Old Coastal Friends

 We came over to Arcata as an interim get away between surgery recovery and restarting chemo. We stayed the first night with Susan and Robert in Willow Creek and then with Angela, Raymond, Lin and Jet in Bayside. I've known Angela since high school and Susan since nursing school. I'm so grateful to have old friends to visit and relax with. They and their families have been really kind to us.

 Today a stroke of luck helped me find my old friend Lynn. We've been friends for 36 years but I'd lost track of her. Her house isn't really accessible so I was writing a note to put on her mailbox when she pulled up hauling a horse trailer full of trash from a beach clean-up. So many memories flooded back looking at her beautiful face.

 Today we hiked up into the Headwaters Forest which is now preserved after the struggles of Judi Bari and countless others to save the ancient redwoods at the headwaters of the Eel River in the 80s.

 Yesterday we walked around the Bayside neighborhood, enjoying the rhododendrons and other flowering plants that have now dried up at home. So much glory... so lovely at the coast!

Mothers Day

 What women bring-- I look at these faces and I know it would take too long to tell you. The loving hours spent in the fields of human endeavor that bring us closer to justice and to caring for all.

 ...Music, teaching, bringing up the young. Linda, below, is wearing clothing she made from a commitment to garment workers... a new endeavor is born.

 And Mira, below, is here from Guatemala supporting an art school there for young people and multiple other projects that help her community.

 Orien and I were brunching yesterday to support the CCE&NN Program (see if I can get this right-- Community Clinical Education and Nurse Navigation Program) that assists women who are facing breast cancer financially as well as with education and emotional support. So many other women inside the Women's Club Mother's Day morning-- all doing good work.
It is an honor to be a mother and to stand next to my daughter as we resume our work as Women in this harried world. Yesterday was a wonderful step aside to just enjoy each others company.

Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe*, 1870

The First Mother's Day proclaimed in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe
was a passionate demand for disarmament and peace.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Biography of Julia Ward Howe

US feminist, reformer, and writer Julia Ward Howe was born May 27, 1819 in New York City. She married Samuel Gridley Howe of Boston, a physician and social reformer. After the Civil War, she campaigned for women rights, anti-slavery, equality, and for world peace. She published several volumes of poetry, travel books, and a play. She became the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1908. She was an ardent antislavery activist who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic in 1862, sung to the tune of John Brown's Body. She wrote a biography in 1883 of Margaret Fuller, who was a prominent literary figure and a member of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalists. She died in 1910.

Faire and Fair

 The Endangered Species Faire is part of an exhausting but exuberant first Saturday in May every year. There is also a "Pioneer Day" Spring Parade that I am boycotting because the parade committee would not change the name of the parade last year after representatives of the Mechoopda and Pomo people both spoke to Occupy Chico about how painful to them it is to celebrate pioneers and we made a well reasoned request that was never responded to. That was enough for me. Change it or stay away from it. (I don't feel done trying to change the name.)
Anyway, there is nothing I would want to change about the Endangered Species Faire that Butte Environmental Council puts on each year. It is a Gem.

 We have been blessed with creative people working all year in the schools with children to educate and make puppets representing endangered species. In this section the creatures of Air, Water, Earth came out separately after the original Procession of the Species... a wonderful, solemn entrance of many children, adults and their spectacular and humble puppets.

 It was nonetheless heart searing to hear the little voices on the microphone one after the other describing their species... so many at risk and these little people not really understanding why this is happening to their animal.. me either. me either.
The next stop was the International Fair at Chico State University where I got some fun shots of Jeanne Christopherson's dancers.

 At the end we were all samba-ing around and a couple of the guys from an Arabic country, I think they were perhaps Saudi, came out and danced around to the beat with the crowd. Just one big family under a hot spring sun. I loved it.

Beale- Drone Protest Arrests

 I just want to quote this:  Beale AFB is home to the U2 and the Global Hawk, the unmanned surveillance drone that is an "accomplice" in drone killings. The 5 activists arrested attempted to deliver a letter to the Beale AFB commander that demanded:

(1) An immediate ban on the use of all drones for extrajudicial killing (2) A halt all drone surveillance that assaults basic freedoms and inalienable rights and terrorizes domestic life in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia (3) A prohibition on the sale, and distribution of drones and drone technology to foreign countries in order to prevent the proliferation of this menacing threat to world peace, freedom and security and (4) The U.S. must immediately stop this lawless behavior of drone warfare that violates many international laws and treaties.

"US military and CIA Drone attacks have killed thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, in the Middle East, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In the name of combating terrorism against the U.S. we are terrorizing innocent people, and creating many more enemies and potential terrorists in the process," said a statement issued by Veterans for Peace, Code Pink, Chico Peace and Justice Center, Nevada County Peace Center, Peace Fresno, WILPF and World Can't Wait.

 It was inspiring, scary, bewildering and thought provoking how this morning went. This is a very heavily used gate into Beale AFB and a lot of people had very valid reasons for getting to work on time and were very upset at us....to the point that I think one of our numbers would have been injured had a military person not redirected the traffic.

 However, there are no forums for the truth of what is happening to civilians in the countries where the U.S. is using drone strikes. In this shot, Fred, a physician, looks over his shoulder as his wife, Toby, is taken off for booking after stepping over the white line defining base property.

 Both he and Shirley took advantage of all the young military people lining the road to speak out about the drone attacks and give the perspective of those communities where civilians have been killed and communities exist in constant fear. We really tried to communicate, to share what we have learned, to humanize the situation so the young soldiers will realize they must take responsibility for their part in this illegal, immoral killing.
Hopefully more people will join us and we will be able to stop the drone killings and put limits on drone surveillance in our own country. It will take a lot more pressure on the Obama administration to counter the corporate-military- executive branch collusion on this though.

Almost too much but the earth, ahhhh.

 So right now I'm listening to a Webinar-- Breast Cancer Action's Fracking and Breast Cancer. Before that, a House "Party" with a representative of Corporate Accountability, focusing on their work, especially against bottled water. (A corporate plan is in the works to get the public to accept that bottled water is better and therefore to eventually control all water access.) And, before that Beale Air Force Base and the struggle to stop drone attacks.
But First. Michael above Sunday at dried up Table Mountain, a well-loved area usually covered with wildflowers this time of year. He's healing, the wind is blowing everyday and it hasn't rained since about Jan. The uncovered rice fields are being disced and the air is filled with brown soil particles all the way up the valley. I worry but had a wonderful night in nature last night at Beale, at the base of the Sierra foothills.

 This was the sunset over the Sutter Buttes down N. Beale Rd. The North Beale gate closes early now and very few planes/jets were in the air so it was lovely camping last night with peace activist friends at the gate.

 Folks came from as far as Fresno where they do the Over Bridge Light Brigade. (I hope I have that title right-- it's a project that started during Occupy at the Brooklyn Bridge and is remarkably simple.)

 We demonstrated in the afternoon Monday at the Wheatland gate and my next post will show the demonstration there today but for awhile this morning I was by myself waiting for late comers at the N. Beale Gate watching the light play on the drying grasses across the prairie where coyotes and birds still sing all night long. It was the best night sleep I've had in a month... blessed earth even in all the madness of what humans are doing.

Over the Hump

 It was nice to see photos of Gus and Susa with Bob, our land partner, on the camera. As special as their whirlwind visit (from Germany) had been I'd forgotten all about it with the intensity of this last eight days.

 Michael has finally left the hospital today and I am incredibly relieved. All there is left to do is heal and then do six more rounds of chemotherapy. The photo above and below show a church you could see from his window... a church with a labyrinth that I was able to walk to help my stress during the tedious and sometimes uncomfortable hospital stay. We were really lucky to have such a beautiful view. Today as he was getting his discharge instructions I was watching a red tail hawk circling above Sutter's Fort across the street. We are both greatly relieved to be home no matter how lucky we were to have so many advantages.

 He is looking thinner and paler but feeling pretty well. After a rest he went off to an acupuncture appointment-- getting all that sluggish pain medication, residual stress, healing energy all moving in the right direction.

And I just wanted to Thank Darien one more time for hosting me during my city week. She's busy with full time work, peace and union activism, so I put in a small summer garden in her front yard--which is why she is in classic "Vanna" pose in this photo.
Many, many people are very dear to me after all the support we have had through this dangerous but necessary "Sugarbaker" cytoreductive surgery with intraperitoneal heated chemo followed by four days more of continuous intra-peritoneal chemo.  We both sincerely Thank Dr. Graves, Dr. Yang, our nurses in surgery, ICU and the Oncology Unit of Sutter Hospital for what we hope will be many, many years of health.

Drone Protest on Tax Day

 People have been blinded to Federal Spending habits since WWII. The constant increase in military spending is not going to be touched by the small nick caused by Sequestration because it is so bloated from the onset. This sign illustrates that and here's a tax graphic we have used over the years to explain that--  http://www.warresisters.org/federalpiechart.
Today I gathered with activists from Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, The Nevada City Peace Center, The Chico Peace and Justice Center, ANSWER Coalition and others, including my dear friend Darien (below) and her friends from Sacramento Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The protest, like others across America, was to demonstrate against our taxes being taken from human needs for wars and war planning with a special emphasis on the illegal and immoral Drone Strikes Program.

 One of the most striking visuals of this protest was this long panel illustrating fictitious images of children, just being children, with some of the ages and names of those innocents killed by Drones in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. The U.S. tries to hide the 176 children/800 innocent civilians killed in countries too politically weak to stop these acts of aggression. As is perfectly obvious, we are not doing anything other than cultivating hatred in these poor countries

 My own small project has been to embroider this quilt square for a civilian man in Pakistan named Munir bin al Haji bin al Assi. Often as I worked on this (I know, it isn't great embroidery,) I thought of him-- did he have a wife and children? was he a kind person? what was his life like and what happened to his family after he was killed by the drone strike? You can't help but wonder what the repercussions were. Veterans for Peace is doing the quilt and I'll send it off soon--it was a good project for contemplation though as I sat by my dear husband (whose birthday just happens to be today) these last six days. My Love goes out to Munir's family. I am very sorry for what our country has done.

p.s. This is what the Killer (Reaper/ Predator) Drones look like except you don't see them before they kill you, your family and your livelihood.