. “It’s about the stressors caused by a society that tolerates leaving so many of its members so far behind.

I will have your things returned to your apartment tomorrow.” It made me sick in my stomach to hear those words. His untimely declarations were worse than….It was that raw, that demeaning, and made you feel like you were nothing but a let down…a total let down. Well, I wasn’t willing to be a let down to anyone…least of all to someone willing to drop me in front of my home tossing my heart into the air…waiting for love to find me in all the wrong places. He wore a look of regret on his face. “Jason will drive your car home for you.” “Oh…okay, well...I had a great time.” It was over. I was a statistic, a hash line on the totem pole of his sexual career. “You and I, we were...it was fun. I had fun.” He leaned in toward me, kissing me gently, regretfully. Are you kidding me?

Standing in front of him was O.G. Banks, one of Lloyd’s crew members. He wasn’t high up on the totem pole, but he always seemed to know what was going on and was happy to run his mouth about it.

So does your Uncle Kevin.” “I’m sick of being the smallest boy. We need another one so I have somebody to pick on, too.” “Oh…great.” It was scary to think her baby was going to be the low man on the totem pole of trickle-down family dynamics.

Bobby stopped laughing and craned his head to look up at her. “I hope it’s a boy.” “So does your Uncle Kevin.” “I’m sick of being the smallest boy. We need another one so I have somebody to pick on, too.” “Oh…great.” It was scary to think her baby was going to be the low man on the totem pole of trickle-down family dynamics.

He liked the staccato beat of the rain drumming on the roof of the carving shed.

Unthinking aggression was genetically positive for clawing humanity to the top of the ecological totem pole, except that it ended up destroying that totem pole. With high technology, strike-first aggression proved unworkable.

This way,” he said gently, wheedlingly, rallyingly, and they walked, Moose and his diminutive companion, around the edge of Belmont Harbor, past the totem pole, up toward the bird sanctuary and then to the edge of the lake, the great flickering oceanic lake that could look milky and tropical in sunlight (as now) or greenish-gray beneath clouds, that during storms could rage in tones of purple-black. And Moose finally did what he’d been longing to do: climbed over the seawall and perched on a cube of concrete with the boy beside him, that mischievous boy he had been, that happy, blind boy, looking out at the sunlight striking the lake with sparks, listening to sounds of locusts although there were none, they had ended with the cornfields. Clicking noises, amoebic phantoms waving their tentacles from the sky; Moose observed these phenomena, which he recognized as hallucinations induced by the excited state of his thoughts, observed them in part to avoid looking at Moose-the-boy, who was watching him. Moose felt the boy’s eyes on his face, a prolonged stare that would be rude in anyone but a child, a stare Moose put off returning for as long as possible because he knew it contained a question he could answer only with the greatest expenditure of energy (and right now he was so tired), and perhaps not even then: What had happened to him?

What an indictment that is, of the Ivy League and its peers: that colleges four levels down on the academic totem pole, enrolling students whose SAT scores are hundreds of points lower than theirs, deliver a better education, in the highest sense of the word, than do those institutions.

Boots on the ground, the men and women at the lowest part of the totem pole—those who faced death head-on—were measured by the highest of ethical requirements. Those at the very pinnacles of power held themselves to the very lowest standards—or to none whatsoever.

The staff used to say, “When the president eats, everybody eats.” That kind of leadership is real. I figured the saying applied to every president but really the saying came from Bush 41’s years. He appreciated the lowest on the totem pole because he’d once pounded the Navy pavement.

When you’re that low on the totem pole, you sometimes think you’re so unimportant that no one can hear you.

Crucially, most of the existing Harrah’s debt did not have to be refinanced. Because it was not secured by any collateral, suddenly Harrah’s could issue senior debt backed by the company’s assets. It would do so in the LBO deal, pushing $4.5 billion of existing debt to the bottom of the totem pole in a $25 billion debt stack. This was cruel. Those existing unsecured bonds crashed in price as they were last in line to be repaid. But the maneuver allowed Apollo and TPG to issue new debt more cheaply. And it illustrated one of the key legal principles that would echo through this case: Debtholders’ relationship with the company remains strictly contractual. Any rights they have must be bargained for and embedded in documents. The management and board of a company, in contrast, have fiduciary duties which dictate that they maximize shareholder value.

the extent to which Mormons wish to continue to dissociate themselves from any of the three major branches of Christianity makes it harder for them to credibly claim to be Christian at the same time. Imagine a young man raised in a not overly devout LDS home today who begins to go around describing a vision he had received in which he saw three identical looking men who identified themselves as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They instructed him to associate with no existing church but to await further revelation. Eventually an angel guides him to dig up silver tiles that are covered with writing he cannot read but looks a little like pictographs on totem poles. Later he announces he has been enabled by God’s Spirit to translate them. They tell the story of a group of Mormons who migrated to the Yukon in the late nineteenth century and who mingled with the Inuit there until they were all killed off except for one who had buried these tiles with their story engraved on them. Later God reveals to this young man extensive instructions for the founding of a new group restoring the original Mormonism of Joseph Smith, which had begun to be corrupted by Brigham Young, lost its moorings considerably in the mid-twentieth century, was reformed and improved by LDS church president Ezra Taft Benson but still needs a full restoration. After all, Joseph Smith died before he could pass on his authority to his divinely ordained successor, so no existing Mormons have true priesthood authority. The Salt Lake City-based Mormons, the rural Utah fundamentalist Mormons, and the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are all illegitimate, and it is time to restore original Mormonism under the leadership of this upstart young man. Anyone who wants to be in God’s best graces has to be baptized into the new church this man is organizing, which is to be called the Restored Church of our Holy Lord Jesus Christ of Last-day Disciples. Existing Mormon baptisms are not good enough for membership in his church. Indeed, this new Restored Church is the one true church on the entire planet. At the same time, it wants to call itself Mormon and be treated as fully Mormon by the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency in Salt Lake City, by all the renegade fundamentalist Mormons, and by the Community of Christ. What is the likelihood that anyone in these three groups would agree? Yet that is very close to how the rest of Christendom perceives, rightly or wrongly, the desires of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Archaeologists also found totem-like poles buried at Göbekli,

Sweet and Sour Summers “There is something my parents did, and it was pretty unique. My brother and I refer to it as ‘The Sweet and Sour Summer.’ My parents would send us, for the first half of the summer, to an internship with a relative or a friend of the family who had an interesting job. So, at 12, I went and interned with my godbrother, who is a lobbyist in D.C. I would go along with him to pitch congressmen. I had one tie, and I was a pretty good writer. I’d write up one-page summaries of these bills we were pitching, and I’d literally sit there with these congressmen with these filthy mouths—you know, the old Alabaman senator and stuff like that—and watch the pitch happen. It was awesome. I learned so much and developed so much confidence, and really honed my storytelling skills. “But then, from there, I would come home and work in a construction outfit, in a nasty, nasty job. I mean, hosing off the equipment that had been used to fix septic systems, gassing shit up, dragging shit around in the yard, filling up propane tanks. Just being the junior guy on the totem pole, and quite literally getting my ass kicked by whichever parolee was angry at me that day. I think it was part of their master plan, which was: There’s a world of cool opportunities out there for you, but let’s build within you a sense of not just work ethic, but also, a little kick in the ass about why you don’t wanna end up in one of those real jobs. . . .” TIM: “You had the introduction to the godbrother, for the lobbying. Did your parents also help organize the sour part of each summer?” CHRIS: “The guy who ran that construction company is my dad’s best friend, and he was under strict orders to make sure we had the roughest day there.

Trance of Totem (The Sonnet) This is my decree to my soldiers of the future, Refrain from raising my giant lifeless structures! Use the funds to build schools and hospitals instead, Providing free/affordable education and healthcare. Keep me alive in your heart, not in dead statues, each one taller and more extravagant than the other, Just so self-absorbed snobs could take the perfect selfie, to declare an empty alliance with humanitarian behavior. If you must have symbollic momentos of me around, Keep them personal, humble and utterly non-extravagant. Always remember, I am honored with your acts of love, not with your thousand feet statues and chants unsapient. It's a sad state of affairs, when virtues gather moss upon the monuments of hypocrisy. Break your trance of totem poles, be the freedom you are meant to be!

Break your trance of totem poles, be the freedom you are meant to be!

International. Facing it from Kalakaua, I looked at the totem poles on my left, garishly painted, contorted faces carved upon them. Farther left, and extending from the Avenue into the grounds, was Don the Beachcomber’s Bora Bora Lounge, in which — according to a sign outside it — was the famous Dagger Bar. On my right was the first of many little stores and shops. This one was Polynesian, crammed with idols, wood-carvings, jewelry in glass cases, a model outrigger canoe in the front window. Beyond it, all around and in the Market Place,

Which means I will have failed because of you. I may be low on the diplomatic totem pole, but I am sufficiently high enough on it that when I push you, you will die from the fall.” She looked over to Schmidt. “And he’ll kill you when he lands.

That’s the tricky thing with quiet guys in D.C.—are they reserved or just not interested in talking to people lower on the totem pole?

I wanted fo have my books around me, forming a totem pole of the narratives I'd visited.

I wanted to have my books around me, forming a totem pole of the narratives I'd visited.

The bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation, Dixon thought. 'You bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation', he said.

Here's the reality, guys: you save up for years to go 'Out West' and you spend everything you have in six months living in a roach infested hole in K-town, paying for "casting workshops" so you can meet managers and casting directors who don't give two shits about you. You cut your hair a little bit or grow a moustache and you have to get new headshots because people in Hollywood fundamentally lack imagination and can't even begin to fathom 'who you are as an actor' unless your headshot looks exactly like you do on the day of. And headshots cost $300 to shoot (on the cheap end) and $100 for make-up artists and $100 to retouch and $100 to print. Plus, you need a car to get around because mass transit in Los Angeles is a goddam joke. You need to get into class so you can learn how to unlearn all the shit you learned in college theater. Meanwhile, you're in love with the city because it's new and warm all the time and there are beautiful women everywhere. But you start getting this creeping sensation like everyone is a facade of a human being and beneath every beautiful face is spiritual rot, careerism, graft, nepotism, bull shit, lies, fakery, a need to be seen and an overwhelming whorism. But don't worry, guys, because you can always get a job working as a bartender where you can sneak booze from the well and forget for a few minutes what it's like to be on the bottom of the totem pole. That's a lot of fun, especially when you discover that cocaine means you can drink forever and not get too wasted until later. You'll get a DUI eventually, but fuck it, right? Around this time you start to get bitter. Really bitter, which you'll mistake as an 'evolution of your art.' You start looking for edgy rolls. You get a dumb haircut and try to make yourself look ugly. Maybe you hit the gym or start doing improv. Something to give you an edge. You start seeing young kids coming into town all bright eyed and bushy tailed and you say 'good luck' when you mean 'eat shit and die.' You wake up one day after endless commercial auditions that you really need to make rent but can't seem to book because you 'come off as an asshole' or don't smile enough...

Time and again, the most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have succeeded in creating new caste systems by triggering a collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole. This pattern, dating back to slavery, has birthed yet another racial caste system in the US: mass incarceration.

I wouldn’t touch a one-eyed teratoma like you with a ten-foot totem pole.

Maybe some kids are told from an early age what's what, as regards money. But most are ignorant I would think, and that was me too, till I was eleven and started pulling down a paycheck. Before that, my thinking was vague. If you had a job, you had money. If you didn't have a job, you had your food stamps or EBT card and basically, no money. I didn't really get that there were grey areas. Okay, I did know about rich people, that some few made the big bucks from being movie stars, pro footfall, the president, etc. These types of people living one hundred percent not in Lee County. Except for this one NASCAR driver that supposedly bought a farm near Ewing in the seventies. Also, the coal miners back in union times. Thirty or forty bucks and hour, old men still talked like those were the days Jesus walked among us throwing around hundred-dollar bills. But for the most part I thought paycheck was a paycheck, whether from Walmart or Food Country or Lee Bank and Trust or Hair Affair or the Eastman plant over in Kingsport. Obviously, you live and learn. Now I know, if you finish high school that's supposed to be a step up, money wise. College is another step up, but with a major downside: for the type of job college gets you, most likely you'll end up having to live far away from home, in a city. My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you're doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I'll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's lowlifes you're looking after, not so much. And if it's kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I'm chasing the big bucks now, Schoolteacher! I've had friends in places high and low since then, and some of the best were people who taught school. The ones that showed up for me. Outside of school hours they were delivery drivers or moonlighting at a gas station or, this is a true example, playing in a band and driving the ice cream truck in the summer. They need the extra job. Honestly need it,just to get by. So here is Miss Barks in her first real job, twenty-two years old, working her little heart out for the DSS. And hitting the books at all hours because she pretty desperately wants to live in her own tiny apartment instead of sharing with a slob, and for that she needs to climb up the paycheck pole to first-grade teacher. That's how they pay you at DSS. Old Baggy has been at it so long she's got no more reason to live, working two shifts a day, going home to her crap duplex in Duffield owned by her cousin that gives her a break on the rent. If you are the kid sitting across from her in your case working meeting, wearing your two black eyes and the hoodie reeking of cat piss, sorry dude but she's thinking about what TV show she'll watch that night. Any human person with gumption would have moved on to something else by now, the military so selling insurance or being a cop or even a teacher. Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That's what the big world thinks it's worth, to save the white-trash orphans. And if these kids grow up to throw punches at washing machines or each other or even let's say smash a drugstore drive-through window. Crawl in and take what's there. Tell me how you're going to be surprised. There's your peanut butter sandwich back. Every dog gets his day." -Demon Copperhead