nisi

While the actual working cowboy disappears, along with the genuine nonworking Indian, the make-believe cowboys flourish and multiply like flies on a pecan pie. Everywhere you see them now, from California to Florida, from Texas to Times Square especially in the small towns west of the Mississippi, where cowboyism as a cult grows in direct ratio to the disappearance of cattle-herding as an occupation. You will see the latest, the Cattleman couple in authentic matching western costume-the husband with sunburnt nose and belly bulging over a steerhorn buckle heavy enough to kill a horse with, and his wife, a tall tough broad in gabardines and boots with a look on her face that would make a Comanche blanch...
weep, all you rains,
wail, winds wail-
all along, along, along the Colorado trail.

-edward abbey

The Din (Navajos) are real. They exist as they truly arehorsemen, nomads, keepers of flocks, painters in sand, weavers of wool, artists in silver, dancers, singers of the Yei-bei-chei. "But they will have to forget or at least learn to be ashamed of these old things and to bring them only for the amusement of tourists."

they are my family.