WriteForChange

Capitol Action to End Dependence on Coal

2009-03-03T01:45:00.000-08:00

Power Shift, a youth led training and nonviolent protest/civil disobedience action in DC, brought thousands of protesters to the coal plant that fuels the White House and Congress. The issue is about America's dependence on coal at a time when the imperative to reduce green house gas emissions grows stronger every day. The action brought Robert Kennedy, Jr., Bill McKibbens, and Wendall Berry and movie stars to join with green energy advocates and youth concerned about a sustainable future.

Kennedy spoke eloquently about ending the most egregious process in coal mining: mountain top removal mining. As he explained, every week an explosion the size of Hiroshima bomb is obliterating the Appalachian Mountains.

As citizens in the American southwest face warming temperatures and the threat of water shortages, and people in Victoria, Australia face the horrors of more deadly fires from long term drought and spiking temps on their side of the globe, we must get a grip on our carbon based emissions economy and, as Van Jones has shown us, marry the Green Jobs Movement to the production of the new grids and energy sources that are nonpolluting for a viable future.

Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act Introduce into NC Legislature Today

2009-02-26T12:40:00.000-08:00

Follow this link to learn about progress by Appalachian Voices NC Team working with Representative Pricey Harrison to end the use of mountain top removal energy by NC (30% of its energy comes from MTR coal production.)

For breaking news in VA follow this link. Oral argument took place today before the Virginia Supreme Court in Appalachian Voices, et al. v. State Corporation Commission, et al. (No. 081433), in which a coalition of environmental groups is attempting to block construction of Dominion Virginia Power’s 583-MW coal-fired power plant in Wise County, Virginia.

High Country Excursion

2009-02-22T07:32:00.001-08:00

Over the last month I have seen my father through two surgeries and into rehab, closed down a personal business, put my things in storage, moved to Boone, N.C. in High Country of western North Carolina. Moving from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Appalachian Mountains - especially in the winter months - is a jarring experience.

Staying at a friend's condo, complete with her wonderful library of mountain literture, I've reentered a world I once knew well when I lived in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Johnson City, Tennessee where I was born. The Appalachians are old and embued with a distinct energy that is both dark and disturbing as well as mysterious and inspiring. Here in these hills and hollers my relatives lived, worked, and struggled to make a good living. They were farmers and tinkers from Germany and Ireland; on my mother's side, Cherokee blood flows through our family tree. My great grandmother grew tobacco and corn on the Clinch River where her Cherokee relatives had lived for millenia.

Coal is richly laced through these mountains and therein lies the struggles of the mountain people, and the wealth of a few companies to which we are all dependent today for our energy. North Carolina obtains 80% of its energy from coal combustion. Much of it is now coming from mountain top removal, a relatively new method that while efficient for coal companies is literally blowing up mountains and covering or polluting streams, rivers, and wells - and thus thousands of Americans living on or near these ancient mountains.

Go to iLoveMountains to listen to the voices of the American citizens living in the wake of MTR.
Read one person's testimony to Barack Obama about living in terror: MTR in West VA.

This will be a theme of my blog for some time as this issue is directly related to sustainable energy production and the imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Coal burning contributes more per unit of energy to the CO2 emissions than anyother kind of energy.

Another Genocide is Happening - Call Congress Now

2009-01-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader,

Gaza is without electricity and water, children and women are dying by the hundreds, and now we learn that Israel is using phosphorus laden weapons. I have no more patience for this nation of ours that will sit in its legislature and cooly vote to continue to support Israel. It is about our own national security and not the high principles that we purportedly stand for. What have we become? I am not interested in who is right or wrong, only that innocents are slaughtered.

I vote for a coliseum where teams from warring nations can duke it out to the death...but the stadium seats will be empty. Let the politicians and terrorists take the bullets. I wonder how long the war would last?

Please go to your congressional representatives: http://www.house.gov/house/orgs_pub_hse_ldr_www.shtml

Make a call, email and blog to stop this humanitarian crisis. Another one that we are sitting out, clenching our national jaw and supporting Israel REGARDLESS for some policy. How much longer are we going to take these spineless stances, too afraid to upset our so called foreign relations.

There is only one kind of relation with which we should be concerned: human relations.

http://www.democracynow.org/. Democracy Now is airing REAL information and news, not the crap with which our major news channels distract citizens from the real work of free citizens in a democracy.

Act please act.

Coming to Terms

2008-12-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Please take time to watch Robert Kennedy's testimony in the House of Representatives on December 12 about the egregious roll back of environmental law by the Bush Administration in its parting weeks. In particular, he outlines what is happening to the Appalachian Mountains - the oldest mountains in America and communities of great cultural value.

Southcrop Forest: A new genre of environmental writing

2008-11-30T06:46:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while a new book comes along that resets the compass of writing. Lorne Rothman’s tale, Southcrop Forest, sets a new standard for ecological literature.

An exciting tale about Auja, a young red oak, and Fur— a collective conscience from a colony of tent caterpillars—Rothman has created an eco-fable as magical as a Tolkien adventure even as he teaches forest ecology. We learn about the imperiled state of the forests at the hands of “hewmans.”

Auja lives in Southcrop Forest where trees retain the ability to communicate across the land through their roots, soil, and leaves—Southcrop Vision. Forests were once connected across the world and could communicate by feeling each others sensations. That was before the hewmans cut down the trees, separating forests by false rock (roads or highways) and their rapacious machines chewed down ancient trees and killed the farms that had kept them alive for eons.

As the story opens, we learn that Southcrop Forest is on the verge of destruction. Auja awakes full of hope and joy, glorying in the sunlight, when the remembrance of their doomed future makes her boughs droop. She is watching a group of fuzzy caterpillars nibbling away in her canopy when suddenly a voice speaks to her! At first Auja thinks it is her fellow trees who whisper continuously but then she realizes the voice is coming from the colony of tent caterpillars. Fur introduces herself to Auja and explains that her colony is a Rune—an ancient being that arose at a Gathering of trees and people a thousand years before.

Guide Oak, a wise being, guides Auja to engage Fur to travel to the Dark Forest (Boreal Forest) to obtain a special gift and take it to Deep Sky where it will save the forests to the north of Southcrop. And thus, the epic journey begins.

Along the way readers learn about the life cycle of the tent caterpillars, their viral and insect predators; the ancient geological history of the land and how trees repopulated the earth after the Big Ice (ice age.)

The mysterious “gift” is the Holy Grail Fur toils to find. He must cross the false trails, battle rogue wasps and a viral plague that infects the forests he travels through.

Rothman, a zoologist, provides young readers with endnotes rich with scientific nomenclature; Old Norse lore; Native American history; chemistry and climate change science which can be easily used in a classroom or enrich the understanding of young and adult readers alike.

This book offers the reader a blend of the magical with the hard realities of the human ecological footprint on the natural world. Through nonhuman characters we see the folly of the “hewman” (a brilliant play on words) from wisdom that understands the web of life as the source of life itself.

The last sentence in the story makes me believe Rothman plans a sequel. I hope so. Southcrop Forest should be required reading for all youth—a textbook and a legend for a new generation and an ecological age.

Rothman, Lorne. Southcrop Forest. New York: iUniverse, 2006.
http://www.southcropforest.ca/index.html

Burning it up for a renewal of the landscape: a Florida tale

2008-10-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

In September I was invited to accompany staff scientists from The Nature Conservancy in Milton, Florida to take a boat trip on the Perdido River along TNC land newly deeded for restoration. As we motored along the tranquil, broad river on a cool, misty morning, I learned that the forest I observed is greatly changed from its natural state.

The lands along this broad river were continuously logged, passing through three paper companies before being returned to the original owners, a founding family in Pensacola, FL. They were disturbed at the state of the forests that had grown back and donated 2800 acres to The Nature Conservancy for restoration and preservation.

Had the scientists not told me, I would have accepted it as the natural condition. Knowing the natural history of a place is critical. Without that knowledge, newcomers like me, and new generations will not be motivated to act on behalf of the living communities of trees, plants, and animals that maintain the well-functioning of the places we live and come to love.

The Nature Conservancy has begun a program of burning down forest riddled with nonnative species to awaken the fire-dependent seeds of native plants lying dormant in the soil. When the new forest comes back, it is the forest of old: long-leafed pine, live oak, magnolia, Atlantic white cedar, palm cypress, water oaks, willow oaks, diamond oaks, etc. It's encouraging to know this land at least will eventually be restored.

One of our companions is the last living descendant of the Wind Clan of the Musogee-Creek community. He told us stories about his people and pointed out places where burial mounds were developed over with homes and condominiums. We learned about his days on the river fishing and exploring and how it has changed as people buy up lots, remove the wetlands to build boat docks and plant sloping green lawns in front of beautiful, big vacation homes. They want a view of the river, too. But, at what cost do we all render our personal dreams?
Without his stories, how would we know what went before us? What has been lost that we should strive to save or bring back?

Along the way we measured the water depth, checked on sites where campers had chopped down trees, and trashed TNC sites to make temporary campsites, leaving trash behind. What a legacy we modern humans leave! Where is our sensibility that we are spoiling our own nests? These scientists and this tribal elder and myself, a little floating tribe of its own, need to hook up our separate boats with all the other defenders of this river and this land, and make a stronger tribe than the tribe of spoilers!

For more information, visit these sites:
www.nature.org/florida
www.eowilsoncenter.org
www.coastalplains.org
www.gulfspecimen.org

Of such is the kingdom of Heaven

2008-09-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Sinking Roots in Shifting Sand

2008-09-09T20:17:00.002-07:00

On Santa Rosa Island the sunrise provided much needed centering for my soul. I've been in Pensacola just seven weeks but I want to feel more rooted. The sands of the barrier island shift with the tides and that is how I feel these times are for my family and I as we face more frequent storms and for this nation as an awful rent in our political and cultural ground opened with the Republican Convention.

There is an elephant in our living rooms, and it is not wearing red, white, and blue. Like any dyfunctional family, we are not talking about the bigger issue facing us as a species: a warming planet.

To look at these photos is to question that anything could ever destroy such beauty and wildlife.

The waving golden sea oats and barrier dunes are all but gone except on the Gulf Shores National Sea Shore parkland. These dunes, gone for development on these fragile islands where water carves their contour with every incoming tide, once held the fierce hurricane winds in check along with wetlands. In these grassy fingers loggerhead babes hatch and waddle to the sea, terns, skimmers, and pipers all lay their eggs in the white sand and tangled roots. When the dunes go, a whole chorus of animals will go with them.

When visitors or children come to these islands they do not know what should be here, what may be greatly reduced in number or diversisty. Each generation is losing a priceless memory of what was created over eons of evolution and experiment, the earnest strivings of untold numbers of plants and animals striving and thriving through the good times and bad, living and reproducing Wonderkind to populate and join a pageant of life on our planet. Will the knowledge of how to live properly on the earth, with respect for all living things, with appreciation for the very soil, rock, lake and ocean upon which we have found our fortune ... will it become like the ghost crab, a faint outline on the shifting sands of time?

Tripping the Light Fantastic

2008-06-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

Water came to our desert three nights ago with the advent of the first monsoon rains in Tucson. Since then we have had another afternoon deluge to wash the trees and skiies clean of dust. The light sparkles on damp vegetation and lingering pools of precious rainwater before it disappears in the sandy soil or transforms to its gaseous form and wafts away. More Tucsonans caught rain in big aluminum or concrete cisterns decorated with bright colors or whimsical designs ... or just shiny silver columns hugging their home. Some caught thousands of gallons of water that will be metered out to trees, shrubs, and vegetable gardens in the dry times. This is a wise way to live in desert lands. It makes me feel content to leave now, to finally journey back east.

Rains are falling in Pensacola, Florida, along the Gulf shoreline. Rain runs down the gnarled trunks of oaks, drips off gray haired moss, sets up in quivering droplets on the leaves of the magnolias. Out in the Gulf dolphins jump into the pouring rain. It must feel strange to leave the heavier salt-laden oceansphere to leap into the lighter ocean of air where fresh water falls in sheets, pelting their skin. I wonder what it sounds like, feels like? Like an outdoor shower after an ocean swim?

Places like Pensacola, where so much water is concentrated, must be affected by its energy. The shoreline (Pensacoleans call it sugar sand beaches) is a divide of sorts, between one set of life circumstances and another, between a water world and an earth world. Dolphins connect these worlds, intercessaries. They come by that honestly as their ancestors once walked the land.

Santa Rosa Island is a magical intersection between sea and land a mixing of elemental things, sanctuary to creatures large and small including four sea turtle tribes. WriteForChange will serve people along this beautiful shore and perhaps the intercoastal waterways of Florida, too. Whatever this move brings, it will surely trip the light fantastic. This Earth is truly a magical place. Whether desert, ocean, plain or mountain, its magnificence is beyond the powers of this writer to truly express. But I feel it everyday, have fallen in love again on each of my 22,421 days walking in its beauty.

To learn more about beautful places along the Gulf Coast go to http://www.beachcalendar.net/.
Another good link to learn about Pensacola's community activities: http://www.pensacola.com/

Failure is NOT an option!

2008-04-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

The Apollo Moon Program took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon’s surface in 1969. During the third mission to land men on the moon (1970) an explosion left the Apollo crew in grave danger.

The story of Apollo 13 offers an important message for humankind as we face up to climate change: “Failure is not an option.”

These words were uttered by Gene Kranz, NASA Flight Director, when he addressed the engineers and scientists responsible for returning the three crewmen to Earth under what appeared to be impossible circumstances and limitations.

As we learn more about the daunting task of reducing carbon emissions well below 1990 levels even while the world’s population grows exponentially, the challenge feels every bit as awesome as that faced by Krantz on that fateful mission.

Kranz advised his team to not be emotional but to “work the problem.” It seems to me that is good advice. We have to cut through the arguments and individual beliefs that each of us holds to create a sustainable human enterprise on Earth.

And like Apollo 13, the clock is ticking for us, too. Beyond a certain point we will not be able to reverse the physical adjustments of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and of living communities most vulnerable to them.

So just how did these scientists and engineers “work the problem?” Well, to begin with they erased the previous flight plans and went back to the drawing board. Then, they looked at what was on hand that could be used in new ways to meet the needs of the moment: “We’ve got to take this square battery pack and make it fit into this round receptacle,” the engineer explained to his team.

And what were they attempting to solve? Chillingly for us, the crew was experiencing a lethal build-up of carbon dioxide on board their small craft, and the engineers were attempting to build a carbon scrubber with the stuff on board the spacecraft.

Cutting through all preconceptions, the team put their heads together and managed to build a new scrubber with a square end that fit into a round hole.

Without being simplistic, much of what we have to do to come together as communities, nations, and international bodies seems just like that: a square peg in a round hole. So far nothing fits very tight.

But here is a simple example of how a great accomplishment was achieved:

1. Work the problem, skip the rhetoric;
2. Gather what is on hand and if necessary use it in new ways that can get us the solutions we seek;
3. Failure is not an option – we do not have the luxury to try this another time, therefore our leaders, social institutions, and citizens must all come to the table with sobriety and willingness to think anew.

Apollo is the Greek god of reason, morality, and maintenance of society. Perhaps in our cultures these have not always been united. Just as the Apollo crew was buoyed by the worldwide prayers and hopes of people and nations, we could look at the human community, and all the living communities that keep us alive and happy, as a crew on an endangered spacecraft that we have got to bring home safely.

Let’s work that problem.

Climate Code Red - a Mandate for Action

2008-04-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Visitors to My Site,

I am sending two things this morning out of the passion in my heart for this Earth and out of my profound sense that we must acknowledge climate change and get to work to save our planet and our lives.

Think of living in the desert as Ground Zero for climate change. We are running out of water and everyone knows it but is afraid to talk about it for fear of causing panic. Yet citizens here are panicking because they do not see one leader with gumption enough to face facts. Only doing that will we have a chance of turning this around in time.

First watch this video of a elephant who paints her image:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LHoyB81LnE

Is this not a message? What are we losing if life on Earth is destroyed?

Then go to this link to read the Climate Code Red Report. It is long and comprehensive but it is a MUST read for all of us. Put aside your doubts. We are at a point of no return and our job now is to create the political and social will to act together to reduce carbon emissions dramatically.
http://www.climatecodered.net/ Save the PDF then read it over the next week.

The consensus is that we must reduce carbon parts per million to 320 ppm to enter a safe climate zone. We are at 385 parts per million now. What is happening is a series of interrelated factors that are reinforcing heating so that events are happening much faster than predicted. Most scientists now say the IPCC reports that won the Nobel Peace Prize were too conservative and racked by political and economic pressures to be conservative in their estimates.

The catastrophic impacts we predicted for future generations will happen (are happening) in our generation and nothing short of the survival of the biosphere is now in question. Business as usual is over. Don't be fooled.

I am no longer worried about being called crazy or overly dramatic. That attitude and not paying attention to world wide events such as the loss of polar ice (50% reduction in just two years!) - that is insane.

Please read this. Let's discuss what we each need to do to create that will to change course, and what each of us must prepare for in our various regions. Those of you living in the east where decent public transportation is available are so lucky you have no idea.

Don't panic. Just sit down and read. Action will help us stay settled. But we all need to get ready to show up at our leaders' doorsteps. Use your intuition. Ask questions. Why aren't we leading the world in dealing with this?

See the link on this blog for the Pew Climate Center where you can find other important research results and recommended policy decisions.

In faith that we will act as a human community for not only ourselves and our own, but for all life on this Earth we share. It's time. The time is NOW.

Susan

Gestalt

2008-03-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

Santa Cruz River at Saint Mary's Bridge circa 1930

Thoughts over coffee on a midweek-day-dawning

Not long ago I hiked up A Mountain. Standing atop that old rounded place with its mute green denizens – the sturdy, tall saguaros – I looked across the sea of houses floating on the valley floor. Beyond them the towering blue Catalina Mts. and rocky Rincon’s rimmed the valley, and in the south I could see the Santa Rita Mts. through a dusty haze thrown up by thousands of vehicles steaming in both directions. I turned north and there before me the traffic seemed to emerge from the horizon, sky beings coming at high speed. I couldn’t imagine how it could be stopped. Turning south my eyes gazed into a developing plain at the curve of Interstate 10 where it meets Highway 19 in arching rivers of cement.

Standing still with the saguaros, I felt the thunderous vibrations in the land and realized how the trees and rocks must be perpetually jiggled by the cars and trucks. My mind could see the combustion of gas in all the engines all at once. I saw streams of fire moving across the land. The air danced above the inferno, waving ominously.

Then, I turned west toward the rounded backbone of the mountain itself and a line of low rounded hills covered with native vegetation. Beyond, the Tucson Mts. filled the sky. It seemed cooler, less on fire, and it seemed a place where one might find silence again.

Looking down at the coarse soil under my shoes, I studied the stones left by volcanic action and imagined the fiery birth of the region’s modern topography - a very different kind of fire. On this mountain and all along its base are the places where humans first lived and loved in what we now call Tucson (the place of black stones). There was a river at the bottom of this mountain, a river lined by small, densely growing trees. And there was an ocean of silence that lay over the land. For a long, long time this was so.

Then I turn to the east and look deeply into what has been created since that early time. And I wonder, “What were we thinking?”

Word Count: 368

All Quiet on the Western Front

2008-01-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

"All Quiet on the Western Front" is still as relevant today as it was in 1929, on November 18, Armistice Day commemoration, when the filming began. It was filmed on forty acres of ranch country near Los Angeles where a full scale French village was recreated along with realistic battlesfields pocked by explosives. Over 2,000 men played in the battlescenes, all of them veterans of war. Eventhough they were from many countries, they all fought together in the movie as Germans or French. Lew Ayers, who played the lead role as Paul Baumer, was a pacificist, refusing later to fight in WWII for which the film was banned in many U. S. theaters. The film is adapted from Erich Maria Remarque's novel of the same name. He fought in WWI for Germany and then took ten years to absorb the experience and write the story. It is a classic anti-war film and more. I do not remember the last time I saw it, years ago.

My family and I have long been touched by war. Mom's father drove an ambulance in WWI in France; the family stories portray someone who, like Paul Baumer and his friends, came back disillusioned, a little "off his rocker." My grandfather, Dudley Jones, carried schrapnel in his legs. He became an alcoholic after returning home and died before I was born. I wonder if he was in pain or just depressed... or both. Later my own father flew B-29 Superbombers in the Pacific, participating in the fireraids that brought Japan to its knees in the latter days of the war and just before the atomic bomb was dropped... twice... by my country. Dad was a career pilot in the USAF after the war. I grew up a military "brat" submerged in the idealism and patriotic hype within the American defense community. Then my husband flew Hueys in Vietnam with the Americal Division, U.S. Army. The experience profoundly shaped him emotionally for decades until he began to meet up with other Vietnam vets and talk things out.

War made a pacifist of my father. The military made a pacifist out fo me and my whole family. As in the film, when you are touched personally by war, it changes your mind about it. There is just nothing good about it ever.

All Quiet on the Western Front explores the basic question every soldier must ask him or herself in the middle of carnage and destruction: who wants this? who benefits from this? who started this? At one point in the film, a character suggests a way to work out differences between leaders and business interests (the "kaiser and the manufacturers"): clear off a large field and sell tickets; dress all the politicos and business tycoons in their underwear and let them duke it out with clubs. I think it makes more sense.

Read an excellent review of the film: http://www.filmsite.org/allq.html

Susan

A Way Forward in Uncertain Times

2007-10-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly three decades since James Lovelock published a scientific premise for the Earth as a living organism. He based his work on observations that show a self-regulating zone of life call the “biosphere.” Gaia: A New Way of Viewing the Earth suggested that living communities regulate the life functions of a living planet.

Human beings are mostly unaware of how temperature, recycling, energy flow, and population are managed on Earth, yet humans affect outcomes and are affected in turn by them.

Consider what Lovelock observed about the differences in atmospheric composition among “dead” planets and a “living planet.” Planets with high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere (Venus and Mars) are either broiling or ice blocks. They contain little or no life. Earth before the advent of life averaged about 300° C surface temperature. With the current envelope of life on Earth, the average temperature is 13° C.

Organisms evolved in oceans that began to remove carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. Gradually nitrogen and oxygen replaced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A hydrologic cycle formed and the Earth began to cool to conditions that allowed life to proliferate.

For nearly two billion years the plankton of the oceans, lakes and later trees and land plants of Earth sequestered carbon from the air incorporating it into their forms. As life evolved into more complex forms, animals – passing carbon they ingest from plants or plant eaters consumed – deposited more carbon into “sinks” as their bodies and waste were incorporated into the Earth’s crust. These accumulations of life forms, whether sinking to the bottom of the sea or dissolving into the crust of land over time, were gradually transformed into rich, black strata: oil and coal.

For a long, long time this was true. Life followed five principles of self-regulation:

§ Use of a non-polluting, unlimited energy source;
§ Recycling of matter through food webs;
§ Preservation of biodiversity in genes, kinds of creatures, habitats;
§ Fine control of populations to stay within carrying capacity;
§ Change in response to new conditions (evolution).

Then came the conscious being, the human, whose brain began to question how things worked, and whose ingenuity mimicked nature. A certain kind of wisdom grew as men and women observed nature’s ways and lived accordingly.

Things began to happen in one or two places in the world as man’s knowledge grew. Man wondered if oil or coal was combusted could it help us get things done. And as the pundits say, the rest is history.

A relatively small percent of the total human population has been putting that store of carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide emissions, and the Earth’s biosphere is heating up.
For readers who understand this basic imbalance and its consequences, it is very frustrating to live beside so many fellow countrymen and women seemingly unconcerned. Recently a woman I met stated that the warming of the Earth’s surface was “going to happen anyway, and besides, man as a species is not going to be here forever.”

Isn’t that like saying, “Well I am going to die anyway so why not kill myself now?”
Statements like that tell me how little people grasp the essential reality of life: we are not here alone, nor did we arrive here alone, but we evolved in tandem with thousands of species whose lives are intricately connected to ours and that make it possible for us to have life and to have it abundantly.

Americans in particular have never been more disconnected from their biological inheritance. We talk about “nature” in the abstract even as millions of microbes cleanse our skin, digest our food, and destroy harmful invaders. And this is happening in our very own bodies! Microbes can’t “get no respect!”

We are not bad people but we are ignorant of how life works and how we are a part of it. That knowledge, once the inheritance of every young child growing up in communities across the Earth, has been lost in modern technological cultures - lost to our peril.

So, what can thoughtful people do?

On a personal level we can contemplate those five principles of ecosystems and use them as a checklist for our own lives. How can we use less of a polluting type of energy, recycle more, leave a smaller footprint, create habitat in our yards, join conservation efforts, and change our ways to meet the new challenges? Call it a program of self-regulation.

Some might challenge that suggestion asking why they should give up their comforts, or restrict their activities, when no one else seems to be doing so. That reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s quest to find an ethical basis for living.

Here is what he thought:
As I sit here under this tree I think about how much I value my own life and wish to go on living and to have more of it. Then I look at this lofty tree with its gently swaying leaves and think, this tree must hold its own life as valuable and also want to go on living and have more of life, too. And even though it is mute, it nevertheless is no different than me in its desire to live, to grow, to flourish.

Everywhere we see this, if we stop to observe…the force of life willing itself into being and to survive upon the face of the Earth for its time. The fleeing gazelle with the swift cheetah in pursuit, the child fighting for her life in the cancer ward, bees pollinating the flowering beings that bring so much pleasure and food to humans…all to make the honey to survive, to thrive.

Recognizing this common bond to all of life around us, Schweitzer wrote, results in Reverence for Life, which he concluded is the ethical basis for living. We begin to value our own life more, to see it as a precious gift and to live it to its highest purpose. We regain the will to live.

This brings us full circle to Lovelock’s premise that the Earth itself is a living organism of which we are all functional parts. All together the whole thing works. Works, that is, as long as we follow the five basic principles that are the great roots of life on this planet.

Perhaps this time in human history is a call to return to a higher purpose in life, to realize the human’s role to consciously participate in the well-functioning of Earth’s living systems.

We are being reminded of our place in the whole pageant of life we find around us. We are called to Reverence for Life as a way of life. As individuals we can find emotional, spiritual, and practical guidance from the life we observe around us. Reconnecting, experiencing life in all its manifest forms as fellow inhabitants with which we share this beautiful planet – this life - is a way forward in an uncertain future.

References
Lovelock, James (1995). The Ages of Gaia, A Biography of Our Living Planet, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Schweitzer, Albert (1990). Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

La Mar

2007-08-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

The beaches along the western panhandle of Florida's coastline are edged by azure and tanslucent green water through which sparkling white sand can be seen clearly. On any morning the sandlerings and dowitchers, gulls and dolphins can be see there and sand crabs darting into deep round holes, silver fish roiling in the waves near the shore. There are footprints from the day before and new ones on the wet sand including mine. The ocean stretches level to the horizon where it is dark blue or sometimes black.

Out on Ft. Pickens, a civil war bunker which lies battered by Hurricane Ivan, the wildlife find refuge from the human storm. Closed after the hurricane winds ripped out the road, it is open only to hikers so that at least two miles of the barrier island of Pensacola Beach is returning to something like it might once have been before people began to change it.

Blue herons stalk the inland marshes where native cane and grasses are flourishing, whole flocks of terns, gulls, and sanderlings rest on the warm sand. Brown and cream striped jellyfish bob near the shores and dolphins frolick there.

There are still places of repose on this Earth.

The Writer's Convenant

2007-07-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

I have established a covenant with my self, the writer.

Write everyday.

Cease writing to be published.

Accept that what I have to offer readers is worthy.

Keep writing but write by the internal keel that is at the heart of who I was at about age fourteen.

Why age fourteen?

The ideas which determine our character and life are implanted in mysterious fashion. When we are leaving childhood behind us they begin to shoot out. When we are seized by youth's enthusiansm for the good and the true, they burst into flower, and the fruit begins to set. If allof us could become what we were at age fourteen, what a different place this world would be. ~Albert Schweitzer from Out of My Life and Thought

Be well my fellow writers everywhere!

Susan

To Mr. Bush

2007-07-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

The True American Character

Some people believe that America exists in forever spacious skies, purple mountain majesty, and the fruited plain. America is not a place. America exists within the mind.

It was an idea whose time had come.
Birthed from the loins of Liberty, it came like a bright light in the midst of human strife. It came like a gentle rain on hardened soil, loosening each grain of rock for a seed to grow. The idea that all could be free...it was present on this continent.

The American mind was here when Europeans first stepped upon these shores. As pilgrims felled trees, and the air was filled with the sharp sound of the ax and saw and the heavy scent of hardwood, Liberty gazed through dark eyes in the green of thick woods. Liberty was bronze, bedecked in eagle feathers and soft hide. Liberty was sleek, bounding in a sunlit meadow, and silk-haired diving below blue waters. Liberty was vigorous.

It set minds to dreaming.
America is a belief, a principal of life - that all beings are free and self-determined. America means harm no thing. America means respect for all life. That is what America is and what a true American lives by. To live otherwise is to diminish it.

Those who came and still come to America are changed by Liberty. For so long now, immigrants think they made America. They think they thought of her. But Liberty made them think America. It was she who changed their minds and made their thoughts go to dreaming. She was already here among the people, and the animals, and all throughout the land. A true American understands this.

Liberty whispers in the ear: Let them all be free! Take only what you need and share the rest. Glory in the abundance therein. See the sunrise and the sunset, swim the clear lakes, and eat the flesh of my fruit. Liberty is a shimmering light on the rounded lip of water spilling over stones. Liberty is the glint in the eye of a child. Her voice is the high pitched scream of a hawk soaring off its prominence. Liberty is the cry of a man to be free at last!

America is an impulse. Americans are animated by it, driven to play out its creed. America’s elixir is Liberty, and once tasted, nothing will ever satisfy the soul again.

Liberty stalks the dark places.
Liberty walks the land with sure feet and white garments that dazzle the eye. She has a voice like a bell ringing. Americans listen for her coming. Sometimes she awakens them from their sleep. Liberty stalks the dark places in peoples’ hearts and minds. She says firmly: Let them all be free!

Americans like the sight and sound of Liberty. She is their beacon of hope and great teacher. When confusion comes and when strife and conflict arise, true Americans look for Liberty. They listen for her voice across the land and through the woods. When they hear it - the bell that rings so clearly - they can go on… they can endure anything.

A true American is ever vigilant. An American dissents if Liberty is threatened. An American has a certain kind of angst when told what to think or do: call it “democratic irritability.” It is the sign of true Americans. Listen to their voices:

Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor? ~ Ohiyesa, Santee Sioux (1858 – 1939)

Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. ~ Susan B. Anthony, Women’s Rights Leader (1820 – 1906)

When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Leader (1929 – 1968)

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well…. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. ~ David Henry Thoreau, American Dissenter (1817 – 1862)

Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice. ~ Cesar Chavez, Leader of the Farm Workers’ Civil Rights Movement (1927 – 1993)

The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives… is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Women’s Rights Leader (1815 – 1902)

Liberty presses on the American mind.
A true American cannot be moved from his or her conviction about Liberty. No eloquent speaker, powerful force, mind-altering influence; no bribe, or set of tragic circumstances, no ideology can shake an American from the knowledge that Liberty is at the heart of America:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ~ Declaration of Independence 1776

Liberty caused these thoughts to be written when minds were shaped by an America present long before the Europeans walked upon our shores. Liberty presses on the American mind still: Let them all be free - black, brown, red, yellow, woman, child, plant and animal! Liberty stands firm on this. True Americans understand it.

Americans believe all people should know Liberty. A true American will not participate in or support anyone or anything that would deny Liberty to another human being. Americans look across the globe with the hope of Liberty’s promise for all. A true American is generous and long-suffering for just causes. Listen:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…. ~ Declaration of Independence 1776

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. ~ Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1809 – 1865)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ~ Thomas Paine, American Patriot (1737 – 1809)

Americans raise their flag to honor Liberty and burn their flag when Liberty is in jeopardy. Liberty for All is the creed of true Americans. They cannot be swayed. They have tasted her intoxicating liberation. No government, no religious doctrine or no person can deter true Americans from their pursuit of freedom. Liberty is their only religion, their only banner. True Americans are free to think and free to live.

Liberty whispers in their ears throughout the land. True Americans can hear her voice summoning them to act on her behalf.

This is the true American character.

by Susan Williams, Submitted to Vanity Fair in 2004

References and Permissions for Quotes
I. “Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor?” ~ Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman)

Excerpted from 'The Wisdom of the Native Americans’ © 1999 BY Kent Nerburn. Reprinted with permission of New World Library. http://www.newworldlibrary.com/, per Marjorie Conte, Permissions Editor, in an E- mail communication, July 8, 2004.

II. “Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.” ~ Susan B. Anthony

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sentencing.html%20Retrieved%20on%20July%208
Retrieved on July 8, 2004 Public Domain (Trial Record in the Case of United States vs. Susan B. Anthony on the Charge of Illegal Voting, June 17-18, 1873)

III. “When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

From the speech “Domestic Impact of the War in America” given in November 1967 to the National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace.
http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king03.html Retrieved July 6, 2004

IV. “No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well…. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” ~ David Henry Thoreau

From: Paul, Sherman (Ed.). (1960). Walden and Civil Disobedience. Riverside Editions A14. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. p 223. Permission to quote: July 8, 2004 E-mail communication from Monika Konwinska, Subsidiary Rights Assistant, Houghton Mifflin Company: Public Domain

V. “Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice.” ~ Cesar Chavez

http://www.sfsu.edu/~cecipp/cesar_chavez/cesarquotes.htm%20Retrieved%20July%203
Retrieved on July 3, 2004 Public Domain

VI. “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” ~ Thomas Paine

http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3?Author=Thomas+Paine&file=other. Retrieved on July 3, 2004 Public Domain

VII. “The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton from “The Solitude of Self”

http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/resources/index.html
Retrieved on July 5, 2004 Public Domain

VIII. “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln in a Letter to Henry L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.
http://www.nps.gov/liho/slavery/al14.htm%20Retrieved%20on%20July%207Retrieved on July 7, 2004 Public Domain

Scene

2007-07-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

"The museum sat low and snug in the gentle curve of the desert and its tan adobe walls and rock paths formed an extension of the sandy floor and surrounding mountains. Sunk in a sea of saguaros, the museum’s presence was subtle like the land, the only change at its boundaries marked by the rock outlines that formed outdoor exhibits for mountain lions and coyotes, and by a forest of little trees, lacey and green, and plump cacti in every shape and size.

At night in the moon tide the big brown bats swooped over its lush vegetation drinking with long tongues from the huge white saguaro blossoms, carrying sticky pollen from saguaro top to saguaro top, and some scooped up insects hovering over the beaver pond. Bobcats and coyotes hunted there too for rats and mice and snakes that roamed the museum grounds under the cool moon light. The rattlesnake and sidewinders plied the earth across the valley’s confines drawn by the warmth of breathing little bodies gathering seed. Swift and silent their belly scales seamlessly rowed them forward over rocky paths where they ruled the nighttime’s smaller kingdoms.

But at daybreak the night stalkers disappeared, confined to subterranean caves to rest through the heat of the day. The cactus wren, hummingbird, and human took their place in the sun tide of the desert sea."

Local Theater

2007-05-28T17:28:00.000-07:00

Saturday night I attended a local performance of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men at the Beowolfe Alley Theater in downtown Tucson. I was reminded of Steinbeck's comment that writing should uplift the human heart. His play gives voice to the worst and the best of humanity in difficult economic and cultural conditions. http://www.steinbeck.org/MainFrame.html The local actors were superb.

Steinbeck wrote Of Mice and Men as a play-novelette (a form in which the play can be read like a novel, and the novel can be read as a play). He was not happy with it. That at least gives a novice writer like me a sense of hope.

With my own writing I often get lost in the writing. I start with a clear idea. As I go into the writing the whole idea becomes muddy as I go into it. Characters don't behave. They go off and do their own thing. Point at hand: last summer I drafted a novel about climate change in the Southwest. It was plot driven right from the start because I did not know much about character development. I had no less than twenty characters and the whole book was something like "and then this happened."

Now I am engaged in the arduous task of redrafting the story-in fact, just about throwing the first draft to the wind and starting over.

It's scarry because I wade into the story and then sink in a guagmire of writing starts and stops, bad writing altogether, and it feels like I have lost the purpose of writing it in the first place. Being an impatient kind of person, I am willing to only go so far into the agony of creation.

When does a writer know what is a false start? When should one start over, when file it away for posterity? Supposedly writers possess an intuitive sense, but I have never been intuitive about anything. I am one of those people that has to "go there" then try to make sense of it and hopefully understand where to go from there.

I look to my mentor, Margaret Atwood: Many of the things I've written have begun, and indeed have continued, against my better judgment. Okay, at least I am in good company.

Susan

On the Isle of Saucy Romance Writers

2007-05-13T10:36:00.001-07:00

Last month I discovered a whole world unknown to me in the island of romance writers, a tropical place with white sands, lime green and hot pink libations and steaming bedrooms. The man in your bed might also be a vampire, descended from a Greek god and the woman whispering in your ear may hold a dark secret.

This professional group of writers (https://www.rwanational.org/eweb/StartPage.aspx) is very serious about their craft. Genres include chicklit, paranormal (time travel), historical romance, speculative fiction and some science fiction. I learned how to structure my first novel using a story board: inciting events for the heroine and hero, turning points that build suspence and keep readers reading, the black moment when the heroine or hero come to some realization and then the quick resolution. It is a kind of contract with the reader of romance novels. Readers in these subgenres expect certain things to happen.

My first novel is not a romance novel. However, I believe there is much to be learned from this group of writers. At a recent workshop with the local chapter, the group used my heroine and hero to explore how the two personalities should interact. A book they used is one I have read but forgotten about: The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes and Heroines by Cowden, LaFever, and Viders. Sixteen archetypes are explored. After describing male and female archetypes, the authors then show how these personality types engage with each other.

At this point in the rewriting of my first novel, I need to decide whether to throw out the first draft and start over using a more structured plot sequence, or allow the book to be what it is: a series of scenes along a 100 year time line with characters who may or may not interact but who each represent a sector of Tucson's population that grapples or flees from the crisis caused by global warming and climate change.

One thing for sure, if I keep stalling, it will become a historical novel!

Susan

Where did April go?

2007-04-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

This month slipped away in a flurry of editing and writing new chapters for my first novel. Recently I submitted three chapters to Ashley Grayson of Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. The novel tells a story about this region-the Sonoran Desert and American Southwest-during a water crisis. Speculative fiction (2010-2100), it posits what would happen if Tucson ran out of water. How would that crisis unfold? Who would be the most or least resilient? How would governments be able to respond?

I discovered a very interesting thing while editing this month: the real character of my novel is the Colorado River. The last sixteen years of my life have been spent near the river. For most of that time I had the privilege of working closely with native people, ranchers and farmers for whom the river is part of their psyche and livelihood. Now as a Tucsonan, my drinking water-which for the city's history has came from groundwater exclusively-is now mixing in the river's water after channeling it through a 306-mile-long canal across the Arizona deserts.

Go to www.desertscribe.com and click on Featured Writing for a taste of the story.

Susan

Writing No Matter What

2007-03-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

Writing in spite of all that seeks to erode that sacred time and space is a feat. To write requires a mental fortress be put up in the face of storms, salesmen of all sorts hawking somebody else's passion, bright sun shining days that lure the soul to play and even against the writer herself - so willing to give in to self-doubt or procrastination, the evil twins.

It makes me think of Saint Teresa of Avila. She wrote an amazing account of the journey of her soul in search of the ultimate truth. (Well, isn't that why we write?) In Interior Castles St. Teresa described seven rooms within the castle of the soul, each a kind of stage where the soul gets to know itself, a layer of interfering thoughts peeled away to a shiny new surface...tender, potent.

Guarding the fortress of time and space is a similar process for a writer who with ferocity, ever alert to threats, sets out to prob his heart and to sing his song. Therefore writers aquire quirks. "No thank you, I will be writing all day on Saturday" is a statement not well received by the world out there. Yet everyone depends on the writer doing just that: waging a kind of war with the exterior flotsam of things, voices, paper, emails, god-awful news and edgy relationships. The dog that needs to go out. The phone that rings. The taxes that....

I write because writing clarifies my feelings and organizes my universe and on one golden hued day I sometimes even write something someone else might want to read. But regardless, I write anyway.

Susan

Hemmingway's Compound Sentence

2007-03-02T04:18:00.000-08:00

I am learning that a writer reads.

Revisiting Hemmingway this month I was impressed again with the clean language and his use of the compound sentence. Here is a good example from Islands in the Stream, Chapter 1:

"The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream."

To me his writing emanates from very organized thinking, first this fact, then this one and then the logical one after that so the reader follows naturally and easily along with the storyteller.

Chapter Eight, the greatest fishing description I have ever read, includes this: "The boy's brown back was arched, the rod bent, the line moved slowly on the surface, and a quarter of a mile below the great fish was swimming."

Which also reminds me that we are most powerful as writers when we write about what we know. Hemmingway was a great sport fisherman. He lived in Cuba and knew the Gulf Waters very well. Old Man and the Sea is a testament to Hemmingway's many years on the sea and his love of the people of the sea.

In this photo, Hemmingway has netted a tuna off the Bimini Islands, the place where his main character, Thomas Hudson, lives and paints in Islands in the Stream.

Reread Hemmingway to learn the art of unvarnished language and the power of a good story, well told.

Write well and happily my friends! ~Susan

Truth or Consequences

2007-02-11T07:02:00.000-08:00

These times require us to write the truth. Following the International Panel on Climate Change summary report (www.ipcc.org) there can be no doubt that global warming is altering the climate of Earth, and what will happen is in good part predictable. Literally thousands of scientists from countries across the world contributed to this latest analysis of changing landscapes, living communities in the oceans, forests and polar regions.

The fact that heads turned only briefly to listen to a unified cry from ecologists, from people who ARE paying attention, leaves me more concerned than ever. To lessen the impacts on the living communities on Earth takes massive, coordinated action on the scale of the U.S. when it called upon the nation to support WWII. This time we must call on ourselves to curb our own war upon nature, a war most do not understand or even acknowledge.

As individuals we can do much, starting with our own habits and our inborn ingenuity. There are three major areas on which we can make a difference: 1. driving; home energy use; citizen action. Simply carpooling using public transportation or not driving can save thousands of tons of hydrocarbons from the atmosphere each year per person. By turning down the heat and putting on a sweater, replacing bulbs with compact flourescents and using appliances infrequently (hang your clothes out if you live in the west) you can also help significantly. By far, however, citizens need to push local, state and U.S. govenments to get off their arses and chance policies, invest in alternative energy research, and lead, lead, lead business and citizens to act together.

All these efforts will save you money, but it is really about saving life...yours, mine and all the biota that support the gift of human life on this once beautiful planet. While we go about our daily business as usual, the gorgeous coral reefs are dissolving away from warming of the ocean and human pollution; the ice caps are melting and much of the biodiversity of our once fruited plain is vanishing in the path of unrelenting human development.

“The U.S. emits more greenhouse gasses than any other nation on earth – fully 25 percent – yet we Americans are just 4 percent of the global population. The United States cannot sit on the sidelines any longer. It must take immediate action to establish meaningful and binding limits on CO2 emissions and rejoin international negotiations to secure a long-term solution.” ~ President of the World Wildlife Fund.

There is still time to use our brilliant engineers and designers to create sustainable landscapes and cities, to restore and protect food production, to generate copious energy from renewable sources...but there is not much time. We must act. We must. Or we will surely perish from this Earth in not too many generations, many of whom - our descendents - will eke out a final existence not worth living.

Susan

To learn how you can prepare: fohttp://www.organicconsumers.org:80/articles/article_4407.cfm

To learn what Tucsonans are doing about sustainability:
www.sustainabletucson.org

A writer's life

2007-01-22T16:38:00.000-08:00

The morning you get up and find no greater joy than staying in your pajamas, cup of java in hand, a journal and ink pen and write for three or four hours straight, getting up to pee, get more coffee, get back in bed or under a comforter...you know you have arrived at the helm of the writer's ship and you've hitched a ride on the subconscious stream that feeds the writer's fingers. It is exhilarating and thrilling and amazingly the writing is good. It is real and it is so surprising what comes up from some fount of experience, of living and loving, grieving and searching.

By accident I discovered Diana Gabaldon's The Fiery Cross, a historical romp of such magnitude, wisdom and exploration of human love and human struggle that I have been glued to a little cassette player I actually bought for $14 to play cassettes in my home. (My only player has been in my 1995 Ford.) No author that I have read integrates history, human imperfection and human courage, medical science, and U.S. and Scottish history...but that is not all that is there. No, there is a subconscious stream that flows through Gibaldon's brain onto the page that comes like a strong river flow with no perturbances.

Go to her website to stand at the helm of her ship: http://www.dianagabaldon.com/

I am discovering the connection to an ocean of consciousness where wisdom, characters, and historical information flow from the cauldron of human experience spaning the ages from the first conscious beings to the present. It is not an individual contribution, but the contribution of the ages and the writer is nothing but a willing conduit.

Mystifying. And a part of this writer's life.

All the best,

Susan

Bird by Bird: Anne Lamott's Gift to Writers

2006-12-31T10:07:00.000-08:00

My sister gave me Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott's treatise on writing and life, that made me laugh from cover to cover. http://www.authorsontheweb.com/features/bird-by-bird.asp

Barbie had worn it soft from numerous rereads as a kind of bible on life that she had suggested I read for some time. Finally my sis caught up with me on a family visit over Christmas and gave me her blood copy. What a gift. She handed it to me as if releasing a child in my care. This made me even more anxious to read it. Barbie is not prone to cult worship.

The advice in Bird by Bird is superb, crafted out of Lamott's life's struggles, with many good ideas for creating character, plot and dialogue. She begins with this gem in Chapter One, Getting Started: "...good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do."

Anne encourages "shitty first drafts" from which we hone the final decent drafts. She gave an example of how she begins with the one-inch frame assignment into which you write about your childhood, for example, just letting it come without the critic that haunts your writing space. In one she wrote about school lunches and rambled on until she saw the boy who always stood against the fence on the playground, the one with the muddy shoes from walking off the sidewalk to avoid notice. That is the book she will write... about the boy who stood against the fence.

Other salient advice that no one wants to hear but must: few of us will be published but all of us will be enriched. Contrary to publication curing our need for accomplisment or paying the bills, Anne poignantly describes how publication gave her no satistfaction at all, and not until her fourth publication did she come close to paying bills with her royalties. But what she does describe is coming to know oneself and being present in your own life...noticing, writing it down for your family and friends...for posterity.

After reading Bird by Bird, I kind of felt settled about the whole publication issue and began to view my writing as a life, not a destination. Maybe this is what my sister gave me for Christmas.

That we should all have sisters like my Barbara Gay and writers like Anne Lamott to remind us why we write in the first place.

Happy writing!
Susan

P.S. You have to read Bird by Bird to learn how the title came to be the core of Lamott's wisdom.

Golden Ocean

2006-12-11T06:42:00.000-08:00

Cliffs of Moher
Near Doolin, Ireland
Photograph by Heather Williams

I have been advised by many writers that reading from the great masterpieces of literature, popular authors and what accomplished writers have to say about writing is a key to becoming an effective writer.

This I have taken to heart. What a task. Can you imagine how hard it is to treat myself to great stories, memorable characters under my comforter with a mug of hot tea or fresh ground coffee? Aye, what a labor.

Along the way, I picked up some books on tape as well. For me-a visually driven learner-listening, learning how a great writer draws my imagination forward in my mind's eye, has helped me immeasurably. Besides being very entertaining, it is helping recover words and expressions long buried in my brain. Popular culture tends to dull the imagination whereas great literature sharpens the relief.

From Patrick O'Brien's great book, The Golden Ocean, I pulled these gems over the weekend. Listen:

"dark patch of ruffled sea"
"the sun pierced in shafts through heavy clouds"
"stood mute and submissive"
"unctuous light"
"burst with turgid plums"
"vapid conversation"
"uncommon elegant notion"
"harrying visions of treasure"
"pierced through all his disregarded clamour"
"faint movement of the air"
"purple land stretched low across the sky"

The Golden Ocean, Patrick O'Brien, 1956
Performed by John Franklyn-Robbins

Ghosts

2006-11-26T14:57:00.000-08:00

Being a writer seems to be a lot like fishing. You bait your hook and cast it into the sea of publishers and editors hoping for a nibble. The lure of catching "the big one" entices. There is the fear of sharks (critics and the discerning public) and shipwreck, the possibility that the winds will shift perhaps still (loss of drive and dogged determination to keep writing for its sake only).

This weekend I rewrote a chapter from a draft of my first novel and submitted it to the Wallace Stegner Fellowship competition at Stanford and to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; entered short stories for the Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck prize at the NC Writers Network (Davidson College) and San Jose State University respectively.

Part of my writing practice is reading, reading a lot from the greats. I've reread William Faulkner's The Bear, rejoining Ike McCaslin and Old Ben with a opening run-on but lucid Faulkner utterance; Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel) and sat in the crib with Eugene feeling his absolute frustration at not being able to utter a word but understanding everything; Hemingway (The Old Man and the Sea for short story) feeling the weight of the Marlin in Santiago's old but competent and determined hands: the big fish is metaphor for my new novel.

Then on to sterling prose with Margaret Atwood (I cannot reread Oryx and Crake however; too depressing,a dystopia; her book reviews and essays in Writing with Intent so crackling sharp and funny); John O'Hara (short story collections) which I thought rather strange stories; and Eudora Welty (short story). I also reread Sacred Ground by Barbara Wood (historical fiction). For dessert I rode with Buck in his desolation on the train North in Jack London's Call of the Wild. I studied how characters are shaped by the masters of my craft. How did plot unfold, scene take up residence in my imagination; how was the theme woven and magnified?

Pat Conroy's The Water is Wide is a textbook on character. I am listening to this book as a recording. I've learned that the reader can make or break whether a novel's true brilliance is conveyed. In this rendition of Conroy's 1972 popular book, Tom Stechschulte reads. His long acting career lends to his ability to talk like SC black children living on a remote island and mostly illiterate. Conroy's work utilizes metaphor and simile well throughout a coming of age tale based on real experiences of Conroy as a teacher.

Recently I found a CD of Eudora Welty reading three of her more famous short stories, among them, "Powerhouse" based on the bluesman Fats Waller. I am trying to learn the art of short story. She is one of the best and so I treated myself to a Eudora Welty afternoon complete with a nice cabernet. I cuddled up on a couch to listen to her molasses-flowing Mississipi drawal...this last word in Welty's mouth is voluptuosly round, guttural. You have to move your lower jaw in a 360-degree circle. Try it. DDRRRAAAAAWWWL. Wonderful! She make me laugh hard.

Welty's extraordinary skill at developing character and setting a scene transcends to mastery from the first sentence. She lived most of her life in Jackson, Mississipi. To me Welty is the Rembrandt of the word, painting characters so real you feel like you're right there in the bar with Powerhouse or the beauty parlor with Leona who has the scoop on everybody in town. Listen: "Powerhouse is playing. He's here in town from the city. Powerhouse and his key board. Powerhouse and his Tasmanians. Think of the things he calls himself. There's no one in the world like him. You can't tell what he is."

Go to http://www.caedmonaudio.com to order it. Also check out the Eudora Welty Foundation: http://www.eudorawelty.org/.

This Thanksgiving weekend I transcended into some other level with my writing practice. I am now possessed totally. When my friends are talking I am thinking, That would make a good title, or Look, here's a character to incorporate. I go around thinking about the characters in the stories I have been working on. They now occupy every room, even my bedroom. I think they whisper to me while I sleep. Like ghosts they waft about my house.

~Susan, On the road...somewhere.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

2006-11-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

In honor of my father, Lt. Col. Edward Buell Feathers, Retired, and my former husband, Thomas E. Williams who fought in Viet Nam, and all the men and women who put their lives on the line so that I can enjoy the freedoms and Liberty that are the envy of the world's peoples and governments. There are no words to thank you appropriately. But I do offer it evenso. And from my heart.

This day causes me to reflect on the persistence of war....

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." ~ Chapter One, "Recalled to Life", a Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

Chilling how true these words, written so many years before WWII, were true for that war, and ring true for Korea, for Viet Nam, for the Gulf War, and now for the Afganistan and Iraq wars.

Men get caught up in wars that princes plan, and women and children by association. All suffer whether the "victors" (for no death make us victors) or the defeated, all lose in war.

Still, we pause to honor the warriors among us who have gone forth with courage, or at best hope, for a good outcome. To our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons; our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters; our cousins, our friends and lovers we give honor to you today.

But we do not honor war. No. We honor good relations between people, where Liberty is honored for each of us, or freely given up for a good we all agree to protect.

Here in America, we agree to respect the liberty of each other and strive within the complexity of relationships that trust requires. We are very young at this, imperfect in our implementation. We trust that providence gives us time to learn to live by the high calling of Liberty. Perhaps then we can even extend that relationship globally. We strive for that, but until we can do it at home, within our own borders, we will be as children in the courts of law abroad.

I live in hope that before I die I will see an end to war as a means to resolve conflict in our world, a time when reason prevails and thoughtful dialogue is our most powerful tool - a time when we are warriors of the word.

Knowing how much is at stake, how could we strive for less?

Veteran's Day 2006

Down for the Count

2006-10-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

Down for the Count:
On October 27, 2006
In the United States of America

2,810 U.S. Military Fatalities in Iraq (thru today)

343 U.S. Military Fatalities in Afghanistan (thru today)

20,687 U.S. Military Maimed in Iraq (DoD Update: 10-Sep-06)

49,692 Iraqis Reported Killed (thru today; source: Iraq Body Count)

5.6 hectares per person U.S. Carbon Footprint (Global Footprint Network ‘06)
0.42 hectares per person Africa Carbon Footprint (Global Footprint Network ‘06)
2.2 hectares per person World Footprint (Global Footprint Network ‘06)
1.8 hectares per person Earth’s Biocapacity (Global Footprint Network ‘06)
(One hectare = 100 acres)

64% voting-age citizens voted in ‘04 elections (‘06 US Census report)
72% voting-age citizens registered to vote (‘06 US Census Report)
81.3% $100K over income voted in ’04 elections (‘06 US Census report)
48.3% $20-$29 K income voted in ’04 elections (‘06 US Census report)

219 years since the signing of the U.S. Constitution
728 days until the 2008 Presidential Election
11 days until the Congressional General Election
0 days to shape the future

References: pulled from Internet on October 28, 2006
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/04000lk.html
http://www.lwv.org/

Achille-Claude Debussy's Early Morning gift

2006-10-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Claire de Lune softly played on my Bose at 4 am this morning, sweeping me back in time to my teens when I was a budding clarinetist in Plattsburgh, New York.

That time in my life was filled with good music, shared inspiration of fellow musicians; directing the Philharmonic from my third floor bedroom, a new LP from Columbia Records blaring the Firebird Suite, in a nineteenth-century brick home overlooking Lake Champlain. I was thirteen years old, and how could I have known that what I experienced then would be some of the best experiences I would ever have?

Claude Debussey broke with tradition at the Paris Conservatory, writing music influenced by the period's Impressionist painting schools. Afternoon of a Fawn and La Mer are two other Debussy favorites of mine. Debussy takes listeners into a kind of rapture. This morning's happenstance, listening to Claire de Lune and drinking organic coffee from Chiapas...these are the experiences of only a small part of the human race.

How can it be that while I sit in my warm living room, enjoying great music and coffee, anticipating a day when I can determine my own future, go my own way with no worries about food, shelter or safety...that three-quarters of my fellow man are lying on the bare ground, starved and threatened by a mean race of people within their own borders?

How can these realities exist in time together?

When I was thirteen it was perhaps forgiveable because I rarely encountered information about people living in these conditions. But now we have CNN and that other reality is present in my living room with me. It comes as a discordant fact in the midst of Debussy's exquisite creation presenting me with a dilemma early in my day. What should be my response? How can I proceed now that I recognize I am related to those who suffer?

Is adulthood a time when the seriousness of the world community steals away the rapture of youth when life was taken for granted and fully tasted, embraced? No, I think not...but the art of living in the world's incongruity requires me to live with integrity, to try to do what I can do so that any human being on the Earth can enjoy an early morning interlude with Claude Debussy's masterworks.

For information on the latest situation in Darfur: http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGUSA20061022002

Susan

Among Garden Spirits

2006-10-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

A garden is a spiritual place. I have always created a garden, at each house I have lived. My garden in Tucson is maturing. By that I mean each shrub or plant, or seedling tree, is taking root more deeply or widely, depending on its strategy for collecting water. Roots and branches, vines and flowers intermingle providing support for another or shade; some compete for space and sunlight.

I let my gardens grow wild, following the shape of growth, surprised by fruits that pop up in odd places from my mad composting of kitchen waste. Under my bedroom window a new garden bed hosts a tribe of butternut squash seedlings rising from one spot. I'll let them all grow, determining among themselves which will prevail to grow the vine across my tiny backyard.

Pieces of pottery as seen above (a wall vase my daughter made when she was young) I hang on a wall, or I place bowls and vessels in the soil where water collects for ants, lizards, and a wild cat that drinks from a pitcher smothered by white allysum underneath the birdbath. Cat is a sleek, black panther just the right size for a small urban garden. He stalks unwary birds and about once a month manages to get one, leaving me a pile of grey feathers and white down as a marker of his work.

Salvia is flaming red and I noticed a ruby-throated Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna) drinking from one of the carmine pockets this morning.

Because Tucson is experiencing a West Nile outbreak from mosquito bites, I have let my birdbath go dry. The usual feathered friends no longer drop by for a drink. But the Inca Dove (Columbina inca) flutters down when the coast is clear to eat small seeds from grasses and the over-hanging Foothill palo verde tree (Cercidium microphyllum) . The palo verde is a legume and my garden benefits from the nitrogen rich seed pods it drops profusely in the late spring.

Earlier I wrote a note about the Sacred Datura or Jimson Weed that sprung up in my front garden. This large leafed plant sprawled over a six-foot circumference, about two feet high. But, in only three days it was "mowed down" by the larvae of the Hawk moth (Sphingidae) which is a prime pollinator of Sacred Datura (Datura wrightii).

When I examined the leaves of the disappearing Datura, I came "face to face" with a garden shape shifter (below). This one was five inches long!

I left the horn worms to grow. After one more day the entire leaf canopy was gone, the only trace of the green spirits a pile of dark balls of dung left to enrich the garden soil. Where the larvae diappeared to I have no idea. Maybe they are under ground waiting until next spring when they will metamorph into the huge brown hawk moths that visit Datura on warm summer nights drinking from the white trumpet flowers.

One thing about gardens: they awaken a different sense of time through the cycles of plant and animal life that follow the moon and sun, the rain and influences of mountains, rivers, and wind. A garden holds my feet on the Earth.

Writing and William Faulkner's Advice

2006-10-02T05:19:00.000-07:00

On the trip home from Taos, closing my writer's residency at the Frank Waters Foundation, I encountered the Very Large Arrays, Radio Telescopes of the National Science Foundation. I pulled into the visitor center, curious to learn the purpose of this amazing site with over twenty giant discs aimed toward the heavens. A storm brewed, kicking up winds that found no obstruction across the high plateau in southwestern New Mexico. I always imagine sinister plots at sites like this, some covert U.S. operation underneath the veneer of science research. I learned that these telescopes use radiowaves, not to listen to sounds emanating from space, but to visualize the far reaches of our galaxy. In fact they produce images of places that may be from the beginning of time, fourteen billion years ago. That seemed more mysterious than a covert plot. At its least, it might afford me an idea for a new chapter in the book I just finished drafting at the Waters' Foundation studio.

Writing itself is somewhat of a mystery. Beyond the obvious need to learn to write in correct format and convention (something I am still learning), writing taps into streams of consciousness hidden even from the writer herself. Where, for example, do names of characters come from? I was writing about a minister recently and the name Cleveland Sturgess popped in my mind. Now where would a name like that come from? I have no idea, but I rather liked it and incorporated "him" into my story. Maybe he even exists somewhere on the planet.

Then two days ago I felt the need for redirection in my writing. Scanning my library I picked The Faulkner Reader from the shelf. William Faulkner inspired me early in my life when I studied his works as an English major at East Tennessee State University in the rolling foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Ike McCaslin and Old Ben (The Bear) remained powerful images in my own psyche and probably led me to become an environmental educator later in my life. There in the beginning of the Reader is Faulkner's address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. Therein I found the redirection I sought:

"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in this workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice....

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart...."

Now how did I know to pull that book from the shelf just when I needed a lighthouse?

For more about William Faulkner go to William Faulkner on the Web:
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/faulkner.html

~ Susan

P.S. That same evening the owner of the B&B in Alpine, Arizona told me his military friend believes that, indeed, the Very Large Arrays sometimes engage in spy operations here on planet Earth. The wheels are turning.

Sheltered at the Frank Waters Foundation

2006-08-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

The spirit of the land and people at the Foundation are definitely contributing to my creative process. I am amazed at the progress I have already made on my book.

For me the time and space provided at the artist studio, set behind Barbara Waters' home, is essential to formulating a cohesive story.

The image above shows my living room floor covered with nearly 100 books stretching well beyond the photo's frame. I finally selected about 40 reference books and stories that form the backstory for the novel 's plot about the human community's journey toward a sustainable future on Earth.

More than time and space, the opportunity to spend time with Barbara Waters, an author in her own right, philosopher and patron of the arts continues to be one of the highlights of my residency. Recently I helped Barbara start her own blog about her adventure as a newly diagnosed Parkinsonian. Here is a link to her blog. Please refer anyone you know who is dealing with this disease; I am sure Barbara's blog will most encouraging and filled with links to important sites:
www.parkinsonsfromthehorsesmouth.blogspot.com.

Another upbeat in my residency was the visit by my daughter Heather who briefly found shelter at the studio for her painting. Heather's water color of El Salto mountain and the surrounding countryside was created in the Upper Pasture not too far from Frank Waters' memorial site under the great oak tree.

She listened to a brief reading of the draft and made excellent suggestions. We sat in the yard at night contemplating the constellations and weaving stories. I miss her enriching spirit now....

I have completed Part I of the draft, however, constructing a likely scenario (speculative fiction) for the devolution of the status quo and the evolution of a new mindfulness about human habitation is my constant challenge. In the back of my mind I can hear a friend's query, "Susan, how will you make it a page-turner?" Indeed.

Till my next sojourn into Arroyo Seco to take my seat at the tables of the Taos Cow - a hot bed of interesting people, ice cream delights and wireless - be well!

Susan

Taos Adventure

2006-08-05T03:40:00.000-07:00

Next week I leave Tucson for the Frank Waters Foundation in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico. The Foundation is located about 8 miles outside of Taos in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There is a small cabin on the Waters' property for artists to work in solitude, away from email, phones and daily distractions.

By some miracle I was awarded a Writer's Residency for six weeks.

Long ago I discovered Frank Waters' writing in The Man Who Killed the Deer. Frank Waters navigates the psyche of a character struggling to live in two cultural realities - Native American and European/western. Through this novel and many others Frank wrote over his lifetime, he offers readers a chance to examine the values of different cultures. To do this well requires a kind of integrity that distinguishes Frank's writing.

Go to this link on the Foundation's website to read about his life and the experiences that were the well-spring of his writing: http://www.frankwaters.org/photo.htm

I plan to blog my experience writing at the Foundation. However, if I fall into a writer's crevass, you may not hear from me until October when I return to Tucson. In that case, I am leaving these links to sites and resources for you to explore perspectives of the American cultural experience and to wet your whistles for my new book.

Please leave your comments here about what you read or about your own experiences.

Food for Thought:

Read about the Iroquois Great Law of Peace:
http://sixnations.buffnet.net/Great_Law_of_Peace/

Read the Hopi Experience Living in the Fourth World:
http://www.hopi.nsn.us/emergence.asp

Two of my favorite Frank Waters Books

Link to Frank Waters' classic - The Book of the Hopi:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140045279/103-2967322-9485414?v=glance&n=283155

Link to The Woman at Otowi Crossing:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804008930/sr=1-1/qid=1154876637/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2967322-9485414?ie=UTF8&s=books

Here is a photo of the cabin where I will be working:

Later! Susan

The Stubborn Determination to Continue Dreaming

2006-07-29T19:01:00.000-07:00

“The future is a construct that is shaped in the present, and that is why to be responsible in the present is the only way of taking serious responsibility for the future. What is important is not the fulfillment of all one’s dreams, but the stubborn determination to continue dreaming.” ~ Gioconda Belli, The Country Under My Skin

Belli's admonition is important for Americans disenchanted with our nation's leadership in the world. It is easy to feel disenfranchised from our present government.

As I painfully listen to the U.S. President and Secretary of Defense hawk an old tune, I am once again amazed that my country's experience - that war does not bring peace - never seems to penetrate very deeply into our psyche. It would be so easy to throw in the towel when most of us come home from a day of long hours commuting, working and bringing our children along the bumpy roads of life...but that would only give them more license to proceed no matter what we think or write or even vote!

No, it is imperative that I and you choose a small part of the turf of our democracy, breathe into it new life from our personal energy, and defend it with all our might. Everything is at stake right now. Just when we need to dream, we are delivered a nightmare. The U.S. is destablizing a whole region of the world under the guise of freedom.

My dream is that we reform this government through active participation on all levels of civic life so that we begin to measure our worth through something worthy like the condition of children in our nation. Think of this: 13 million American children live in poverty. And, how do we measure up for protecting the biosphere: have we provided leadership as the world's worst polluter per capita? Have we responded to genocide wherever it festers? These are some of the true measures of whether we are actualizing prudence and compassion.

Stubborn determination it will certainly take to stay the course and not let fearful scenarios from our so-called leaders and their media entourage dim our hopes for something much better than their dystopias.

We must recover credibility not just in the eyes of other nations, but in our own eyes. And, there are another set of eyes - those of our children. I want to be able to face my son and daughter and tell them truthfully that I did everything I could to renew and protect our national dream of a society based on responsibility for each other.

The following is excerpted from "The Quickening of America" by Frances Moore Lappé and Paul Du Bois (Jossey-Bass, 1994). I believe this is a common dream we could bring into reality now. In fact there are millions of Americans "doing democracy" as I write this. See links to some of their projects at the end of this blog.

THE GREAT CITIZEN EXPERIMENT
Living democracy opens new possibilities for America and the world. It's not anti-government. In living democracy, citizens are not seeking more government. They're not seeking less government. Instead they are developing appropriate and effective roles for government - made accountable to citizens' real concerns.

It's not anti-market or business. In living democracy, the marketplace and business are not the enemy. Instead, citizens ask: How can the market and business be made to serve our community's needs and values. It's not about simple volunteerism. In living democracy, individual volunteerism is not considered The Solution. Rather it is considered a means of building citizen organizations and citizen skills in order to reshape our communities ever closer to our values.

It's not about ideology. In living democracy, citizens are seeking practical solutions, freed from fixed dogma. They're letting go of the notion that there is one formula to fit all communities, all societies. They're experimenting to find what works. They are trusting their own experiences and insights, free to change as they learn new lessons. these citizens know they don't have a democracy. Democracy is something they are doing, as they rebuild themselves and their communities and go about solving today's unprecedented problems together.

~Susan

http://www.environmental-action.org/enviroaction.asp?id2=20839

http://smallplanetinstitute.org/video/index.php

http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/about/index.html

http://www.thegreenguide.com/about/tggi

Margaret Atwood's Truth

2006-07-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Reading Margaret Atwood is sheer pleasure. Her writing stands as a tall lighthouse that guides me as a new writer from shipwrecking on the rocks of verbal glut. I am not alone. Atwood not surprisingly engenders an erudite band of lovers: http://www.mscd.edu/~atwoodso/

Because I chose to write a novel about the way distant future-the beginning of the third millenium-I sat down one afternoon to read Atwoods' essays about writing The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake in her excellent collection of essays, Writing with Intent.

In "Writing Utopia" Atwood explains that her work is not science fiction but rather entirely conceivable in the present (we are either doing it now, did it in the past, or could start doing it tomorrow). Therein lies the power of it. The story is built around trends that we know are happening today or unfolding before our eyes. She calls this kind of novel "speculative fiction".

Whether writing about a utopia (where eveything works perfectly around someone's notion of what's "good") or a dystopia (where nothing works and thus readers discern what would be good or better), Atwood points out that only cultures based on monotheism produce either kind of novel. Polytheistic cultures, not being based on a unidirectional flow from bad to better to perfect, are circular by their nature so that all things move through cycles in a rhythm with one thing creating the forces that bring the other into existence.

From my perspective, to write a utopia or a dystopia is to make a judgement on society or declare that some values are definitely superior to others. Atwood chose to write a dystopia in both The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. In the latter, the dismal, shattered world of Snowman is so terrible it shook me to my core. I wept long after finishing the book. Then I became angry! Why use all this talent to create a lasting vision of devastation? Rather than feeling empowered to make change, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of debilitating impotence.

As a long time environmental educator, I exist today on the hope that we can create in the minds of enough people the vision of how we can live sustainably so that a tipping point in consciousness sweeps across our nation. Atwood's dystopias innoculate us with a half-killed version of the real disease vector to hopefully make us stronger, more resistant to its threat. Why then do I resist it so? The answer may be that I prefer to eat organic food and drink clear water and let my body/mind develop its natural defenses. I prefer a positive vision I can reach toward, one that is realistic. Some would say I look for utopia.

No matter utopian or dystopian scenarios, nature will surely select out of the human community those who possess "robust" genes - or robust behaviors. If humanity goes on with business as usual, few of our progeny will make it into the 22nd century and if they do they it will not be nice.

A decade ago I stepped off the merry-go-round of status quo to study my culture through the eyes of North American first peoples, a Mojave medicine man and an Iroquois teacher. The first question they asked me was "Do you want the truth or a pretty picture?" I chose the truth. And likewise I think Atwood goes that way in her speculative fiction. But it is such a bitter pill.

As I plan my novel I consider whether to drink of the absinthian liquid of despair or imbibe the sweet ambrosia of a better world. Perhaps I will drink both, chasing one shot after another. Perhaps the best we can ever do is to actively strive toward utopia, realizing it IS a myth but that the path is something very, very good, and sustainable.

These are my reflections on a quiet but very warm morning on the Sonoran Desert. I am praying for rain.

~Susan

Meeting at the Crossroads

2006-07-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

Most people think of cactus, cowboys or the Grand Canyon when they think of Arizona. It's true we still hatch cowboys and cowgirls in the Arizona family, but they are definitely becoming an endangered species who can now be found herding tourists as much as cattle.

Arizona is a state riding the waves of tourism, this year raking in $17 billion in revenues from people like you who come to ride white water down a canyon gorge or walk an old path in Indian country.

Arizona's waters, land and big domed sky are the state's natural capital.

So it is not surprising that Arizonans are coming together to assure we protect our nest egg. And we are not a moment too soon! Like other states we are suffering from rapid growth, habitat degradation and an awesome draw down of aquifers.

The state's professional society for environmental educators-Arizona Association for Environmental Education (AAEE)-supported by a generous grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust-hosted a statewide summit on sustainability:
The Arizona Crossroads Summit: ttp://www.arizonaee.org/events/summit.html

AAEE intends to find common ground among many sectors of Arizona's diverse culture to assure that life remains worth living (and visiting) here in the Copper State. Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust (http://www.ninapulliamtrust.org/html/) is betting on the long shot by investing in the Summit as part of their commitment to protect wildlife and facilitate a high quality of life for all Arizonans.

AAEE brought together over 80 decision-makers in April from government, business,technology, public education and university sectors along with interpreters and educators from parks, museums, nature centers and university science programs. They spent the day at the beautiful Heard Museum in Phoenix
(www.heard.org) considering how they can work together.

AAEE's members are people from all walks of life who value ecosystems and wildlife for its intrinsic value. Learning to speak the language of a broader group of Arizonans who may look at nature's value in terms of human wealth is an acquired skill. Yet both viewpoints can lead to the same end. The Crossroads Summit is AAEE's committment to interpret the value of nature in many "languages" to foster a grassroots movement that will result in more sustainable practices in a variety of sectors in Arizona.

At a Follow-up Meeting of Summit Participants at the Desert Botanical Garden, (www.dbg.org) the group focused on bringing networks of existing programs and services together to make them visible to the public. By doing so they hope to channel citizen action and support through them. In other words, there are hundreds of organizations, businesses and community groups who are already focused on sustainability and maybe all that is needed is to promote their efforts.

As this commences, the leaders believe it will define markets and illuminate what is missing from the picture. This dynamic process will lead to innovation and create a sense of being in this all together.

The Crossroads Summit moved out of the theoretical realm at the Follow-up Meeting and into action. Check the AAEE website for updates and ways to get involved: www.arizonaee.org.

Even as the Arizona Crossroads Summit moves into implementation, no one involved is deluded into thinking this fixes the problem of human impacts on fragile ecosystems in our state. This is only a first step together on a steep path but the path holds potential for Arizonans to reconsider how to live here, how to formulate a creative yet appropriate lifestyle.

For us the issue of water is of paramount importance. With Arizona at the dripping end of the Colorado River Water Pact, we face serious issues in the near future. The Follow-up Team is planning to focus on water exclusively in this early phase to support Governor Janet Napolitano's creation of a tri-university think tank to conserve water resources.

The message of the Arizona Crossroads Summit is clear: It will take all of us to make it into a viable future in Arizona.

Other resources to check out:

http://www.azwater.gov/dwr/

http://www.azcommerce.com/communityplanning/council.asp

~Susan

A Matter of Time

2006-07-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

There isn't any place I'd rather be than by an ocean. This is the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola's main beach.

Perhaps what captivates me is its energy. Many people, maybe all human beings, are beguiled by large bodies of water. Must be some cellular recognition of our origin, when relatives unrecognizable to us today rocked in the womb of life.

That we are at all related to strange looking creatures darting about in the light-filled strata of the oceans is at best a remote feeling. Yet we learn that we are. In some long ago past our line came packaged in a silicon skeleton!

Scientific American recently published a special edition, A Matter of Time (see below for link). If I read these articles correctly, our perception of time moving forward is a physiological consequence of our neurology. In fact past, present and future may exist simultaneously in the universe.

So perhaps our old relatives exist in the fabric of space, which scientists describe as a grid-like arrangement of matter and energy in something called "spin networks". I think you will find the articles in this special edition of Scientific American very thought provoking.

The ancient knowledge on this planet-which Western societies have denied credibility-includes an understanding of this grid-like structure of the universe. Presumably there were once Earthlings who utilized the energy lines of the electromagnetic grid (where the Earth's crust releases energy from deep within). These old lines were locations of sacred structures, pathways of lost civilizations with sofisticated knowledge of the Earth and the Universe.

An Iroquois Teacher once told me she participates in balancing energy flow along these lines to help the Earth in times of great disruptions of natural energy flows (climate change?).

When I walk along the shore of the ocean, lulled by the ebb and flow of its salty waves, I feel the pull of a numinous presence, a deep call from my core. I know intuitively that call comes from something much greater than the concerns of my daily life, a Source of profound wisdom that suffuses the entire Earth and indeed, the Universe.

Perhaps this is why I am drawn to oceans....

~Susan

A Matter of Time: http://www .sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssue&ISSUEID_CHAR=6A269AE7-2B35-221B-60DCBF6A2F13F5CF

On the Edge

2006-07-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

More articles and reports about Earth Changes. Acidification of oceans from increased absorption of carbon dioxide has reached levels that interfere with production of shells on lifeforms that are at the base of vast marine food webs; release of methane-rich cathrates during glacial and tundra thawing are expected; continued degradation of forests and grasslands rages on, imperiling Earth's large carbon sinks. Read below about acidification of oceans:

Growing Acidity of Oceans May Kill Corals By Juliet Eilperin
The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world's oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say. They warn that, by the end of the century, the trend could decimate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea's food web. To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/04/AR2006070400772.html?referrer=emailarticle

Our prevailing economic and political worldview results in the U.S. contributing the biggest impact per capita on the biosphere-a commons of air, water and land systems shared by the entire community of life. Our values, our Constitution, does not include the Earth and her communities of life under its protection. It is valueless in our principles of governance. This is a critical point we need to reevaluate.

For a country that purports to follow Christian ethics, what happened to the Law given to Moses? Natural Law. A very hopeful sign from religous communities shows some of us may be reexamining the Law:

Ecological efforts unite faiths in common cause. More than a decade ago on an Aegean island, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians made a startling proposition: That pollution and other attacks on the environment could be considered sins.

The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/14976527.htm
(c) 2006 ContraCostaTimes.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.

The environmental alarms have been screaming for decades now but so many of us are deaf. The question is "How can we bravely face the truth of our times?"

Hopefully we will face it together with grace and humility and a lot of determination to save all we can, and we will gain understanding about how to govern ourselves more ecologically. I live in that hope and intention.

~Susan

Great Voices of Democracy

2006-07-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

Is there not something worthy of perpetuation in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth, our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to impoverish or enslave his neighbor?
~ Ohiyesa, Santee Sioux (1858 – 1939)

Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.
~ Susan B. Anthony, Women’s Rights Leader (1820 – 1906)

When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the bitterest criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Leader (1929 – 1968)

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us as well at last as the truth. This alone wears well…. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. ~ David Henry Thoreau, American Dissenter (1817 – 1862)

Because we have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything - even our lives - in our struggle for justice.
~ Cesar Chavez, Leader of the Farm Workers’ Civil Rights Movement (1927 – 1993)

The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives… is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Women’s Rights Leader (1815 – 1902)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….
~ Declaration of Independence 1776

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. ~ Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1809 – 1865)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
~ Thomas Paine, American Patriot (1737 – 1809)

Americans raise their flag to honor Liberty and burn their flag when Liberty is in jeopardy. Liberty for All is the creed of true Americans. They cannot be swayed. They have tasted her intoxicating liberation. No government, no religious doctrine or person can deter true Americans from their pursuit of freedom.

Liberty is their only religion, their only banner. True Americans are free to think and free to live. Liberty whispers in their ears throughout the land.

On this 4th of July I am hoping for a sea change in American politics to right the wrongs of a misguided foreign policy. For the sake of Freedom and Liberty, bring home the troops.

Susan

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-19T03:48:00.000-07:00

If you have not yet seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, get there soon. http://www.climatecrisis.net.

Gore put together the information in a way that everyone can grasp the science. But more importantly, the consequences we face if we do not act now to sharply drop greenhouse gas admissions are straight-forward. The film does not use fear tactics. Rather, it is based on the assumption that intelligent people are watching the film and can grasp the meaning without it being hammered into their heads.

Few people realize how much their energy use at home impacts the environment. The average home produces twice as much greenhouse gas pollution as the average car, or about 22,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. Compare this to the typical automobile that produces 10,000 pounds of CO2 per year.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, replacing incandescent lighting with
compact fluorescent lighting will not only save considerable money, but can cut the amount of energy you use by 100%!

The DOE's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Network offers a clearinghouse of energy-efficiency information at http://www.eere.energy.gov/

Here is a great site to bookmark for dependable information and updates on how we are doing meeting the challenges of climate change: http://www.pewclimate.org/

Here's a site for kids: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/difference.html

As I listened and watched Gore, it was like a miracle: finally, we have a leader who is talking about the greatest threat to national security we have ever faced.

Finally, someone is respectfully but firmly bringing reality home. We have responsibilities to the children in our midst and to peoples the world over.

It burns me that we have lost so much time. Earth changes are in full swing already but if we act together we might be able to slow it down before we reach a threshold.

We can no longer expect or trust our government to lead us. It's up to us, until we can bring on leaders who can see farther than Captitol Hill.

The advent of An Inconvenient Truth playing on movie screens nationally is a historical marker. From here on out, we cannot say we did not understand or know what to do.

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead

See if you can walk, bike or carpool one day this week. Start a revolution.

Peace,

Susan

Win some, lose some

2006-06-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

The state of Florida continues in its long tradition of raping Mother Earth wherever and whenever it gets the chance: read Carl Hiaasen's article about the manatee's new status as threatened, no longer endangered. This opens the door for development to proceed as usual.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14782935.htm

I recently finished reading The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise by Michael Grunwald. It is a thorough, gut-wrenching chronicle of powerful men driven by greed and a twisted version of "for the greater good" that, like no other book I have read illustrates the misdirected values of our present economic system. Read a the New York Times review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/books/review/09martin.html?ex=1302235200&en=305f880b59bad761&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Just the quality of life and its continuance on Earth are at stake.

Sobered,
Susan

Mother Earth Scores on the Hill - Finally!

2006-06-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Ocean Conservancy reported today:

"Today, President George W. Bush declared the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, making it the largest marine reserve on the planet. The action will protect one of the last intact marine ecosystems in the world, one that is home to sharks, whales, extensive coral reefs and the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. The marine reserve would be free from commercial and extractive activities, allowing the entire marine ecosystem to continue to thrive for future generations." Read the full press release.

"The Ocean Conservancy released a scientific report on October 24, 2005, showing that even the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are not immune from the dangers of overfishing. The report — based on government data — reveals that some key fish populations in the area are in a steady decline due to fishing pressure.

Most of us have never been to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, an archipelago of islands and atolls located northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands that stretch for more than one thousand miles. There are no resorts, no restaurants, and no surfing beaches.

And that’s the point. This area is so remote that we humans have hardly made a mark on it. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands ocean ecosystem is home to extensive and massive reef colonies and thousands of marine species, many of which are found nowhere else on Earth. It stands apart as an oceanic gem at a time in which large fish are disappearing from the oceans and ecosystems around the world are in decline.

Fewer than a dozen commercial fishing boats currently make the long journey to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands’ waters. But, as our report illustrates, the ecosystem cannot remain healthy if any commercial fishing continues in the region.

On October 25, 2005, Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher of NOAA rejected an effort by WESPAC* to allow ecologically damaging fishing in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. By doing so, he has helped to preserve the natural character of this truly magnificent, globally important ecological treasure."

For more information on the role of The Ocean Conservancy in creating the chance for this positive action on behalf of one of the few remaining natural treasures on Earth: http://www.oceanconservancy.org

In his seminal work, the Diversity of Life, Edward O. Wilson (long regarded as one of the preeminent biologists living today) made this statement about the role of government in saving the last great reserves of biodiversity on this planet:

"The government's moral responsibility in the conservation of biodiversity is similar to that in public health and military defense. The preservation of species across generations is beyond the capactiy of individuals or even powerful private institutions. Insofar as biodiversity is deemed an irreplaceable public resource, its protection should be bound into the legal canon." (pg 342)

The role of The Ocean Conservancy was a critical piece in accomplishing this marvelous act. We need much more of this kind of cooperative action - and fast!

To learn more about hot spots of biodiversity that need to be protected go to:
http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots

Onward...and upward...!

Susan

Sacred Spaces

2006-06-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

At my house
Sacred datura and moonstone rose,
Two friends,
One native, one immigrant
Share this space
With me.

It rained this
morning early.
Datura opened
its white throat
and rose a petal,
and me a possibility.

Sacred datura is a native plant of the Sonoran Desert. http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/sonoran/index2.html It is more commonly known as Jimson weed. It's large, dark green foilage is amazing in light of the hot, dry conditions of the summer in this desert. At dusk it opens its large, flute shaped flowers, frequented by bees and moths. The large tuberous root looks almost like a limb.

All parts of this beautiful plant are poisonous. Shamans traditionally have used the seed for its hallucinagenic properties. Only experienced practitioners should use it however;many have died trying to enter dream states. Read The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castenada for a first-hand description of Sacred datura's powerful toxic alkaloids and its impact on the human mind and body. http://www.prismagems.com/castaneda/

Every place on Earth is imbued with these sacred places and mysteries. Our everyday drugs are derived from plants, minerals and animals. Aspirin for example is derived from the bark of willows. Long ago our ancestors used the pharmacopoeia of the landscape to increase health, prevent pregnancy, cure disease. These direct ties to plants, minerals or animals that promote the well-being and survival of human beings have largely been forgotten in modern culture.

How would our attitude toward the land around us change if we understood where that bottle of cold medicine in our medicine cabinet really came from? It just so happens that Sacred datura (Datura wrightii) produces scopolamine an alkaloid that is a common ingredient in cold and nausea remedies.

Go to this link for the National Tropical Botanical Garden to learn about conservation of one of the world's greatest sinks of plant biodiversity: http://www.ntbg.org. Visit this link to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson to learn about the amazing diversity of life in our desert: http://www.desertmuseum.org.

And next time you are near a plant, give thanks to it for the exchange of gasses (oxygen released into the air by plants/carbon dioxide exhaled by humans) that is one of the most essential relationships among the great kingdoms of life on Earth.

Information about Sacred datura came from The Natural History of the Sonoran Desert in an article by Mark Dimmitt.

Keep loving the Earth,

Susan

Path of the Warrior

2006-05-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

There are many paths of the warrior spirit.
My Dad followed the warrior's path with a band of brave men in a Superfortress, a Boeing B-29, over the Marianas in WWII.

Their warship was called Three Feathers and Dad was commander-USAF Captain Edward B. Feathers from the foothills of the Smoky Mts.

March Air Field Museum in California recovered Dad's plane in 1981, but not until 2002 was its early history discovered. In a seemingly fit WWII tradition, a gorgeous blond-flight engineer and then museum restoration director, Shayne Meder-headed up the restoration of Three Feathers to its original glory. http://www.marchfield.org/b29a.htm In fact yesterday three members of Dad's crew visited the plane they risked life and limb to keep airborne between the island of Saipan where they were based to bombing raids over Okinawa and Tokyo 60 years ago. http://www.janeresture.com/saipan/index.htm

In the footsteps of our fathers...
Two years ago I was privileged to join Joan Liska, daughter of my father's right waist gunner, Sargeant Matthew Moore, when we crawled into the restored Three Feathers and sat in our fathers' respective seats. We cried for joy and for the memory of her father who passed away. Then I fired up my cell phone and we called Dad. What a joy it was for him to know that after all these decades his own child sat in his cockpit! It was a peak moment in two daughters' lives.

I listen to accounts of how they skimmed the ocean at a harrowing altitude of 1500 feet with only two operable engines on one side, listing like a wounded bird, on a wing and a bunch of prayers. Or the time they stayed behind, circling Tokyo Bay under the nose of the entire Japanese fighter force, to call in help for a downed fighter pilot. As a child these seemed like tales from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It's taken decades to grasp even an inkling of the immensity of that world war, the incredible oneness of the American government and people, and the terrible loss of life and the darkness that threatened the world.

I realize how this path left an indelible trace on my Dad's life map. The crew's ages ranged from 19 to 27. Most were kids! In fact, they had not flown the new B-29 much at all. It was specially produced by Boeing for the Pacific Theater and crews were rushed through training for heavy bombardment on Japan in 1944-45 near the end of the war. Dad's crew went out together in harm's way and each person's life was in the others' hands. War is not glorious but the human bonds forged therein are lasting. While the crew now lives far apart, they still check in with each other and remember those passed on-mostly the funny stuff.

Citizen Warriors
I am very proud of my Dad. He put in another 20 years of military service retiring as a Lt. Colonel. He remained what he calls "a citizen warrior" as a reserve officer. In the war and his career in the Air Force he received many commendations. But, Dad never defined himself by the war or even his USAF career. He is a modern man who moves on and today finds he has changed many of his perspectives on war. After another dozen have come and gone, he doubts the value of war in modern times. I do, too.

We often reflect on the wisdom of the Marshall Plan that recognized the value of rebuilding Europe to prevent the conditions that foster hatred and lead to war or genocide. http://www.usaid.gov/multimedia/video/marshall/av.html General Marshall won the Nobel Peace prize for his work toward international peace. There is a great lesson that we have forgotten. The man who led the Allied Forces to victory in WWII turned peacemaker.

Eisenhower followed the path of peacemaker, too. As President, Eisenhower's prophetic view from the top (when he realized that America's corporations and U.S. military were too closely aligned for comfort) fell on deaf ears. Citizens forgot about the wisdom of Marshall and Eisenhower. As we entered the Cold War we massed arms. There was simply too much money to be made in building the military for more war. Eisenhower saw clearly how a democracy must be ever vigilant that her hard won freedoms not be chipped away from within. http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/hartung01.html

Dog Soldiers
In long ago times on Turtle Island in North America, a sacred society of warriors known as Dog Soldiers was established among the Cheyenne people. www.manataka.org/~manataka/page164.html

Of all the Cheyenne soldier societies, they were the the most respected. Dog Soldiers wore a sacred sash called a Dog Rope. It was staked to the ground where the Dog Soldier defended his nation as the last line of defense-often unto his death.

This impressed me so greatly that one night I dreamed that a new kind of American spirit, like that of the Dog Soldier, spread among the people of this nation. I saw people stand their ground for principles. They were the Senator that says no to preemptive war, the corporate boss willing to be transparent, the citizen who dissents on moral principles, and all who show compassion for the human condition. I saw the Nation defended fiercely by a new kind of warrior, one who uses words backed by action, and one who drives her/his stake into the ground, not yielding to convention or the path of least resistance. Some things are sacred and inviolate.

Running Raids on a Virtual Battleground in the 21st Century
Dad once flew a Superfortress, was as tough as nails. And for that war, I am glad for it. But now he flies a computer and runs raids on a virtual battleground. He's out there ambusing the charletons and misled leaders of this crazy world with a few strokes of his keyboard.

And he has organized his family and remaining crew members and their kids to our online Family Council. Everyday we receive Postings from the Chief. At 89 years of age he is still in command! But today he has joined the ranks of the gentle warriors, the peacemaker society.

I can only hope to live so well and to continue to grow with the times as he has. Today we deal with great uncertainty, and we are now a global tribe linked by our economies and a shared ecological future. All of us will have to find the new path of the warrior spirit, one that secures the peace and conserves the Earth.

~In honor of my Father, the crew of the Three Feathers,

and all the men and women who have gone down

the Path of the Warrior.~

Go in peace and wear your "Dog Rope"! The battlegrounds are everywhere Liberty is at stake.

Susan

Frolicking by the edge of the sea

2006-05-20T06:35:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago I had the good fortune of meeting Donis Davey. She was then a preschool instructor at the Orange County Marine Institute at Dana Point, California. http://www.ocean-institute.org/ Donis taught me how to recover the child in me so I could teach the smallest of students. We became friends along the way, and now, after her passing last year, I am missing her terribly. For Donis possessed the most treasured of qualities in a human being: passion!

Donis lived by the sea, actually by the San Clemente Pier, a famous place for surfers and beach goers in southern California. http://www.beachcalifornia.com/san-clemente-pier.html When you go to this link, follow the curving street up the hill and look for a white watch tower on top of a house. That's the tower she and her husband Don built so they could continue observing the ocean, something they did everyday. That house is where they raised their kids, and where Donis lived for over 30 years. She walked that beach everyday except when she was too sick to go down there.

The reason I am sharing this life with you is that I think Donis was on the right track in her life. She was fearless when it came to protecting the ocean and all its life. She was very active in land reforms and zoning policies and fought hard to keep the town and her neighborhood from overdevelopment. Well, as you can see in the picture of her neighborhood, she was not successful in keeping development down, but she influenced the way it happened. The point is Donis stood up for what she believed in.

My daughter recently accepted a position with the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C. One visit to their website reveals the need for citizen participation in the ongoing pressures of human activities on the ocean: http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home.

Donis taught children through her intuitive wisdom. She studied preschool education at Pasadena College, but her ability to engage little children in learning emanated from her own child within. Docents at the Marine Institute helped make puppets of all sizes and kinds for her programs. One remained a hallmark of Donis around Orange County: Sandwitch, a funny old witch who trashed the beaches and made the kids go wild with laughter at her antics. Donis had Sandwitch toss the plastic rings from a six pack on the "beach" only to find a bird or an otter end up strangled by it. She always had the kids rescue the victim. Other puppets were large enough for kids to get inside, like a gray whale that four kids could get inside and work the flukes and open its mouth to gather krill. Donis was alive and full of surprise and mystery. She always started off with a Treasure Box. What little kid doesn't want to know what's inside? There was a story connected to each object she slowly pulled from the box as kids stood up to see what was coming next!

Donis became a professional storyteller in her seventies. She travelled around the county performing in libraries. Her energy was boundless. She instituted the famous Ocean Birthday Party program that thousands of kids and parents attended. I helped her with these elaborate parties. She wore a lobster hat with long red segmented arms and pinchers protruding in every direction! We sang and danced the Hermit Crab Cha Cha which the kids loved because at one point they have to shake their "tails" and wiggle into a new shell. Watching parents shake their booty always made the kids crack up.

Toward the end of her life she held performances on the pier outside Schleppy's Bar and Grill on the Dana Point wharf. There one could find her dressed in purple, of course, and doning some crazy hat, draped with gorgeous jewelry made especially for her in the shape of seastars, dolphins, sand dollars and ocean waves. Sandwitch would be there, too, throwing styrafoam cups and saying the most outrageous things like, Why should I care about what happens to birds and fish? Donis's puppet co-star exemplified the worst human behavior toward the environment. Before long she would have a crowd around her with little kids booing Sandwitch's behavior.

Donis suffered from a host of life-long illnesses and finally died of a brain tumor. But inspite of her physical challenges, she accomplished more than most in a lifetime. Because of Donis Davey, there are tens of thousands of adults - once child prodigies of the woman who loved the ocean - out there with a love for the ocean in their hearts because Donis taught them to love it, to keep it well and to fight for the magnificent creation we hold in trust with our Creator.

Good teachers are worth their weight in gold. But sometimes we don't recognize them because they follow unusual paths. Donis's contributions to the Ocean Institute's program (then the Marine Institute) were never fully valued. The Director cast dispersions on her parties and while he never said it outloud to her, he thought they were frivolous compared to the other more scienctific classes taught to upper grades. Yet Donis followed the rose colored stream of passion that Rachel Carson so eloquently explained as the key to engendering a desire to protect and value nature:

Once emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love – then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.[1]
[1] Carson, Rachel (1965). A Sense of Wonder. New York: Harper & Row.

I look around and still see the stale factual presentations about "the environment." Once an Indian elder told me that her people have no word for environment because they do not conceptualize themselves as separate from it. "We are the environment," she told me.

Donis's abilities to bring the love and wonder about the ocean into the hearts of children derived from her own deep love for marine life - and that welled-up from a lifetime of exploration and experiences in and around oceans.

Even into her late 60's Donis could be found in a purple bathing suit with her colorful boogey board surfing the waves in front of her home at San Clemente pier. With the Boogaloos, a surfing club for which the only entrance requirement is you have to be at least 60, she held firm to the life force so many of us forget and eventually lose!

To my friend and mentor, Donis Davey, I am so glad that one such as you walked the Earth and that by the grace of God I had the opportunity to know you! Your spirit lives on in all of us who were lucky enough to know you and frolick with you by the edge of the sea!
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/edgeofsea/

http://www.mbayaq.org/ Monterey Bay Aquarium
http://www.sheddaquarium.org/ Shedd Aquarium

For some real fun, read Carl Hiaasen's two books: Hoot and Flush or go see the movie "Hoot" and fall in love with Florida oceans and estuaries. http://www.hootmovie.com/

Wild Thing

2006-05-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

Backed into a corner she is a wild thing that will devour you. Three Floridians went to that wild appetite this week down in Swamp country. There are laws of the natural world that can not be violated. Nature is feeling the pinch of the human footprint and innocent victims pay the price.

On a recent trip into the back country of Florida I made this photo. I consider it a window into a real world that can be pushed only so far.

Florida, the Real Florida, still exists - though it is harder to find through the web of artificiality humankind's insatiable appetite for land has created. Is this a reptilian payback? Not in a premeditated sense, but when we push closer and violate the boundaries of habitat other species require, well, gulp... those glittering white teeth probably are not smiling at us.

See Carl Hiaasen's article from the Miami Herald. He has the long perspective on gators! http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/carl_hiaasen/

I for one never want to be part of a gator's food chain. It is indeed tragic for the three women.

Wild thing! You make my heart...scream!

Susan

For Earth Day 2006

2006-04-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

The Earth within Us

The desert is full of contradictions. Its sparseness supports abundance; flowers bloom at night, creatures sleep by day. The desert follows its own song. I think that’s why I live there…because I want to learn how.

The rhythms of place, of hatchling or cub, of bud or seed, and the unmoving character of elder trees and weathered rocks that stand watch and hold the earth with fierce love-these affect me to my core.

Human institutions, on the other hand, serve me not. Built landscapes and unnatural acts like office work and traffic jams rise like dull monoliths separating me from my senses. They can not prevail though; I needn’t really worry. The earth is as much within as without. That we are separate from the environment is just another modern day scam.

We start out rocking in a warm sea, soothed by the steady beat of mother’s heart, enlivened by muffled strains of her voice. Like a rose unfolding petal by petal, we are brought into the world connected to the source of life. It’s just an illusion that we separate. There is something profound to be remembered here.

We each receive a marvelous body, a vessel to get about on Earth, a bellows to voice our thoughts and dreams, a way to pass on our traits to our progeny. This body of ours is durable, comes with its own self-repair kit, and given plenty of care and proper nutrition, is capable of great physical, mental, and spiritual acts.
Our body carries the ocean in its blood. Water, minerals and oxygen from the blood our mother gave us, passed down from distant times when our relatives rode on swells of plankton-rich depths, remain a tie with all time.

We take in earth, sky and water in the food we eat and the air we breathe. Our body's muscle, fat, elastic tissues, bones and teeth are all made up of earth, sky, water and fire. These remain profound connections with the Earth.

Even the movement of the Earth on its axis creates temperature, moisture, quality and length of sunlight, changes that our bodies respond to. Seasonal Affective Disorder is depression caused by lack of sunlight during winter months. A tiny mass of cells-the pineal gland in our brain-is a sun-sensor. It secretes a hormone when sun light enters through our eyes, a hormone that promotes a feeling of well-being. This is an old tie to a time when our relatives sensed light through these specialized cells underneath an azure sea.

Creatures of the moon, we women spend the majority of our lives fluctuating along a 28-day lunar cycle. Seasons prompt us to move faster or slower, build a nest or seek far-flung places, eat more fat or drink more water. We are centrally attuned to Earth and celestial forces. How could we forget?

I once befriended a child hidden in an old woman’s body. She dressed in purple and frolicked near the sea in California. She was a teacher of tiny children, the ones before school dims their lights. She taught me how to be a child again so I could become a real teacher. Donis brought me gifts from the sea. One of them was a children's book, Pagoo, by Holling and Lucille Hollings. It tells the adventures of a tiny hermit crab (Paguradae). That’s how I was reminded of Old Pal Instinct!

Pagoo’s kind start out as tiny dabs of protoplasm drifting in giant surf and thrown against the rocky tide pools and reefs. Most of his clan never make it to adulthood. But Pagoo’s internal sage, Old Pal Instinct, cues him at each important step of his life. Old Pal is responsible for saving Pagoo’s sausage-shaped butt as he navigates life's storm-tossed seas, predator-laden reefs and the ever-changing tides of a hermit crab’s life.

Adult humans have an Old Pal Instinct buried under multiple layers of should’s and cant’s, should of’s and could of’s. Unless wisely instructed, most of us forget Old Pal soon after we are born. Yet instinct is always at work cuing us even if we have no "ear" to listen. Old Pal whispers what to eat and not eat; when to rest and when to get going. When we are in a threatening situation, Old Pal tells us to “get the hell out of there!”

Unfortunately, at almost every urging from Old Pal Instinct, modern society teaches us to ignore our inner wisdom, sometimes even telling us we should act or feel directly opposite. Children raised in dysfunctional families, for example, are taught to ignore their need for human warmth and affirmation, learning instead to stuff their feelings and be independent. Yet our dependence on each other is one of humankind’s most basic instincts that promotes well being, i.e. survival.

Our inner set of instructions, included with each new baby, is the wisdom of billions of living relatives gleaned by experience over millennia. Not to make use of Old Pal Instinct causes grief and sickness and hampers the full unfolding of the human spirit. "Failure to thrive" is a dramatic example of our irrefutable connection to each other. Without physical touching and maternal nurturing, human infants quit eating and die. They wither on the vine in emotionally barren soil, the inner fire of will just flickers out.

We are learning about another basic need: the health promoting aspects of beauty and quietude that promote mental, physical and spiritual health. Humans, we are learning, need to look at flowers, trees, open sky and bodies of water. Without natural landscapes we experience a kind of pervasive stress. City parks provide relief from heat, noise and artificiality. We are most likely to wax cynical, lose heart and go a little insane without the beauty of nature as a reassurance that life is worth living. This is because we are not separate from the Earth nor have we ever been.

In the Twenty-First Century, 80% of the world's population lives in or near a city. The majority of people live in very poor conditions. Hopelessness serves to squander a huge reservoir of human ingenuity. The loss of instinctual knowledge among civilized people additionally ensures we will struggle to determine how to live well together.

The tragedy of our time is that we are the cause of our own suffering. We are witnessing the fraying of whole biological systems in our oceans, lands and air. Certainly, some species will survive and "Go on!" as Old Pal Instinct instructs. But humans depend upon the whole of the environment to survive. The survival of the human race into the future is in question by many who are watching the demise of earth ecosystems.

What does Old Pal Instinct tell us Homo sapiens about living on Earth?

Protect Diversity
Diversity is good. We humans like variety! We are drawn to places where there are communities of different living organisms. Our inner wisdom leads us to keep a diverse gene pool of living things to ensure survival.

Stick Together
There is safety in numbers! Social relationships provide all the basic things we need. Families and communities share resources with each other and provide support and protection. Our inner wisdom promotes the survival of group members.

Be Good
Old Pal leads species to cooperate more than compete. Respecting territory, observing rules of engagement, feeding another’s young when they cannot, are the wisdom of altruistic genes. These conserve energy and resources and protect the group’s viability.

Be Moderate
Humans living together need to share equitably so there is enough for everyone, and there is no over-harvesting of any one resource by individuals or groups. Life on Earth is in a dynamic state of balance.

Old Pal Instinct tells us to rise with the sun and retire with the sunset; to work in the early morning and rest at mid-day; to commiserate in the afternoon and eat well together in the early evening; to laugh heartily, speak our minds but listen to each other. Old Pal teaches us mammals that our progeny must be nurtured. Like seedlings of a fruit tree we gently care for them and hope they bare much fruit one day.

Above all, we need hugging, touching, freedom of movement physically and mentally. Old Pal urges us outside to garden, hike and ruminate, to slow down and live in the moment. Old Pal tells old, old stories of those who went before us. We are reminded of our story because we need it to set our life and give it meaning and purpose.

I believe it has come to pass that even with our great intelligence and schools of thought about so many other things, we as a culture have lost touch with the set of instructions that bring balance to our actions: a sense of how much is enough, a feeling of reverence for all life, and basic knowledge of how to live on Earth.

These are all "there" in our genes if only we were attuned to recognize it. We must not forget, however, that at least very young children still know where the sidewalk ends and the moon bird rests in the cool of the peppermint wind. They could lead us back to our senses.

Once I had a spot on the Earth where I sat in soft green grass. It was on a little hill on the side of my grandparents’ gravel driveway that wound around their farm. It pitched toward a meadow and onward to Aunt Kates’ farm that stretched to fill a little gorge with green fields and spotted cows. Near my spot a tiny pond (created by my grandmother from an upturned tin garbage-can lid) collected drops of water from an old spicket until it was full to the brim. With each new drop a little water spilled over the edges catching the sunlight like a diamond. I sat in quietude, holding my breath to not disturb the blue dragonfly with gossamer wings skimming over the water, or the tiny bee perched so carefully on the edge to imbibe a little of life’s elixir. I smelled the sweet, cool fragrance of mint that grew around the edges and entered the dreamtime of being in perfect harmony with life energies. I was eight years old.

Will life be worth living without such moments? Can we live without them?

Lately, when I walk in the desert on a cool morning, I wonder how much more the Earth that is in me and all around me can take of our foolishness. Then perhaps I am stopped by the sudden trill of a cactus wren perched on a tall saguaro. I can see its feathered throat shudder and expand with breath. And for that moment I am lifted up by one still following its own true song.

To all my friends and family and readers who visit this blog, I urge each of you to celebrate the Earth within you! Below are the books that inspired this essay, each one a gem. - Susan

References

1. Berry, Thomas (1988). The Dream of the Earth. Sierra Club Books.

2. Berry, Thomas (1999). The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. New York: Bell Tower.

3. Bowlby, John (1980). Attachment and Loss, Vol. III. London: The Holgarth Press, Ltd. And The Institute of Psyche-Analysis,

4. Hollings, Holling C. & Lucille W. Holling (1957). Pagoo. N.Y. Houghton Mifflin Co.

5. Kuhn, Peter H. Jr, (1998). The Human Relationship with Nature. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

6. Nabhan, Gary Paul and Stephen Trimble (1994). The Geography of Childhood. Boston: Beacon Press.

7. Orr, Daniel (1994). Earth in Mind. Island Press Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

8. Silverstein, Shel (1974). Where the sidewalk ends. N.Y.: HaperCollins Publishers.

9. Wilson, Edmond O. (1998) Consilience: the Unity of Knowledge. New York. Alfred A. Knopf.

10. Wilson, Edmond O. (2002) The Future of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Jesus Packed His Bags and Left Town!

2006-04-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

On any given night 4,000 homeless people need a place to sleep in Tucson. Only about 1,500 beds are available. On any given day, the Community Food bank delivers enough food for over 30,000 meals in Pima County. Contrary to prevailing stereotypes, most people who need emergency food are either children of one or more working parents or seniors whose retirement no longer covers the bills.

For the past month I have been taking notes at Pima County Outside Agency (PCOA) roundtable discussions. Rather than hawking our own grant requests with the usual competition for morsels from government (reduced each year), PCOA decided to wipe the board clean and start a whole new process for determining the needs of low-income residents.

Instead of the usual begging, each agency was invited to a roundtable discussion with colleagues from the same service sector (housing, emergency food, youth development and so on). A professional facilitator leads the session during which each panel member answers one of five questions. Members are instructed not to answer in terms of their grant requests but rather in terms of their sector’s mission and work in general.

Many of us were skeptical in the beginning but most now see that the process does define the need more sharply, showing where there are missing services or links between them. This is really important considering the measly $2.1 million available for over 90 organizations applying for Outside Agency funding. And folks, it is NOT a pretty picture. If you are not depressed when you arrive, you’ll surely leave so.

Arizona ranks 40th or lower out of the 50 states in just about every indicator for poverty, homelessness, high school drop out rates, and even infant mortality. And Tucson ranks even lower in these categories with the highest poverty and homelessness in the state.

Thus we witness the Herculean efforts of shelters, food banks, counseling and juvenile justice programs; the work of churches and synagogues and the generosity of the community. But we are all on a treadmill and the belt just revolves so we never get to goal. What’s at the base of these dismal conditions?

Our economic system creates poverty because it is based on low wages for high profits. To meet stockholder expectations, companies go for the highest profit margin. Cheap labor is essential in this scenario without social values to inform it. What most people do not know or fully appreciate is the fact that we all pay in the end for the misery we create: for every dollar of prevention not spent, we pay fourteen dollars in clean up down the road. Poverty may be greatest form of violence but it also makes no sense financially.

Homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, crime, poverty and chronic illness have deep roots in low wages and the stress of limited resources. Poverty breeds poverty just as wealth breeds wealth. Whatever disadvantages you may be handed as a child in a poor family play out just like the advantages handed to a child in a wealthy family. A child gets a downward blow or a step up. It has nothing to do with either child’s worthiness or character or talent. But it may have to do with a child’s ethnicity, sex or physical abilities, even a child’s beauty, and these latter factors are socially determined by us.

All about us swirls one incongruity after another: I sit in the boardroom of foundations with my colleagues representing the unfortunate. We all earn low salaries. Many professionals in social services end up using the services themselves because they are so close to poverty. Often they work in organizations where the differential between the administrative assistant salary and the CEO salary is more than 200%.

As I sat in a Request for Proposals meeting at one of our community’s premier foundations, it occurred to me how bizarre it is that we are there to beg for the interest earned funds of wealthy people who got where they are by the profit driven strategies that create the problems we are there to get money to mitigate. Sometimes it is good not to think.

But if I do, I am driven to try to get others thinking about a world where a child is considered society’s greatest hope, and a country where we agree that no matter what a child’s family situation may be, he or she is going to get the best of everything – guaranteed – because we are smart enough to know that is the way to create a world worth living in.

Worried about terrorists? We should think about the social and economic conditions that create a terrorist out of hopelessness and poverty. Worried about crime? We should think about crime as a symptom of hopelessness and poverty.

The answers to society’s greatest woes lay in the boardrooms of our wealthy corporations and in the hands that invest in them. They lie in the hearts of people who look more deeply into social ills and do not cop out with attitudes like “there will always be poverty…Jesus said so.” I am sorry to be the one to burst your bubble, but in the face of American hubris and greed, Jesus packed his bags and left town a long time ago.

Poverty is our creation, not God’s.

To read the dismal statistics click here:
http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/sld/profile_results.jsp?d=1&r=4

To do something about them click here:
http://www.socialinvest.org/areas/sriguide/

Till next time,

Susan

Gandhi's Truth

2006-04-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

It is a quiet, bright sunny day in the southwestern desert. Last night as the stars twinkled brightly over my little condo, my son and daughter in law were terrified by the tornadoes that ripped through their town south east of Nashville.

My family has experienced extreme weather events for the last three years. My father and two of my sisters live in Pensacola on the Gulf. Gulf waters are the cause of the hurricanes that devasted Pensacola and New Orleans and the region in general. These Tennessee and Texas tornadoes are also the result of a warmer Gulf. http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures/

While Washington pundits argue over immigration, the war in Iraq, and play their games of truth and consequences, global climate change is accelerating. We will not be able to claim we did not know. For over three decades scientists have been warning us of the possible tipping point humans could trigger if we continued to dump so much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3629540a6026,00.html

Perhaps the evolving part of our intelligence is still in the frontal cortex, responsible for forecasting and long-range planning. Indeed, Americans seem to be infants in this regard by our lack of leadership in the world community to stave off disaster by acting with prudence and self-discipline. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4501636

It is a bitter pill to watch who is hurt most by climate disasters. While the rich can pull up and move, buy generators and other survival gear, the majority of people and certainly the poor and low income citizens of our country are without resources to recover without a huge burden.

In so many sectors of American society we witness the skewed nature of what we tolerate as acceptable behavior: amassing huge wealth in the face of so much poverty and suffering; irresponsibly continuing a lifestyle that contributes to global warming; claiming our tolerance for freedom of speech as we attempt to subdue and dampen the voices of reason and protest that seek to reveal the wrongs of our government's policies and behavior world wide. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2003/04/06/stories/2003040600120200.htm

Last night and this morning I rewatched the movie "Gandhi" which I do each year about this time to reset my moral compass. Today his word's are ever more prophetic:

"Whenever I despair I remember that the way of truth and love has always won out over hatred and war. It can seem for a time that despots and tyrants will win, but in the end they always fall. Always. Think of it."
http://www.mahatma.org.in/index.jsp

The connections between peace and justice and the environment are becoming defined in this decade as we see that unjust economic and political movements reek havoc on the earth either by omission or commision.

Hopeful signs are the many unadvertised efforts of companies and individuals already reducing their carbon dioxide load on the environment. I have been looking into ways I can do that too. Here is an interesting site to get started seeing who is doing what, and where you can find green watts for your energy consumption:
http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/

Replacing your regular lightbulbs with flourescent long life bulbs is the modern version of a peace prayer.

Think of it.

Susan

Died and Gone to Heaven

2006-03-21T15:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend I traveled to Grayton Beach, Florida for the wedding of my neice, Jennifer, daughter of my big sister, Beverly.

Jennifer is an performance artist, working as marketing and production manager for Michael Belk (http://www.michaelbelk.com/) a nationally known photographer. Michael came to photograph his protege's wedding, gratis. Amazingly generous.

Jen's new husband, Scott Plumbly, is chef of Criolla's Restaurant in Grayton Beach. It is rated as one of the top 20 resturants in Florida. Criolla's staff catered the wedding with first class gourmet dishes. Scott made the wedding cake, a work of art adorned with pineapple seastars, orchids, creamy thick butter frosting and chocolate layers (I am sure this is very basic description from an untrained pallette...to be corrected and embellished when the newly weds drop out of cloud nine). Maybe we will even get the recipe!

The event was exceptional for all the above reasons, but also because the condo at which the wedding took place is on the shore of a spectacular coastline in the community of Watercolors near Destin. As Jen and Scott exchanged vows, the intimate group of friends and family looked out over a glittering Gulf, lipped by white sands and capped with blue skies.

Family members rented the most terrific "cabins" from Florida State Parks: http://www.floridastateparks.org/graytonbeach/Photos-Park.cfm . Each "cabin" sleeps up to six people comfortably, sports a porch with rocking chairs, fireplace and modern kitchen. No phones but cell phones work there. No TV but a game table to scrabble, cards, etc.

The beach is nearby through piney paths and over real live barrier dunes that can only be found in places likes national parks that harbor them from development.

Jennifer and Scott stayed up the night before recording all their favorite jazz and blues CD's. They have exquisite taste. Listening to Nora Jones and Dave Brubeck, I thought I had died and gone to heaven...well, almost!

And the rains came!

2006-03-12T07:57:00.001-08:00

A huge low pressure system in the grand old Pacific pulled cold air from the North downward to circle over the ocean, scoop up a big handful of blessed moisture, sprinkle it over the desert of southern Arizona and dump tons of it on its northern mountains!

I went to bed with the delicious sound of rain popping on the roof and awakened to a rain washed, sparkling desert. The birds' songs are sharp and clear, the sun is shining in azure blue skies, the mountains are circled by while fluffy clouds, and I am on my way out the door to hike and breathe in the pungent fragrance of wet creosote.

Blessings upon the Earth. I thank Mother Earth and Father Sky - and, the capriousness of life and climate!

Let's work together so we do not have to wait another 100 days for this precious resource. Stayed tuned....

Susan

Why We Fight

2006-03-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

Today I saw "Why We Fight" a documentary based on the ominous warning of Dwight D. Eisenhower as he left office. It is a very comprehensive movie that reviews the history of our military-government-congressional relationships since the 1950's.

The film did not tell me anything I did not know, but rather put it together in a straight forward way that affirms my sense of urgency about the fate of the Americam nation. Truly our country is in trouble.

It is a bitter pill to realize I live in a country that is not what it says it is. And we never have been, but it took a while to figure that out. Most American citizens take at face value what they are told by govenment or hear on TV. But even a cursory examination shows we are imposters to other countries and people who have to deal with us.

The actions and policies set by a run-away government have placed our children and grandchildren in a very dangerous place historically. They used-up, no, threw away, the good will countries once felt toward the U.S.

There is too much money to be made on war. That is the point.

I have to figure out what I can do now, and how what I do will help me live with integrity in the future.

Susan

The World Is Changing Before Our Eyes

2006-03-04T07:02:00.001-08:00

With seemingly little fanfare or response from either the Congress or the public, we have just witnessed President Bush and his Capitol Hill entourage shift the power relationships in Asia by power-broking with nukes and delivering another blow to the possibility of peaceful coexistence among human communities on Earth.

I personally feel completely disengaged from the people who supposedly represent me in Congress, and I am more convinced that when we observe these dramatic actions from Bush that it is all part of a carefully constructed plan and philosophy, far from the actions of a democracy, just being rolled out in spite of any public will or consensus process on the Hill.

Below is the letter I sent all my respresentatives in DC last week. I fully expect a form letter, not responding to my concerns, but a statement of what my representatives personally think should happen. I am talking in the wind.

What can a private citizen do? This is my deep musing this morning. What can I personally do to right the wrong action of this government when my Constitutional means and methods for democratic action are so compromised as to be like citizens in countries with anti-democratic governments? I will decide and I will act, but it will be like nothing I have ever thought about doing before.

For sure, I will be supporting Moveon.org and other democratic people's action forums. Should I pay my taxes? How can I best protest what is happening to the land I love so much? What can I do so that when I die I can go knowing I tried to leave a legacy of hope and promise for my children?

Letter to My Representatives:

February 26, 2006

Senator John McCain
SR-241Washington, D.C. 20510-0303

Senator Jon Kyl
SH-730Washington, D.C. 20510-0304

Congressman Raul Grijalva
1440 LHOBWashington, D.C. 20515-0307

Dear Sirs,

My concerns about the direction of the United States government in foreign relations and domestic security prompt me to write you directly. I share these concerns with you and urge you to act on behalf of me and other Americans citizens who share my view.

First and foremost is the issue of war in Iraq and instability in the Middle East in general. As I step back and look at the results of our invasion and occupation of Iraq – and the deceit imposed on Congress and the voting public – I see a more destabilized Middle East, an erosion of many international relationships with allies and world bodies such as the United Nations and European Union. I see leaders in countries on the South American continent who polarized their nations away from the U.S. as a reaction to the heavy-handed diplomacy of Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney.

U.S. leadership, developed over decades of careful diplomacy, has been wasted and delivered a mortal blow by this administration.

I did not vote for George Bush but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, to examine closely the rationale that drives his administration’s decision and policies. After six years of disappointing results, and more – with our country’s security more imperiled than ever – I and many of my fellow citizens have no faith whatsoever in this administration.

Impeachment has crossed my mind, but how can we impeach an entire administration?

Domestically Americans have never been in worse shape. While costs of living rise, the amount of take home pay has declined; medical care and social security are passing through the hands of this generation, the Boomers, to be non-existent for future generations. How could this happen in the land of plenty, the most important democracy on Earth?

I would like to answer that question: it has happened because a belief in the free market, unbound by democratic principles, continues to sequester wealth in the top 1% of Americans. Corporations have grown to control almost all of what occurs in Washington these days. This must stop!

I represent educated citizens who are active in voting, responding to issues and working locally to maintain our democratic principles.

We, the voters, elected you to seek wise counsel, to learn all you can about issues, laws, and bills that come before you for critical decisions. The Republic we established two centuries ago is based on a body of representatives, who by virtue of their talent, good sense, and clear intent to uphold the provisions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, run this country for us, its citizens - its blades of grass.

With all due respect, I believe this has been imperfectly implemented. Republican or Democrat, it is a disappointing and worrisome record.

I write you out of my own respect for your office and your efforts. But for reasons unclear to me, we are much worse off than I can ever remember as a citizen. I grew up in a military family. But today my family and I no longer believe in armed conflict. In fact millions of Americans have seen through the wrong idea that war brings peace.

Today I see my representatives embroiled in petty infighting when what is needed is a much broader vision of where this nation is headed and what we stand for. We based our government and indeed the viable future of our democracy on the principles of religious freedom and non-violent co-existence with agreement on a set of basic values expressed in the Bill of Rights.

Instead, Congress and this administration have tried to impose on us a one-size-fits-all religious and social reform movement that is anti-democratic. Moreover, this set of ideas is being used in international relations to our great detriment. We are isolated, hated by other religious groups and nations, and about half the American population is not represented by these ideas.

Yet, Congress has offered little resistance, supporting laws like the Patriot Act to be voted in and then re-approved, even after the recent revelations of security abuses in the highest office of government have come to light.

Clearly this administration acts above the law at will. This is treason. Where‘s the outcry, the outrage from our representatives?

To me, we are in the most confused and fragmented state in American government in my lifetime. We need a whole new kind of leadership, one that can rise above politics to the high calling of democratic principles.

Can you help? What can I do? How can we save our Republic from this threat? I urge you to consider these actions:

Ø Pull our troops out of Iraq with a staged withdrawal plan;
Ø Use the resources saved on military occupation to help New Orleans rebuild wisely, and develop the Homeland Security program to needed levels;
Ø Immediately launch a program to significantly reduce green house gases in recognition that global climate change is currently the greatest threat to national and international security;
Ø Pay down the national debt;
Ø Invest billions saved on the war to strengthen American schools; start by raising the salary of teachers across the country;
Ø Launch a national citizen education campaign to study and re-invoke a discussion about the Constitution and Bill of Rights;
Ø Recognize publicly that we are not a Christian nation only, but a pluralistic nation of many faiths, people who come together based on a set of principles outlined in our Constitutional laws;

For my part and those of citizens who share my view, we promise to:
Ø Elect wise leaders who have clearly demonstrated their commitment to principles, not politics, special interests, or a personal religious ethic.

We have a catastrophe in American government. An administration and a President, who act on their own, in secret, and who espouse a religious and moral agenda not permitted by our laws, have gripped this country for six long years and taken us to a point of great peril. We have to bring it to an end.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan L. Williams

The World Is Changing Before Our Eyes

2006-03-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

With seemingly little fanfare or response from either the Congress or the public, we have just witnessed President Bush and his Capitol Hill entourage shift the power relationships in Asia by power-broking with nukes and delivering another blow to the possibility of peaceful coexistence among human communities on Earth.

I personally feel completely disengaged from the people who supposedly respresent me in Congress, and I am more convinced that when we observe these dramatic actions from Bush that it is all part of a carefully constructed plan and philosophy, far from the actions of a democracy, just being rolled out in spite of any public will or consensus process on the Hill.

Below is the letter I sent all my respresentatives in DC last week. I fully expect a form letter, not responding to my concerns, but a statement of what my representatives personally think should happen. I am talking in the wind.

What can a private citizen do? This is my deep musing this morning. What can I personally do to right the wrong action of this government when my Constitutional means and methods for democratic action are so compromised as to be like citizens in countries with anti-democratic governments? I will decide and I will act, but it will be like nothing I have ever thought about doing before.

For sure, I will be supporting Moveon.org and other democratic people's action forums. Should I pay my taxes? How can I best protest what is happening to the land I love so much? What can I do so that when I die I can go knowing I tried to leave a legacy of hope and promise for my children?

Letter to My Representatives:

February 26, 2006

Senator John McCain
SR-241Washington, D.C. 20510-0303

Senator Jon Kyl
SH-730Washington, D.C. 20510-0304

Congressman Raul Grijalva
1440 LHOBWashington, D.C. 20515-0307

Dear Sirs,

My concerns about the direction of the United States government in foreign relations and domestic security prompt me to write you directly. I share these concerns with you and urge you to act on behalf of me and other Americans citizens who share my view.

First and foremost is the issue of war in Iraq and instability in the Middle East in general. As I step back and look at the results of our invasion and occupation of Iraq – and the deceit imposed on Congress and the voting public – I see a more destabilized Middle East, an erosion of many international relationships with allies and world bodies such as the United Nations and European Union. I see leaders in countries on the South American continent who polarized their nations away from the U.S. as a reaction to the heavy-handed diplomacy of Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney.

U.S. leadership, developed over decades of careful diplomacy, has been wasted and delivered a mortal blow by this administration.

I did not vote for George Bush but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, to examine closely the rationale that drives his administration’s decision and policies. After six years of disappointing results, and more – with our country’s security more imperiled than ever – I and many of my fellow citizens have no faith whatsoever in this administration.

Impeachment has crossed my mind, but how can we impeach an entire administration?

Domestically Americans have never been in worse shape. While costs of living rise, the amount of take home pay has declined; medical care and social security are passing through the hands of this generation, the Boomers, to be non-existent for future generations. How could this happen in the land of plenty, the most important democracy on Earth?

I would like to answer that question: it has happened because a belief in the free market, unbound by democratic principles, continues to sequester wealth in the top 1% of Americans. Corporations have grown to control almost all of what occurs in Washington these days. This must stop!

I represent educated citizens who are active in voting, responding to issues and working locally to maintain our democratic principles.

We, the voters, elected you to seek wise counsel, to learn all you can about issues, laws, and bills that come before you for critical decisions. The Republic we established two centuries ago is based on a body of representatives, who by virtue of their talent, good sense, and clear intent to uphold the provisions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, run this country for us, its citizens - its blades of grass.

With all due respect, I believe this has been imperfectly implemented. Republican or Democrat, it is a disappointing and worrisome record.

I write you out of my own respect for your office and your efforts. But for reasons unclear to me, we are much worse off than I can ever remember as a citizen. I grew up in a military family. But today my family and I no longer believe in armed conflict. In fact millions of Americans have seen through the wrong idea that war brings peace.

Today I see my representatives embroiled in petty infighting when what is needed is a much broader vision of where this nation is headed and what we stand for. We based our government and indeed the viable future of our democracy on the principles of religious freedom and non-violent co-existence with agreement on a set of basic values expressed in the Bill of Rights.

Instead, Congress and this administration have tried to impose on us a one-size-fits-all religious and social reform movement that is anti-democratic. Moreover, this set of ideas is being used in international relations to our great detriment. We are isolated, hated by other religious groups and nations, and about half the American population is not represented by these ideas.

Yet, Congress has offered little resistance, supporting laws like the Patriot Act to be voted in and then re-approved, even after the recent revelations of security abuses in the highest office of government have come to light.

Clearly this administration acts above the law at will. This is treason. Where‘s the outcry, the outrage from our representatives?

To me, we are in the most confused and fragmented state in American government in my lifetime. We need a whole new kind of leadership, one that can rise above politics to the high calling of democratic principles.

Can you help? What can I do? How can we save our Republic from this threat? I urge you to consider these actions:

Ø Pull our troops out of Iraq with a staged withdrawal plan;
Ø Use the resources saved on military occupation to help New Orleans rebuild wisely, and develop the Homeland Security program to needed levels;
Ø Immediately launch a program to significantly reduce green house gases in recognition that global climate change is currently the greatest threat to national and international security;
Ø Pay down the national debt;
Ø Invest billions saved on the war to strengthen American schools; start by raising the salary of teachers across the country;
Ø Launch a national citizen education campaign to study and re-invoke a discussion about the Constitution and Bill of Rights;
Ø Recognize publicly that we are not a Christian nation only, but a pluralistic nation of many faiths, people who come together based on a set of principles outlined in our Constitutional laws;

For my part and those of citizens who share my view, we promise to:
Ø Elect wise leaders who have clearly demonstrated their commitment to principles, not politics, special interests, or a personal religious ethic.

We have a catastrophe in American government. An administration and a President, who act on their own, in secret, and who espouse a religious and moral agenda not permitted by our laws, have gripped this country for six long years and taken us to a point of great peril. We have to bring it to an end.

Respectfully submitted,

Susan L. Williams

Building Air Castles

2006-03-03T04:42:00.000-08:00

My father recently told me a story about his parents.

Grandad and Mamaw Feathers lived in the green, rolling hills of east Tennessee on the Watauga River. Throughout my youth my family and I visited them on their hill top, shaded by giant maples and elms.

Grandad and Uncle Anthony built their house with tall, narrow gables and a wide porch. On that porch, me, my sisters and cousins happily passed summer days, sitting side by side, our tanned legs and sneakered feet suspended over broad chair swings at each end. We laughed and connived, swinging to and fro and to and fro.

Each swing was painted dark forest green to contrast with the highly lacquered battleship gray of the floor boards and crisp white of the clapboard house. These were our cradles in which we rocked together in shady cool on summer days or liquid nights with fireflies dancing in the dark above the gravel driveway. We whispered instead of talking outloud on that porch.

Mamaw and Grandad moved into the hill top home as a young married couple. Both my Dad and Aunt Marynelle were born and raised there. It was a good place to be from.

Grandad made his living as a carpentar and often worked in his brother Anthony's construction business. The two of them could build anything. They were never without work. Mamaw was an excellent gardener. She always had rows of turnips, rubarb, tomatoes, pole beans and an arbor of grapes growing.

Grandad kept cattle, pigs, and chickens. He cured hams in a smoke house and Mamaw canned beans and tomatoes and made pickles in Mason jars that lined the stone and earth cellar I loved to visit. In this cool dark place we discovered old toys and Mamaw's fruit cakes curing on wooden shelves.

There was always an abundance of food at my grandparents. It just seemed to ooze out of the earth and the kitchen!

But during the Depression years, things got very tight according to Dad. He remembers being hungry and no jobs or business going on anywhere. Grandad and his brother scraped together enough money to buy an old jalopy and actually drove to New York state just to work on a construction job building a gas station! Imagine.

Dad remembers his parents invented a game they called "Building Air Castles." This game lifted their hearts by firing up their imaginations. It probably took place on the swings. Either Grandad or Mamaw would start it off by describing a world just the way they wanted it to be, one or two sentences. Then the other would add to it and so on, weaving a world together.

They laughed and entertained themselves on many a day, Dad recalls, and they sometimes came up with really great ideas!

And so, keeping the tradition going, I decided to write a book about our human community and how we learned to live sustainably and in peaceful coexistence across the globe. When I began to share this idea with my friends and family, it seized their imaginations, too! People give me ideas and ask me, "Are you still writing that book, the one about the future? I sure hope so, I love that idea!"

It's title is Building Air Castles.

Writer's Life Can be Miserable

2006-02-27T18:15:00.000-08:00

Came home after a long day to find a rejection note and returned manuscript from Rita Rozenkrantz in NY. "I would find this book hard to sell," was her hand written comment. As I walked to the front door from my car after driving home from a totally boring day at a bureaucratic grants training, I flinched from the dagger in my heart.

I know agents have to choose, but sometimes they are tactless in their honesty. The mail date told me she probably had the proposal in her hands for less than a day!

Okay that officially makes six rejections: batting 6 for 10.

These messages from the "world" can be one of two things: 1.) revelations about how out of touch I am with the culture; 2.) revelations about how out of touch the agent is with the culture. I suppose there is a third: 3.) they mean nothing in particular. That's even worse!

After two glasses of wine I feel appreciably inebriated to pass into sleep and get up to another day when my dream might have a chance.

It's hard to write after this. But, I am sure I will revive and write anyway. Come to think of it, I really don't give a damn. I write everyday regardless, and I don't know why. It's just part of me and the day, like the coffee I brew each day. It's all part of orienting myself to the universe and trying to make some kind of meaning out of my life.

Sobered Susan

Chance Encounter

2006-02-24T06:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I met Ruby in front of the short order counter at Rincon Market.

She was dressed in a dark burgundy suit that contrasted with her dark skin and jet black hair, deep set and penetrating eyes. Our gaze met and for some unknown reason I could not look away.

I broke the silence with "There are so many choices, it makes it hard to know what to order!"

"Oh, I know what you mean."

It amazes me how small talk is the means of breaking down the unseen but very sturdy walls we each carry around with us. Our souls came scrambling out to meet each other.

We sat at my little table watching the short order cook prepare our meals.

"I just love this market," I remarked.

"Yes, me too," she said.

"Have you lived in Tucson long?" I inquired.

"Seventeen years! I moved here from my homeland of Pakistan," Ruby's explained, her dark eyes peering intently at me.

"Wow. I just read a wonderful book you might enjoy. It's written by a woman from what was Persia then...."

"Iran now!" interrupted Ruby leaning forward a little.

"Yes. It is a very funny book. It is called 'Funny in Farsi'...but it really is a serious book that shows how cultures can clash or be insensitive out of just plain ignorance!"

Why this book jumped into my thoughts is probably related to my own ignorance, just lumping everyone from the middle east into one group of people. But she did not seem perturbed by it, possessing that graciousness of people who have put up with it for years.

"Yes. You know when I was a young girl in Pakistan, we had what you call...oh I can't think of the word now...untouchables! Yes, untouchables. I was taught to never speak to them, that they belonged to another class. Then I fell in love with a man who was a Bahá'í. One day we were walking and he greeted them... the untouchables. I was horrified!

He stopped me and said, 'Ruby you know I am a Bahá'í and I believe in the oneness of all humankind. If that is a problem for you then let's stop this relationship right now.' That was the first time I really thought about this belief I held."

I found it rather miraculous to be talking so intimately with a woman I had just met. It seemed almost surreal how our few sentences connected us instantly on a profound vein of human behavior. But, I felt so glad about it.

"You know, I am so concerned right now about the violence around the world that is because of the same thing - lack of knowledge or even basic respect for others' beliefs," I shared.

"Yes. I was a speaker at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration here, and I told the story about my husband. Then I told them how my mother-in-law saw my revulsion at eating at the same table with untouchables invited to dinner with the family. I truly thought I would get some illness from eating on the same china! She saw that I was struggling and for a time served me on a different set of china just to help me through my struggle...so strong was my belief. It took a long time to change my reactions."

We were watching the young chef flip burgers and pat fish fillets sizzling on the grill. Shoppers passed us to pick fruit and vegetables from the mounds of produce in the little grocery section near our dining table.

Ruby went on enthusiastically. I was rapt with attention, amazed at our meeting....

"After I was married and accepted the Bahá'í faith, too, I was out shopping with my friends and greeted an untouchable. My friends pulled back from me and shouted, 'What are you doing!' I then did the same thing my husband did with me. I said 'You know I am a Bahá'í now, and I believe in the oneness of all humankind. If that is a problem for you, then let's end our friendship right now!' But of course it did not end."

She went on, "One person's conviction can bring about change. That's how it happens, just like Dr. King said."

"Susan, your order is ready," the loudspeaker announced.

We glanced at each other again. Two souls who encountered each other by chance.

Or was it?

Waiting for Rain

2006-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for rain this morning. Dry, dry desert here in southern Arizona. Sonoran Desert to be specific. Its been since October 17th since the last real drops of blue liquid fell gently upon the green figures of Saguaros and Barrels and Opuntia, all waiting patiently....

Fires are burning in Payson, in the White Mountains above the Mogollon Rim in Northeast Arizona. It's February and there is no snow pack. Rangers reported seeing fires burning under the little snow pack there was in December. Imagine! Fire under snowpack. How is that possible?

Waiting for rain is not a bad occupation; it causes me to synchronize with my surroundings and sit by my cactus companions. We are all in this together, are we not?

Shattered Mirror

2006-02-07T17:43:00.000-08:00

Bumping into Each Other

We are strangers in a crowded room of shadows…

Imagine a message flying across an ocean, gray pigeon weighed down with terribly important mail clutched tightly in its curled feet, winging over the vast stretches of sea. The letter falls onto an embattled landscape, desperate expression of a loved one separated from her son, her lover, her brother. She stands on distant shore at the edge of her continent.

Ideas fly across oceans down from the high Himalayas, up from the low valleys of the Mekong Delta, and crisply flying out off the deserts. Memes stream from the places of government, courts of law, gesticulations; soulful cries roll up from mosques, ring from churches and linger in peaceful temples. Across the world, prayers like flowers, pink hearts pumping. We call upon our gods.

Our bodies fly through space and clouds, transported around the world, going to jobs, reuniting with loved ones, seeking insight, fun…treasure; missiles and war planes, too, and car bombs and bouquets of flowers, and new poems and lost children. By the flowering tree a hand ripped asunder from its arm. Earth moistened with her blood.

For the whole of human incongruity is standing before us, exhausted, wide-eyed, a stranger wandering the Earth looking for some place, some reason.

We are not used to each other. No, for all our education, our high-minded ideals, we are not ready for this crowded room, this place of seeming shadows where strangers dwell….

I reach across the divide to touch I know not who. Behind your eyes what world do you know, see, and believe with all your heart is the one true world. Am I in it? Am I your enemy or your friend? Talk to me through this darkness. Can I come to know you and you me? Do we even want to try? Am I your infidel and you my nemesis?

In the shadows is one wearing a Crown of Thorns, a Heart of Compassion, and there is the Prophet of Love; an Earth Goddess and her peacemakers. They watch in silence as we bump into each other, recoiling then reaching out. We try to sense each other. Who are you? we ask. The soft chorus from the shadows says, Keep Looking.

Pieces of a shattered mirror lie strewn about. Pick them up! the chorus cajoles. Pick them up and see!

Dinosaur! An Essay after the State of the Onion Address

2006-02-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

Dinosaur
An essay after the State of the Onion Address
February 1, 2006

Visions of T-Rex intruded on my mind’s eye, twisting his Big Head back and forth, bellowing a putrefied roar in that grating Texas accent. I was actually brought to tears, again, at last night’s State of the Onion address on Capitol Hill.

Why I watch I do not know, but perhaps I hope I might catch a glimpse of democracy somewhere in the night’s dark drama.

Instead I am assaulted with that sound, that grating sound that haunts me whenever he utters the word “Whhiiinnn” (as in Whhiiinnn in EYE-raq or Whhiiinnn the American public will) and levels his beady eye upon his victims.

Fortunately the raging of a dinosaur on Capitol Hill is falling on more and more deaf ears. Dinosaur language about moral and military ascendancy is anti-democratic and promotes isolationism.

Citizens of the Real World feel the lasting tragedy of dead or maimed children coming home from a failing war. We struggle more to pay our bills, and we worry about the future while corporate giants benefit from dinosaur economics. Exxon’s $36 billion Quarter Profit is the latest example of corporate greed in the face of citizens struggling to pay increased gas costs. What’s positive about that?

The only sign of hope I saw was the Dems cheering their victory over stopping T-Rex’s assault on social security and medical insurance. I was thrilled to see the democratic forces finally rallying openly against the reptiles across the aisle.

Still, seeing T-Rex at the head of our great country makes me weep. As he tramples the world with his fetid breath, the odor of a dying ideology, the world is turning away from us and our opponents grow in numbers.

Last night I was reminded of the Big Headed British in India during the 1950’s. Facing the little, brown man of peace, the T-Rex’s of that era Just Didn’t Get It either!

George is bellowing as the meteor hurtles toward the Hill. Soon the small, resilient forces of truth will propagate a new American society. Indeed it is already making its mark on American soil.

Only two more years!

Susan Feathers Williams
Hunkered Down in Tucson, Arizona

On the trail of the Old Florida

2006-01-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I journeyed east to visit family and to drum-up some grant writing business in the land of the sun - Florida. My family lives in Pensacola on one of the world's most beautiful beaches. Even after the onslaught of Ivan over a year ago, the beach is coming back. Not the buildings (yeahhhh) but the dunes and wildlife are making a come back. This area at the far western reach of the Florida Panhandle is all I have ever known of the State.

After a wonderful Christmas week, and a short pop-up journey to Nashville, Tennessee to spend New Year's with my son and his beautiful wife, I headed east along the panhandle, then turned south to Gainesville, nestled in the heart of pine country. This small city is home to the University of Florida and a vibrant town some call the "other Florida" because of its residents' more liberal orientation compared to the rose-red Florida interior. Anyway....

On the spur of the moment, I decided to leave Gainesville, Florida a day early and travel the coastline from Cedar Keys to Pensacola. As the saying goes "Go out on a limb...that's where the fruit is." I discovered places still untouched by development - the Florida of old days.

Taking Hwy 24, a two lane highway stretching southwest of Gainesville, I drove along pine tree corridors, unbroken for mile after mile. As I neared the coastal waterway, a sea of grass appeared, cut only by winding blue estuaries. A snowy egret or great blue heron stood watch over each quiet cove or bayou far from human frenzy. My blood pressure dropped incrementily for every mile I drove south. I was surprised there were no beaches like Pensacola. It's in the middle of marshland, so Cedar Keys is great for bird watching, fishing, boating, and reading!

Cedar Key is a tiny fishing village replete with restaurants, a few hotels and gift shops, and boat rentals nestled on the upper west peninsula of Florida. Rooms in the B&B's were surprisingly low for their elegance: $55 a night! [Learn more at www.cedarkey.org ] It was about 3:30 and several couples were checking in for a night of great sea food and lapping waters. Not all the restaurants were open, but enough of the good ones were serving-up fresh grouper and shrimp. Nearby the 3,000 acre Scrub State Park hosts 12 miles of hiking trails through salt marsh and sand pine scrub. I elected to push on west to stay overnight near Manatee Springs.

Taking Hwy 347 I ambled north west toward the Swannee River in search of the Shell Mound Archaeological Site - a 28 foot high shell midden that stretches for five acres. Crunching under my feet were the remains of countless meals of oysters, clams, fish and other foods from peoples who lived here for over 3500 years. As the sun began to set, I walked into a large spider web at the top of the trail and literally panicked - Crocodile Dundee images coming to mind. There was something foreboding about being on the site alone in the dusk. I decided it was time to go, and headed for Chieftown, a burger at the Sonic, and a quiet room at the nearby Holiday Inn Express motel.

Rising early I headed over to Manatee Springs hopeful I might get a glimpse of my first water goddess. The two rangers at the park entrance - about a quarter mile west from town - directed me to a small interpretive trail in the park. I am sooo glad I took it because I got the short course on local ecology. First I learned that magnolia trees are one of the oldest species of trees in this area of Florida, hailing as far back as dinosaurs! I found pignut walnuts and learned how hardwood forests supported wildlife and human communities for thousands of years before modern settlements.

Preservation ferns coated many hardwoods like fluffly moss. Then I came to a distinct boundary change as hardwoods (hammock communty) gave way to shallow rooted pines (sand hill community) and fields of palmettos. Beyond them salt marshes blended outward toward open ocean. The parks have built wooden walkways and bridges that take the visitor out over the marshes and inlets. It's wonderful, silent, and teaming with of birds and fish.

At Manatee Springs a few hundred yards down the camp road, I found unbroken shores of towering bare cypress trees, their gray branches draped with pale green moss. I learned that all those "baby cypress trees" growing up out of the water are not new trees but "knees" that make oxygen for the tree. Manatee Springs pours 64,000 gallons a day of fresh water into the Swannee River which spills into the Gulf about 30 miles from there.

The main spring is a beautiful azure blue with chocolate-colored reflections of the cypress forest that lines its edges. Large black birds of prey swooped down along its swift moving waters, landing from tree to tree to join a colony of fellow vultures. They dominated the community of birds that morning, but were joined by king fishers, a great blue heron, and a snowy egrets.

Taking the wooden walk way out over the spring I watched turtles paddling along the bottom or surfacing for a bite of air. The waters were broken frequently with a whish and a loud slap as large mullet jumped high over the water and landed on their flanks, a strategy thought to remove parasites from their skin.

Alas, there were no manatees that day. It was the right season when these ancient relatives of elephants come to the warm springs from cooler Gulf waters. With this season's higher temps, the Gulf remained very warm so the manatees stayed in open waters.

[*Note: the concession manager told me that manatees are being harmed by companies taking tourists out to swim with them. He explained that human body oil can cause fungal growth on the manatees' skin, and that by learning to associate with humans, young manatees do not stay away from boats and harmful propellers. Unfortunately, these companies masquerade as ecological tourism with an educational mission. Don't be tempted to swim with manatees if you want to help preserve these important animals. For more information go to www.floridastateparks.org/manateesprings ]

I left Manatee Springs with the intent of driving to Apalachicola. But like the Sirens of Greek mythology, Wakulla Springs called me and I went there to witness one of the largest springs on the continent. Taking Hwy 319 I drove into the 6,000 acre park. The entrance road meanders past tall beech trees, chestnut oaks, spruce pine, basswood, and magnolias down to a Mediterraen style lodge on the spring. It was built by Edward Ball in 1937. He bought Wakulla Springs and the surrounding area, constructed the lodge and grounds buildings including a warf for swimming and diving over the 150 foot deep bowl of the spring. There are docks for glass bottomed boats that run all day for the public. Ball wanted the springs preserved in perpetuity for the public, and he protected it fiercely from development encroachments. The State of Florida bought it in 1986.

I stayed at the magnificent lodge with its cathedral ceilings, large roaring fire, and fine dining restuarant. The rooms (cheaper than the Holiday Inn) are just like your grandmother's: quiet elegance, a claw-foot tub with very hot water, and no distractions like CNN.(Just so visitors don't go into withdrawal, the main dining room has a large screen TV where you can watch the The Good Morning show on CBS after breakfast.) The dinner and breakfast were both superb. Try their french toast; it's to die for. [This is the time to go to the lodge; it's guest capacity is only 27. To see the lodge and make reservations go to www.wakullacounty.com/wakulla-24.htm ]

By luck, I was late pulling into Wakulla Springs, so I caught the last boat out for the day, about 4:30. Do this on purpose when you go, because the gators are out by the dozen beginning their nocturnal feast on birds, turtles - or anything that crosses their path. In one hour I saw more species of birds than my whole life. The park is home to large populations of Ibis, Egrets, Herons, ducks of all kinds including Merganzers.

Wakulla Spring is an Ice Age sink hole with a massive cave system that reaches well beyond the park. Divers explore its fourteen miles of caverns. Prehistoric animal skeletons have been found as deep as 1200 feet. The spring waters were too dark for the glass bottomed boats the afternoon I was there, unfortunately; heavy nitrate and phosphorus runoff from people's yards, farming, and other industrial processes add nitrates to the water system that make their way through the aquifer to the springs. These cause algae and other plants to bloom out of control. [http://www.floridasprings.org/]

Another assault on the beauty of the springs is from hydrilla, an invasive weed introduced from by the aquarium trade for our home aquaria. Jeffrey Johnson, our boat captain, told us they have to literally scrape it off the top of the spring several times a year to keep it from choking off all the life below.

As we quietly made our way along the ancient spring with all its life towering above us, swimming below us, and swooping over its surface, I realized anew how important it is to preserve all we can of our land's natural beauty for children to understand the magnificent land on which the First Americans once lived, and to work on their behalf now to preserve and restore all we can.

That night at the lodge I sat at a small desk with a crystal lamp set for visitors to peruse a scrapbook of old newspaper clippings starting in 1935. This beautiful lodge hosted movie stars who came to make films on the springs (Creature of the Black Lagoon and others). Politicians and corporate giants as well as tourists like me have all lounged in front of the fire with a good glass of wine.

Reading about Ed Ball is an Americana story. He left home at age 13 to pan for gold in California and was working in a department store selling shoes when his sister's new husband, Alfred Dupont asked him to move to Florida with them to manage Dupont's business operations. Ball took over and grew the Dupont fortune and his own. He is said to have been a gifted and tough-skined business man. The fact that Northern Florida is less developed than the rest of the state is purportedly due to the fact that Ball owned much of it at one time.

As a grant writer in the non-profit world, and an environmental educator, I am deeply grateful to Ball for his vision and generosity. On this trip I feel like I finally had a chance to see what old Florida is really like...festooned with feathers, she is a wild, sometimes dangerous beauty with mysterious crystal blue eyes, wrapped in a moss colored shawl, bare-foot and glistening!

Stay tuned for my report on Horsehoe Beach a priceless old fishing village, population 200! Looks like something from the 1920's. And Apalachicola, a working warf, home of Riverkeepers, Tamara's Cafe whose key lime pie you won't forget, and Wind Catcher, a 40-foot sloop that will take you to Dog Island, Litte St. George Island, and Cape San Blas.

Wild about Florida,
Susan

Dwellers at the Threshold - Four

2005-12-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

This morning I am continuing to write the story of how the human community came to live sustainably on the Earth by the year 3000. As I imagined what this might be like, I decided that we as a species discovered other ways of communicating with all the life around us, much as the shamans of many indigenous cultures. I also tried to put into historical perspective what animals might think about us, the two-leggeds.

The first chapter introduces the major characters in the book. So far, the reader has met Fran and Ridley from Alice Springs, Australia; Bidrha from the Gobi desert; Wangari from the African savannah; Yareen, a jaguar in the Sierra Madre, in Sonora, Mexico; the Elder, an old sycamore tree on the Lower Colorado river in the Sonoran desert, and now, Shira, an elephant on the African savannah.

This part of my book describes an actual event that occured in Erwin, Tennessee. I carry some baggage about it, as my Uncle was the man who was charged with carrying out the unbelieveable act described below. I only recently learned about it, and as a person who cares deeply about all forms of life, it made a deep impression on me. I decided to create a story where I can somehow resolve the generational guilt I feel about the hanging of a circus elephant named Mad Mary.

For those of you who are reading the sequel, I am bringing in the savannah in Africa, for which Wangari is a representative to the Federated Deserts Annual Meeting. Contiguous ecosystems are also present at these meetings since ecosystems blend into each other and each system's health is linked to the other's.

Chapter 1 Part Four

"She had a great memory, as all her line. A shutter rippled along her bulging, grey flank hanging in folds from her great age. In her blood line was one who suffered greatly, one whose grizzly death left an indelible scar on all her clan. Mad Mary's death by hanging in the verdant hills of Tennessee, a world away from her native savannah, was the lowest of the low in the two-legged - elephant relationship.

Driven mad from years in two-bit circus tents, poor diet, abuse, and utter loneliness, Shira's ancient relative died in agony as mountain men hoisted her scarred body on a railroad trestle and literally squeezed the last breath from her until she was released from hell on Earth.

That memory, and others like it from places where her clan members had been imprisoned, was passed to each new baby as a marker. She found these stories surreal and inconceivable in the present day cohabitation with humans. Both two-leggeds and Thunderers roamed the grasslands in peaceful cooperation. The yellow sea of grasses flourished with their presense. Her clan ate down the trees and shrubs that invaded the open savannah, and their waste nourished the soil. The Thunderers presence in the savannah helped to maintain its integrity. The two-leggeds came to learn.

Like all Earth's Children the act of remembering the Dark Ages was cultivated as part of one's duty to the Mother Earth and all life present - that never again should any of her creatures act with such disdain for any other life. Shira's clan mothers taught her about The Changes, when men and women among the two-leggeds began to understand the Great Law.

Shira rubbed against the massive flank of Sidah, her eldest son who was munching on the succulent leaves of an acacia tree. He wrapped his trunk gently around her head in a sweet embrace. Nearby Sidah's great love, the winsome Radha, nestled their new born underneath her smooth belly where the little one sucked hungrily from her full breast.

Shira looked out over the great clan happily grazing on the small trees and bushes along the edge of the African savannah. For as long as she remembered, the family was growing in numbers. The gentle two-leggeds of her day were welcome among them - they were called "Addah". They were the youngest among the earth's clans, God's most recent creation.

When the Addah came to the Thunderers, they humbly recognized the clan's great knowledge and historical memory, passed generation to generation. Just as the adults among the clan shaped their youngsters' character by teaching them the Life Protocol for all living beings on Earth, so now Addah came to learn from them. The clan of Thunderers moved slowly about the great savannah, stretching unencumbered for thousands of miles in every direction. Addah followed the Thundrerers on their daily saunters prompted wholly by whim, which the two-leggeds enjoyed immensely.

The great clan of Thunderers communicated by touch and passing of thoughts through the energy streams that surround all of Life in the universe. The Addah were learning to do this, too, but still created many varied sounds and sang and chattered like the three-leggeds that swung happily in trees along the tall forest's edge. Sidha has seen these furry, aerial acrobats when she was but a youngster. They delighted her as she stood and trumpeted their wild flings high above the forest floor. Imagine! God of Earth created such marvelous cousins. All of her life, Sidha experienced joy and wonderment, fulfilling the great Mother's wish for her living children, large and small.

Startled from her musings, Shira's grandbaby was nuzzling her old wrinkled tummy. She chuckled to herself and softly rumbled to the littlest clan member, caressing him with her soft pink nose. The baby smelled of new life - that sweet mother's-milk-aroma that made her at once a fierce protector and a gentle nurturerer. This was the Mother's gift of female-kind's duality, an image of the Mother 's own true nature.

A low rumbling passed like a wave among the males, alerting the clan's attention as an acrid odor of lion washed across the grassland. Tawny forms were visible only as undulations on a canvas of golden grass, occasionally broken by the penetrating dark of an eye. A reverberating roar spilled over the plain. The males trumpeted in return, acknowledging that all is well between these clans linked by the waving, golden sea.

The two-leggeds moved into the middle of the herd with the youngsters, walking in safety among their giant friends. Herds of the Hooved-Ones galloped in dark shadows in the tall grass. Like waves they adjusted their locations, ever alert to the muscled predators of their world.

In the year 3000 the savannah stretched across the horizon, its life forms richly woven into its interior. The Addah no longer dominated the community but were a small, integral part of it. Life flourished."

Dwellers at the Threshold -Three

2005-12-10T04:58:00.000-08:00

"Ofelia and Bidrha chatted about news from home as they walked down the mountainside to a natural clearing where about 50 women sat under the canopy of small oaks. Their colorful apparel representing each desert homeland tradition, dappled the soft brown canvas of the desert.

Something about women's voices at a distance, thought Bidhra... like tinkling bells.

Wangari rose from her seat, a broad grin speading over her round face.

"Bidhra!" she sang forth, moving jauntily across the circle to engulf her tiny friend in the folds of her ample body. Everyone chuckled at the site.

"Wangari, I can't breathe!" Wangari let her go with a loud laugh and slid her arm around Bidrha's small shoulders.

"I've got this one taken care of," Wangari declared over her shoulder to Ofelia, as she led Bidhra to a table laden with food and beverages.

Ofelia heard the drumming and singing start up, and turned to greet another arrival.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nearby the gathering of women...

They lined the great river like tall guardians with thick intertwined arms. Their jigsaw patterned trunks of bronze, moss green, aqua blue, and soft yellow blended with the muted colors of the earth. Only the rushing red waters of the river demarked a border.

These were the titans connecting earth with sky, channeling life giving waters from under earth's skin up into the air above. Among them stood an Elder - a tree so broad and tall its roots caused the Earth to rise and curve with them, drawing water along their inclination.

Below the earth, unseen by human eye, roots met a tiny crawling army of yellow, gooey creatures - a living mat as vast as the forest itself. Upon this undulating sea of microbial life, the words of the Elder to members of the clan ran back and forth in a chemical language. Trees in need of nutrients were fed from areas of the forest rich in the needed elements. And so, did the Elder tend its tribe.

The Elder was a clan leader of great stature. From this old waterway, the Elder protected her clan and reported to the two-leggeds on all its living inhabitants, the featherd, furred, scaled and spineless members of the community. The Union of All Species felt the Mother Earth's heartbeat, checked her circulation an cleansing systems. Through the global leaders in each biome of life - an interspecies alliance - the Earth flourished and all therein, a part of Her living, breathing, changing body, hurtling through space together in God's vast kingdom.

Life on Earth reached a high level of consciousness when the two-leggeds gained new self-understanding and raised their conscience to that of all the plant and animal species. Their evolution was still young among Earth's species, but they were finally coming along. Their numbers decreased, and their violent past faded from memory.

Today's humans were finally of the indigenous mind: humble members of a colorful community of living beings whose very lives depended upon the health and well-being of their Mother.

They were ready. Soon the return of the Great Ones would come again upon the Earth."

Dwellers at the Threshold continued....

2005-12-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

If you are reading my blog, you may recall that the first chapter of my new novel began with Fran and Ridley who live in Alice Springs, Australia. It is the year 3,000. Across the Earth a smaller human population is organized in federated govenments by biomes.

The world's human community has learned the value of earthkeeping. Each biome (desert, tropical forest, temperate forest, savannah, deciduous forests, tundra, etc.) has governments linked across the world according to the distinctive plants communities, weather and topography that define these ecosystems. Fran is getting ready to join fellow desert leaders at their annual meeting in southern Arizona in the Sonoran Desert.

In this part of the chapter, readers begin to learn that animals and plants are important partners with humans in monitoring the health of the earth. During the milennium after the great earth changes, humans began to communicate with trees, plants, and animals, rediscovering the ancient wisdom of earth's first people: all life has consciousness. Here we are introduced to one animal who will help Fran and her fellow delegates understand the state of the Sonoran desert in what was once called Mexico.

Chapter 1 continued...

"Across the world, Yareen made her way down a jagged escarpment on the Sierra Madre plateau. Her ebony and tawny flanks rippled with reflected sunlight through the pale green of manzanita and scrub oak. Falling pebbles pushed from their earthen beds by her great paws scattered noisily down the slope ahead of her.

Her mate roused from an afternoon nap in the tree high above her. He greeted her with a low rolling hello as she bound up the tree in which he lay. Yareen rubbed her head against his and breathed in his pungent scent, her golden eyes wide open with their reunion. They had been together for many sunrises and sunsets. Soon he would leave her and she would return to a solitary life and the birth of their cubs. It would be her second pregnancy.

They made their way to a pool of water in the bowl of the river for a swim, catching what fish or turtles that swam by. As they lingered by the water's edge, a trembling deer stood immobilized in the brush, caught unaware by their silent arrival. His breath was barely discernable. Later on the pair left the water's edge together and he could breath again. The great cats were more numerous as was so much of the community of wildlife.

On the other side of the world, in the ancient walls of a city long ago destroyed, Bidrha sat down upon a sacred spot where Earth's energy was strong - one of many energy grids discovered by Earth's people after the Great Conflagration and subsequent Age of Awakening.

Bidhra focused on her journey from the high plateau, ringed by mountains. Her breathing slowed and began its deep, pendalur rhythm. She could feel her body transfiguring into wave form. Her vision lifted suddenly. She was above the plains of the Gobi desert, now flying over the Himalayas, gaining velocity as her material form released to pure energy. Crossing the great blue ocean she winged through white clouds beneath a dome of azure sky. At a certain point her decent began by predetermined intent, tumbling energy down, down to a peak she could see now, on a mountain range bordering a city by a river that poured red on a southward race to a blue green ocean.

As she descended, her form began its rematerialization. She felt the tug of Earth, of mass - her body form so heavy now. When Bidhra opened her eyes she was greeted by a ring of elders drumming and singing her welcome, creating a space of positive energy, and blessing her arrival.

A woman of awesome stature, like a great tree, stepped forward to take her hand.

"Welcome, Bidhra, welcome to our homelands." Bidhra bowed her head and clasped her hands together, pulling them slowly below her chin as was the custom in her home.

"Do you need water. How do you feel?" Ofelia asked.

Bidrha felt a little unsteady. "I think I could use a little food to anchor my body to the Earth!"

Ofelia chuckled, "Come on, we have a feast going with the new arrivals. About half of us are here."

End of Section in Chapter 1: Dewellers at the Threshold.

Be well my friends! Let me know what you think about the story so far!

Susan

California Dreamin'

2005-11-30T05:19:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like the landscapes and seacapes of southern California. On my Thanksgiving holiday I visited friends in Santa Monica and San Diego, returning to many of my favorite nature trails, and places of beauty. In spite of the runaway development, the land and sea hold sway over human activity.

In 1985 I moved to southern California from Westchester County, New York to settle my family in Laguna Beach. My former husband and I thought we had died and gone to heaven. First and foremost was the Big Blue Pacific Ocean that filled the panoramic view of our three story home on Blue Bird Canyon drive. We kept binoculars near our top floor jacuzzi to watch for the lumbering gray whales migrating from Alaska to Baja California for their seasonal mating and birthing season.

We swooned over a bugless atmosphere, havin endured the jet sized mosquitos and mayflies of the east coast for 15 years. Throwing open all the windows to feel the moist ocean air, breathing in the fragrance of flowers that bloom in ecstatic profusion...well, it was paradise.

Later of course I learned that the real flora and landscape of this area is mediterranean chaparral, with dense short aromatic shrubs, and small trees - a flora held in check and refreshed with fire every 25 to 30 years. Since the invasion of humans, bringing in trees and plants of all kinds from other parts of the world and suppressing the natural fire regimen, the chaparral ecology is hard to discern in and around the numerous towns that pepper the coastline. Fires are seen as tragic to us humans, but they are just a natural cycle of the land.

In Santa Monica my friend Cirelle lives in a condo near the ocean in one of the oldest sections of the city. It is a sweet place with blooming plants, orchids no less, and a short walk to the beach. She herself is pixie like, I think a result of living in beauty and gentle air for most of her life. We drove to Franklin Canyon north of Beverly Hills to meet our mutual friend Melinda. The three of us once led hikes in this canyon, cut through the hills between Coldwater Canyon Drive and Beverly Hills Blvd.

It had been 20 years since my last hike there. Cirelle and Melinda remained as docents for some time after I left for Arizona. Melinda took us on a tour through the grape arbor, natural enclaves shaded by towering sycamores and eucalyptus trees, scrub oak and mountain laurel below them. The heavy rains in southern California caused prolific growth in the understory. There must have been enough grapes produced this year to start a small winery!

We meandered along pine covered paths, down to the lake. It was originally a small reservoir, part of the LA water system, held by an earthen dam. During the 1979 earthquake in LA, it was damaged and later condemned. For years the little body of water sat, watched only by the LA Water Department. Then, as it became a natural flyway for migratory birds, neighbors began to walk in the canyon and discovered deer, fox, and oppossum. They got together and with the help of officials in LA and Bevely Hills had the canyon set aside as a nature preserve. Since then an education center has been built and many thousands of school children have been thrilled by its beauty and the surprise of its many inhabitants.

Later I drove down to San Elijo Lagoon near Encinitas, CA. It had always been one of my favorite hiking and meditation spots. The lagoon is one of the few remaining and protected marshes of a once vast system of coastal marshlands that lined the ocean shore for thousands of years. Chumash people fished, netted abalone the size of platters, and lived all summer along these marshes as recent as 200 years ago. I saw wood ducks, avocets, trumpeter swans, a great snowy egret and many shorebirds. American coots still dominate along the narrow, reed-lined canals and ponds that meander through the lagoon. Giant sycamores dot the rolling hillsides that fall down to the lagoon. Small group of hikers sat on the thick curving limbs under the canopy of its velvety, large leaves.

There is nothing like this place in the world. I have learned to look past the houses that now cut all the hilltops, and cover the hillsides. I close my ears to the roar of the freeway, and the drone of one SUV after another on the way somewhere. Even that I am at one time or another part of that frenzy I hold back from my thoughts, just to hold it all at bay so the beauty of the land can be the only dominate sensation.

But my return to the places we give enchanting names like Laguna Beach and San Elijo Lagoon prompts in me another California dream. I see a scaled back human community and the reflourishing of the natural land and waters. I hear fewer cars, maybe the silence of hydrogen powered vehicles spewing only water vapor into the cleaner air.

For Cirelle, Melinda and I, this is the dream we will hold, and in the meantime we will continue to visit and to protect - best as we can - the places of our inspiration and healing.

Be well my friends,
Susan

Through a glass darkly

2005-11-25T06:22:00.000-08:00

One thing about vacations is that you get a new mental space to consider how things are going in your life.

I am staying with two of my best friends, and shared Thanksgiving with them. They are both artists. Being in a space with them and the artfulness of their gardens, interior spaces, and observing the way they each regard the other is a gentle space for me to think about my own "posture in the world".

We forget how much our lives affect people and things around us. I remember the old eighties corporate lingo about a person's "area of influence". That is what I am experiencing at the lovely home of my friends. Their lives make me a better person, smooth out my rough edges, inspire me to wonder.

Only six days ago they put to rest their last parent between them. For the past three years my friends gently cared for two parents in this home near the Pacific Ocean. Through that time I listened and learned from them about what true love means. Day after day they applied ministrations of their love and respect, making each parent's last days as comfortable and beautiful as possible.

As we prepared Thanksgiving dinner together, I asked about how things would change for them now...now that they were free to return to their previous life focused on their own needs and desires. I learned that the greatest lesson learned was patience. Of slowing down and learning to enjoy what was at hand, and not what might be or anticipated.

When I awoke from a great night's sleep this morning that was on my mind. I remembered the Biblical verse "We see through a glass darkly...." How often life brings us something and we see only the one facet of it - until we go fully into it as my friends did. It changed everything about their previous life with its flow and its considerations. But then, it brought treasures, personal gifts like patience and joy in the ordinary.

My friends' mothers and fathers are gone physically from Earth. But they left their children a gift beyond measure that will make the rest of their lives worth living. And now I am benefitting from it too, reflecting on what they learned.

Being away from my routine, I suddenly get a glimpse of the reality of my life. Its about how I choose to treat my friends and family, strangers on the road of life, and even the earth herself. That's what this is all about and nothing less.

Peace my friends,
Susan

Swinging with Soul Music on the Eve of Thanksgiving

2005-11-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

Listening to the Bee Gee's in the dark of early morining. KXCI is a fantastic radio station in Tucson that plays all kind of music. This morning it is Soul and '80's. Been up way too long. I am learning to navigate the wee hours of the morning now that I am in my sixth decade of life on Earth. Why is that? Clinging to the moments?

Getting ready to travel to visit good friends, and then on to visit more friends I have not physically been with for twenty years, though we have been in touch often with long phone calls. There is something about true friends: your relationship does not exist in time and space, but resides in the heart. So, we just carry our friendship wherever we are habiting at the moment.

Are you baking pies? Getting ready for Thanksgiving? My daughter has been in search of Durkey's Fried Green Beans for her delicious casserole. NPR featured an author of the book "Humble Pie" who is calling forth to the nation to revive the art of pie making! It made me realize I stopped making homemade pies about 15 years ago. Hawaiian Pie was my specialty: Eagle Brand Condensed Milk and egg custard with lemon flavoring; freshly ground coconut and crushed pineapple layers on top of that, and whipped cream and cherries on top; a layer of bananas on the pie crust before the thick custard filling is poured in. DEEEELLLICIOUS

I am giving Thanks for family and friends and the kitchens that will welcome me home. I think also of those in need, making sure I give something for a local pantry or soup kitchen to provide meals and food boxes for people struggling with hunger and poverty. Better yet, I will continue to work in my state and in congress to finally create a living wage for all the hard working Americans standing in the soup lines tomorrow. There are too many in this land of plenty. Let's work on that together, and enjoy Thanksgiving knowing we are creating home and safety for all.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Susan...swooning with Barry White

Dwellers at the Threshold

2005-11-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

A gentle, warm morning on the Sonoran Desert. I have large, cream and pink-colored Moonstone rose blooming in my garden. Purple lantana, and the white, crinkled blossoms of native gourds enliven my tiny backyard garden today.

Please enjoy and let me know what you think of my novel Building Air Castles, about the year 3000 when the human community lives sustainably upon the Planet Earth.

Chapter 1 Dwellers at the Threshold

"Fran awoke with a start. Had she overslept again? The eventful day spread out before her as she rubbed her eyes and turned to Ridley who was hard asleep, a gentle snore issuing from his parted lips.

Fran sat up on one elbow, her glistening black hair flowing over the dark brown flesh of Ridley's muscular arm. A mischeivious grin spred over her angular face as her hand followed the contour of his back, arousing him. 'Hey, sleepy-head' she whispered. He rolled over. 'What time is it?' he muttered. Ridley reached around Fran and drew her into the crook of his embrace. This was Fran's favorite spot in the world, safe and warm in bed with the man she adored.

They would just stay in bed and let the world go spinning by, she thought. It had been six months since their Joining Ceremony, but it seemed as if she had always been with him. From childhood, when they first met at age six, Fran had known him - this man she would someday join with, the one chosen for her by her mother.

Flashes of his moon-shaped face encircled with orchids from his native Pohnpei, the pure white of his eyes against his chestnut skin, the fullness of his lips on that day they were joined. He radiated youthful beauty and joy. She saw his face - the man who always righted her world and anchored it in something timeless and good.

'Girl, you better get going or the rivers will run dry!'

She smothered him with her pillow and slowly extracted herself from their warm cacoon. Reluctantly, she plodded to the shower. Fran prepared for the journey across the world to high desert to her clan's lmeeting. This time was different though - she would take the lead as the new Chancellor of the Federated Deserts of the World.

As she let the cool waters flow over her warm skin, she thought back to the clan mothers of her line. From babyhood, Fran's clan mothers recognized a natural leader, a budding orator in the baby who talked very early and in full sentences. Even as a toddler her elocution was legend. She possessed the qualities of a peacemaker, and even more important - she was a Poet. In her day, it was the highest calling, the revered quality in a human being. A Poet provided a voice for Spirit to talk to humankind.

Being a poet and possessing a sense of the ironic came down an ancient blood line of matriarchs and patriarchs who kept alive the Great Learning from the dark ages of the Earth. Passed with care and diligence, the knowledge remained vibrant and responsive to each new generation's challenges and dreams. Now it was Fran's turn to guard the ancient wisdom for her clan.

'Are you ever coming out?!' Ridley's teasing baritone shook her back into the moment. 'I'll tell them my desert rat has just wasted enough water to grow a garden!'

Ridley had risen, his nakedness turning her to mush. How would she ever get by without him for a whole month? she mused darkly. Ridley began to sing his welcome song to the morning, standing on the patio of their tiny bungalo in the central desert of Australia. Before him spread the valley that held the community of Alice Springs.

The old expression 'fish out of water' came to mind as Fran dressed, wondering that Ridley made the leap from his tropical homeland to the red earth of the Gibson desert. Ayers Rock loomed in the distance as Fran looked out over the verdant valleyscape before her.

Fran was leaning over her duffle bag folding the last of her garments when she felt Ridley's arms encircle her, his warm breath on her neck. 'You dressed...how unfortunate."

She would be half an hour late leaving the house."

Peace,
Susan

Novel in progress

2005-11-21T04:23:00.000-08:00

Hi. Two cups of coffee into the day. Great fair trade coffee from Guatamala, roasted in Tucson.

I mentioned yesterday that I am writing a fiction novel about the year 3000. In that year, when the novel opens, people belong to federated governments depending on the biome in which they live. (A biome is a large area of land or water that can be characterized by its dominant plant forms - temperate forest, tropical forest, desert, tundra, grasslands, plankton.) So, if you live in the Atacama or Patagonian deserts in South America, you are affiliated with people in Australia (central deserts); Mongolia, China (Gobi and turkestan deserts); Saudia Arabia and Iran/Iraq (Arabian, Iranian, and Thar deserts); North America and Mexico (Sonoran Desert, Mojave Deserts); Africa (Sahara, Kalihari, Namib deserts). In this way, people are linked across the globe with mutual concerns about the environment that supports their way of life.

In the year 3000 people recognize a key role of humans as earth keepers, of being responsible for what is taken for human use - a profound shift away from our current way of thinking in most developed nations. In the frame of reference of people whose relatives survived the dramatic earth changes of the 21st century, due to climate change and overharvesting world resources, this makes perfect sense.

Another sea change in human organization came about in response to the human community's desire to avoid violent conflict at all costs. Following Iroquois governmental structure, the world community decided that marriages should take place across biomes, and not within them. So, if you are from the desert, you can not marry someone from a desert biome. This means that people in any biome will hesitate to bring war or violence against other biomes because they will be populated with their relatives!

The story opens in Alice Springs, Australia as we meet Fran and Ridley. Fran is getting ready to attend the Federated Deserts of the World's annual conference. She is the newly elected Chairwoman.

That's all for now. Peace to all who read this blog....

Susan

Singular Moment

2005-11-20T08:33:00.000-08:00

There are a pair of house wrens sitting in my palo verde tree, swaying in a gentle east wind on Sunday morning. They are oblivious to this singular moment in my life, the advent of my first blog to the world "out there".

It's amazing that everyone of us "little people" can now blog our hearts out, having our say, and connecting with readers in every nook and cranny of the earth. So, here goes!

Write for Change is both my business and personal practice. I prepare grant proposals, write articles, conduct research and write reports - for the people and businesses I believe in. I also write articles, essays and books about nature and society.

For years I worked for universities, school districts, and other large corporate groups, and frankly it killed my creativity and zest for life. To me American corporate worklife is debilitating. Not only do we work too much, but we are forced into schedules that may or may not fit with our own natural biorythms, and we rarely ever get a chance to do what it in our hearts.

For years I lived in this manner, always dreaming of when I would write my book, or create something.

So, about three years ago I stepped out of that paradigm into a new one I created for myself. It's been kind of scary sometimes, not having much money in the bank and now having to pick up my own medical, etc. etc. But, let me tell you - it's been worth every moment of doubt!

Over the last three years I finally wrote a memoir - a record of my political coming of age. Trying to find a publisher right now. My rejection rate to date is currently 60% (3 out of 5 publishers). If I get to 100% I intend to publish the damn thing myself and put it online!

My latest adventure is a fiction book about the year 3000. It is my attempt to bring a positive vision of how the human community learns to live sustainably on the earth. Naturally, I had to obliterate all current geopolitical boundaries and establish a new way for humans to organize themselves!

I will be featuring segments of the book on this blog and hope you will join me in figuring out how we get from 2005 when the world is in a real mess, to 3000 when human communities live within an ecologically sustainable paradigm with all the rest of life on earth.

Till then,
Susan