Hope, Cherishing, Kindness, Compassion, and Love

Happy Healthy 2019 to youse!

My Monday Muse is takin' a snooze.

See you in the New Year, dears, right here!

<3,

Melinda

Up & Out Or Coffee

What is the sound of one hand putting down the cup of coffee instead of bringing it to lips?

(What is the sound of anguish?)

Coffee has crept into my life and crevices of consciousness since May, when I was asked by The Shift Network and interviewer Tonya Pinkins, to join the national #Me Too conversation. In titrating my visibility and vulnerability during the videoed interview, at first I complied with Tonya’s request to share some simple bodywork techniques for getting back into our bodies when we may be feeling overexposed after speaking aloud something that heretofore was unspeakable. Very little of my personal story came through until late into the thirty-minute conversation. When I did allow that I was molested as an infant, repeatedly so as a young child, and gang raped at eighteen, I began to feel the familiar flushing of cheeks and tremble of limbs.

I spent much of my growing up time circling the field because my body was dangerous territory to inhabit. I believe speaking the truth of my history gives me credentials also to speak about how to get back into one's body. I spent a lot of years healing to make the bod habitable again. It is important to note that it’s OK to lift up and out when need arises. It is as much a grace to dissociate from the body as it is to fight or run away from danger to protect ourselves from a predator. Only babies and young children have no escape except to go deep inside, which looks a lot like up and out.

Around July of this year, when the interview was released on the internet, my coffee consumption increased. I was suddenly selecting darker, tastier brews; buying espresso blends and adding a cup to my cooking oatmeal as well as drinking two to three cups a day.

In September, I was contacted by The Shift Network. They let me know mine was among the top three videos in terms of number of viewers and asked me to write a guest blog. I did so, and shared a bit more about my personal story. Another uptick in the caffeine intake.

I’ve shared in my safe and loving writing groups some of the nitty-gritty of my Adverse Childhood Experiences. Being visible is still a challenge. Out of habit, I cringe while waiting for the other shoe to drop. Therapy helps. Yoga and meditation help. Writing about the writing and the symptoms that sometimes replay when I am recollecting those maladaptive misadventures helps.

Thursday, while in receivership of aware kidney/adrenal listening, thanks to a friend and fellow body-worker, I recognized the kafoogeldieness of my heart-beat and hyper-adrenalized buzz in my system as I lay on the table. That's when I began to trace the recent history of the coffee addiction to the visibility piece.

Alcoholic families have a primary rule, but it’s like water to a fish: Secrecy is so pervasive we don’t see it. We only sense it viscerally as life- sustaining.

Breaking secrecy feels life-threatening.

I can cut myself some slack for being addicted to coffee which keeps me in the familiar sensation of ready. Absent was the default setting of my adolescence. Braced for fight or flight is a preferable sensation to my system than to being dissociated. It’s easier to do life speedily than not to be present for it.  

Plus, I get so much more done in a day that includes coffee!

Good news: Singing my Solstice Song at Saturday's writing group of ten folk made me shake only a little for a few minutes.  Progress!

If coffee gives me embodied presence, I'll take it. Maybe I can cut the caffeine just a little?

Start With Onions + Bone and Smile

I overheard my Jr. High School aged daughter say to a friend who'd asked her, Is your mom a good cook?"

"I dunno. Whenever I ask, what's for dinner, she always says, 'I don't know yet, but ya gotta start with onions.'"

A couple of years have passed since that carpool over-hear experience. That daughter just graduated from a 200 hour yoga and meditation teacher training event.

Tonight, in preparing a celebratory dinner, her quote of me came to mind. It's true, once the aroma of browning onions fills the kitchen, I think about what else we have on hand, then I begin to assemble ingredients - tempeh, beans, tortillas, eggs, greens, ground turkey or fish.

I think the tantalizing scents that rise from the old black cast-iron skillet tickle my gray matter and help me think about what to create.

Sometimes it's surprising. I was hungry a few nights ago and didn't want to wait the 45 minutes for Red Rice to cook, so I threw it raw into the Vita Mix to pulverize it to smaller kernels. It took only twelve minutes to cook once stirred into the sautéed onions, coconut oil, and broth I poured over to cover it. I threw in a couple hands full of raw spinach near the end of the cooking time and it turned out really tasty. Pretty too with the reddish rice laced with green  leaves.

Organic riced Cauliflower with fresh grated ginger and turmeric has become a new staple. It comes up so colorfully yellow and aromatic with garlic and ginger that kind of caramelizes  The little hand-held grater retains the ginger skin and the turmeric skin, so it's quick work to grate it in. No peeling required, by my fingers turn yellow! It's one of the dishes we had to celebrate Yoga Graduation.

Another  favorite main dish is frittata, which always gets started with sautéing onion - either red or yellow. Then a hand full of greens - either fine threads of kale or quicker wilting spinach, then the beaten eggs mixed with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, grated nutmeg, a splash of vinegar, and mustard powder are poured over. Once the eggs begin to congeal, I heat the broiler and grate some Gruyere on top (or not) and pop the cast-iron pan under the heat coils until the frittata rises up and turns golden. Delish for dinner or Weekend Brunch!

About the only time I don't sautée onions is when baking banana bread. Maybe I'll have to try it! Or not...

*.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  

Bone and Smile...

Meera Ramamoorthy is one of my heroines. 

In her thirties, Meera has accomplished incredible things in support of many children, all the while being chased, like Peter Pan by a his crocodile who swallowed a ticking clock. Meera's croc is a life-threatening disease with which she was diagnosed ten years ago during her second year of medical school. It keeps pursuing her. Yet, even when she cannot move, feed or dress herself, she is at her specially rigged computer churning out content for her newest book.

She solicits, edits and assembles camp stories from campers, counselors, and medical staff who contribute stories about their experiences at camps for medically fragile kids. Her latest tome arrived by mail Friday. My beloved husband "Pun 4 Phun" contributed six stories to the mix. 

The latest edition, "This is Serious" is second in the series of "Stars In the Sky Bring the Summer Right Back to Me," and contains over 280 short stories with custom created black and white cartoon drawings illustrating each one. It came with a box of scented colored pencils. Interactive! We ordered twenty volumes. Proceeds go directly to the Serious Fun Network of camps. Meera threw in a hooded long-sleeve shirt showing the logo of fourteen year-round cost-free Hole-In-The-Wall-Gang camps started with Paul Newman's seed money. (Keep buying Newman's Dressing!) There are now more than thirty such camps worldwide where kids get to be kids instead of first being identified by their disease.

My desire is to have Meera, who is a medical doctor, and all medically challenged kids everywhere be completely healed. I'd like to see them boot their pursuing crocodiles in the teeth. Until that day, there's camp. 

May Meera continue to triumph over adversity for a long time to come. 

Dressed in her Wonder Woman costume and radiant smile, she inspires mightily. 

Recollections of Sayulita and Farewell to Jonathan Skow

SOMEbody has to be HERE in Sayulita!

Looks like I'm the designated body. 

I wholeheartedly accept the task of breathing moist palpable air. Touch the air, it touches back! The sound of surf underscores birdsong and Henrique's velvet baritone as he prepares the ceremonial space for this evening's welcome when all fifteen participants will be present.

Last night several of us walked to the central plaza to see the remains of the Día de Los Muertos festivities. Sayulita is known for this grand celebration.

Imagine Tibetan prayer flags hung in rows two-feet apart across all the major dirt and cobblestone streets, only the images cut out on each colorful square are of skulls, human and animal skeletons, suns, moons, and stars. On the streets closed to vehicle traffic, mandalas of pollen, amaranth, dyed rice of all hues, and fresh flowers mirror the themes and motifs of the fluttering flags above. 

Whole families are dining outside on the sidewalks. Most shops are closed as it is approaching midnight but we see through a window many statues encrusted with Huichol beaded designs. Rainbow colored horses, jaguars, and turtles.

The night is SO hot and humid, the dirt covered cobblestone one-way roads are alternately dusty and muddy since the tail of Hurricane Willa lashed Sayulita in late October.

Ana, Janaína and I linger longer in town trying to order a small taco for Janaína to taste the local flavors.  It takes a  L - O - N - G  time. When her Brazilian tongue meets the hot Mexican chiles, I see smoke rising from her ears! Tears fill her eyes. I taste the taco. Ouch! I say to Ana, "Please tell her how courageous I think she is."  When Janaína responds she says, "ALL mothers are courageous. We have to be." I think she's right and there are many more reasons ALL women are courageous and have to be. She tells me she has a daughter who is eighteen and a twenty-two-year-old son. She asks about my family. I name my beloved husband, both daughters, and the nine-year-old grandie. 

Ana, who has known me for fourteen years, translates for Janaína and me. I lament that my Portuguese has rusted to the point of being creaky to virtually useless. By this time we are on the bridge walking back to Corazon, the compound where we wiłl hold ceremonies for the next two weeks. The others must have gotten back long enough ago that we three were missed because right behind us come our hosts Billie and her husband Tim in the golf cart that drove Henrique and three others of our group earlier into town.

''We were worried,'' Billie says. ''Everyone else is back so we thought we'd better make sure Ana didn't get lost again.'' We all laugh. Ann's default setting is ''lost.''

We three "lost souls" hop on the back of the golf cart. WhenTim tries to start it, nothing happens. It is as dead as my Portuguese language skills. Four strong but travel-weary women push the cart up a small hill so Tim can give it a jump start on the way down. After three such tries, we leave the fickle cart parked near the all night pizza place and the five of us walk home. It's a sweaty, steamy walk... the best antidote to cramped seat airline and bus travel.

What a perfect first day I've had!

About day seven into our two week stay, I got word from the last resident of my childhood home that Jonathan Skow died as result of injuries sustained in a surfing accident. He and his wife, clothing designer Trina Turk, purchased the John Lautner designed home from my brothers and me in 2014. They loved it from the ground up, renovating it back to Lautner's original intent: Bring Nature IN. 

I'm heart-sick that Jonathan's vision, joy, and dedication to supporting the arts is taken from the world too soon. My heart aches for Trina. Together, she and Jonathan have made such a positive difference in this sometimes sad and often sorry world. I will miss him.

Here's a re-link to the NY Times article about Trina, Jonathan, and the "Long Lost Lautner."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/fashion/lost-john-lautner-house-trina-turk.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/fashion&action=click&contentCollection=fashion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 

Sayonara, Sayulita

It was a shock to leave 85 degree moist air on Mexico's Pacific Coast to come home to "Smokeland" where it's 53 degrees, dry, with thick apocalyptic smoke from the fires in Northern and Southern California.

Looking over photos of the trip, puts me back in the mind-set of gratitude for all I got to experience in twelve short days.

Henrique, my favorite shaman from Brazil, with whom I've studied since 2004, is very brave to set foot out of the country of his birth for the first time in his life. Accompanied only by translator Juliana, and Janaína, a helper person from the huge community there in Belo Horizonte, he comes to Sayulita to teach us, guide us and heal in us what he can. We are fifteen participants from British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington. Another translator, Ana, joined us for eight of the twelve days.

We are hosted by a couple who have been going to Brazil to work with Henrique since 2010. Their compound is called Corazon (Heart), and is

comprised of innumerable luxurious white-washed casitas on a hillside overlooking the Pacific. The dusty and muddy roads into town are the only residual evidence that Hurricane Willa lashed her tail at Sayulita in October. Luckily, the timing of this very special gathering was perfect.

Palapa is a new word in my Spanish vocabulary. There are at least two on Corazon's property. One is the main outdoor room where we nineteen folk meet, work, sing, and learn each day. Seventy feet long by thirty feet deep, the main palapa has roofing made of palm fronds secured only by weaving them in and out of cross beams made of a particular wood that must be harvested on the new moon, which is low-tide for sap. When fronds or trees are full of sap, they attract the termites which can devour the palapa in a matter of months because they're sweet and tasty to the hungry buggers. 

My two roommates and I stayed in a casita called Tres Amigos. Here we are under the circular palapa between kitchen and pool. 

 Janaína and I speak Portuguese very slowly. She is Henrique's helper, singer, and arranger of ceremonial objects. My refresher, on-the-ground-crash-course in Brazilian Portuguese this trip allowed me to translate many conversations for students into English, and into Spanish for the wait-staff at Corazon and English into pigeon Portuguese and Spanish.  

On our first night as sun drops into the Pacific, students gather to bask in the glow and look at mandalas chalked onto a roof-top floor. Some of us then go to see the remnants in town of celebrations of Día de los Muertos. There is a large Huichol population in Sayulita and one street off the plaza is decorated ornately in their particularly colorful traditional designs. 

On another street, Ana,  Henrique and Janaína stop to admire store-front decorations. Doing my best to understand and join in conversations.  Portuguese is pure poetry.

 Yet another roof-top. Where students Melissa and Tom rented an Air B 'n' B further uphill from Corazon, showing off  magnificent sunset views over the bay where Sayulita nestles on Pacific shores. We sing along with Andrea Bocelli on the iPad.

Off the top of my head selfie with Juliana, Henrique, & Janaína.

 With Juliana.

Jaguar watches over all.

Hearts appear everywhere!

Dining al fresco.

Good food too!

Hard to say Sayonara to Sayulita, but it's good to be home... in Oakland/Smokeland even with its cold, dry, and smokey air. There's no place like home.

Lowly Rutabaga, Cast Your Golden Light

The Grandie has some special friends at school.

Saturday, one classmate whose family lived awhile in Switzerland, shared an autumnal ritual learned there with invited classmates and their chaperones.

We gathered on the grass next to Lake Merritt, which would've bee enough. Just to see people walking, marathon runners in Halloween costumes, picnickers, lovers, whole families in celebration of whatever they were celebrating on a beautiful October twilight lifted spirits.

For kids, the freedom to rough house on Mother Earth's soft green lap while their adults watch obliquely, is a rare and needed gift. Bubble blowing, bubble popping, bubble keep-it-up games, tag, circle dances, swings, slides, and climbing structures delighted the two to ten-year-olds. Playtime would have been enough.

The inviting family came prepared with humble yet magic ingredients: A plethora of rutabagas and collection of carving tools. Sarah cut the top off each stinky tuber before showing a child how to use a melon-baller and the pokier pointed tools to make the walls thin enough to see light pass through.

Now imagine that as the sun descends to color up the sky, a goldish pinkish glow of more than a dozen candles - each in a hollowed out rutabaga echoes what's above.

The effect as twilight yielded to darkness was breath-taking. My camera couldn't capture one one-thousandth of the wonder in children's eyes as each held her/his light-filled vessel. Still, I will remember the glow inside and out as I witnessed these children thrive in the warmth of their own imagination, camaraderie, and safety of caring adults. Shared food was also delicious.

What transpired about half way through our gathering gave many of us food for thought. 

A gentle, but at the effect of whatever was in his "water" bottle, man parked his body on the grass just on the fringes of the tarps for veggie carving  and blankets laid out by the fifteen or so families from the school. The gentleman spoke to the air around him, or to entities only he could see, about gratitude, all people, and food - while gesturing to anyone who walked near enough to make eye contact. He looked hungry in every meaning of the word.

The "unknown" plunked himself in the middle of  our minds in mid picnic, putting all us caring adults into a quandary as the imaginative children, who cannot be sheltered from news cycles, shortened the distance between themselves and their adults. How do we keep our kids safe without hovering, without instilling irrational fear but only reasonable questioning fear: Is it safe to be near this person? How near is too near? What does he want? What is my responsibility to be my neighbor's keeper? What of my right to enjoy nature without an uncomfortable closeness of unknown other?

My granddaughter asked me on our way home, "What was wrong with that man?"

"I don't know for sure," I said, "but it seems as if he had too much alcohol to drink and wasn't making good choices. Maybe he is without family, without friends, without shelter, and without food.  The food seemed to interest him most of all, right? And the blankets.

"Uh huh." she said looking into middle space the way she does when she's sorting information.

Then she changed the subject.

I could not derail my trains of thought so easily. What I didn't voice, but what raced through my mind with the force of dozens of diesel-engine locomotives for a good portion of the rest of the night was those actions I might have taken to support and move along to another locale the gentleman on the fringes of life in the park. 

He wasn't sinister. He was marching to a different drummer. He wasn't holding weapons. He was holding us captive by our concerns for fairness and well-to-do guilt. He wasn't making obscene gestures. He had found a picnic and wanted to taste it. 

Dark came fast. I moved to make a plate for him at the same time I asked the host nearest to me if I might please take a sandwich and piece of pizza to him. "Of course," said the classmate's dad. "I think someone is giving him the whole box of pizza now." I put the sandwich in with the fragrant cheese pie while the gentleman said in his accented English, "Put all in. Put ALL in."

He asked for a candle. 

The mom of the classmate drew a line, saying, "Sorry. These are what the children made to take home." 

Guilt assuaging phrases come cheap:

The lights around the lake stay on all night. 
He has a blanket and a meal.
We don't want to encourage hustling in the park. 
There's a bathroom and a boathouse for warmth. 


Some might say, he shouldn't be making people feel uncomfortable.

Or... He shouldn't be making people feel. 

Or worse... He shouldn't be.

I do not pat myself on the back because I don't say that. 

The Grandie and I may need to have another conversation about how the presence of a different sort of gentleman near the picnic made her feel.

He certainly became my teacher at twilight.

Redwoods and Forgiveness

When a redwood senses it's going to die, or is struck by lightning or fire, it sends up shoots off its roots. And because its roots radiate out in a circle,  the next generation stands  surrounding the wise ancestor's stump.

Two weekends ago, when I went with a group to Roberts Regional Park which is populated mainly by redwoods I observed many circles of trees but didn't know the cause.  It wasn't until this past weekend, at a camp outside Occidental, that I understood the phenomenon of why the Sequoias often stand in circles.

Survival looks like respectful honoring in the Redwood family.

What does survival look like in the human family? Not quite so stoic and regal, eh? More like dog-eat-dog?

I wonder how we might reinstate the sense of wonder and honoring?

Dreaming a poem, waking to write it, this weird start of gratitude for all that befell me as a kid popped out...


In the dream I scraped some semen off the walls that know

What happened in that bedroom in my childhood long ago

I put it deep inside me just to see what it would grow

DNA of my warped daddy mixing with my own


And in the dream I noticed the results were much the same

That I grew up surprisingly, I'm healed, no longer lame

The pain of early childhood with its awful name

Don't wish incest on anyone the monster must be tamed


Still there are some upsides I must bow down in awe

Sure Dad's own dark suffering, unhealed, left us raw

But his art and creativity, aliveness to the core...

Worth a celebration and honoring... what's more

Profound the gifts he gave us, the wisdom for to see

When others hurt I know it, 'specially if they hurt like me



The gift to know that addicts must never be left in charge 

Of kids - especially young ones - but even when they're large

For addicts act to sooth their pain that's way down deep inside

Leaving all in ruins; beloved friends and family all in for a wild ride



Can we stand in wonder, in witness of this stump

That gave us life and honor good as we stand all in a clump?

Supporting one another, making vows to pass on the good

Respecting others' boundaries the lesson now understood

Unvitations

Yesterday, I issued three unvitations to the same person.

I was cooking when the phone rang and a friend went into a rant about the POTUS. Usually, commiseration R US, but I suggested we change the subject, as I didn't want the eggs to curdle.

Next, I was at a memorial service with like minded folk for a wonderful woman who enhanced many lives with her spunk, smarts, daring, and beauty. During the reception, someone got around to the latest scandalous tweet. Again, I took a page from my Cousin Gina's book and reminded the friends seated at table with me that the POTUS had not been invited to the ceremony or the reception.

Later, in the redwoods with ten like-minded and environmentally conscious friends, while picking out an invasive species of spiderwort from the forest floor, inevitably, the parallel play led to political talk and sharing of disturbing disgruntlement over the bullying we're seeing from the highest bully in all the land. 

"Ya know," I said, "He wasn't invited to our weed-pulling party. Let's see if the beauty of Nature can truly restore our sanity, refresh our senses, and dilute the rage, anger, disappointment and helplessness we're all feeling." 

A spider's giant orb web danced in the sun, casting a magic of its own. Steadfastly, we pulled the intruding weeds that compete with the redwoods for nourishment.

We spoke of the innocence of children. We spoke of people we know who are doing wonderful, creative things... creating art and beauty and music and gardens. We spoke of how gardens absorb all our negativity AND all our CO2, and how they give us so much solace, comfort and FOOOOD!

As far as I can tell, talking about the terrible horrible no-good very bad things that are being perpetrated under our noses makes us miserable and talk won't change a thing. Voting will.

There's an organization called thelastweekend.org which seems to make a lot of sense. From Friday, November 2, through Sunday, November 4, they encourage people to TALK with other people about voting. It's those last few impressions before election Tuesday, November 6 that seem to stick and make the biggest difference. The idea is to get as many folks to vote as possible. 

It's scary to think how many people have been stricken from the voting rosters for not having a street address, but only a Post Office Box address. Since when must you have a street address in order to vote? Ever since Trump and his handlers, circus clowns, and puppeteers came to power. 

What about this for a street address: Third car from the One Way Street sign, Corner of Main and Grand, Anytown, USA? So many Homeless Folk. So many Native Peoples. So many disenfranchised are excluded from the polls. Seems as if some ARE more equal than others, just as George Orwell predicted in 1948 about 1984. Now thirty-four years down the road, we've had lots of practice and inequality has mushroomed.

I've got my mail-in ballot and my recommendations from The League of Women Voters and I'm gonna send it in soooooon!
And, by the way, the POTUS is not invited into my heart or brain for the rest of the year. Or my gut. I shall return to the redwoods for comfort.

Sugar Highs and Political Lows

I ate a lot of buttercream frosting atop glorious and gloptious gluten-free cupcakes Friday night at a women's retreat half way up Mount Tamalpais.

Surprise!

My beloved husband conspired with a neighbor who also went to the retreat to schlep up forty cupcakes and waxen numerals he'd purchased so I would remember he loved me on my big "Seven-Oh."

The gals all sang the traditional song to me. I was totally surprised.

On Saturday, we heard the news about the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice who seems to be unable to control his temper. I do not believe he has the temperament of one who is supposed to be able to review cases with impartiality. Saturday was a sadder day than anyone at the retreat would have preferred.

We stood and sang "We Shall Overcome." I was totally overcome.

I hope we may not be in danger of returning to darker ages in this country when only illegal abortions in shadowy circumstances were available, and the harming of women in this and other ways was even more common than it is today. 

Is anyone listening? 

It is hard to hold up half the sky while trying to keep your panties up and fighting off drunken and determined, or sober and sinister overly entitled men.

May you VOTE for what you believe in. Vote to preserve the goodness of a three part government of, for and BY the people, rather than voting for pawns of oligarchs.

Rape is not healthy for Mother Earth or other living beings.

Red Shoes

Pete Seeger penned this marvelous song made popular by The Weavers during their 1980 Reunion Concert at Carnegie Hall.  It’s a classic that speaks to Baby Boomers like me who may remember, if we still have memory, the political activism of our youth.

Get Up and Go 

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

Old age is golden so I've heard said

But sometimes I wonder as I crawl into bed

With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup

My eyes on the table until I wake up

As sleep dims my vision I say to myself

Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?

Though nations are warring and business is vexed

I'll still stick around to see what happens next

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

When I was young my slippers were red

I could kick up my heels right over my head

When I was older my slippers were blue

But still I could dance the whole night thru

Now I am old my slippers are black

I huff to the store and I puff my way back

But never you laugh; I don't mind at all

I'd rather be huffing than not puff at all

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

I get up each morning and dust off my wits

Open the paper and read the obits

If I'm not there I know I'm not dead

So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

I always wanted to have this bumper sticker:

You never can have too many pairs of Red Shoes.

Why do I love red shoes? Maybe because…

-The Red Shoes Ballet as danced by Moira Shearer got stuck in my brain at an early age?

-I grew up in Echo Park near Downtown Los Angeles. A hot-bed of communist activity, Echo Park was called “Red Hill?”

-Red Shoes conjure for me Native Peoples who spoke of two roads: the Red Road (Life) and the Blue Road (Spirit). I’m fond of walking the good red road, preferably in comfortable red shoes?

-I want to hold onto my youth, like Ronnie Gilbert, female vocalist of The Weavers, whose slippers were red in her youth in the song above?

-The first pair of Capezio Spanish Dance Shoes I purchased, when I was an impressionable seventeen-year-old studying classical Spanish dance, were made in 1920 of bright red leather and I loved those shoes?

I love red and used to wear a lot of red clothing and, naturally, a girl’s got to have shoes to match!?

The Wizard of OZ probably always will be my favorite film and those Ruby Slippers have the power to move me to tears as I contemplate like Dorothy, I too always have had the power to “go HOME.”

No place like it, right?

Ram Dass says, “When it comes right down to it, we’re all just walking each other home.”

I like to imagine those times of red-slipper- wearing when I could kick up my heels right over my head. I like to re-member at the cellular level the certainty of conviction coordinated with muscular discipline in my more youthful body back then when it bent to my bidding. 

Not so long ago it seems, I walked, wrote letters, marched, and protested government actions I believed to be wrong. I marched with Congress Of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society, Progressive Labor Party, and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee against segregation in Los Angeles County and City Schools 1964-1966. I marched against the war in Viet Nam every year from 1966-1971, and was part of the Great Peace March send-off that started in down town Los Angeles with Holly Near singing us into an easy walking pace in 1986. A friend and I played guitars and sang songs at one of the early Earth Day Celebrations in L.A. 1972. More recently, like millions of women around the world, I knit and wore a bright pink Pussy Hat at the Women’s March and rally on January 21, 2017 and again in 2018. I’ve worn rainbow attire at nearly every Oakland Pride Parade since moving to the Bay Area from Los Angeles in 2014. For June 2018’s action of solidarity with families separated at our borders, I marched to and rallied around one of the detention centers in Alameda County. 

Marching feels right. Eighty percent of Life is just showing up, says Woody Allen. 

As I enter my seventies, I foresee that I will keep going for as long as ever I can to speak my mind, and use my will, voice and marching shoes for changing the world for better, if not for good.

Maybe, I need to buy some gently used red marching boots... that were made for walking, 'cause that's just what they'll do...

But that's another song.

Masters of War

When Dylan’s Masters of War song plays on my car radio in 2018, my head warbles to the sound of an off-screen harp, as if in movie flash-back-mode to… 

Danny and Teddy Simonovsky’s living room. Echo Park. Downtown Los Angeles. Any Friday night in 1964, ’65, or ‘66. 

The darkened room is filled with angst-ridden and pock-marked sixteen to eighteen-year-olds, trying our damnedest to look and sound like Buffie Saint Marie, Joanie B, and Bob D. 

We know all the words and chords, all the harmonies, and all the meanings which we discuss endlessly at lunch in our inner-city school cafeteria. Over time, too many of our male classmates leave their graduation gowns in a pile, sunny days in June, stash their tassels and year-books with family, and don the dull khaki green of bright shiny new Army recruits ready (yet also green) for sardine box-shipment off to the jungles of Viet Nam. 

These Friday nights are a time to let down our center-parted hair, to air our grievances, and to plan the next march against the insanity. Too many of our buddies are coming back in boxes or severely and permanently bent by what they see or are made to do while dodging Napalm - our own country’s lucrative (Dow Chemical Company) invention of Hell on Earth - a gift that keeps on giving to succeeding generations. 

War leads to more war. Betcha can’t have just one! Try one, and you’ll see. But this one is a Just War. Hah! We fall for that unjust justification too often. There is no just war if the motive is tainted one bit by greed. Do you know one that isn't? 

In 1967, I see the Joffrey Ballet production of Kurt Joos's The Green Table in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at Los Angeles Music Center. The ballet is the most searingly visual anti-war statement I have ever seen up close and personal. Joos and Fritz Cohen first presented this scathing depiction of how wars are planned and war's true cost in 1932, winning first prize in a choreographic festival of new ballet works in Paris. 

Black and white photos and videos of the war in Viet Nam grace our television sets while we eat our modern TV dinners in front of the sanitized gore.

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My own brother was one of Viet Nam's casualties. Granted, his body came home but much of his mind went missing, obliterated by attempts to forget his part in the war with liquid libation, dubious prescriptions, or beautiful as white-snow-coke. He’s quite a reader now, closer to eighty than seventy. Just don’t ask him what he’s reading, or to socially engage. That’s beyond his shingle anymore. The ears are gone, the stutter is pronounced. Reclusive is his modus operandi. He’s a survivor; not a thriver. He’s in compliance: Not drinking anymore but certainly not in recovery. I have almost as much survivor’s guilt as he does. I was lucky to be female, born half-a-generation later, and to avail myself of the healing modalities to which I had access for getting over what our father who aren't in Heaven, Howard was his name did to us both. Brother Mel did not choose a healing path. I miss him, or the "him" he used to be.

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A friend who saw lots of action in ‘Nam, and who was exposed to Agent Orange is now battling for his life. “Charlie,” as he calls his sternal cancer which has metastasized to his gut, is getting the upper hand and I’m pissed as Hell. I feel the rage against the very idea of war being shoved into the lives of young people. I rail against corporate greed. The letters I write to Nestlés, Dow, (now DowDupont), Monsanto, and Bayer nearly self-incinerate with fiery anger before I can get the stamps on with shaking fingers.

There are no just wars. 

On Sunday, our dear Pastor Ben Daniel at Church of Last Resort (AKA: Montclair Presbyterian in Oakland) offered a Peace Sermon. In it, he supposed getting rid of Hitler should have been accomplished long before 1930 wherever seeds of discontent and inequality were planted during and after WWI. When Adolf was not got rid of, the world was finally forced to remove his war engine with the Big War.

War begets war. Pastor Ben is right: Only Peace begets Peace.

I’d like to subscribe to this premise: War is avoidable, IF (longest word in any language), IF we sense in our fellow humans build-up of resentment of and struggle to get out from under indignities and inequalities, and IF WE WORK ACTIVELY TO RIGHT THE WRONGS.

Here's how Dylan sang it:

Come, you masters of war

You that build the big guns

You that build the death planes

You that build all the bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks

I just want you to know

I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old

You lie and deceive

A world war can be won

You want me to believe

But I see through your eyes

And I see through your brain

Like I see through the water

That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers

For the others to fire

Then you sit back and watch

While the death count gets higher

You hide in your mansion

While the young peoples' blood

Flows out of their bodies

And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear

That can ever be hurled

Fear to bring children

Into the world

For threatenin' my baby

Unborn and unnamed

You ain't worth the blood

That runs in your veins

How much do I know

To talk out of turn?

You might say that I'm young

You might say I'm unlearned

But there's one thing I know

Though I'm younger than you

That even Jesus would never

Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question

Is your money that good?

Will it buy you forgiveness?

Do you think that it could?

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die

And your death will come soon

I'll follow your casket

On a pale afternoon

I'll watch while you're lowered

Down to your deathbed

And I'll stand over your grave

'Til I'm sure that you're dead

• 

         Bob Dylan

Here is a write-up of Kurt Joos's The Green Table with music by Fritz A. Cohen, (1932):

https://balletwest.org/news/the-green-table-at-85