You know when you think about going back and having the chance to do something differently? What would you do then that you aren’t doing now?
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Category Archives: Community
8:27pm
The phone rings and I’m crying at the immensity of life and the losses losses losses.
I answer, thinking I must, and it’s a guy from Spectrum. He says good afternoon. I say good evening. He says this phone call may be recorded. I say, I can tell. He says he’s from Spectrum calling to offer me a new deal. I say I’m not interested, but I am sorry that you must sell your time like this for money, something you can’t eat or build a house out of. He says well you have a good night ma’am, and I say you too.
They Gave the Indians Blankets Laced with Smallpox.
Photo from: Peter d’Errico, “Jeffery Amherst and Smallpox Blankets: Lord Jeffery Amherst’s letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians,” 2001, 2019. Accessed on October 19, 2019, at https://people.umass.edu/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html
Just After Twilight
There is no end to the blame
Or the depths of pain.
We all bear not only our own history
But our ancestry.
There’s no way to even the score.
We must, like children, cry,
Olly olly all come free!
In Two Days, Tomorrow Will Be Yesterday
We Must Go Back
To the mending pile
To the kitchen garden
To canning
To home-cooked meals
Human Nation News
It’s been a rough few years, and this past year has been the roughest yet in many ways. But it never has been easy, as Betony says in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony. Life isn’t easy, and nature is often brutal, pitiless. Humans make it harder than it has to be most of the time, though.
I’ve been thinking about doing Human Nation News (HNN) since 2003 or 2004, but I guess it needed to stew a bit. The idea was basically that we are all here on this One Planet, in the vast cavernous space around us, and we have come to the point where we must recognize we are One People. The Human Nation. The purpose was to write about this nation, focusing on our commonalities through story. To connect us through the stories of people everywhere.
This was way too broad, though–made even more broad when I set up the fraternal-twin websites of Handmade Shoes and HNN. Gestating in the same womb, but each from its own zygote. Handmade Shoes is soul musing, a journal, a place for dreams and for sorting through my life and finding my way. HNN is more outward-facing but still firmly planted in soul soil. I’ve been dabbling in here for a few years, testing the waters and allowing myself space free from others’ eyes for the most part. Things do need darkness to grow sometimes. Even the trees, who love the sun, will tell you that.
Back in the early 2000s when I went deep into the darkness of my own mind and soul, propelled by the accumulated and ongoing insults of life with humans, I also went into the woods. Nature, who offered me succor and magic all through my childhood, once again became prominent in my daily life, and as I walked outside with my dogs (first Heidi, now Lucy) daily around the neighborhood and every weekend at Thacher State Park, I became friends with the beings we encountered. One tree in particular, an old maple at Thacher, became a “someone” to me, and I greeted her with joy each time we passed by. Over the years I would often stop and talk to this great being, and when I was feeling utterly lost I would come right up to her and wrap my arms around her and cry, letting out all the poison.
This tree did not mind. In fact, I felt that she appreciated my attention and talking and even tears. Until, after many years of greeting this being and talking to her and loving her, I was once again in a very dark place (I know the dark places well) when I visited her. I put my hands on her trunk and my forehead too, and said, “I feel so bad,” and felt that badness all through me, in all its possible meanings, from all the accumulated and ongoing insults of living with humans and being a human. The tree, this magnificent old being, took me down deep into her roots, into the darkness where the creatures of the dark live and never see the light. There she told me not to be ashamed of the darkness. She told me darkness feeds Life.
Over all these years wandering in the woods I have come to understand that the Human Nation is one among many other nations Here on Earth–which goes against my indoctrination, which says humans are the ones that matter on this planet, we are the smartest, we are the conscious ones, the most important ones. We alone of all living beings have Soul, and all the other beings on Earth are for our use. Our use.
Except we treat “other” humans as though they were expendable/beneath notice and, often, as though they are there for our use. To make profit off them. Within our own groups, even the smallest groups, we treat certain members as though they do not matter as much as other members, effectively rubbing them out.
Human history is very dark, filled with brutality that has its source in a concept of power as physical (and physical wealth is an extension of physical power). The atrocities that have been carried out upon our own species in the quest for power have never been adequately healed because the victims have been obliged to get back in the game or perish: a game whose rules are defined by those who have managed to grab power over others. Unresolved trauma gets passed through the generations, leading to perpetuation of brutality through retribution and acting out patterns of abuse upon those who are physically and economically weaker.
But something has been happening. The darkness has been coming up to be acknowledged and healed, in my personal life and in the world. Concurrently, a reemergence of the consciousness of our interrelatedness with one another and all of life on Earth has been gaining clarity and force–connecting direct back to the true source of power: the place where we all ultimately connect.
Now, after all these years, I’ve decided that Human Nation News is to be an exploration of the re-emerging consciousness that we are all interconnected–not only all humanity but all living beings. This includes the compassionate observation of what comes up to be healed and let go as we dismantle the old physical power paradigm and embrace the life-giving power that resides within each of us. It is also a battle cry in the eternal War of Love, sending dispatches out to humanity in the name of all life Here on Earth. Calling to all who feel their innate value and who understand that each human possesses this innate value regardless of their position in the current crumbling hierarchies. Calling to all who, conscious of their own innate value as living beings, also recognize the innate value of all living beings.
Over the Verizon
Before I begin, I wish to say that I make my “living” through technology. It is what puts money in my bank account so I may continue to have a warm place to sleep and cook and love and otherwise live my life outside of work. I appreciate the tool, but I hate it, too. I hate how it seems to pervade every bit of life. But it isn’t really technology, it’s how it is used—which serves to foster more dependence, more looking forward to the next thing instead of being here, now. We take pictures at a concert instead of allowing ourselves to be swept into the music. We take pictures of our food, of our loved ones, of ourselves, instead of really being there. We check work email from home, so we won’t be confronted with a pile of it when we get back. We allow ourselves to be swept along by the current rather than drinking the depths of true experience.
Anyhoo.
My older brother Gregg came to visit me on his way home from an elk-hunting trip in Colorado a few weeks ago, and he told me about his time out there with our cousin Jeff, in a sparse but evocative way so I could feel the place and Gregg’s experience of it. He was a little reluctant at first to talk about it because he knows I eat vegan, but I urged him to tell me, and he did, and he also told me other things about his life that I did not know, and it was a very lovely and healing evening.
Along the way in this conversation, Gregg told me he had an old iPhone and GPS for backpacking, and asked me would I like them? I said, sure. Of course.
I have not upgraded my phone since 2012. It is a perfectly serviceable and quirky LG keyboard phone, doesn’t capitalize when it should and capitalizes when it shouldn’t,
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away ~Paul Simon
but fine for texting and vocal communications. It was running out its days, though, getting on in senescence, close to death. I’ve known it for months, but wasn’t going to do anything about it until the emergency hit. Life has a way of working itself out, though, if you step back and let it. So in late October I received a package from Gregg containing a Lowrance Endura Out&Back and a sweet little iPhone, fully charged and ready to go.
But I didn’t do anything about it right away, because my old phone was working fine, and I know, from long experience with companies and technology, that what should be easy never turns out to be easy.
So on a rainy Friday in November, my Saturday, I ventured out to get my hair cut, some groceries, and to switch my phone over to (angels singing) an iPhone. First I stopped at Verizon, but could not find a parking spot near the shop. It was raining hard, so I elected to go get my hair cut and the groceries rather than push on ahead.
About 45 minutes later I found myself in the same parking lot, with a good parking spot and the rain abating, steeling myself for what would follow.
I show the woman at the back of the store my antiquated cell and my new-to-me iPhone. No problem. We can get you sorted out. She hands me off to her coworker, a young man, who begins the process, which takes time on his computer so I have space to witness what is happening with the other guy who came in behind me. Turns out he lost his phone. He doesn’t have any more money to spend per month. What can he do?
He was so apologetic, as if the Verizon lady held his balls in her custom-fitted gauntlets, ready to squeeze. Really. Well, of course he would need a new phone, and an upgrade as well. Only a few dollars more per month, not much at all. He acquiesces, grateful for the privilege of increasing his monthly payment, probably consoling himself that he’ll have a new phone to play with. I don’t know.
∞ ∞ ∞
It is all looking good for me as I answer the questions I’m asked, but along the way my salesguy picks up the iPhone and sees it is a 3G.
We are not supporting 3G as of next month. And actually we will not be supporting this phone either (nodding to my LG). Nothing less than 4G. As of next month.
I’m processing this all, and basically repeat what he has told me, in different words to make sure I was hearing correctly. So, you are telling me that this (holding up 3G iPhone) we are now calling garbage, even though it works perfectly? Even though children in Africa are forced to mine the metals used to produce it and it will go to a landfill to poison the waters in time…we are calling this
3G iPhone
garbage in the name of technological advancement? (Read: corporate greed.)
The salesman nods and tells me I can get a new phone for only $7 extra each month, $1 more for a Smartphone.
I say, again, So you’re telling me that this perfectly good phone—we are calling it garbage because you aren’t going to support 3G anymore?
He nods, looking at me like I’m slightly deranged. I pick up my obsolete phones, thank him for his time, and walk out past the apologetic man and the bouncer at the front of the store.
And other than telling this outrageous story to a couple of people, I was ready to have that be the end. So what if I don’t have a cell phone? So what? Fuckers.
But really, you almost NEED a cell phone these days. My bank sent me an email just a couple of days later telling me they will no longer use email to send me access codes to my account—only texts or phone calls. People expect you to have a Smartphone—my cell phone is a rarity. It cripples you in this world if you don’t have access to the technology that is used by the majority.
Tonight for some reason I remembered that I work in technology, and I know there is always another way to do something. So I looked it up. Turns out Verizon is refusing to activate phones less than 4G. Which to me means, if I can figure out how to activate it myself, it will work. And I did. And here is how to do it, right from the horse’s mouth:
How to Perform the Over-the-Air Activation
People. Do not be ensorcelled by technology and corporate rule. Do not forget your sovereignty. Do not bow and scrape in stores. Do not bow and scrape, ever.
Peace.
April Hike
There ain’t no fuckin’ around at Mohonk when the weather gets good. If you are arriving at 10am on a Sunday you may be too late. Lucy and I were too late for Trapps Trailhead, but lucky for us we were heading for Coxing and that was still open.
Today was the kind of day no one can fault. Flawless. Magnificent. 60 degrees and clear sun all around. I got out of the car and took off my jacket, took off my fleece (the layering habit of what seemed an interminable winter), and unbuttoned the flannel shirt I intended to keep. Donned my safari hat to keep the sun out ‘ma eyes, and we headed over to the map, where, I see, there are other dogs freely wandering. This is always problematic because Lucy, my kooky, loving dog, does not get along well with others of the canine persuasion. She loves or is indifferent to humans by turns, but other dogs are near always trouble. When we encounter them she goes on short leash, and if we can avoid the dogs we do, even if it means bushwhacking off trail a bit.
Oncet I had a Golden Retriever–sweet and mellow. I could let her off leash in the woods and she’d never go more than 100 feet or so from me, and although she had been attacked in the woods by a couple of German Shepherds when she was a pup, and sometimes drew a growl from other dogs on trail, we mostly just passed on by other hikers and other dogs without incident. So I understand the attitude of people with mellow, off-leash dogs. “Oh, my dog would never hurt another dog.” “My dog never causes trouble.” Thing is, when we get your dog and another, unknown dog in proximity, there are now two, and that means unpredicability.
Lucy (on short leash) and I get up to the map so I can figure where we are going–never having hiked here before. I’m looking at the map when something makes me turn to the left. One of the loose dogs has come up to Lucy, and Lucy is quietly straining on her leash to smell him while the other dog’s head is cocked to the side and his eyes are rolling, like a horse shying. Then Lucy lunges at him. I have a good grip on her and back slowly and calmly away. The dog immediately follows our retreat, and I say calmly to the general crowd, would you please put your dog on leash? A man steps forward and calls his dog, which turns and goes to him, but he does not put him on leash. I apologize to the man for Lucy (because that’s what you do) and turn back to the map. A moment later I hear another man say sweetly to the dog, “Were you causing trouble Bentley? That doesn’t sound like you!”
Now, I am surrounded by a bunch of people who appear to be serious hikers with lots of gear, lacing up and shouldering big packs. A bunch of type-A, weekend-warrior hikers (the two men with Bentley are lawyers by the sounds of their conversation) and two loose dogs. I’m just a hippie woman in jeans and flannel looking to get alone in the woods, and am feeling pretty prickly by now. I turn around to look in the direction of the man who spoke to Bentley, but a kind of calm runs over me and I decide not to engage. I turn back to the map and decide to cross the road, in the opposite direction from where all these people are going.
On my way across the parking lot I see the other loose dog following its human toward the bathrooms, right in our path. This man bends down to his dog and tells it to go back over there (pointing away from where Lucy and I are headed), which it obediently does. Then he stands up and looks right at me and gives me a big, beautiful smile. A conspiratory smile that tells me we both get what just happened with Bentley. Then he turns and jogs toward the bathroom, his own flannel shirt flapping behind him. His smile–his beautiful, understanding smile–made me spend the next few minutes blessing this man and his family forever and ever. Thank God for smiles from strangers. Thank God people still see and hear and love and care for strangers.
(The leash rule is there for a reason–and it isn’t because your dog isn’t sweet and mellow. It’s because not all dogs are sweet and mellow in all circumstances. It’s also because dogs can be unpredictable in the woods, and for one to run off here, in the wilderness, is asking for heartache.)
Lucy and I cross the road, and I’m talking to her, saying, “Do the other dogs not like you, Lucy? I’m sorry, baby. I like you. I think you’re the best.” Poor girl. She just doesn’t know how to be with other dogs. For the first two years of her life she was with an elderly man who did not have the strength to take her out. When I first started taking her out, she was attacked by dogs we met on three occasions, and since then she has been on the offense. And always on leash.
A little ways in on the other side of the road, I see a placard on a stand. Here is the stone foundation of the Enderly barn. The placard has an artist’s rendering of how the barn may have looked back in the day, and it reminds me of the Laura Ingalls-Wilder books. It puts me in a mood, standing there, knowing that this place used to be a homestead. We walk further on, another 300 feet or so, and come upon another placard. Here is the foundation of the Enderly house. Another artist’s rendering reminds me again of times gone by, when people were largely self-sufficient. A hard life in many ways, but at its best steady, slow, mostly peaceful, balanced. Before crossing the bridge, we came upon a map of the entire homestead, which included a large garden, a sawmill next to the stream, a root cellar, and a burial ground. The kid in me sings. My imagination is fired up with the notion of living there, in cooperation with and at the mercy of Nature.
The woods are shining with light. We walk along a large stream and cross over into the Minnewaska State Park for a bit, finally coming upon a restored cabin–the Van Leuven Cabin. Panels say that when there was an illness or emergency, the residents would light a lamp and put it in the window to call for help from their distant neighbors. It reminds me of my favorite scene in The Lord of the Rings–the lighting of the beacons to call for Rohan’s help. Such a system depends, overall, on an agreement to come to one another’s aid, and trust that those in the distance are both watching and willing to come to the rescue. A trust that despite their differences and their individual rights, all parties are better off when they work in cooperation, pooling their strengths. A very different world than we live in now, where the seeming norm is to watch out for one’s own and leave the rest to whatever befalls them.
These strong, resilient mountain people lived a hard life and understood that they needed others to help them at times, and others needed them. They understood that sometimes one is up and the other is down, and sometimes one is down while the other is up. This is the essence of community. This is why people agree to give up some of their freedom in order to ensure that they and everyone else has a better chance to do well and live in peace in this world that is full enough of danger without all humans add to it.
∞ ∞ ∞
This way of life is long gone. We have, most of us, lost the knowledge of how to be self-sufficient–let alone the opportunity try it out, because the land and resources have all been taken and sold back to us, rented back to us–and now we must depend upon earning money to buy the things we need. But like the dogs I have written about here, not every person is born and raised in an environment that supports their successful entry into the system. And all of us–I don’t care who you are–all of us are directly affected by the systemic violence that oppresses certain groups and privileges others. Our ancestry, our membership in one (or a few) of these groups makes it much harder to fit in, to convince others to give us the money everyone needs. It becomes a popularity contest. A struggle to fit in rather than a question of the value you can add to the community as an individual.
Right now, in our world community, millions are desperate. Perpetual war, based on greed, decimates families and rich cultural histories. Our relatives, the animals of the sea and air, cry out to us, dying with stomachs full of plastic. Everywhere fires are burning, water is polluted, food is contaminated with poison. Here in the United States we can still turn away, not see, not feel. We can still watch our favorite shows and go out and buy more stuff and follow the next trend, but the future is on our back stoop.
The beacons are lit. Your assistance is requested. Are you watching? Will you accept the call?
How I Became a Leftist: Phase I
I was born into privilege—from a long line of Republicans on both sides of the family. We hated the Democrats, we hated Jimmy Carter, and my brothers and I, on long car rides, would try to outdo one another finding the meanest, lowdown shacks and say, “That’s Jimmy Carter’s house!” We didn’t know anything, of course, about politics. It was just something we picked up, something our parents laughed at, thought was cute.
That was when we lived in Texas. I was 6 when we moved there from California—just that age when you get really good at your body—running, riding your bike, swimming. All that good body stuff. It was 1974 when we moved there, and we were encouraged, forced, to play outside unsupervised. One of my mother’s signature lines was, “Go outside and don’t come back in until dinner!” I had a mile-radius roaming ground easy, with my bike, and I did everything. I explored the woods, found an ancient burial ground, caught lizards with their long, toothless mouths and put them on green leaves to see them turn green, brown leaves to see them turn brown. I dug clay out of our yard and made pots to dry in the sun. I melted my Crayons onto leaves with a magnifying glass, loving the drops of color so much I just wanted to eat them or something…something I couldn’t quite imagine.
When I was ten we moved to a small town in Upstate New York. I was a sun-tanned, gawky kid with a Texas accent who wore sneakers with skirts so I could run around at recess. It started right away. “Yvonne is a pest! Kick her in the chest!” This was recess now. A group of girls would walk around behind me chanting this, and I had no clue how to deal with it. I limped through the end of fifth grade and entered summer, thinking they’d forget about me over the months.
But sixth grade was worse—more girls joined in the fun, including my new best friend. She was my friend, but also the other girls’ friend, and so I was tied to this group somehow and I couldn’t escape. I still look back on it and wonder at that. I had no power to leave, find other people to hang with.
Seventh grade was worse still, because we moved to junior high and boys joined in with the girls. It became very focused on my body, which they picked apart with precision, but mostly focused on my chest—my flat, pubescent chest. I remember once, standing in the hallway outside my English classroom, all of them sneering at me, picking at me with their words, until one of them said, “What you got there on your chest? Mosquito bites? Why don’t you put some Band-Aids on those mosquito bites?” Everyone laughed, and it was too much, I couldn’t hold it in anymore, and I started crying, right there in front of all of them, showing them how much they’d hurt me. Hot, shameful tears.
I endured this daily onslaught at school for 3 ½ years, from the time I was ten until the night before I turned fourteen, when me moved once more.
On the dark car ride to the new town, I swore I would never allow myself to be stepped on like that again. I asked to be put back into the 8th grade, even though I’d finished one quarter of 9th grade—just so I could hide my skinny, flat-chested body among a younger lot. When the prep-girls tried to make friends with me I withdrew from them—I didn’t trust groups. I made two good friends, Tracey and Mary, and went about building my life again, being a kid again.
One day, Mary and Tracey and I were marching arm-in-arm down the empty corridor after school, chanting some silly nonsense over and over at the top of our lungs to hear the echoes. We turned a corner and met the toughest girl in the school and two of her lackeys. Diane yelled at us to cut the crap, and without thinking I yelled, “No!” Diane said, “What did you say?” and I repeated, “No.” Tracey grabbed my arm and whispered, “Shut up!” Diane said, “Come over here and say that.” So I extricated myself from Mary’s and Tracey’s arms, walked over to Diane, and told her to her face, “NO.”
There was an instant of pause before Diane said, “You’re lucky I’m wearing a skirt today or I would beat the crap out of you.”
And that was it. I had stumbled upon a great truth in life: you can change. You can face foes and your fears and limitations and overcome them.