Memorial

This past week I've seen flower stands along Foster Road, selling cheap hothouse flowers dyed with chemicals and wrapped in non-recyclable plastic. This afternoon's traffic to the Willamette National Cemetery was backed up over 1/2 mile, spilling down 110th Avenue. As I made my way through it, heading home, I thought about my tradition of calling all veterans I know on 11/11, how I don't actually know anyone who died while in military service, how my father threw his purple heart into the ocean, his reasons complicated and intensely personal.

And then I thought of Utah Phillips (wiki link here), whose singing and storytelling touched me, and provided a common forum through which my father and I connected, he a veteran and his daughter a peacemonger. The 1996 album Utah Phillips produced with Ani Difranco, The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, was tremendous and moving. Two tracks in particular, "Korea," followed by "Anarchy," brought tears to my eyes every time I heard them. I have many memories wrapped up in associations of this man, his cataclysmic force and sense of humor will remain in the threads woven through the past twelve years when I was first introduced to his stories and his music.

From "Korea":

I knew that it was all wrong, that it all had to change, and that change had to start with me.

From "Anarchy":

I learned in Korea that I would never again, in my life, abdicate to somebody else my right and my ability to decide who the enemy is.

. . . anarchy is not a noun but an adjective. It describes the tension between moral autonomy and political authority, especially in the area of combinations, whether they are voluntary or coercive. The most destructive coercive combinations are arrived at by force. As Ammon said, 'Force is the weapon of the weak.'

All these thoughts and memories and triggers inform me that now is the right time to publicly acknowledge my next project, to investigate and explore the Great Peace March of 1986. My fascination with the March, with Marchers' thoughts and stories twenty-two years later, with the meaning of Peace as a concept, a practice, a vision, a reality - these things will weave together the next creative phase.

What is peace? What is war? What is between the two? What else is on the spectrum? How do we choose to exist?

.

He Said . . .

. . . to K on the phone:

Oh no! [rummaging sounds] Shit! . . . . What the . . . . ? Dammit!

So she asks:

What is it? Whassa matter?

And he says in utter seriousness:

I can't find my phone anywhere!

K laughed until urine threatened to soak her jeans. And when K recounted the story, telling us of "B's blond moment," T looked at me, raised her eyebrows and wondered aloud if he should have taken that last hit.

Maybe he shouldn't have taken those last twenty years' worth of hits.

.

Bags of Urine

The cultural exchange in my family is something I love. We tell stories and surprise each other with our varied experiences and perspectives. Some stories are far more entertaining than others. Jorge-Mario is my sister's domestic-partner-husbandish-person, who is called Jorge-Mario because there were so many Jorges in his family that they had to distinguish them somehow. I don't even think Mario is his middle name; it was just made up so they could quit calling him Jorge Number Seventeen. My favorite story thus far from Jorge-Mario about life in Guatemala? The Bags of Urine story. He gave me permission to recount that story here and prove how much my sense of humor revolves around the toilet. You know, in case that wasn't already self-evident.

Jorge-Mario:

Where I grew up, people were crazy about soccer. Loco. Totally nuts. You think I get passionate during my soccer games when I tell the goalie he's a worthless piece of shit? That's nothing. Nothing.

When I was eight years old, two years after I moved back to Guatemala from L.A., I went to a soccer game at a big stadium with my cousin Beto. He got us what I thought were really good seats, right down next to the field. But Beto was nervous about the seats. He'd had gone to a game before, and warned me that when he said to move, I should move. He didn't tell me where to move, just that I should move.

At this stadium, there was barbed wire along the top of the fence separating the stands from the players. See, people get so into the game that they've been known to climb the fence and get onto the field. They put up barbed wire to keep everybody in the stands.

So we were watching the game, and all of a sudden, after one side made a goal, fireworks started going off. In the stands. It sounded like gunfire, and I was pretty scared until I figured out it was fireworks. After a quick glance over his shoulder, Beto suddenly shoved me. "Move!" he said. I was staring at the fireworks, wondering if the stadium was going to catch on fire. "Move!" he said again, but I was mesmerized.

And then I found out why I should have moved. Okay, you're not going to believe me, but I'm not kidding: there were BAGS OF URINE, raining down from the seats above us. They were trying to hit the players, but the pissed off (ha ha!) spectators were already so piss-drunk (ha ha!) that they had terrible aim. They would pee into plastic grocery bags, tie them off, and throw them at the field. But they kept getting caught on the barbed wire and it was suddenly raining urine on me.

That was my first experience at a professional soccer game, and I've been hooked ever since.

If you ask me really nicely in the comments, I will recount the Second Floating Turd Story from a Surf-n-Swim outing when I was a kid. That particular version had to replace the Original Floating Turd Story because the Original version would only embarrass the parties involved, and I am above embarrassing other people. Embarrassing myself, however, is clearly not a concern.

Courage Part One

Eleven years ago I told my then-partner that I wanted to get a pet snake and overcome my intense fear of slithery creatures. What did I get for Solstice that year? You guessed it. I didn't mean I wanted to get a pet snake quite so soon. It was more of an in-the-future idea and one that I expected to tackle myself, not through a holiday gift. At the time, I felt freaked out and slightly resentful, although simultaneously invigorated with what was probably adrenaline. All of a sudden I was responsible for this living being whose mere existence caused me heart palpitations and sweaty palms.

I named my snake Hygeiea and she was a wonderful companion. After about a year, she went many places with me, wrapped around my neck for warmth. She and I were connected, and I continued to explore my own associations with snakes and serpents as "male" in juxtaposition to ancient traditions of snakes representing femininity. During Hygeiea's growth spurts she would shed her skin once a month, during the same time I was menstruating. I felt a profound systerhood and strong Knowing during those times.

Additionally, the life-death cycle played out in my tiny one-bedroom apartment when my partner acquired another snake and we began breeding rats rather than buy pinky rats to feed our snakes from the pet store. Now, years later, I revisit the conflicting emotions of seeing the mama rat frantic, pressed against the glass, whiskers quivering, as we fed her babies to our snakes in the other room. It is an image that haunts me. Life-death-life-death-life. It was intense.

What ended up happening to Hygeiea, some time after that partnership ended, is another story entirely, and ultimately one of liberation and joy. But the experience of caring for her was perhaps the first time I realized that my inner strength and ability to delve into new, terrifying realms is deep, wide, and mysterious.

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure. But I'll dig deeper in the next post.

Cassie's Birthday

Dipstick's posting about her snow dogs is prompting this post in honor of Cassie. It's timely, given that LittleGrrl turned six two days ago.

Cassie was born February 1, one week before the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, and is my very first dog. Given the totality of the circumstances, leaving her with B and K was assuredly the right choice. The prospect of taking her away from her home and her best friend was unacceptable to me. Nevertheless, moving 766 miles away from my canine companion was one of the hardest choices I've ever made. The privilege of caring for animals is a blessed responsibility, and making that particular decision about Cassie's future was perhaps the most unselfish thing I've ever done. Maybe there's hope for me yet!

Though it brings a lump to my throat, my heart swells when K sends pictures to my phone, like the one above from a hike in Memory Grove. I miss her fiercely, but it brings great comfort to know she is happy and cherished. Many thanks to B and K for continuing to give all the Avalon Animals such a good home. (They are now giving daily insulin shots to Buddy, whose obesity resulted in an unsurprising feline diabetes diagnosis a few months ago.)

So happy birthday to Cass; may your next six years be as joyful and full of adventure as the first six!

Men's Abortions & The War Mentality

Two weeks ago I read two articles about abortion on the same day. I'm glad I read them in the order that I did because the first one placed my paradigm in a more inclusive rather than exclusive stance.

The first article (A Change of Heart: From Pro Life to Pro Choice, AlterNet 1/9/08) included a perspective I needed to hear: "Our beliefs are not created by what -- or who -- we are against. They exist because of what we are for: comprehensive reproductive health for all, and the ability to decide for ourselves if we will or will not have an abortion."

A line from the second article (Changing Abortion's Pronoun, LA Times 1/7/08) elicited an audible groan from me, and my mind went to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and Starhawk's description of The Southlands in The Fifth Sacred Thing. A man, discussing his personal regret about several ex-girlfriends' abortions: "'I never really thought about it for the woman,' he says slowly." What?! He never really thought about the woman part of the equation in an abortion scenario? Excuse me?

It's an interesting catch-22. Though it disgusts me, it doesn't surprise me that anti-abortion activists will utilize women's termination regret to influence the courts toward the incorrectly-perceived need to "protect" women from their own choices. But would they do the same with men's regret as a motivator? To protect men from themselves? I do not doubt that some men experience loss or sadness over the termination of a pregnancy in which they played a role. But is regret the best measure of whether or not government should permit certain reproductive medical decisions?

Back when I was a married-to-a-man queer grrl, before the polyamorous part of our marriage was predominant, my husband and I terminated a pregnancy. In Utah. I wrote about it here, when the South Dakota mess was in the news. In the post, I half-heartedly pretended it wasn't me, but it was probably pretty obvious. Many women have termination stories; I have one. I don't see why men shouldn't get to tell their stories too.

My ambivalence toward abortion topics is deep and multi-layered. I believe it important to let stories and voices be heard, and yet I also recognize the deeply personal realm of reproduction, coming from a family where fertility, miscarriage, and ectopic (tubal) pregnancies were wrapped in whispered conversations, kept from children, spoken about with solemn secrecy.

The more we share, all of us, the more information we have, the greater likelihood that we might just be able to see each other and really connect and not live under the illusion that our way of experiencing the world is the only way it's experienced. The more information, more connection, more understanding, more empathy, the better. That includes having empathy for people who truly believe that abortion should be illegal. If I can empathize with their feelings, it may be a vital step in bridging the gap in our perspectives, and maybe that person will one day believe that even if abortion is not a choice s/he would make or want a loved one to make, it is a choice that should nevertheless be available in a legal and safe way. The "fight" is more about increased connection and communication rather than fighting. Give peace a chance, wo/man.

. . .

Blogs & Family

Two more conversations with the 5-year-old who lives upstairs:

#1
me, giving her a hug hello: I wrote about you in my blog yesterday.

B: What's a blog?

me: It's a complete and utter waste of my time.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

#2
B: I don't know for sure about this, and I might be wrong, but you know what I think?

me: What do you think?

B: I think that if someone moves into your house, that means they are your family.

me: Like me?

B: Yes! My family has grown! It used to be 3 people: my mom, my brother and me, after my dad died. Then it was 4 when mommy met N. Living with you makes it 5! And when T gets here, it will be 6! Our growing family!

me: I love being in your family, B.

Display

Ring ring ring

voice, slightly muffled: Hello?

me: Hey, baby, how's your night?

voice, more clearly: What?

me, panic rising: Mom?!

I'll be watching the cellphone display a lot more carefully from now on. I'm just so relieved that all I did was say "baby." It could've been worse. It could've been a hot and steamy sexy-text. Yikes.

Passage

In this part of the world, the agricultural year is ending and Death, a necessary element of Life, predominates as growing things roll into fallow time before life returns in the spring. The other night, I described to C how my pagan practice has changed over the years, and now I don't engage in much ritual or pageantry, but rather I simply feel the seasons, the cycles, the shifts as energy mutates and transforms. I honor it quietly, feel it deeply.

Last night my grandfather took passage from what we know of this life. I am profoundly relieved. Yesterday was quite awful, as I felt him dying all day, and felt his children's pain in watching their father die. Although I am nearly 800 miles away from where it took place, the energy of the events surrounded me.

Today I have a sense of peace and am glad that he has taken passage into the Mystery. Grandpa frequently referred to death as graduation, that one completes this life and moves ahead to the next thing. Though much of my family and I may differ in how we conceive of what happens after death, I am comfortable with the graduation analogy. He completed his time in the form in which I was blessed to know and experience his spirit.

My love for him is intense and honoring his life and celebrating his passage feels highly appropriate during this liminal time in the solar year, as light fades and solstice begins its approach.

Rites... updated ... and updated again.

Before I moved away from the only state I had ever lived, I made a difficult but deliberate decision. I did not make the 12-hour trip to see my grandfather. I wanted to remember him how he was during my previous visit, about a year before. I knew I might live to regret that decision, and I didn't make it lightly.

About an hour ago, I was told that Grandpa is en route to Salt Lake City to undergo surgery after taking a fall. More details as they become available. **Update: he broke his hip, had surgery, developed pneumonia, is now doing better, and I've talked to him on the phone.**

He's worked so bloody hard his whole life. First as a miner, then as his town's garbage collector, then as a thoughtful and supportive grandfather to his fifteen living grandchildren, many of whom had no other grandparents except for him. He would say to me fondly, "You were the first one to call me grandpa."

During my tearful call to TW, she offered to take him flowers at the hospital tomorrow. Her angelic presence and willingness to be at his bedside in my stead deepens my devotion to her. That's what's so wondrously surprising - that my devotion could grow any deeper than it already was.

**SECOND UPDATE: Just heard that he's suffered a stroke. As of yesterday he was doing much much better, was actually sitting up, eating solid food, coherent, and was being transferred to a rehab facility sooner than initially expected. Sometime during the night he had a stroke, his pneumonia is back with a vengeance, and his body is full of infection. If the antibiotics are going to work, we're told, they will do so within the first 24 hours. And so we wait. And I fight back tears at work while coping by writing this update.**

TrashMan

After his back was broken in a mining accident, my grandfather became the garbage man in Blanding, Utah, an insular little place, just north and west of the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. It's a town that doesn't sell alcohol within city limits, a place where five or six family names dominate the cemetery headstones.

As the town trashman, he would often take people's broken side tables or bikes or whatever, fix them, and put them back on their front porch.

Grandpa was always picking up garbage. Everywhere we went, he was picking up trash, stooping his broken-backed self over to pick up a stray cup lid or cigarette butt or newspaper. He consistently made a place better than it was when he found it.

I've tried my best to follow suit, to follow the good examples I've received from my male lineage, taking latex gloves from my first aid kit and picking up people's nasty leave-behind garbage. And yeah, humans are really gross creatures. But this weekend, at the Owyhee Hot Springs Rendezvous with TW, I was shocked by the garbage. The 5-cent glass beer bottles and aluminum cans were taken away by enterprising sorts who wanted the recycling credits. But the cardboard box that held the 24-pack of Budweiser was left askew on the water's edge. The toilet paper alone was enough to warrant a second pair of latex gloves. But the topper was the Huggies and Pull-Ups.

What kind of person leaves filthy diapers strewn about? Seriously?

Noticing the Fear/Hope Connection

Though I generally reject dualisms, believing them oversimplifications of complex spectra, hope/fear dichotomies and impulses are on my mind, informed by recent events. My last post, about the miners trapped in a Utah mine, is still abuzz in my brain, though the volume has decreased slightly over the last two days. But hearing about the earthquake in Peru added to my tragedy anxiety. Is Uncle W, visiting Peru, safe? Are his friends and loved ones safe?

So I called my folks. After discussing my uncle's whereabouts and planned travel itinerary, my mom brought up the trapped miners, how they've been following the story closely and my dad has been trying to keep himself from watching the news continuously. This came as no surprise -- every cave-in takes him back to 1965. She talked about the families holding vigil and the incessant hopefulness that propel tight-knit mining communities. Stories of mind-boggling survival circulate, like trapped miners in southern China surviving 23 days, fueling with optimism the eleven-day-long search at the Huntington mine. Hope persists, even for those watching from afar, bearing witness. Praying.

After hanging up, I sat outside under three gigantic cedar trees in my backyard, listening to birds singing in the trees and chickens cooing at my feet. I thought about how fear and hope wove together these events in my psyche. Fear for W's safety and the safety of those he loves in Peru, as hundreds of bodies are found in rubble; fear for the families whose loved ones are trapped. Hope for W's well-being; hope that plucky earth-diggers will survive.

I recognized how much I've grown, because now I'm noticing the hope. I persisted in such a fear-based state for so very long that hardship seemed to loom at every turn. Now I often create a Gratitude List upon waking each morning, almost automatically, but consciously. I live a blessed life, and I am thankful.

Focusing on hope, in the face of frustration, is my mantra for today, and probably for tomorrow too. Larger events put my challenged job searching in perspective.

Update: Just heard a message from my uncle, who reports that the earthquake's devastation was in the area he had visited and that he returned to the US two days before. N, the love of his life, and her family, all escaped injury. Blessings abound.

Update2: Another cave-in at the mine leaves rescue workers dead and injured. Mournful, I breathe, quelling fear for hope.

Trapped in Earth-Tunnels

Along with my father, I have a tendency to pay close attention to mine accidents, those inevitable consequences of digging hundreds of feet into the earth and putting humans there to blast and gather and cut away stone. I generally ignored the news this week as I settled into PDX and studied for the exam I took yesterday. Last night on the BBC news service I read about two US mine accidents and my belly rolled over.

No one in my family works underground anymore. But my connection to mining persists; I cannot shake free from the prickling awareness of what happens in the heartstone of Gaia, where we've tunneled and taken. Don't misunderstand by my word usage that I am vehemently opposed to mining. What would be the point of such opposition? I am acutely aware of why people work in mining and logging and for defense contractors. The food that fueled my lengthening limbs, the house that sheltered me, the books that expanded my sharpening mind - these were all acquired by the modest salaries derived from work I find politically objectionable.

But politics and personal family dynamics are a realm requiring deliberate navigation. How do I hold these seemingly disparate parts of myself? Will I continually mourn for unknown miners, trapped by tons of rock and soil, oxygen running low? Is that mourning a reflection of the sadness I feel toward the limited opportunities available to my dad and granddad? Grandpa's back was broken in a uranium mining accident in 1965, a cave-in that also crushed my father's 15-year-old shoulder. Dad's neck was broken in 1978 in a copper mine accident, and after recovering he went back to the mines as foreman. After Anac*nda shut down its Utah operation in 1983, he sought whatever mining work was available. Hearing of workers dying in a mineshaft fire, he'd rush to the mine to apply, knowing there were now openings. After being unable to secure underground work, as new veins and cheaper labor were harvested in South America, he moved on to defense contractor jobs, at Dugw*y Pr*ving Ground and then at Thi*kol. And how was my mother impacted by her husband's profession? How many times did she wonder if she'd see him again when he left for a graveyard shift as she put her small children to bed? How often did she expect to be a young widow?

There are things I recognize on a cellular level. Through my mother's body I recognize Oregon, the land here, as well as the proud hearts and minds of old-school loggers, who eschewed clearcutting and defended their work as promoting forest health. Through my father's body I recognize redrock desert, uranium dust, the smell of greasy manual labor, and the terror of being trapped in tunnels.

I wrote the following about a year and a half ago:

Sentimentality for the natural world could have easily overwhelmed me; gratefully, it did not. I am deeply connected to the western landscape in which I was raised and protecting the earth from abuse is a cherished personal value I hold. But sentimentality could never fully take hold because early on I realized that issues relating to natural resource acquisition and preservation of wild spaces are complex and require creative methods to find common ground.

My maternal grandfather was born in an Oregon logging camp, the son of a crew foreman. Before he died, my family took him to the forest areas of his childhood; Grandpa was shocked by the clear-cutting we found when venturing off the main roads. He recounted stories of his father covertly bringing forestry students to his camp, against the wishes of the company bosses, to advise the crew on healthier logging techniques. I thought about that story a lot on the drive back to Utah, realizing that my great-grandfather, who made his living from the forest, had a fervent desire not to see it destroyed.

While my mother’s family subsisted on the logging of trees, my father’s family endured by tunneling through the earth. My father and maternal grandfather worked in uranium mines in southeastern Utah, their very livelihood reliant upon a nuclear industry with undisclosed health and ecological consequences. I understand all too well why and how economic survival takes precedence, even in the face of extreme risk and physical injury.

In my family, balancing idealism and pragmatism was a necessity, not a luxury. As a child, I witnessed and participated in a working-class struggle for survival. Education was my ticket out of that cycle of hardship. However, I did not anticipate that education would create such an intense disconnection from my family. As my education and life experience grew, so too did my perceived sense of alienation from my upbringing. My beliefs have deviated from my family's, which has provided me the unique opportunity to recognize the validity and importance of a variety of perspectives and eschew ineffective dogmatic approaches.

* * *

I'll probably still continue to follow the progress in the mines. I can't seem to help myself. The simultaneous integration and untangling of emotion and worldview and cellular knowing is a lifetime journey; not something I expect will be quickly resolved. And for the families of those trapped, those praying for oxygen to reach their loved ones - I pray with you, eyes welling with tears. My body remembers.

Infatuation

I am completely and utterly in love with this dog.
(many thanks to K for sending me these pics via cameraphone!)

Going to Term(ination)

Okay, I admit it. I've become complacent in recent years about my pro-choice activism. But South Dakota's attack on the constitutionally-protected right to choose has the tiniest of tiny silver linings. NARAL: Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood are each getting a ridiculous pittance from my dwindling-too-soon-in-the-semester checking account. I'm clinging to the adage that every dollar helps.

This Denver Post article describing the extreme difficulty women already faced in South Dakota prior to the new sweeping criminal ban reminded me of my own state. According to the oh-so-pleasant American Death Camps website, Utah has three abortion clinics. (I had only been aware of two. Thanks for the good news, abortion foes!) All three clinics are within Salt Lake County. Meaning 96% of the counties in this state do not have an abortion clinic. [According to the site, there are five states with only one abortion provider: Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.]

Terminating a pregnancy in Utah is tough. Five years ago, a woman I know better than anyone else (yet somehow never well enough) went through the challenging and frustrating process of getting an abortion here. Although I can't find statutory explanation for this circumstance (and perhaps I'm forgetting the explanatory facts), she had to wait for several weeks after learning she was pregnant and had a very brief window of time during which she could submit to the procedure. The hassle was tremendous, but would have been much worse had she lived in any one of the 28 less fortunate Utah counties.

After getting an appointment, she had to take another day off work to go to the clinic two days before the planned abortion to receive the mandated "informed consent" (aka state-articulated you-are-killing-a-baby) lecture from an underenthused women's health worker complying with a law she despised, pick up the manipulative and expensive color glossy thirty-page printout with details of fetal development, and be given the state-produced try-to-convince-you-adoption-is-the-answer video. On the day of her termination, she thanked the doctor and nurses profusely for being willing to stand up for the rights of women. Given the difficulty she had in scraping together money to pay for the termination, she couldn't have afforded to go to a friendlier state as an alternative.

FOR ANYONE READING THIS WHO IS ANTI-CHOICE (a longshot, given the scant and known readership of this waste of my homework and sleeping time), would you be less upset about this abortion if you knew she was addicted to methamphetamine at the time?

This decision was wrenching for her. She had previously described herself as pro-choice. Yet she found the biological drive and the intensely positive feelings the pregnancy hormones induced may have clouded her judgment and affected her decision had she not been addicted to speed. She has often said that it was a blessing that her Unintended Pregnancy Lesson and her Drug Addiction Lesson coincided. Otherwise, she may have given birth and not experienced the Getting an Abortion in Utah Lesson. [Another day maybe I'll post the story of a close friend whose Drug Addiction, Abortion Attempt, and Unsuccessful Open Adoption Lessons converged.]

The irony? At the time of these intersecting lessons, her state-employee health insurance wouldn't pay for oral contraceptives. But two weeks after the bleeding stopped and her reproductive system started to re-boot, she received a check from her insurance companying covering 80% of her $380 abortion.
. . .

Is it just coincidence that those who criminalize abortion are overwhelming fat white men?

Rep. Roger Hunt, a sponsor of the [South Dakota]
bill, said momentum is building for a change in national policy on abortion.
(By Doug Dreyer -- Associated Press)