You can take the gal out of DC, but...

When I was a 3rd grader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, and my hometown was put on lockdown with Military Police on the corner of Mintwood Place and Columbia Road. I’d never seen a gun that long or in person.   During the uprising that engulfed parts of DC that April in 1968, my mother decided she was not afraid of the looting, even though we could all see the red glow to the east above 14th street: she was going to the grocery store and get us food for the weekend, and that was that. On a Friday night, in the dark, by herself, she found the Grand Union where we usually went was closed, so she went to a bodega-like corner store and bought a few things.  The Black man who worked there was just closing up. Apparently, he thought it was unsafe for her to go back out, and he walked her home.

This shopkeeper extended a protective hand to my mother, who’d blithely ignored the fact that, temporarily, she’d become a stranger in a strange land. Her naivete is a good example of white privilege. No matter. She was escorted to safety by kindness, hospitality, radical welcoming. Now that is hospitality. My mother hadn’t realized she was a stranger in a newly strange land, and this man was her ‘neighbor’, long enough to get her safely home.

 I’ve discovered a group call the “Othering and Belonging Institute” which is housed at that bastion of liberal thought, the University of California at Berkeley. The director is a Black man named John Powell. He writes in a special issue of Yes Magazine about building bridges, in 2019:

“At a time of heightened polarization and intense inequality in the United States and around the world, social differences run the risk of being turned into fault lines, and exploited for divide-and-conquer politics. As political scientists Rose McDermott and Peter K. Hatemi recently observed, inflammatory us-versus-them rhetoric “instigates neural mechanisms from the evolutionary desire to be part of the group.”

…. Bridging …is a concept used to investigate trust and social cohesion, as well as reciprocity and civic bonds. It describes relationships between and among different groups of people in society, and is a form of social capital, which examines connections that connect people across a cleavage that often divides society (such as race, class, or religion). Bridging occurs when members of different groups reach beyond their own group to members of other groups. Examples of this would be moving into integrated neighborhoods or places of worship where people hold different identity markers than oneself…

           “Othering” occurs when a person or group is not seen as a full member of society, as an outsider or “less than” or inferior to other people or groups. It happens at an interpersonal level across many dimensions such as race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and others, but is also expressed at the group level. When governments and other elites participate in the othering of certain groups, othering reaches its most dangerous level, and can lead to violence, and even genocide.

One of the mechanisms of othering is the practice of breaking—the antithesis of bridging. Breaking occurs when members of a group ….turn against the “outsider” group or the other. ... It tells the other, “You are not one of us. You don’t belong and you should not get the same public resources or attention and regard that my group gets.” Breaking emerges from a belief that people who are not part of the favored group are somehow dangerous or unworthy. It is largely based on fear, and a feeling of insecurity. These emotions may be grounded on a belief that “those people”—whoever they are—are stealing our jobs, harming our neighborhoods, or that they pose a threat to our sacred values and norms.

By imagining together, we can use bridges to hear the other and help construct a larger more inclusive “we” where no group dominates or is left out.”

[https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/building-bridges/2019/11/11/only-bridging-can-heal-a-world-of-breaking/]

On the website of the Othering & Belonging institute, I found this:

“No person, nor our living planet, are left outside the circle of our concern.”

Just in the past few days, the revered Civil Rights giant Congressman John Lewis died at the age of 80. Lots of quotes are being shared, and then I saw this illustration:

He was one of the original Freedom Riders who made it possible for Black people to vote safely in the South; a bridge to voting rights. (Don’t you wish Luckavich had colored his skin darker?)

  I think that a kind of bridging is easier for people to express during a crisis, like a hurricane or tsunami, like a fire. For a few weeks, the covid19 crisis in New York made everyone family:

We are not in that “remarkable act of global solidarity” anymore. Solidarity has given way to a deepened partisanship, most recently over the wearing of fabric masks on our faces.  This ‘othering’ feels like a tearing apart of the fabric of community.

To wit:

I chimed in:

All you have to do is say you’re from Eugene OR, and you get verbally assaulted in “Lakeview Announcements” Facebook page.  Are you one of us? Or are you going to be ‘othered’ here? This poor woman now knows it could go either way.

Because I’ve been feeling so disheartened lately, I’ve been looking for stories like this one:

“Athlete Abel Mutai representing Kenya, was just a few feet from the finish line, but he was confused with the signage & stopped thinking he had completed the race. The Spanish athlete, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him & realizing what was happening, he started shouting at the Kenyan for him to continue running; but Mutai didn't know Spanish didn't understand. Then the Spaniard pushed him to victory. A journalist asked Ivan, "Why did you do that?"

Ivan replied, "My dream is that someday we can have a kind of community life". The journalist insisted "But why did you let the Kenyan win?" Ivan replied, "I didn't let him win, he was going to win". The journalist insisted again, "But you could have won!" Ivan looked at him & replied, "But what would be the merit of my victory? What would be the honour of that medal? What would my Mom think of that?"’

What indeed? Ivan saw Abel as his athlete-brother.  His mother taught him how.

Here's an even more stark reminder of radical protection, radical hospitality:

From the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24653643:

“Keshia Thomas was 18 when the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist organisation, held a rally in her home town in Michigan.  Liberal, progressive and multicultural, Ann Arbor was an unusual place for the KKK to choose, and hundreds of people gathered to show them they were not welcome.

The atmosphere was tense, but controlled. Police dressed in riot gear and armed with tear gas protected a small group of Klansmen in white robes and conical hoods. Thomas was with a group of anti-KKK demonstrators on the other side of a specially-erected fence.

Then a woman with a megaphone shouted, "There's a Klansman in the crowd."

They turned around to see a white, middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt. He tried to walk away from them, but the protesters, including Thomas, followed, "just to chase him out".

Image copyright MARK BRUNNER

It was unclear whether the man was a Ku Klux Klan supporter, but to the anti-KKK protesters, his clothes and tattoos represented exactly what they had come to resist. The Confederate flag he wore was for them a symbol of hatred and racism, while the SS tattoo on his arm pointed to a belief in white supremacy, or worse.

Teri Gunderson, who now lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, emailed BBC News Magazine about her respect for Keshia Thomas when we published a series about kindness earlier this month:

"Her courage so touched me that I keep a copy of the picture and often think of her in situations. The voice in my head says something like this, 'If she could protect a man [like that], I can show kindness to this person.' And with that encouragement, I do act with more kindness. I don't know her, but since then I am more kind."

There were shouts of "Kill the Nazi" and the man began to run - but he was knocked to the ground. A group surrounded him, kicking him and hitting him with the wooden sticks of their placards.  Mob mentality had taken over. "It became barbaric," says Thomas.

"When people are in a crowd, they are more likely to do things they would never do as an individual. Someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'This isn't right.'"

So the teenager, then still at high school, threw herself on top of a man she did not know and shielded him from the blows.

For Mark Brunner, a student photographer who witnessed the episode, it was who she saved that made Thomas' actions so remarkable.

"She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her," he says. "Who does that in this world?"’

Who does that?

This guy. Patrick Hutchinson in London did that:  

From the WashPo:

LONDON — A photograph that went viral globally this week of a Black Lives Matter protester hoisting an injured white man, suspected of being a far-right demonstrator, onto his shoulder to extricate him from a violent scrum contained an essential mystery: Who was the man being saved?

He is a former cop. The white man being rescued in London by a black man in the now famous image was identified as Bryn Male, 55, a former police officer and detective constable for the British Transport Police, the service committed to protect rail passengers from crime.  He was saved from a bloody melee by Patrick Hutchison, 49, a personal trainer who also works for a security company.

Black Lives Matter protester hailed as hero for saving suspected far-right demonstrator

Both men are grandfathers, British news outlets reported…

Read his tee shirt: a melaninnaire, indeed.

June was a busy month:

“A noose at a NASCAR speedway in Talladega, Alabama, led to an outpouring of racial solidarity today [June 22, 2020]. The noose was found Sunday in the garage space of Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's sole black driver. He had successfully pushed to ban Confederate Flags from racing sites. All 39 other drivers rallied around Wallace today, pushing his car down pit row before the rain-delayed race began.

He climbed from the car and wept.”

By the way, Bubba is biracial.

Thirteen years ago, the following happened (reported on by the Associated Press):

Would-be robber demands cash, stays for wine and hugs at Washington, D.C., home

By Associated Press  Jul 13, 2007

WASHINGTON — Police on Capitol Hill are baffled by an attempted robbery that began with a handgun put to the head of a 14-year-old girl and ended in a group hug.

It started around midnight on June 16 when a group of friends was finishing dinner on the patio of a District of Columbia home, authorities and witnesses said. That's when a hooded man slid through an open gate and pointed a handgun at the girl's head.

"Give me your money, or I'll start shooting," he said, the witnesses told The Washington Post.

Everyone froze, they said, but then one guest spoke up.

"We were just finishing dinner," Cristina Rowan, 43, told the man. "Why don't you have a glass of wine with us?"

The intruder had a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupery and said, "Damn, that's good wine."

The girl's father, Michael Rabdau, 51, told him to take the whole glass, and Rowan offered him the bottle. The would-be robber, with his hood down, took another sip and a bite of Camembert cheese and put the gun in his sweatpants.

Then the story got even more bizarre.

The man with the gun apologized, the witnesses told the Post.  "I think I may have come to the wrong house," he said. "Can I get a hug?"   Rowan stood up and wrapped her arms around the man and the four other guests followed.

The man walked away a few moments later with the crystal wine glass in hand. No one was hurt, but once he was gone, the group went inside, locked the door and called 911.

Police said Friday that the case was strange but true. Investigators have not located a suspect.

"We've had robbers that apologize and stuff, but nothing where they sit down and drink wine," Cmdr. Diane Groomes said. "The only good thing is they would be able to identify him because they hugged them."

 I for one am glad they didn’t find the ‘suspect’. Maybe the hug was transformative and he just went home to put a gun to someone’s head no more.

In the New Testament, it’s the Good Samaritan who took care of the Wounded Jew left for dead on the side of the road. Jewish clergy had passed by to avoid touching someone who was ‘unclean.’ At that time, apparently, Samaritans were considered lower-caste. And this guy took care of the wounded man without concern for who either of them were in terms of social standing, or how much it cost to have the innkeeper tend his wounds.

It's so EASY to “other” someone of a different caste, or race or gender, or as I find it to be true today, someone who refuses to wear a mask.

Belonging. Welcoming. Hospitality.

A definition:

I googled “hospitality in the Bible” and found a blog by Scott Cormode. He writes:

“Hospitality is the offer to extend the privileges of community to those who do not have the standing to expect it, especially those who are vulnerable because they are strangers. ... Hospitality is an offer to identify with outsiders and to treat them like insiders. Hospitality is extending privilege across difference.

…God’s prophets remind [the people of ] Israel and Judah that God will judge them based on how they care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger—that is, by the degree to which they provide outsiders with the privileges that automatically come to those who are part of the community. [Why is ‘the widow’ an outsider? Oh yeah; she’s female.]

… Outsiders measure “warmth” by hospitality—by the degree to which insiders treat outsiders like they belong. That means that hospitality must adapt to the experience of the outsider. … Accommodation is different than assimilation. In assimilation, the burden is on you the outsider to change if you and I are going to share a culture. In accommodation, the burden is for me to change. … if hospitality is treating strangers as part of the community, then I owe them the same obligations I owe my friends. “

 I’ve heard the message loud and clear:

Also, this:

Dare I wear this tee shirt?  I think I have to earn the right to wear it. Not there yet.

If I am to build any bridges, I need to go beyond rooting out judgmental attitudes. I am still challenged by the Eugene-Oregon-hating, non-masking wearing members of my community, not to mention Mitch McConnell and #45.  (You do know that Satan asks: “What would 45 do?”, right? Yes, I just ‘othered’ #45.]

 I listened to a podcast the other day, part of a series called The Science of Happiness. A woman described how she does what’s called the “Lovingkindness Meditation.” There are a number of versions of this contemplative practice. Here’s what she does:

Call to mind someone you love easily, and say in your mind, “May you be well, may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.”

Call to mind someone you don’t know as well, and say the same wishes.

Call to mind someone you don’t get along with or have trouble feeling compassion for, and wish them wellness, happiness, and freedom from suffering.

Call to mind yourself. Lastly, expand your compassion to the world: May every creature be well, may every creature be happy, may every creature be free from suffering.

 She also shared that sometimes she has to do an exercise that’s called Just Like Me in order to wish the person she is least connected to “wellness, happiness and freedom from suffering.” Ram Dass has a script for this:

This person has a body and a mind, just like me. This person has feelings, emotions, and thoughts, just like me. This person has experienced physical and emotional pain and suffering, just like me. This person has at some time been sad, disappointed, angry, or hurt, just like me. This person has felt unworthy or inadequate, just like me. This person worries and is frightened sometimes, just like me. This person will die, just like me. This person has longed for friendship, just like me. This person is learning about life, just like me. This person wants to be caring and kind to others, just like me. This person wants to be content with what life has given them, just like me. This person wishes to be free from pain and suffering, just like me. This person wishes to be safe and healthy, just like me. This person wishes to be happy, just like me. This person wishes to be loved, just like me.

https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/practices/practices/view/27782/just-like-me-compassion-meditation

Bridging, welcoming, takes work. I am working on it. It’s some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.

I wonder if Lake County could ever post something like this in the doorways of our businesses:

Probably not. But I can hope someday for this one:

I mocked this one up with a map of our county, roughly the size of New Jersey:

I don’t believe that there ever was a time when America was great, and by that, I mean truly welcoming.

I believe our greatness is in the future. Perhaps that future is coming closer:

The author of Roots, Alex Haley, noted, “if you think about it, there’s not a religious group, there’s not a nationalist group, there’s not a tribe, there’s no grouping of people to my knowledge, of any consequence, who have not, at one or another time, been the object of hatred, racism or who has not had people against them just because they were them.”

The eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, noted that “Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.”

Bring on the liberation. I will be looking for bridges to build and methods of radical hospitality to exercise. Who does that?

The idea of having a peaceful procession to honor George Perry Floyd’s death, and the catalyst for change it’s become, was voiced by Sandy Watts during our church meeting on zoom June 7th before we said Compline together. She’s the woman who graduated from Oregon State and promptly went to Mississippi to be a Freedom Rider and register black people to vote. Her mother was so embarrassed that she lied to people about where she was, until a newspaper revealed that a Lakeview native had been arrested with other Freedom Riders there. Sandy is now retired, but spent her career as an attorney and judge, working as an advocate, especially for First Nations peoples. She’s also Valerie’s cousin.

She told the zoom-church that she’d heard about a proposed procession and plan to kneel in silence at the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeview. I volunteered to compose an email to Democratic Party of Lake County, to the Paisley Book Group and all the other progressives I know, to wit:

“In honor of George Floyd's memorial service [on June 8th], we have heard that there is interest in having a quiet procession to perhaps the courthouse green or the city hall, kneeling, and dispersing. 

“I'm creating this email to see if there is interest. People can meet at the courthouse. It doesn't have to take long. 3pm is the time, our time, because of Mr. Floyd's burial in Houston, his hometown.

Reply to all to discuss?

Respectfully,

Jane Lincoln, Senior Warden, St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Lakeview”

 Eighty one replied emails later, we had a loose plan, with members of the Lake County Democratic Party co-sponsoring. Claire of the Dems and I agreed to be the coordinators. I tried to reach our priest to see if he was coming and to wear a collar if so, but I got a text saying he couldn’t make it.

Since our church is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the director, who was part of the talk about racism last fall, put up a notice on the Facebook page, Lakeview Announcements, and the Chamber’s Facebook page. She promptly received a lot of threats and insults, including to her personally (about her weight!) Ad hominem attacks are what happens when any liberal point of view is expressed on facebook in Lake County. Even the freer-wheeling Lakeview Forum is a dangerous neighborhood for minorities: I posted something about happy pride month and it got taken down.

Despite the negativity, on Monday night, an out gay man and self-described “liberal” named Peter put up the notice on Lakeview Forum:

There were a fair number of negative comments on Facebook, including accusations that we were antifa (anti-fascists from Portland) who would loot and ‘insight’ riots. I countered that we were a church group, unarmed, over 60, and we might be singing hymns but they would be muffled due to masks. We would walk on the sidewalk and avoid inconveniencing the one business we’d pass on the way to the Courthouse, Burger Queen. I had an exchange with the county sheriff, Mike Taylor, and assured him we would be peaceful. I also mentioned that other folks are welcome to exercise their first and second amendment rights to counter-protest, to show their weapons, whatever.

I was nervous about this effort. I debated on a skype call with my therapist on Monday about whether I was up to this, given how upset I was that a Happy Pride Month! post had been taken off Facebook for no good reason on June 1. Knowing that there would be more than a handful of church members and other progressives, I decided I could be there. I took 3 hours off my work schedule and drove to the church at 2pm on Tuesday, June 9, the day of George Perry Floyd Jr’s burial in Houston.

Claire was already there at the church, and I opened the building with the key I was given when I agreed to be Senior Warden a few months ago. We’d both photocopied songs: Amazing Grace, We Shall Overcome, and an evangelical standard that Valerie recommended, Marching to Zion. Claire made a sign of a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. I made 6 signs with biblical verses on them:

Our friend and fellow member of Easy Writers, Margot, showed up wearing a “Back the Blue” tee shirt and an American flag face mask. She was once a card-carrying member of the NRA and remains a decent shot. Kathy Thompson’s husband Manley showed up with a big American Flag – she is a fellow knitter, Valerie’s primary care provider, and a coworker. JD, my friend and fellow social worker, arrived with one of his children who is 9 and already an accomplished athlete. More people joined us, some I didn’t recognize. We made sure everyone had a mask. I tried to gather people’s attention to talk about how we would deal with heckling, and there was general agreement not to engage or escalate, and either be silent or sing. We did not have practiced nonviolent-protest discipline, but I had faith in our ragtag good intentions.

Kevin Winter, our reporter from the Lake County Examiner, the weekly local paper, showed up and took this picture of us:

Off we went down the sidewalk, sort of social distancing, and the first part singing We Shall Overcome. I heard a man yell from a car, “Oh come on.” Cars slowed down to look at our signs. We walked on, about 25 of us. Our masks and our signs distinguished us.

As we approached the courthouse, we passed alongside Animal House, the all-volunteer dog rescue in town, which was sponsoring something of a cookout/counter protest. I knew many of the folks in the yard and waved and greeted them. One person, a former client, looked sheepish. There were also about 10 people with ALL LIVES MATTER signs, who were yelling at us. We crossed the street and several people joined us, some from church, like Karen & John who weren’t up to walking, and some I’d never met. A young Latina carried a sign saying “I will not stay silent so that you can stay comfortable. #BlackLivesMatter #Stop Police Brutality.” A coworker from the Wellness Center, who will be my field student for her MSW degree, also came.

Peter engaged with a counter protestor for a few moments. Then I gathered us up and we naturally formed a circle. Claire had brought a small bell, and told everyone that we would be kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in silence. And so we did. Some stood, and I ended up sitting, my knees uncooperative.

While we were thoughtfully silent, the counter protesters would shout ALL LIVES MATTER, DEFUND THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (because it shared our flyer on Facebook), and BLUE LIVES MATTER. Around minute 6, a few folks murmured, I CAN’T BREATHE, which were Mr Floyd’s last words. Manley fell forward, the flag resting on the ground, in imitation of Mr. Floyd’s collapse, and the counter protestors pointed out that the flag was on the ground. So Peter picked it up.

Tu Lucha es Mi Lucha. Latinos for Black Lives: Your struggle is our struggle. Racism is a public health crisis.

Claire declared that there were 46 more seconds. And then we all stood up. I thanked everyone for coming, and asked if people felt like singing. Sure, was the response. We shall overcome or Amazing Grace? The latter. I started us off, slow and strong, maybe too slow.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!  I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed!

We made it through 2 verses, and faded out.

Again, thanking everyone for joining us, I turned and said to a counter protestor, “YES, I agree! ALL LIVES MATTER!”

We quietly dispersed. A small group walked back to the church because our cars were parked there. Driving to the Burger Queen, I treated myself to a chocolate and vanilla swirl soft serve, and drove home.

When I got to Paisley, I saw a text from JD, who is among many wonderful qualities, a gay adoptive father of 3:

“I am beyond proud of you and continue to learn so much from you. Words can’t express how much I appreciate you. You’re making me a stronger person and social worker. So thank you for being an amazing mentor.”

Made my day, he did. I was still recovering from the adrenaline.

Since that day, the various Lakeview Facebook groups have been active on the subject of law enforcement: I posted this about our procession:

I’m not sure what our procession of 23 souls, and kneeling circle of 35 actually accomplished. We who walked and knelt felt a solidarity with each other as the minority of ‘libtards’ in our county seat, and a kinship with the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve marched and knelt around the country, including in Burns and Klamath Falls.  For the first time ever in the US history of civil rights marches, the majority of protesters were white.

Lake County is 85% white. Our little procession was white, and also Mexican-American and First Nation (Klamath). Tu Lucha, Mi Lucha.

I wonder what the counter-protesters thought of us. I think at times they wondered how to engage, and belittle, a group of people who were so nice to them. We didn’t have water hoses, tear gas, or pepper spray to deal with. We were shouted at, and the children were spoken to with inappropriate disrespectful words: “your parents are wrong”. We maintained a prayerful groundedness, even the atheists among us, one of whom had a sign that said “Stop killing black people, said God”.

Anti-black racism is a low hum in Lake County. There are so few black residents here, the whole idea seems abstract. Most people here do not see the connection between their anti-government point of view, and the American sin of racism. They don’t care. They DO care about fighting the prospect of a housing project for homeless people in Lake County. As if the homeless people are outsiders, and not members of their own families.

Sadly, I think Sarah Silverman is on to something.

On May 27th, the death toll from covid-19 hit 100,000 Americans:

Planet Earth has 6 million cases as of May 30th.

Seven million on June 7th  

June 15th, we are at 2 million cases USA and 8 million on the planet (by the end of the day)

On May 26th, it was announced that Lake County had its first case. A person who was tested (because we are now testing prior to surgery or procedures like colonoscopies) came up with a positive result, apparently a great surprise to that person, and puncturing the purity of zero-case-Lake-County. I hear that a person who lives with that person has symptoms, so, 2 cases. It begins. Not sure what exactly, but we are now in the First Case and Beyond era of Lake County Covid-19. As of today, there are 6 cases, and the saw mill was shut down because of a positive test result. Remember we have 4 ventilators, a nursing home, and a prison, all in our county. Thank goodness there is no meat packing plant.

In news from our household, Miss Valerie, in the wee hours after Memorial Day holiday, managed to move her legs out of the bed to go potty, and put weight on her left leg very wrong. She’s been using a walker ever since: the xray read “sprain.”  Which didn’t slow her down any. Nevertheless, we decided that first day of hobbling that it’s time to move the bedroom from the loft to the first floor; no use tempting fate. Her amazing family, including sister Karen and granddaughter Jessica, moved the bed and dressers, and piled up my yarn, while I was at work. I’ve spent the last two weekends sorting and rearranging my precious stash, and taking pictures of yarn I have too much of, to the delight of my Outback Knitters & Crocheters group. I sell top quality stuff for half price. Noro, Malabrigo, Rowan. I have plenty left. I’m knitting or crocheting on about a dozen projects at once. I may be a yarn hoarder, but I’m also prolific.

While we were dealing with Valerie’s knee, yet another black man was killed by police, this time in Minneapolis. He was apparently inebriated, passed an obviously fake 20 dollar bill to buy cigarettes, and was so drunk he didn’t know which way was up. He resisted arrest, because he was claustrophobic about being put in the back of the police car. He was handcuffed behind his back, and still, he was subdued by a white law enforcement officer named, irony alert, Officer Chauvin, who’s knee stayed on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until he was dead. “I can’t breathe” has been cried out by several dead black men in recent years.

Another hysterical white woman called the police on a black man who was ‘birding’ in Central Park. Watching her on the video, I’m thinking she’s on the Autism Spectrum. In any case, she freaked out when he told her she should put her dog on a leash in that part of the park which is clearly marked for leashed dogs, and she freaked, and he filmed it, knowing the video would protect him. The police came and looked at her funny and didn’t charge anyone with anything. She lost her job and her dog the next day.

The Fact Checker journalism organization has counted 19,127 false claims made by the president. The # 1 lie is that our economy is the best in all of human history:

Covid-19 has revealed that essential working-class jobs don’t have benefits like sick leave, health insurance, or bosses who care more about their workers safety than their stockholder’s dividends. Home health aides and delivery people are essential, and suffer the most in the ‘gig economy’. Spain, Italy, and Sweden all have had a bad time with the coronavirus, but they have safety nets.

Humans swarmed the beaches over Memorial Day weekend. Lake County has six infected patients. Even Sean Hannitty of Fox News said in reaction, at least wear masks!

Covidiots. We are a long way from this:

Since George Floyd was suffocated to death, there have been protests all over the world. His body is being buried in his hometown of Houston on June 8th. A tiny group of Lake County residents will walk peacefully from St. Luke’s to the County Courthouse, and we’ll kneel in silence for almost 9 long minutes.

This was what we posted:

New York Times journalists Wesley Morris wrote:

“The most urgent filmmaking anybody’s doing in this country right now is by black people with camera phones. Their work comprises a ghastly visual mosaic of mistreatment, at best, and whose victims are international symbols of mourning: Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland. Art is not the intent. These videos are the stone truth. Quaking proof of insult, seasick funerals. Livestreamed or uploaded, or suppressed then suspiciously unearthed as found footage. Last week, the archive grew by two, and now the nation’s roiling.”

In my hometown of DC, Trump had prison police tear gas peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square so that he could strut in front of St. John’s Episcopal holding a bible upside down. Bishop Curry and Bishop Budde had fits. Mayor Muriel Bowser painted part of sixteenth street with street-width yellow letters: BLACK LIVES MATTER.

I’m glad Clara hasn’t been down there.

Trump’s polls are plummeting. Here’s what it feels like as he reacts like a tyrant, or a toddler having a tantrum:

On Wednesday, I’ll gather with the ‘social distancing knitters’ on the side of the church, because it is shady and green.

This past Sunday, one of my all-time favorite hymns was sung and I keep replaying the youtube video. And watching the sign language interpreter. It starts at minute 18:30:

https://youtu.be/4En0PK795PM?t=1109

How can the writer of those lyrics have such profound faith, such that “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging, since Christ is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?”

I feel so sad. Tears just under the surface. My neuroses have a long-established sturdiness, as does my firmly rooted anxiety disorder.  Combined with the horror of 100,000 American deaths, the horror of a president who is deeply cruel and only good at manipulating his followers as he promotes himself.

Monday, May 4, 2020. Day 55 of the global pandemic (declared by World Health Organization on March 11th.) We as a planet hit 3,500,000 cases today, and 250,000 deaths. There are many more than that, but the planet doesn’t have enough tests.  But then, there was this announcement:

So obviously we’re in good hands. [Sarcasm alert.]

 The entire planet has slowed down, such that seismologists can detect the quieting of the earth: less shuddering of industry, cars, construction. Check out the drop in electricity usage:

Here’s a bit of perspective from Instagram:

The Lesbians of Paisley have been fertile ground for viruses. Valerie is nearly recovered from the viral pneumonia she was diagnosed with on March 26 at the emergency room at Lake District Hospital. She’d begun to feel feverish and achy, with violent coughing on March 15th, 2 days after what turned into my last day in my office at the hospital’s primary care clinic, and a day and a half after we’d dined with our friends Toni, Al, Bonnie and Bruce in person, sans masks. We began 100% isolation from the outside world the minute she felt sick. She recounted the ER adventure to a friend thusly: We drove in and they have organized a system that resembles getting on a [military] base after 9-11. We sat in the pickup at the checkpoint until a somebody in protective attire had taken my temp and saturation levels and asked a bunch of questions. Then they slapped a red sticker on the dash, told us to park in the ER lot and "don't get out of the pickup." Five hours later I had donated blood and been CAT scanned. I had two pneumonia shots that were current and two flu shots, also current. They checked the blood against 14 different virus strains and came up blank. The chest showed white lungs and my saturation levels were iffy. So they used one of the tests they had been sent, gave me antibiotics (just in case) and sent me home. Took me three days to sleep off all that fun.”

Me and Griffey the poodle waited in the pickup for her. At every sound, he got up from the passenger’s seat and looked at the ER entrance where she’d disappeared. No Valerie? Back to sleep. I walked him 3 times.      Hope, her RN daughter, told us that her flow through the ER was great practice in maintaining distance and perfect hygienic process through the CT scan, taking blood, even pushing her food on a tray to her. Lake Health District Hospital is prepared, and still, technically speaking, zero cases in the county.

I was so anxious about her health, her ability to breathe, that I gave up all thought of working from home. I listened to her breathing and coughing, brought her tea, and finally, asked her to write out her last will and testament. She did, and put it away. I figured, her kids are wonderful and won’t fight about stuff but, better for her to express her wishes, even if the paper wouldn’t be legally binding.

Apparently, I get the FrankenDodge (the pickup which has hit one too many deer and who’s grill is sewn together by wire). I’ll take it but I’d much rather have her.

We waited 10 days for the nasal swab results. While we waited, she got better. Never had that cytokine storm, nor that respiratory crash. Storms and crashes; pretty apt words for the medical horror of end stage COVID-19. Once her test came back negative, despite the warning of her PCP who says that nasal swabs miss between 30 and 47% of positive cases, I was able to go to town on the 10th of April, get some software downloaded onto the computer so I could work from home, and hit Safeway while wearing a mask. I also dropped off one of Valerie’s homemade masks to a friend, along with some toilet paper illustrated with Trump’s kissy face. The moment of levity was greatly appreciated.

I started feeling lousy six days after my jaunt to Lakeview (April 16th). Cough and release of gook high up in my chest. Headache. No fever. Who knows if I have COVID-19. We listen to a British gentleman, Dr. Campbell, daily, as he reviews what’s going on globally, and he interviewed a woman who had exactly my illness course, before she moved on to fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. She never got tested. Too much hassle. Which is so ridiculous, criminal really, and in the USA, a direct result of American hubris and incompetence. Fine. Anyone with any symptoms of any illness is isolated until we have a vaccine and treatment, is my prediction. I’m still feeling shitty, though better. Started taking antibiotics just in case and in the hopes of recovering SOMEDAY.

 My son Jonah and his girlfriend June escaped just in time the terrible plight of New York’s COVID19 deluge of infections and hospitalizations. They’ve been in Baltimore at June’s mother’s beautiful home. He spent his 26th birthday in the basement because they were still in quarantine. See adorable picture, below. Now they’re allowed upstairs, enjoying the quiet. Apparently, writing and directing music videos is not an essential service during a pandemic, but he’s writing pitches and living off the most recent lucrative gig with Kesha, thank goodness.

One of the most moving things that is happening in the USA during this time is the 7pm clapping ritual for medical workers and first responders in New York City, in all the boroughs:

There’s a firefighter in DC who’s going to hospitals and nursing homes to play the bagpipe.

That’s where my daughter Clara lives, in DC, but right now she’s staying with a friend in Laurel, MD, since her group house dynamics are stressful and had a symptomatic guest at last report. She’s working from home to make sure the Latinx school children are getting the tutoring they need now more than ever. We worry about her husband Jose and his country, Guatemala, since there are COVID-19 cases down there, and refugees seeking asylum are being dumped there, with and without the virus. Over 700 cases in Guatemala as of today. We hope he will get to the USA this year. However, Trump referred to it as a shithole country, which doesn’t bode well.

My sister and her husband are well, thankfully. They work fulltime from home in the company of Pepper the cat and Darcy the chocolate lab. Yuuki, 25, stays there, too, mostly in their room; they are out of work and applying for unemployment. Kohji, age 28, works from home in DC and makes more money as a web designer than I ever will after 34 years as a social worker, but who’s counting. (I remember well the admonition of a field instructor back in 1987: don’t go into social work for Power, Pay or Prestige.) His girlfriend is probably out of work; she works for a nonprofit that plants trees in DC. Probably not essential work right this very minute. Makoto, 23, is out of quarantine and looking for something to do; he’ll be a senior at the University of Delaware this fall. As far as I hear on Facebook and email, the rest of the folks with whom I share DNA are well. So that’s good. I worry about my Aunt Mary Lee who is 87. But she says not to:  she’s fine and her ritzy retirement community in McLean, VA is on “lockdown.”

Psychologically, in the experience of quarantine and ‘social distancing’, there’s me, and then there are my clients.

My moods go up and down, but a little further down than usual. The terror that Valerie might die of COVID-19 has passed, but I figure I will always need therapy.  I have “Facebook messenger” video chats with my therapist, Darcy of Bend, every other week now, which helps. Having ‘Generalized Anxiety Disorder’ and a tendency toward major depression, I find therapy to be a corrective. A bimonthly tune up. Without it, I naturally veer toward negativity and neurosis, and a hypervigilance that served me well when I was a child, but is exhausting, overwrought and over-thought as an adult.

Psychologically, Valerie is always fine. Seriously. She was once told as a young woman by a therapist who’d tested her with the MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) that she was outrageously and puzzlingly normal. Now that she’s feeling mostly well again from the pneumonia, she’s been tearing up the joint, fixing the sump pump that apparently keeps this little house from drifting down main street on the wetlands it’s built on. Digging out the leaves from our irrigation ditch, chopping and clearing the wood from our front yard.

The BEFORE picture:

The AFTER Picture.

 And this happened one morning in March. Just a cattle drive past our front door.

Valerie’s planning a garden at her daughter’s place, which has a deer-proof fence and lots of sun up on the hill above us. A delivery of horse manure is scheduled, and the garden bed has been rototilled. Val’s granddaughter Jessica and her husband Alan are living up there now, working from home for their Portland-based gigs. They’re almost finished the 14-day quarantine since they moved down here. The new normal: anytime anyone leaves one locale for another, they disappear into strictest quarantine, not to leave their abode. Groceries are delivered to the doorstep. A recent day turned out to be Jess’ 25th birthday: I’d bought a canvas bag with a picture of a pug on it, like her dog Archie, and Valerie found something gluten free flour mix with fresh jam to give her. Birthday gatherings are suspect at the moment.

Here’s a lovely idea for quarantined birthday celebrations:

What a kind and generous offer.

Even in isolation, Val and I do socialize, on zoom. The one pictured below is church.

We ‘visit’ with our fellow parishioners from St. Luke’s on Sunday evenings. Then we say Compline together, from the Book of Common Prayer. My favorite prayer of all time is this one from that service.

Yes, shield the joyous. Because joy is fleeting.

Our writers’ group, Easy Writers, ‘meets’ on zoom every Monday now. I wrote this bit about my yarn for the prompt, ‘write something in your home that means a lot to you.’

I am doing a great deal of crochet and a little knitting.

Yarn is my comfort and my joy. It is the raw material I create blankets and scarves and hats with. My tools are hooks and needles made from wood and plastic and metal. My fingers are also my tools.

Some of the yarn is like cotton candy: spun mohair from a goat is said to have a ‘halo’ or ‘aura’ because of the gentle cloud of color you can see an inch or two away from the spun thread. Some yarn is like twine: you can see every string of ply. My favorite is merino wool and single ply. A unity of color that will not split. All for one and one for all, the fuzzy stuff is twisted and bound into a single string of strength…

My clients are stressed out. The pandemic adds a layer to the stress they were already experiencing. I listen and knit, from within the cocoon of the yarn room which my folks can see behind me.  One of my clients wanders about with her phone in her hand while I get slightly dizzy. I like this kind of counseling since I get a glimpse of my clients’ homes. Reminds me a little bit of being a geriatric care manager. You can tell a lot about a person from their home. From my home you can tell that I have a lot of yarn, and I work multiple projects at a time because there are piles of them alongside my recliner.  

One of the sad weights of being present for my clients is their level of estrangement for most if not all social connections, especially people with whom they share DNA. And every single one has what is called in the mental health world “complex PTSD” from multiple traumatic experiences.  I sit with them, on the phone or via video. I hope to model for them what Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard.’ I breathe deeply to release my own distress at their sadness. We explore one tiny step toward reducing their isolation, the sense of trust. All during a pandemic where other people could be carrying a potentially deadly virus.

It’s no wonder I’m pawing mohair out of screen for my own comfort.

Sometimes I email clients links or articles on how to keep their spirits up, or about good things that are happening instead of the dire predictions they’re listening to or watching. There is much to share that is hopeful.  I sent one to a client on creative ways to care for everyone and she shot back:

“I believe this is Liberal rhetoric. 

Esp the paragraph below:

 This current emergency provides the possibility for a new emergence—the birthing of a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people and the living Earth. “

Oh well. We can’t have a truly civil civilization dedicated to the well-being of all people, now can we?

Sigh.

 Brilliant writing is being penned right now, since the entire planet’s human inhabitants are barely one degree of separation away from this virus, which is apparently ‘barely alive’ and therefore hard to kill, as it spreads onward to make millions miserable and hundreds of thousands die.

I’m saving articles from The Atlantic, The NY Times, and the Washington Post, and following a historian named Heather Cox Richardson who writes a daily blog called Letters from an American. In a recent post she writes:

“The big news … has been the ‘protests’ of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus …These protests are a classic example of trying to control politics by controlling the national narrative. The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s reelection. …These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic. Even more, though, they are designed to keep the American public divided so that we do not protest the extraordinary economic inequality the pandemic has highlighted.

These protests have diverted the national conversation by turning a national crisis into partisan division along the lines the Republican Party has developed since the 1980s... The change of subject protects not just Trump but also the ideology at the heart of his Republican Party. Since 1981, Republicans have argued that the economy depends on wealthy businessmen who know best how to arrange the economy—the makers-- and that it is vital to protect their interests. Under their policies, wealth in America has moved upward. The pandemic has highlighted how these policies have removed economic security for ordinary people. They cannot pay their bills, and they might well turn against an ideology that uses our tax dollars to bail out corporations while they must risk their lives to pay their rent.”  [Emphasis mine]

I am so glad someone smarter than me can reveal the interconnections of what’s going on politically.

There is food for thought on Facebook and Instagram: in the guise of a rewrite of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, this poem.

Mary Oliver for Corona Times (after Wild Geese)

by Adrie Kusserow

You do not have to become totally zen, You do not have to use this isolation to make your marriage better, your body slimmer, your children more creative. You do not have to “maximize its benefits” By using this time to work even more, write the bestselling Corona Diaries, Or preach the gospel of ZOOM. You only have to let the soft animal of your body unlearn everything capitalism has taught you, (That you are nothing if not productive, That consumption equals happiness, That the most important unit is the single self. That you are at your best when you resemble an efficient machine). Tell me about your fictions, the ones you’ve been sold, the ones you sheepishly sell others, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world as we know it is crumbling. Meanwhile the virus is moving over the hills, suburbs, cities, farms and trailer parks. Meanwhile The News barks at you, harsh and addicting, Until the push of the remote leaves a dead quiet behind, a loneliness that hums as the heart anchors. Meanwhile a new paradigm is composing itself in our minds, Could birth at any moment if we clear some space From the same tired hegemonies. Remember, you are allowed to be still as the white birch, Stunned by what you see, Uselessly shedding your coils of paper skins Because it gives you something to do. Meanwhile, on top of everything else you are facing, Do not let capitalism coopt this moment, laying its whistles and train tracks across your weary heart. Even if your life looks nothing like the Sabbath, Your stress boa-constricting your chest. Know that your antsy kids, your terror, your shifting moods, are no less sacred than a yoga class. Whoever you are, no matter how broken, the world still has a place for you, calls to you over and over announcing your place as legit, as forgiven, even if you fail and fail and fail again. remind yourself over and over, all the swells and storms that run through your long tired body all have their place here, now in this world. It is your birthright you be held deeply, warmly, in the family of things, not one cell left in the cold.

-Adrie Kusserow

 Not one cell left out in the cold. Yes.

There is so much to be grateful for. I have a place to live, and even while paying off my bankruptcy debt, I have plenty. Enough that I can make small donations here and there. Here’s one cause I found: supporting foster children who were in college and now have no place to go. (Terrible visuals for the logo: it’s “Together We Rise.”)

Soon, the nights of below freezing temperatures will pass, and both Lesbians of Paisley will be healthy at the same time.  Perhaps I’ll get my Tricycle-for-Grownups serviced and toodle around for exercise. Perhaps the Stitch & Bitch knitting/crochet gatherings will resume, maybe in a park for physical distance and social connection.

And maybe I’ve already had Covid-19, and so has Valerie. Looks like 50-70% of all the people on the planet, not quite 8 billion humans so maybe 4 to 6 billion people, need to catch this thing in order to give our species herd immunity. Or WILL catch it because we have no way to stop it, only to slow the infections so that health care is not overwhelmed. We live and Love in the Time of Coronavirus, to paraphrase Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I maybe a libtard, a snowflake, a lily-livered liberal, who’s heart bleeds. But I agree with this sentiment, found on Facebook, our American ‘commons’:

Day 11 of a Pandemic

It’s Day 9 of a National Emergency, as declared by President #45. (On March 21, 2020)

There are many creative memes floating around the interwebs: this might be my favorite:

“Kinda feeling like the earth just sent us all to our rooms to think about what we’ve done.”

Valerie and I are in the house in Paisley, with Griffey the poodle and Moe the cat. We have fabric and yarn for making masks to protect people, including us, from the novel coronavirus known as Covid19, which popped out of the animal kingdom to the bipedal mammalian one known as humanity, in Wuhan China, in December of 2019. The deaths from covid19 in Italy have surpassed the ones in China where many more people were infected.

“A staggering 793 people died TODAY alone in Italy from the Coronavirus. That makes it the single deadliest day for any nation in the entire pandemic.” (Shaun King, Instagram.)

Although the medical system in Italy is sophisticated, the people and public health system were too slow. And the average age is higher than average? Iran is also devastated, while the USA screws down tighter with sanctions. The countries that have dealt with the virus while ‘flattening the curve’? South Korea, Singapore, and finally, China.

There are no positive tests in Lake County because there are no tests. There are a few people reporting the symptoms of sore throat, fever, shortness of breath, and fatigue. Valerie’s friend, who is also Valerie’s second husband’s eighth wife, but who’s counting, had a sore throat and just didn’t feel well, and went walking with Valerie and Griffey on the desert road by the Paisley airport, to my consternation. Valerie is 72, and is hale and hearty most of the time, but has this little flaw: an autoimmune disorder that kicks her butt, or rather the myelin sheath of her nerves, following any immune battle. I wasn’t around to forbid it, so all I can do is point out that Valerie is at higher risk than the average 60+ year old.

I might be, too, given my general lack of aerobic fitness and, um, insulin dependent diabetes. Also, sleep apnea and hypertension.

The person I worry most about is Toni’s husband, Al, who has been smoking cigarettes for 50+ years and uses oxygen now. He had just resurrected community theater in Paisley and we were rehearsing when the ‘social distancing’ directive from Governor Brown came down. I am to play Cora, a busy body and gossip in a small New England town, foil to the proper but also gossiping member of the welcome committee, Reba. And we both apparently dislike Willa Mae, played by Valerie.

The play will happen at some point. But I refuse to memorize my lines until I know when we start up rehearsals again.

Covid 19 would take out Al in a New York minute.

Schools are closed, restaurants are ‘take out only’. No one is traveling, with the exception of my sister’s youngest child, 19 year old Makoto, who flew east from Japan, to Los Angeles, to Philadelphia, cutting short his adventure as a student abroad. He became fluent in Japanese, and posted daily on Instagram. Now he’s in quarantine at his father’s home, just to be safe.

I have had moments in the past two weeks where I had trouble feeling at all safe or grounded. Join the club, Miss Lincoln. I sat in a meeting in a large circle of mostly women who all have an interest in helping ‘senior citizens’: the Aging Services Collaborative. And for me, there was a large elephant in the room that had my attention the entire time called ‘Coronavirus.’ It was Thursday, March 12. We were meeting in the Lakeview Senior Center, and the director got rather defensive when someone asked if she had shut down the lunch program. She said there’s be a serious backlash if she shut it ‘too soon.’  No such thing as too soon in the pandemic: by the next day, the senior lunch program was shuttered.

I was cranky and agitated in that meeting, and the younger women, new to the Collaborative, probably though I was a menopausal bitch. I wonder if they look back now, a week later, and think me prescient. Maybe a prescient menopausal bitch. At one point I said something to the effect of, we can choose to be South Korea or Italy. Let’s be like South Korea.

I also still get really wound up when the conservative Trumpian assholes in this county pipe up on Facebook about how the whole thing is a fraud, a hoax, a tactic to get to “Marshall Law.” Omigod. Like this guy:

Snowflake waving wildly here. If I could address this man directly, I would say the following:

Except we are not paying for it equally. Poor people always have a harder time.

Someone pointed out that, when this is all over, it will not be the CEOs and billionaires who saved us, but the nurses and janitors and grocery store clerks. Also, the truckers, the doctors and family nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants.

I can’t retort to the delusion MAGA Lake county resident because we who work for Lake Health District are frequently scolded about posting anything in social media about Covid 19 because we ‘represent the hospital.’ Hmf, I’ve been muzzled. I try to read less of ‘Lakeview Announcements’ and more NYTimes. Still, I overhear bullshit at work. It’s not good for my blood pressure.

I am trying to figure out how to be useful at work, and I’m signed up to be a ‘greeter’ at the front entrance, and staff the ‘hotline’ which means I call folks who have symptoms to see how they’re doing, and wait for calls. The clinics are closed, the acute care is cleared out for the most part, the Operating Room where Hope works is ‘emergencies only.’ People drive up to a tent in front of the hospital and get their temperature taken. They’re asked, by a medical assistant who has a high school education and some extra training, whether they’ve been traveling, have a sore throat or any other symptoms. If they answer no to all and have no fever, they may be allowed to proceed to the emergency room, clinic, or to an appointment with the staff, like the head of corrections who came by on my greeter shift. He’s an enormous man, married to a pretty woman who holds at least 3 jobs in Lakeview including a part time Area Agency on Aging gig that’s directed by the Klamath group. Many non profit or governmental entities are based in Klamath and have a partial oversight in Lake County, the red-headed step child of Klamath County. This woman, and a south Asian man nicknamed “avatar’ by the BLM staff because they couldn’t remember “Arvinder”, and I were to start working on developing a “Village” volunteer effort in Lakeview. Then, the virus.

There are some volunteer activities spontaneously springing up in Lakeview; one facebook group is called Helping Hands of Lakeview. There are helpful things going on in Paisley through informal networks. I have one primary volunteer job: to pick up books at the Lakeview Library that sit in canvas bags labeled Paisley. And drop them off to Jan, who I think is the informal town mayor. She knows everyone, and everything, and reared her kids here.

I saw this on twitter: 

Most of the volunteer stuff seems to happen via Facebook, a group called Lakeview Announcements. That’s where a lot of political bickering also happens. Missing dogs. Reports of ‘tweakers’ thieving around. Well of course they’re stealing, when no one will hire them, when the US of A punishes what is actually an illness, not a crime. An illness born of childhood trauma. But I digress.

No more crochet/ knitting/ rug hooking at the cavernous Bowling Alley’s party room. No more church, either.

We watched the marvelous Presiding Bishop Curry preach on our computers last Sunday, and listened to gorgeous church music and sonorous prayers, online from the Washington National Cathedral, one of my favorite Episcopal places. We’ll see what’s streaming again tomorrow, Sunday morning.  

The knitting group is contemplating making face masks. So is Valerie. I’ve been looking at ‘the literature’ and there is one and only one study, in 2013, looking at the efficacy of homemade masks versus ‘respirators’ or ‘surgical masks.’ Of course, they are not as good but they are better than nothing. And corvid 19 seems to go straight for the throat. I’m thinking, those Safeway employees have been working really hard, and they are more at risk at the moment than health care workers at Lake Health District.

It’s a very strange time, full of opportunity for goodness and for greed. I’m glad my kids are safe, we are healthy so far, and I still receive a paycheck. We’ll see how this evolves.

Written during Lent 2020 to share with our parish, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Lakeview Oregon.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order…  the continuous thread of revelation.                              Eudora Welty

 My paternal great grandmother, Margaret Turner, converted to Christian Science in the late 1800s when the denomination was just starting. Mary Baker Eddy was a single mother, and lived in New England, apparently influenced by the Transcendentalists, and the spare liturgy of the Congregationalists and the Society of Friends. My grandmother, Ruth Turner Lincoln, kept the faith for her 90 plus years, and reared my dad and aunt in Christian Science as well. The 5 direct descendants of Ruth Turner Lincoln are none of us Christian Scientists now, but we were all molded by it.

My maternal grandmother tried Christian Science because my mother was, in my Nana’s words, a ‘high strung sensitive little stinker.’ Apparently, something about worship and the ideas of “The Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures” calmed my mother.

The unfortunate thing about “Christian Science” is that it was started before antibiotics. Mary Baker Eddy could not foresee any real purpose to the male-dominated medical science of the time, which had only morphine to show for its efforts. My mother died at age 55 of preventable medical problems, and her mother, who converted to help my mother, died at 65 after receiving zero treatment or rehabilitation following a stroke. It had been my turn to sleep in the next room to turn Nana in the night, and I was the one who found her dead, cold, in her bed. I was 15.

Is it any wonder that I am a medical social worker, bringing people to health care and health care to people?

God is truly brilliant at making lemonade out of lemons.

One profound gift of the otherwise short-sighted Mary Baker Eddy is her affirmation of the feminine aspects of God. Other mystics, including 14th Century writer Julian of Norwich, discerned the female and feminine aspects of God, too:  

Here is Mary Baker Eddy’s version of the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven,  Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,

Hallowed be Thy name.  Adorable One.

Thy kingdom come.  Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Enable us to know, — as in heaven, so on earth, — God is omnipotent, supreme.

Give us this day our daily bread; Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections;

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And Love is reflected in love;

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;

And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

From Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 16–17

 This feminine language for God/ess was a gift from the faith of my chilhood. So, too, was a sense of loving prescence which expands beyond any denomination or religion and was a healthy part of my family culture.

If I had to choose only one motto, it would be this one by Thomas Merton: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time.

I recall being very small and stuck in an elevator in one of the many apartment buildings we lived in, wondering when someone would find me. I said to myself, there’s not a spot where God is not.I was rescued, of course, and the voice of a loving God, reassured a 4 year old in a sweet two line poem.

Whether it was my mother’s romanticized liberal politics, Sunday School teachers, or stories about Jesus forgiving 70 times 7, but somehow I absorbed a profound sense of God’s mercy, and therefore our duty to love even our ‘enemies.’ I remember when my bicycle was stolen for the umpteenth time, my mother admonished me to pray for the kid who stole it. I’m sure I was very grumpy about the whole thing but somehow it sunk in that even thieves are redeemable.  God shone through those bicycle thieves, and my mother’s forgiving idealism. My mother was crazy, (alas, Christian Science failed to heal either body or mind) but she could also be very loving.

In high school I began hanging out at a community center attached to an Episcopal church on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral, where presidents have funerals and a stained glass window has an actual moon rock embedded in the center.

The Episcopal Church sucked me in, and the summer I turned 17, I attended a week-long camp in Orkney Springs West Virginia.  There I met a black man 9 years my senior, a seminarian, who introduced me to the parish I would call a second family for 40 years, until I moved to the Oregon Outback.   I joined St. Stephen & the Incarnation that fall, was baptized there at age 22, (since Christian Science doesn’t ‘do’ baptisms.) I worked as parish secretary before graduate school, was Senior Warden and then chair of the search committee twice over the decades. I met and married my one and only husband, and breastfed my children in its pews. My current partner, Valerie, started attending when she began to winter in DC. God shone through those windows and in the candles we lit every Sunday. Even when I was so depressed that I could only weep and walk around the edge of the sanctuary during worship, I knew I was home and I could share God there.

You know how Alice Walker said in The Color Purple, that people come to church to SHARE God and not find God. She also said, that God made the color purple and gets put out when we don’t stop and admire.

The Episcopal Church showed me that I love liturgy, with the words and song sweeping us to Holy Eucharist.  I love the Book of Common Prayer, especially this one prayer from Compline:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

St. Alban’s Pipeline Community Center had a youth group called Forum which provided discerning counselors to us addlepated adolescents. One of them suggested that I find a therapist. I was apparently the first self-referred teenager the clinic could remember (not court mandated or dragged in by a parent.) At age 16, I started seeing a woman who transformed my life, not the least reason of which was that she was wealthy and decided to put me through social work school ten years after I started to see her. I’ve gone on to find other deeply healing therapists: their names are Patricia, Kitty, Celia, and Darcy. God shone through each of them.

Now after 34 years as a social worker, I am growing into a halfway decent psychotherapist here in Lake County. I feel in a way that I’ve been preparing for this job my entire life. And most days, I also feel profoundly inadequate to the task at hand.

 Early in my social work life, I worked on an oncology floor where many of the patients I came to know, died. God shone through the nurses there, who were tough and funny, highly skilled and hardworking. God shone through the oncologists, and the residents and interns, the respiratory therapists and the phlebotomists, and an amazing aide named Adams. If you were dying, you wanted to be bathed by Adams. Sometimes it was harder to see God shining through the terrified patients and stunned family members. In my late 20s, I grappled with the problem of evil in the dying of people who did not want to die.  I came to appreciate the story of Job, rewritten in books like “Letter to the Man in the Fire” by Reynolds Price, and “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Rabbi Kirschner. I began to see that ‘shit happens’ and that the very same ‘shit’ is not a punishment, nor is it a lesson that the cancer patient somehow ‘chose’ to bring on themselves.

 I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy.            Louise Bogan

 God has shone through to me in the writings of Anne Lamott. She is one hilarious Christian:  

Unfortunately, change is not my strong suit. Neither is forgiveness, or letting go. Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it. But the willingness to let go comes from the pain: and pain makes us willing to change, and effort to change changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to our deepest, hardest, most beautiful, ruined parts. And then Spirit expands, because that is its nature, and it drags along the body, and finally, the mind.

                  Anne Lamott, Salon.com, 9/26/03

 God has shone through many films, including Best Picture of 2001, American Beauty in which these words are spoken while a guy is courting a girl, impressing her with something he’d filmed, a plastic bag blowing in a winter wind:

He says,

I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force wanted me to know that there’s no reason to be afraid, ever… Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it and my heart is going to cave in.

    Alan Ball, in screenplay of American Beauty via character of Ricky Fitts

[Here is the scene: https://youtu.be/V73598mBfKY]

When I was younger and before I became a mother, I discovered that famous letter the poet Rainer Marie Rilke wrote to a young man: I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Now that I am 60, I am living my way into the answers. And the mysteries continue. How is it that the best place for me to be, right now, is in Lake County, with an old school butch from Bly, with whom I’ve been lovers nearly 9 years? How is it that both my offspring are fascinating, profoundly moral, gifted and mostly happy creatures doing good in the world? How is it that a woman came up to me in Safeway on Friday and told me that months ago I made a recommendation to her and she thanked me for the profound improvements in her life since she chose to follow it?

As Martin Luther King Jr put it, Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. (From Strength to Love, 1963)

Thanks be to God. Amen.

One of the most frequent questions I get from my urban friends since I moved out here is, to paraphrase, how the heck can you stand listening to such conservative people? As one friend put it, “I still don’t know how you survive in Trump country.” I stand it because I’ve lived here for 3 years and 6 months (but who’s counting), because ‘love your enemy’ is a thing, way harder than love your neighbor, because I’m ornery that way…because I’ll put up a lot in order to live with this Valerie chick…and I guess because as I’ve made a home here, I still find areas of commonality upon which to interact.

An example of listening, and conversing, happened in October, with mixed results. Apparently, the Lakeview High School went on ‘lockout’ which sounds like ‘lockdown’ in that no one was allowed to leave or enter the building because something was happening, but not so terrible that the place needed to be evacuated or nor did students and staff need to ‘shelter in place.’  A student had written an essay in response to an assignment in which he’d allegedly referred to African Americans in a derogatory way and used the ‘n’ word, which no white person under almost any circumstances is to use, ever, period. The teacher, who happens to be married to the principal of the school, and had at one time been the principal’s student when she was in 8th grade and he was her teacher… graded the paper and had everyone, include the ‘n’ word kid, read the essays in class. When the racist paper was read to the class, another student reacted very negatively and loudly to the content. He was not violent, but clearly agitated. The reacting student was removed from the school by his mother and rumor had it he was expelled. It also sounded at first as if he is biracial but he is white. The Facebook group, Lakeview Announcements, blew up, and eventually recorded over 300 comments. Among the early commenters were former students who are indeed biracial and Latinx. They shared their experiences of being called names and bullied when they were students at LHS. There was a great deal of mention of ‘racism’ and how no one seems to do anything about it, how it’s worse now than ever in Lake County, etc. I was intrigued. Never in my 3 years had this topic came up so directly on a social media platform in this place.

I waded into the discussion, listened, and tried to phrase my points in ways that could be heard. See for yourself how that went…

Two weeks after all this, on October 5th, I had a cup of tea with Cheryl, whom I met in all the hubbub on facebook. She runs the Klamath Community College Lake County school, which is apparently growing under her tutelage, and is now 30% Latinx. She told me that most of the Mexican people in Lakeview come from a province that is known for drug cartel activity. The young waitress who served us, with carefully painted eyebrows in perfect arches, has apparently recruited many other students. Her family had survived terrible circumstances before she left Mexico. Cheryl thinks that we can do a one-time lecture. All students invited, and open to the public. Perhaps something like the “Psychology of Racism”. There’s so much material to work with, to offer. Apparently, the Oregon Humanities is a nonprofit that promotes conversation around difficult topics. I found this:

I’m guessing we aren’t quite ready for either White Allyship or “Reading, Writing and Rising Up” in Lake County.

But we had to start somewhere.

On the Friday evening before Thanksgiving, Cheryl’s daughter, a half-Filipino public defender in Anchorage Alaska, joined me and our Chamber of Commerce director, Jessica, for a panel discussion about race and diversity in Lake County.  We gathered in a large room in the high school. There was a table of school personnel, including the high school principal. There were other tables scattered about, with people I recognized, perhaps 20 in all. A fair representation of liberals, plus the school folks. Jessica spoke ardently of the need to be a welcoming county seat for travelers in order to support our small businesses, encourage people to move to Lake County, and grow tourism. Cheryl’s daughter laid out the bias in our criminal justice system which, by design and implementation, punishes people of color unfairly. I was the last one to speak.

You can watch the entire presentation here: https://youtu.be/HQgHplGZbEo. I started my presentation with a story about Valerie’s grandfather. He was reluctant to start driving a car after a lifetime working with horses. He got the hang of driving, mostly, but it took him a long time to stop pulling on the steering wheel and roaring: WHOOOOA. The point being, change is HARD.

As I write this, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday weekend has come and gone. It’s a holiday for schools and banks, and federal agencies. A second cousin of Valerie’s was a volunteer in Alabama during those years when Dr. King was making a huge difference for Black people. She had her consciousness raised by a teacher in a Lakeview school, and marched in Selma along with Dr. King and the late great John Lewis. Sandy Watts made the Oregonian, and her embarrassed mother could no longer keep up the lie that Sandy was simply taking a summer off before college. Sandy made a point of going to our church on MLK Day to read from Dr. King’s speeches and writings. Lake County plans nothing to mark the occasion: our tiny but fierce Episcopal Church will be open and witnessing in the darkness.

It's not for naught. On New Year’s Eve, 2019there was a hate crime in Eastern Oregon that made the news:

A Eugene man is accused of attempted murder and hate crimes after allegedly attacking a female hotel owner in Redmond on New Year’s Eve in what authorities believe was a hate crime.

The victim is a 70-year-old immigrant from India who owns the business with her husband, also an immigrant. She suffered broken bones during the assault and remains hospitalized but is expected to survive, according to Deschutes County District Attorney John Hummel. She testified for a Deschutes County grand jury from her hospital bed, an effort which Hummel described as “heroic.”…

“Too many people in Oregon are silenced by intimidation and violence because of how they look, who they love, or to whom they pray,” Hummel said in a written statement. “Because of this woman’s strength, and because the Oregon Legislature passed a law last year to strengthen Oregon’s hate crime law, justice will be delivered in this case. Hate is not tolerated in Deschutes County.”

A week later, this update is reported: “Our life has changed forever,” Satish Puri told the AP. “We’re not going to be in the motel business running it ourselves now, and she’s not going to be coming back to this place, ever, because she’s so scared now.”

 In the New York Times, Michele Alexander makes the point:

The stakes are even higher given the acquittal of the Criminal in Chief since this article was published. 

As long as I live in Lake County, also known as Whitelandia, I will struggle with allyship: how to work against the racism that lives in me and everyone else, too. And how to show why it’s important work for us all to do, all of us.

I wish I could explain to the trump supporters I encounter here that the food stamp cuts, the delays in disability determinations, generally shitty treatment of poor people by our culture and government can draw a direct line to the discrimination against Black people, the murderous contempt our culture and government has for Black people, despite (and perhaps somewhat medicated by) our worship of Beyonce, hip hop, Black athletes, etc.

Well, at least the confederate flag is gone. No idea why, but it’s an improvement, I can tell you.

It’s autumn here in the Oregon Outback. I’m writing this in mid-December and it surely feels like winter. The snow is so beautiful and stays white. In DC, by day 3 the snow is grey and black.

We started burning wood in the stove right after the equinox. Much of the wood we’ve bought is stacked in the wood shed but then we were away for a weekend and it rained and the wheelbarrow wheel is flat and Valerie’s hand isn’t quite healed from surgery… can you hear the excuses? So, we gather the wood from the driveway AND the shed at the moment. All in good time.

We had a little trouble locating someone who’d deliver wood all the way to Paisley. We were on a waiting list, but I got anxious since wood is our only source of heat. A client knows somebody who knows somebody who desperately needs the work, and next thing we know, we have a pile of wood. When Valerie organized it, she realized it was not quite a cord, and we’d paid $160, which is a lot for a cord, though more reasonable with the 90-minute round trip from Lakeview factored in. We gave him another chance and he gave us than two and a half more cords.  That were not cut quite right. So we have a stack that needs more chopping, and a lot of misshapen bits with tree branches sticking out that make them very hard to stack. We are making do. He was deeply grateful. And we have heat.

When I got up this morning, it was 23 outside and 62 inside. It may get warmer than freezing today, and with my beloved pyromaniac, Valerie, at the stove, it might get as warm as 78. Which means it’s over 80 in the loft if you want to take a nap. I go from wool socks, warm jammies and a sweatshirt to a tank top and shorts in the course of a day. If we ever lose power in winter, we’ll be fine.

Valerie had a medical adventure this past summer in which she woke up and couldn’t get the world to stop spinning. I called her daughter, Hope, an RN at the one hospital in this county, and she met us in the emergency department. The 45-minute ride down to Lakeview with poor Val puking in a bucket was not fun. With a shot of Zofran, she stopped puking, and after an overnight stay to see if she’d had a stroke, an MS flare or “just” loose crystals in her ears, she saw a neurologist to establish care with one out here in Oregon. And it was the neurologist who said, you know you really should see a hand surgeon about those lumps in your left hand. Which hurt when she bonks them. So she did. And the hand surgeon, in Bend, went WHOA NELLY you need those lumps out. Can it wait until after my grandson Adam’s wedding in September? Nope. We’ll schedule the surgery for next week. That’s how fast she came to have 22 schwanomas removed very delicately; they apparently cluster like grapes along nerves. The surgeon had to cut her hand like Zorro because straight-line scars would contract and she’d have even more trouble opening her hand fully. The presenting problem of dizziness turned out to be a temporary issue of rogue ear crystals, but what came out of all the hullabaloo was a hand that no longer hurts.

She’s fine now, and stretches her hand out with the use of heat.

++

Recently, Valerie spent hours with 3 neighbors killing chickens, then defeathering them, and finally putting them in baggies to freeze. For her labors, she got two whole chickens (minus their heads, and innards), and two livers. Valerie does love liver and onions. (The big animal vet she sometimes works for says eating liver is like sucking on an oil filter. I’ll take his word for it and avoid the whole situation.) The neighbors, who’d bought chicks to grow them into meat chickens (not egg-producing ones) now have 35 chicken carcasses frozen for winter meals. Valerie invited me to help. Ha! Ha, ha ha HA!  That would be a no. I did take over our new-to-us poodle named Griffey. He’d have LOVED to smell all the feathers as they were drifting to the ground. The whole business was a revelation. I didn’t stay long. (Shudder.) If I’m going to eat chicken, I need to appreciate where the poor bird on my plate came from. I just don’t need to pluck the actual feathers off myself.

Later that same day, after Valerie’s chicken-plucking and a long shower, we drove to the Lakeview Elks Lodge for a fundraiser for the senior citizen meal program. (The Elks Lodge is the largest venue for big gatherings in the county.) There are 350 senior citizens living below the poverty line. The program serves less than a third of that, and although the meals are offered for free, they are not entirely subsidized by tax revenue, therefore, fundraiser. I’ve come to know the folks at the Senior Center through my many requests for transportation, and they are hardworking, smart women.

Val and I sat and chatted with a husband wife pair we’ve gotten to know from St. Luke’s Episcopal. And then, my coworker, fellow knitter, and Valerie’s primary care provider walked in with her husband. I gestured wildly and they joined our table. She’s the health care person who refers the most clients to me for mental health assessment. I got to know her when I worked in Christmas Valley, those 18 months when I drove north each workday instead of south. She referred clients to our tiny mental health outpost up there. Other things we have in common: she’s a liberal. She’s lived and worked on the east coast. She grew up with a high ACE score (which means, many Adverse Childhood Experiences.) She’s a serious introvert and has a very busy, stressful life in the same clinic that I work in. I admire her very much. Her name is Kathleen.

The Lakeview Senior Center program started and we heard about services to folks 65 and older in the county, which include home delivered meals, transportation to far-flung doctor appointments in Bend and Medford, and daily meals with socializing. Right before dinner was served, there was a loud clatter and thud at the edge of the tables. A man had collapsed. A small group surrounded him. Kathleen asked, is something wrong? Yup. She went over to the man, and stayed there until the EMTs took him out on a gurney to the emergency department. She came back to the table, regretful that she’d had half a beer and had to breathe that breath onto this guy, who’s had trouble with dehydration since his car broke down and he wandered around in the desert for days. Despite the Hebrews’ and Jesus’ success at wandering in deserts, it’s not recommended.

We finally chewed on our tamales, beans and rice, followed by sheet cake. Manley, and Valerie, talk old haying equipment, and tell stories. One of my favorites is about the time when young Valerie worked as a ‘hooker’, that is, she hooked lumber so that it could be lifted by a CAT(erpillar) onto a truck… she tells this story so much better than I do… A guy in a caterpillar hoists her up by large hooks which she holds onto, and he lifts her over to the log he wants her to put on the truck next. She puts the hooks where they go and up goes the log onto the truck.

One day, she’s swinging in the air above the logs still waiting to be loaded, hanging on by her hands, and she sees that the guy running the caterpillar is slumped over the enormous steering wheel. Has he had a heart attack? She swings herself around to see the other crew member to find out if he notices the slumped guy, and guy #2 is slapping the side of the truck in paroxysms of humor. Uh oh. She looks down and her bra straps had snapped and her bra was now visible as a belt around her waist. The caterpillar driver managed to catch his breath and graciously swings her up and over a bush and she drops down. After she’d gotten her bra back up where it belongs, she came out behind the bush and bowed.

A great story. One of many that show how a tough woman gets out of a pink-color trap to work alongside cranky menfolk who learn begrudging respect for this ‘hooker’ and ‘millwright’ and shoe cobbler and… my partner is remarkable …

At the benefit dinner, we listened to the brief explanation of how Meals on Wheels is a program of the triple A which has nothing to do with the American Automobile Association, despite the importance of ‘wheels’ in home-meal delivery, but is rather the Area Agency on Aging. Which is a governmental entity. And that’s all that’s said about that by the director of the program. Because we are in an anti-government, very “red” county. But I know that it’s the Older Americans Act that funds all the ‘triple As’ in the country, one covering every county in the USA. (Since Lake County is the red headed step child of Klamath County, that triple A covers 2 counties.) And I know that the Older Americans Act was one enduring program signed into law by Lyndon B Johnson as part of the Great Society Legislation which also brought us Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act, to name just two more important bits of ‘government.’  

Just ask Valerie. My blood pressure goes up when people disparage ‘government’ around these parts. I know too many very good people who served in ‘government’, how many laws are so deeply helpful to everyone, like the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Affordable Care Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act. How most things that we complain about are due to the influx of corporate control over government, and how reluctant the government is to tax corporations. Campaign finance reform would be the way to drain the ‘swamp.’  

Nevermind. I’m trying to chew all my food and not eat too much of it since my bariatric surgery in April as the evening wears on.

(I will post about the weight loss adventure one of these days…)

I’m glad we went. I’m glad to show my face in support of the senior center. Plus we got to visit with two folks I like. One of whom knew just how to care for a man who collapsed.

The other day, Kathleen walked into my over-decorated office and said, Jane I really need your help. Expecting to hear about a patient who was crying in the examining room and who would soon be ‘warmly handed off’ to me for counseling, I was surprised to hear she needed help with the first couple of rows of a 90-stitch knitting project. Could I cast on? Why of course. “Other duties as assigned.”

*****

In other news, we are adjusting to life with a dog. Since Valerie’s faithful Westie, Dudley, died about 7 years ago, she’s dog-sat various pooches and lived happily with my 13 year-old cat, Moe. Since Val’s pretty much retired from ranch irrigation, she’s now able to spend time with a dog. She was vocal about wanting some sort of poodle mix, because they are smart. Lake County is full of cow dogs, pit bulls, and lots of chihuahuas for some reason. When her daughter Hope saw a message on Facebook about a family needing to rehome a poodle mix, she signaled Valerie, and next thing we know, we have a dog named Griffey, named after a baseball player. He’d been born 6 years before in Maryland, and flown by a coworker’s father to a ranch here; Erin has a poodle breeding business. Poor Griffey apparently didn’t like being in a herd. That family rehomed him with a young couple who had a baby and worked long hours away from home. Griffey pooped in their bed. So Griffey came to us.

This pooch is very well behaved. Aside from chasing the cat, which we are trying to discourage, he obeys Valerie’s voice, loves going gallivanting in the desert every mid-day, and enjoys the cat food Moe turns her nose up at. We take him with us to town for church, and he sits in the truck, waiting for our return. Moe gets the house to herself for a few hours. We’ve become a family who lives with a dog. His current names include “Nickelplate” (which is cheap jewelry), “poor, sad dog”, Snicklefritz, and “Your dogliness.”

I swear there are 2 rush hours in Lakeview every weekday: one at lunch to let the dogs out to pee, and one at dinner for the same purpose, even if folks are going out to dinner later. The homeless people have dogs; the owners won’t go into subsidized housing if their dogs can’t come, too. Dogs and guns. Everyone has them. We don’t have guns. But we do have Griffey. Currently, Griff and Moe are negotiating how to sleep on their humans without hissing and growling at each other.  This is not going well; however, Moe, who’s never lived with a dog or encountered dogs in her sheltered life, is learning to hiss and swipe, which may be far more effective than us ordering Griffey to resist a primeval impulse to chase.

The other thing I’ve been doing is starting up and nurturing a group of women who knit, crochet, or want to learn. I miss knitting in a group, chatting, sharing stories about anything. These gatherings have been called “Stitch and Bitch”, but there is no bitching that I can tell. Occasional complaints about the wait service at the first venue we tried, which had but one worker and one cook for the entire restaurant. We moved to the bowling alley, a large building that has a cavernous party room with a wall protecting us from the racket of big ball bowling. The food has been better and the waitresses take good care of us. So TJ’s Family Fun Center is where we can be found on Wednesday evenings right after work.

I’m surprised by the enthusiasm, and we’ll see if it lasts. The very first gathering, there were 11 of us, and a couple women came to learn. I’m a pretty patient teacher, as long as you’re right handed. I’ve listed youtube videos in our facebook group for lefties, and lots of projects. Here are a couple that I finished this fall.

In the midst of a flurry of mostly positive but some very negative Facebook posts on “Lakeview Announcements” about an LGBTQ-friendly Halloween party, I received a text from a friend who is a native of Lakeview:

 A small group of out gay people who live in Lakeview, and Valerie & I, the Paisley Lesbians, had gathered in June, in secret, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. That historical event in New York City in 1969 marked the beginning of the end of police brutality against non-straight people and is commemorated in the annual Gay Pride festivals that happen around the world. I invited the 20 or so gay people I know personally to attend, and asked a young college student who know people below age 30 to help me: that way, a younger group would feel welcome amongst the graying fairies, femmes and dykes. My church, the one I have chosen to embrace and which has embraced me, is St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Lakeview, and there was whole-hearted approval of use the hall across to the Sanctuary. On Sunday, June 28th, a couple dozen queers and allies gathered for a potluck and had a great time. One of the older members of the community marveled at how many of us there were. Straight members of St. Luke’s also came and asked how they could be more supportive. We decided to aim for a Halloween get together, and make it open to the public, straight or not straight.

I also started a private Facebook group in which everyone who agreed to be a member was ‘outed’ only to the other members of the group as either a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer person, or a strong ally.

I’ve pointed out before that if 5% of Oregon is queer, then there are 350 queer people missing from Lake County. Those missing people grew up here, figured out they are not-straight, which is no easy task in this heteronormative world, and then decamped to more rainbow-colored pastures. Hundreds of them.

The Halloween party began shaping up nicely. I came up with a flyer:

I pasted this image into Lakeview Announcements on Facebook, the single best way to get the word out about any event in Lakeview. Not everyone uses that social media platform, but everyone knows someone who does. I also posted it on Christmas Valley 1, For Sale in Paisley, and the Bly Community Page, also on Facebook, and got almost no response.

At first, the comments on Lakeview Announcements came in with a mixture of surprise and delight. Straight people said they’d come. My flyer said explicitly that the gathering was to be kid-friendly and alcohol free. There was also some backlash.

One man did not understand that it was an all-inclusive event, and did not like that it was being hosted in a church. He objected to the party being expressly welcoming to LGBTQ as well as straight people.

Many people helped him to see that everyone was indeed invited and welcome, and, since it’s a gay friendly church that was hosting the event, he piped down.

Then there were the more problematic comments.

Yet another poster equated being gay as just another sin such as having an affair, cussing, judging or gossiping. She would still magnanimously ‘help’ me if I needed it.

Then a young gay college student chimed in:

 Hers is a defense along the lines of ‘live and let live’ while ‘helping gay kids not to kill themselves.’ (I hope I’m a therapist who ‘really understand(s).)

A (presumably) straight gal added her theology of welcome and inclusion, placing the LGBTQ among the outcasts:

 I hope ‘salvation’ in her estimation does not mean ‘straightness.’ Hard to know. But still, some love in her response.

And then there was this:

No better place to share joy, indeed.

A lesbian adds her perspective:

The next post broke my heart a little:

I eventually posted about Soulforce, a pro-LGBTQ, biblically-based resource, not so much to convince the selective readers of Leviticus (those who condemn men who lie with men but still eat shellfish and cotton blend shirts), but to reach out to any queer person who did not know there is another way to look at scripture besides the ‘gays are abominations’ one.

 Ultimately, there were 101 comments in response to my invitation, posted October 8th. The overwhelming tone was tolerance, if not joyful celebration.

 Given the minority opinions of negativity, I sent a copy of the invitation to the Sheriff in   Lakeview, asking the deputies to drive by during the party. A friend from the Paisley Book Club, who lives in Summer Lake, volunteered to act as security, and he showed up, dutifully watched everyone going in the church, and nearly froze in the 18-degree weather.  I confess that I was anxious about a protest outside the church, or some misguided cowboy aiming to rescue the children from the pedophiles. The worse-case scenario: Westboro Baptist Church would fly in to protest.

Despite my fears, the party was a success. Over 40 people came. The small children enjoyed drawing, making things with glue and paper, and pinning the stem on the pumpkin. Teenagers came, ate pizza, and played with their phones. Allies came in costume, and queer folks relaxed. Members of St. Luke’s came in costume, too. Valerie wore a onesie monkey suit. 

I am deeply relieved that there was no protest or disruption. The very first gay-friendly event in all of Lake County’s history came off without a hitch.

During the last hour of the party, a young, slender, androgynous looking person came in the door of the church and looked tentatively around. I welcomed her and asked about her costume, which was subtle. She said she was ‘just an ordinary guy’ – she’d dressed as an ordinary straight male would.  Julia Braudy noticed her and came up to welcome her. Later Julia told me that they’d met and she’d figured out this was a young lesbian. Julia encouraged her to come to the party but figured she probably wouldn’t. The fact that she showed up, was welcomed and praised, and stayed until the end, was reason enough to have spent $200 on rainbow & Halloween décor. (I kinda overdid it on the rainbows.)

Our Halloween Party got a mention in the Lake County Examiner. I would wager that this is the very first time the letters “LGBTQ”, placed exactly in that order, have been mentioned in the paper:

I shared the elaborately edited screen captures of Facebook responses to show the revelation of  where Lakeview residents are along the continuum of acceptance:  From the accepting and celebratory, to condemnation along the lines of ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing.’ In the middle were ideas like, we are all sinners, and as long as they don’t push themselves on me, I’m cool with gay people.

To which I reply:

None of the comments went so far as to say what I believe, that is, that gay folks would like to live our lives in peace, and straight people need us just as much as we need them. That the celebration of a broad continuum of gender expressions will spur on a complete renegotiation of gender roles to the point of transformation. And all like that-a-way.

In November, I put this out on Lakeview Announcements, on my own page, and on Lake County LGBTQ: the Proud & the Allies (both on Facebook.)

   I’ve seen many queer and questioning teenagers who attend Lake County High Schools, in Christmas Valley and Lakeview, as clients. I know there are many LGBTQ young people in the county, and wouldn’t it be awesome if they went away to college only to return and build up the vibrancy and diversity of this sparsely populated and economically anemic place.

We are everywhere. And yes, I’m not from here, and yet, here I am. Let’s be a more welcoming place.

Thursday, July 25th, 2019 was the first day that we were all together, everyone present. On Wednesday, my cousin Targ (a nickname created from “Margaret”) and her mother, my aunt, my father’s only sibling, Mary Lee Lincoln McIntyre, had arrived in a rental car from Eugene airport and checked into a cabin at Summer Lake Hot Springs. My sister, Elizabeth Lincoln, drove my kids, Jonah and Clara, and two of her kids, Yuuki and Makoto, and her husband Jim, up from Reno, arriving just after noon. My cousin, Julie McIntyre, drove with her son, Shayden, all the way from Tucson, AZ.  Valerie’s youngest, Arden, and his partner Maggie drove in from the Willamette Valley, and Valerie’s sister Karen arrived on Thursday from Chiloquin. Karen left on Friday, having to prepare a sermon for Sunday, so by Saturday morning, this was the assembled crew:

We had a more serious portrait shot but I tend to prefer the ‘act goofy’ photos. I look like a zombie, well fed after the apocalypse, Valerie is simply laughing. Mary Lee, age 86, is clearly game for anything. Yuuki is doing a pose. Maggie is blowing bubbles. Everyone was a good sport.

Months ago, realizing I was headed to the end of my 60th year on earth, I decided to invite the descendants of Ruth and Henry Lincoln to the Oregon Outback, Great Basin, High Desert land of Paisley to celebrate the fact of my existence. Not all could come, but a surprising number did. And the two relations of Valerie who were easily able to join us, got to meet more of my peeps.

That Thursday, we enjoyed a Mexican themed dinner, accommodating the vegan and the beef-eating, the gluten free and the ‘organic-only.’  Since July 25th was the day I decided would be my designated birthday with everyone as my captive audience, we played “Vertellis.”  It’s a Dutch card game that’s pretty simple: four rounds are organized into individual and group questions. I picked two categories of individual questions: Looking back on the year, what was good, crazy, interesting… and, looking forward to next year, what do you plan, hope for, find challenging? Everyone picks a card with a question, and you answer as honestly as you wish when it’s your turn.

I highly recommend https://vertellis.com/ for gatherings of people you don’t regularly see, especially around holidays. The answers can be hilarious, revelatory, and touching. When Valerie drew a card about picking something from the past year that she regretted, she told us: “I should have bought that primer bulb for the weed whacker way sooner!” Ever the practical gal, that Valerie! Clara hopes that the immigration hearing goes well for her husband, Jose. The answers spanned quite a range, and helped us to know each other a little bit better.

Why do we gather relatives only for funerals and weddings?  Or for old people’s 90th birthdays? Why not age 60?

I did feel selfish about the whole thing, off and on. My family had to spend money on the flights, the rental cars, and then the cabins at Summer Lake Hot Springs. My friend and coworker, JD, and his husband Joey lent me their RV camper, so 4 of the young’uns could sleep in that for nothing’. There were 4 Lincoln/McIntyre/Matteuccis and 4 Lincoln/Frey/Saitohs in each cabin. There was a lovely symmetry to the housing. The inside of the cabins has a southwest, rustic feel:

They are not air conditioned, and it was quite hot during the day, although as we say out west, at least ‘it’s a dry heat.’  Here in the desert, it is also very dusty. Thank goodness the temperatures cool off at night to around 50 degrees F, and there’s almost always a breeze.

There are the fabulous hot springs pools, too: here is the pool house at dusk, run through a filter:

We managed to escape the heat by going to the swimming hole in the Chewaucan River, which I’d never been to. The water is cool but not freezing, and clear, so that I could sit in a shallow spot and pick out flat rocks for Clara to skip. Even my aunt went, situated in a camp chair, safe from the water, and an elderly chihuahua named Uddha came, too. He stayed well away from the watery fracas.

Valerie and Uddha

Mary Lee and Uddha

 Someone stacked rocks in a lovely sculptural way:

We spent Friday schlepping to Picture Rock Pass to look at the petroglyphs, and then to Crack in the Ground, where I’d been wanting to go. That place is magical. Aunt Mary Lee sat comfortably in the shade on the picnic bench while the rest of us went one way or another, deep into the crevasses. My cousin’s son Shayden is a confident free climber and scaled all the way to the surface. We breathed in the moist, cool air and reveled in curious rock formations.

Shayden at Crack in the Ground

Where did this fern blow in from? Way to the west? I salute you, brave, flying little fern.

Looks like a path in the Holy Land, or a Roman ruin….

 “Crack in the Ground is a volcanic fissure that formed at the western boundary of a small graben underlying the Four Craters Lava Field. The Crack and lava field were recently dated at about 14,000 years old. The fissure is about 2 miles long and 70 feet deep, and disappears into lake sediments at its southern end. Therefore, this supports an interpretation that Lake Fort Rock rose no higher than this level in the last 14,000 years.”  http://www.fortrockoregon.com/Crack.html

Although impressing my family with the gorgeousness of high desert Eastern Oregon was deeply satisfying, the best part of the visit was the conversations. Family lore was reviewed by Mary Lee, who lived it, and Elizabeth, who brought a copy of a bound books she had made of her genealogy research on the Lincolns and the Smiths (my mother’s side.) Jonah was asked about The Future of Film, and Makoto shared that he’s looking forward to his semester in Japan where he can improve his Japanese and get a bit more feeling about the land of his father’s ancestors. I didn’t actually have any deep conversations. I felt a little bit like a bride: everyone’s gathered here to see me (and my beloved), and my job is to play my role and make sure everyone has enough seltzer to drink, and a comfy clean pillow. It was enough to create the event of gathering: I hope to continue conversations with my sister, cousins, and children by phone with more depth now that we’ve seen each other in the flesh.

 The family came in from Brooklyn, DC, Philadelphia, Virginia, Delaware, Albuquerque and Tucson, all very urban places. The empty expanses, and the star lit night sky, will surely stay with our visitors. Arden, Valerie’s youngest, was a firefighter in Lake County and knows a lot of cool locations, like the dry Loco Lake. He took the youngest generation to check it out on at least two nights. I was too tired. But from the photos, it looks like yet another spooky, otherworldly piece of the Oregon Outback.

Yuuki is the most photogenic creature that ever was, and was beautifully lit at Loco Lake by Jonah.

 Beautiful Clara, and Jonah making Alkali Angels??

 Apparently Loco Lake was a highlight for the youngest generation.

For the oldest traveler, Mary Lee, I think the best part of the trip was just seeing everyone. She’s lived and visited most of the planet, and reared her three children in New Dehli and Lebanon. She knows world history and writes plays about strong women, including Eleanor Roosevelt. She survived being widowed in her early 40s, and again in her 70s. She loves Italy, travel in general, gems, and her children and grandchildren. She loves me enough to deal with flight delays and dusty heat. She is amazing.

I was born in the evening of August 15th when Perry Mason was apparently just starting on TV. My father had just turned 30 two weeks before my arrival, and my mother was just 23. My mother passed away when she was 55, and my father after 7 years in a nursing home following a devastating stroke at age 69. Neither lived long enough to know my life as a divorced lesbian, and would have wondered at my choice to live in Paisley. Hopefully they’d have come around to my being gay, and as long as I have a job and am self sufficient, my father would have relaxed about the move. He’d also loved all the gun-toting, horse-riding republicans and he’d have adored Trump. Mom would have romanticized the First Nation people, and asked me about all the churches we’ve tried in our futile search for another St. Stephen’s. In any case, their daughters, myself and Elizabeth, are doing fine, and so are our five children. Mary Lee has 5 grandchildren, too. The 10 great grands of Ruth and Henry.

Ruth Turner, the descendant of slave owners. Henry Lincoln, cousin to the Great Emancipator. In that tension lies most of American History.

One thing that I reflect on as I think about the descendants of Ruth and Henry, is that we are committed to the social good, and to the arts. My sister is learning Healing Touch for working with animals and humans. Cousin Julie is an expert on pollinators, working against all hope for the healing of the environment with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her sister, Targ, is a middle school guidance counselor. Brother Andrew McIntyre, who couldn’t come to Paisley, is a professor of acupuncture. Yuuki is an artist, exploring gender and the biracial life as a Japanese-American hyphenated human, with courage and sass. I’ve been a social worker for 33 years, now psychotherapist to the bruised and broken-hearted of Lake County. My daughter Clara is in charge of a tutoring site in Prince Georges County for at risk Latinx youth, using her bilingual skills to bring children and grandchildren of immigrants more opportunity through education. My son Jonah makes music videos in Brooklyn, living in what Beverly Tatum Daniel calls the borderlands where cultures complement, challenge, connect and stimulate each other. I asked him recently why he only dates women of color, particularly women of the African Diaspora. He says, they can relate to being of two cultures. Since he grew up white in a non-white world, he feels like a code switcher, too.

We are all in our own way, justice-seeking.

 The other part of the birthday extravaganza was letting people give to me. Receiving. Valerie had been reading a book called, It’s Not Your Money, by Tosha Sliver, who’s an amazing writer using humor and an ecumenical lens. I started reading it, and found this prayer, which I inhaled into my heart for the awkwardness of receiving all the love of my family for my birthday.

Back in August, (it’s now early March, 2019) my boss called me up in my office in Christmas Valley and asked if I’d consider moving my work to Lakeview and joining the Lake District Clinics’ staff as a therapist. I pretty much said, you bet, when do I start? It’s not that I haven’t loved the people I work with as colleagues and as clients in Christmas Valley. It’s more that I have spent most of my 30+ years as a social worker basically embedded in medical teams, working on the psychological and practical issues that come up for people who are medically ill. The prospect of going back into a busy clinic at a bustling, though tiny, hospital, excited me. And so it was that I said goodbye to my clients, and to my work buddies Hayley, Jama, and Geri, and started driving south instead of north from Paisley, in late September.

It's now been 5 months, and the metaphor I use is that we are building this airplane while flying the thing, since this is the first time this hospital has had such a role: ‘Behavioral Health Consultant.’

Behavioral Health Consultants are culturally competent* generalists who provide treatment for a wide variety of mental health, psychosocial, motivational, and medical concerns, including management of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, smoking cessation, sleep hygiene, and diabetes among others. (definition brought to you by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Care_Behavioral_health)  

*The better term than culturally competent is ‘culturally agile’, but the idea is the same: to be agile is to establish rapport with anybody, including people from the ethnicity called “white” and the culture of “taciturn cowboy.”  

The new job has an aspiration: “Primary Care/Behavioral Health Integration” whereby “mental health” is not taken care of in some other place, complete with another building, parking lot, and stigma (because when the town’s population is 2,300, everyone knows your rig.) If a patient comes to their primary care person for high blood pressure, or a miscarriage, or very high blood sugars, and the primary care person hears that your marriage is disintegrating, or you have nightmares, or your child killed her/himself, then there’s an immediate referral to me. If I’m busy with another patient, a referral gets made electronically, a receptionist calls this person, and boom, they are on my schedule. If I’m not busy, I’m brought in to meet them right then. Perhaps this person is crying, and I sit and listen, and maybe it’s just a bad day, or a sad anniversary, and what I do is provide compassionate listening. And my card. Perhaps we start a conversation and they schedule for a longer session because they hadn’t figured on being gone from work so long. See you soon, I say.

Behavioral Health Integration is new to much of the country, and yet it makes so much sense. Mind and body are connected. The trauma someone experienced as a child contributes to both his anxiety now and his high blood pressure. Her alcoholism might be worsened by her spouse’s infidelity: however, her liver is for sure. Let’s get this addressed, mind/body/spirit. Teamwork, people.

There are two other populations I get referrals to see. The folks who are taking an addictive substance that really isn’t good for them long term: either benzodiazepines like valium, or opioids.

The second group are the frequent flyers: folks who use the emergency department a great deal. There’s a team of people who try to help them. Are they anxious? Anxiety causes a lot of emergency department visits. So does a life that is very disorganized. Who can keep track of the day of the week, let alone an appointment in a clinic? There’s a meeting of people from many disciplines who meet weekly to brainstorm about how to create a supportive, educational web of services so that this person doesn’t use the most expensive health care resource available, (the emergency department) or bounce back into the hospital because being at home wasn’t safe.

I’ve had some interesting encounters. I meet people who are so much pain that they rock back and forth while they talk to me. I hear about a family where every single member has a serious disability but only one member will come in to talk to me. I finally went out with them to meet another relative waiting in the car and basically said, Hi, I don’t bite, come in to see me sometime, okay? It took 3 months but it worked.

A child came and sat at my table, proceeding to play with my wooden robots, then the magnet marble sculpture thing, and then color a mandala. All the while, a biological parent tells the story of their predicament, and the child corrects and fills in, holding the memory of all that has happened to this family. I find myself wishing multiple times a day, “if only the adults would adult.”

Another child is having panic attacks. Perhaps the addicted parent and the chaos at home are factors? You decide.

There is a funny thing that happens as I work in the arena of mental health while in a small town, and it will keep on happening. I assess one member of a social network, which may or may not be related to one or four of my other clients. The jigsaw puzzle of the situation becomes clearer and more recognizable while I listen to the stories. I can’t reveal that I already heard that story from someone else, with significantly different plot points and antagonists. I simply make note. Later that same day, the client has become the guy or gal behind a counter: well hello! And then I see the client’s mother in town: she peered at me through narrowed eyes, told me she was glad to know who was talking to her son. Sounded like I passed muster.

pass muster

be accepted as adequate or satisfactory.

synonyms:

be  good enough, come up to standard, come up to scratch, measure  up, be acceptable/adequate, be sufficient, fill/fit the  bill, do, qualify

I met with a rather desperate patient, in chronic pain, and super pissed off about everything. That patient died unexpectedly and sadly a few days later. On the same day I learned of this death, two of my other clients came in, separately, and cried about the sudden loss of this person. Used up all of my tissues. We are part of a tightly woven web.

And I can’t talk about any of it except to clinical supervisors or my therapist. Which is fine. Thank goodness I can take notes. My brain gets very full.

I no longer have the Roarks, Hayley the amazing therapist and her husband Tom the amazing police deputy, who could give me the back story and the full list of felonies for most of North County. I exaggerate only slightly. I do get perspective at the team meetings where we talk about the frequent flyers: everyone has a piece of the patient’s history. And everyone knows everyone else, and what they did last summer. I will never have that deep knowledge of this community that natives of Lake County do. There is a chaplain who seems to have the same deep, back stories of everyone in Lakeview. The primary care providers know a great deal, too. Perhaps my fresh perspective has a benefit: at least three clients have told me they are glad I’m not from here. They have a chance, a clean slate, instead of me having assumptions based on last name, what side of town they live on, etc. And I try so hard not to judge. I sit and listen, always humbled and amazed at the stories that are shared.

I can’t share specifics, but I certainly see themes.

Let’s talk for a minute about step families. There are an awful lot of step families and second and third marriages and many times, live-in sweeties who act like step parents, all of which is very confusing to children. There are a couple of rules that I thought everyone knew, but apparently not. Such as:

·         Do not, under any circumstances, tell a child, ‘you are so much like your Mom/Dad’ if those qualities you are calling out are negative. Please, please. You are not getting back at the miscreant, who is a conniving/cheating/meth-dealing/flake. You are hurting your child. (See, self-fulfilling prophecy. See, shitty legacy.) STOP IT.

·         Grownups need to do the adulting. Children are not go-betweens. Period, end of sentence. Also, children best not play one parent against another: the only way to make sure THAT isn’t happening is to …

·         Co-parent. If your kid has left your home to live with grandma, or step-father, or aunt, whomever, guess what? You are now co-parenting with your mother or step-father or sibling. You are coordinating school meetings with teachers, immunizations, and team schedules. You are consulting with the ‘other parent’ on whether the kid gets a smart phone, or can date, and whether they need condoms. Circle the wagons and parent the kid, whatever the old painful history. For the kids’ sake.

Right?

How about grief. People feel grief about all kinds of things, and especially the loss of other people. One grief hooks up with all the other losses, and sometimes, the heart just breaks and the mind stops and the tears flow. My all-time favorite quote about grief is this one:

People, usually, the conscientious ones, have very high expectations of themselves. They will plod on, and keep it all up, until the tears overflow, and they are horrified when they cry at work. Perhaps the long-dead person was the only one who ever stood by them, which explains why the ‘little’ loss that happened just the other day flowed into this biggest loss, and they are overcome.

I do some ‘grief education’. That it comes in waves. That patience with oneself is critical, and kind: if you can’t stop crying, then you need to cry, and go ahead, take the rest of the day off. You are not a slacker, or a malingerer. You are giving your mind and aching heart a break, and that is a healthy thing to do. We talk about options like writing a letter to the one you miss, so that you can tell them what you’ve been wanting to share. Who knows, maybe they are listening. Whatever the metaphysics of the matter, they exist in your experience. In psychoanalytic terms, that’s called an “introject.”  Write freely, as if they will hear your words.

Or maybe write a song, or draw a picture, in their memory, in their honor. What would they have told you to do, if they knew they were about to leave this mortal coil? Go forth and find another lover? Get back to playing that guitar and never mind how bad it sounds at first? Go dancing. Go bowling. Have a beer, or stay sober, in my name.

And know that you cannot push through grief, there is no shortcut:

It is an alteration of self that we would not choose, and it is excruciating. We are altered without anesthetic. I’m sorry. I have been so altered.

Let’s talk about social isolation. I found this quote in the New York Times and had it made into a canvas hanging in my office: (via EasyCanvasPrints.com)

Most of the clients I see are deeply disconnected from people, especially the men. Maybe there is a wife who connects him to the rest of the family, or a mother. But no one else. He doesn’t speak to his children. He’s estranged from a sister or a brother. No cousins, lost track of them. Don’t care to reconnect. Old pain, betrayals, lots of good reasons to stay mad. Except for the loneliness.

I encourage clients to call up an old friend and say, I was thinking about you, what the heck, I thought I’d call, tell me what’s going on, if this is a good time. Once the person gets over their shock, the content of what your old co-worker/ cousin/ younger sister tells you is refreshing. At least it isn’t the same old thoughts going around like a trapped gerbil in your mind. And then you’ve strengthened an old bond. Why not? Doesn’t cost anything.

I know it feels awkward. I called up my first cousin, out of the blue, after texting her to make sure I still had the right number, and in my text, I said, could you chat? She called me right away thinking something was wrong. We hadn’t spoken on the phone since I moved to Paisley. I didn’t mean to scare her. But I didn’t do our usual calendar/Christmas thing this year, and she’s my first cousin. We’re friends on Facebook, but we don’t share the whole truth on Facebook. We were candid. Life is imperfect. And I renewed that bond with this bright, hardworking woman with whom I share DNA.

I also hand-wrote several letters to old friends. I got lovely texts or emails back saying a letter will come in reply but give them time. I’m totally fine with that. And even if nothing comes back, I sent forth a bit of love, and story, to distract them from their mind-gerbils. There was a woman at St. Stephen’s, whom I got to know when I worked as the Parish Secretary and she was a volunteer. She would send a lovely note or postcard to someone and stamp it with “GUILT FREE MAIL.” How wonderful is that. Edith Eder, you were a gift to the world. She would wait to give baby blankets to newborns, and I think she waited because she’d had a stillbirth at one time, and knew the pain of having no baby for all the cute clothes and rattles that had been gifted.

*****

Ultimately, for the anxious and depressed, I hope I can convey some information, some strategies and tricks, a wee tincture of wisdom that they can hold onto, when they hit a bad patch. I have my own therapist, in Bend, 3 hours away, whom I see once a month. I take my anti-depressant dutifully and gratefully. I approach my very own bad patches and slip and fall, like I did over thanksgiving. I try to spot the bad patches, like drivers look for black ice this time of year, but sometimes the slipping can’t be helped. And kerplunk, we are in the ditch and need a tow. Best to minimize the damage, do what needs to be done and chalk it up to ‘When Bad Things Happen to Good People’, which is the book I recommend most to clients.

There’s the awesome quotation by Anais Nin about the blossom:

I see entering into psychotherapy this way: it is a risk, because the familiar misery feels safer, at first, than the bright new possibilities of change, which are scary, but then, occasionally, breathtakingly glorious. And in any case, patience is required. With ourselves. Again, Anais Nin, who is an incest survivor by the way:

.... but who’s counting, since I arrived in rural Oregon with my sister’s help as co-driver and my bewildered cat. I feel well enough at home here by now, like an immigrant who’ll never be native-born, but knows their way around.

I was getting into my car in the parking lot of the one hospital in Lake County, and saw the fellow for whom I’d knitted a red cap to hide his hearing aide apparatus. I waved and he rolled down his window. I shouted, “Who knew that they let Libtards in there?” thumbing in the direction of the hospital. And he said, “And Deplorables, too!”

Who knew I’d be joking around with a gun-toting Trump supporter? Perhaps my memoir should be called, Who knew? Instead of So I asked Valerie.

Val and I had pizza at the Pioneer Saloon last Friday, and she was telling me about her professional roper-niece, Sophie, and said the following: She won money for roping, and to go with it she won a back cinch, a head stall, and Yeti cooler. So I asked Valerie, what was that you just said?  She patiently translated for me. The cinch and the stall are horse tack, things horses wear, and the cooler is the fanciest cooler money can buy. I knew she was speaking English, but I’ll be darned if I understood a word she said. Besides “She won money.”

That happens to me a lot out here.  

I went to my first rodeo ever with Valerie on Labor Day Monday, the Lake County Roundup, it’s 99th year. I went with an open mind, I swear I did. Valerie explained what was going on using nouns and verbs and entire phrases I’d never heard before. The skills these men folk showed off were skills that helped ranchers manage their cowherds for a couple hundred years. The rodeo clown and the announcer made one too many dead mother-in-law jokes, it can be safely said. I am glad I am not a neurologist, because it was hard enough to watch these fellows’ brains get thrown around with such violence. I loved to watch the pick-up men, those horsemen who rescue the bronco- or bull-rider who definitely need rescuing after their ride. They wear pink shirts as they move as though they are one body with the horse.

I wondered where the roping women were? Since I’ve met Sophie, I knew for sure that women rope. But the only females I saw were the eye candy: pretty young horse riders in sequined western wear who showed up at the beginning and during breaks. Valerie tells me that women don’t really ride the bucking creatures like men do. Okay so now I have to go to a roping competition next.

The announcer made a special point of criticizing Colin Kaepernick’s witness to injustice by saying that the people who do not respect the flag are the ones that have never received a folded one (in honor of their beloved dead soldier.) He missed the point of Mr. Kaepernick’s respectful kneeling witness. I stood for the national anthem but did not put hand on heart or sing it.  

Thinking to myself, do I live in Trumpistan, Whitelandia? Or do I exaggerate? Let me check the data.

Definitely Trumpistan. Only Idaho, to the right on the map, is redder.

And what about race?

Yup, Whitelandia for sure.

Okay, so I’m in conservative White Rural America, watching a rodeo. I was indeed impressed by the skill of the young men, and I prayed for their brains. What I found surprising was the music. The Roundup used snatches of songs by black men, one song I recognized. It was the instrumental part of Cee Lo Green’s song, Fuck You: https://youtu.be/CAV0XrbEwNc. It was a musical coda to each man’s ride. No lyrics, just the music.

I’ve noticed this tendency for white folks out here to use black folks’ music in a number of settings, including Valerie’s granddaughter’s wedding dance music. I’m reminded of something I read: In the South, we like black people, but we don’t care to promote Black Rights. In the North, we stand up for Black Rights, but we don’t really care for black people. In Whitelandia, we like don’t black people unless we know them personally and we don’t even think about Black Rights, but we sure like Black Music.

There were two black cowboys, brothers, adopted from Haiti, and shaped into perfect Eastern Oregon young men by their parents. They survived their rides but didn’t score all that well. I believe there were a couple of Mexican-American cowboys, too, given their surnames.  I guess rodeos aren’t my thing. Maybe roping is more my thing, because there are females. And no more mother-in-law jokes, k?  I would be happy to watch all genders compete. I know that skill and strength is involved. Just ask Sophie.

***

In June, Valerie, her granddaughter Kaylin, and I got to go to DC, my birthplace, and one of the most walkable, green cities in the world, not that I am remotely biased. We stayed in a condo that an old friend Pat uses and rents out as a pied a terre, located in a prime neighborhood, Dupont Circle, near 17th Street, which is pretty much the gayborhood avenue in DC. We could walk to the metro to go to museums, go get fresh coffee each morning, and shop at the corner Safeway. My sister and her kids visited, and both Jonah and Clara hang out with us as well. We were lucky that the Museum of African History and Culture decided to be open for the summer solstice at night, so we had a whirlwind visit there. So much to see.

We also checked out the Portrait Gallery (a favorite!), the Air and Space Museum (yawn, but I crocheted when I finally got a bench, and it was Kaylin’s graduation present from her Meemaw so she made the choices.)

A picture is worth a thousand words, right, Sally Hemings?

We went to a movie. We walked, took a few buses, uber’d, and metro’d. We ate Japanese, Ethiopian, Thai and I don’t even remember.

We went to the National Cathedral.

There’s a moon rock embedded in that stained-glass window.

As much as I enjoyed the sights and smells and food, I did not like the noise, and so many people! Where did all these people come from?  Way too much commotion. Apparently, I’m a rural Oregonian now.

***

We went to church. Oh, how I miss church the way St. Stephen & the Incarnation does church. A dear parishioner came to say hi and asked, so, are you moving back? I said, nope. I sang, I loved the sermon, I hugged a lot of people. Kaylin got to see how liturgical church should be done. Valerie enjoyed herself and got hugged a lot, too. If I could bring the whole kit and caboodle to Lake County, I would. 

*****

I love Paisley, and Lake County. I’ve found a place here, meaningful work, friends, and a deep sense of relaxation. I don’t worry about traffic, parking spaces, or broken-down Metro trains. It is quiet, so quiet. I volunteer as a courier for books to and from the Paisley and Lakeview Libraries , and ran a successful rummage sale in the spring, showing the town that I’m good for something. (You gotta earn respect around here.)

Lake County is one of the few places in the united states that has very little light pollution. Come see the stars here. Check this out:

Also cool is the fact that Lake County generates enough geothermal and solar energy to max out on the infrastructure it takes to ship it out of county. I’m not sure exactly what that means but I heard it at a lecture about the future of the county.

I’ve found a bimonthly writer’s group, and also a retreat space one county over that welcomes artists and writers even if we don’t know what we’re doing, exactly. I do this weird Soul Collage business about once a month and I just give in to it as a form of art church. Collage as worship. We worship however we can. Our friend, Toni Baillie, is mother superior for the writer’s group and collage church.

There’s even a stalwart group of Democrats who meet once a month for beer and laughs because, like Judge Kavanaugh, we like beer. We drop f-bombs and generally commiserate. Even in a place as republican as Lake County, there are a few Democrats.

As we head into the dying of the light, I might as well take stock of the differences, both good and bad, of my two adopted cities. (Yes, Paisley, population 250, is a city. Hilarious, I know.)

Lake County                                                                                                            Traffic is basically a recreational vehicle going 55 on a 65-mph highway, or a stacked logging or hay truck. Easy enough to pass. However, cows can slow you down.

DC: Oh the traffic is terrible. Entire parts of the city shut down with one accident. And the Beltway is literally a circle of hell.

Weather: I think I’ve found my climate, although a bit more rain would be nice. The humidity is very low much of the year, with bright blue skies and no need to put the grape-nuts into a Ziploc bag to preserve the crunch. There is snow, which stays pristine. There’s something to be said for a good late afternoon thunderstorm on a hot DC summer day. But feeling damp and sweaty all day is the price you pay for no fire season.

Regarding food, there are 3 choices in Lake County: diner food, Mexican, and one (not very good) Chinese restaurant. However, if you eat beef, you are very lucky to have the best, most organic tastiest beef anywhere, and you simply must make a reservation at the Cowboy Dinner Tree in North County. Cash only, homemade rolls, an enormous cut of beef that you take home most of in a baggy they provide. The bean soup isn’t bad either.

In DC, you can eat cuisine from anywhere in the world, except maybe Congolese. (Those poor people). My favorite restaurants serve Ethiopian injera and doro tibs, with tekel gomen in copious amounts. It’s a foodie paradise. When you live in the Oregon Outback, it’s wise to seek out any food from another country when you cross county lines. Except for Harney County: I think their food is the same as Lake’s.

As far as worship, the Sonrise service at Ft Rock was pretty amazing.

Otherwise, I’ve adapted somewhat.

St. Stephen & the Incarnation will remain my favorite place to worship.

Noise. The wind in the trees, frogs, cattle, the occasional logging truck in Lake County. In DC, cacophony 24/7, including LOTS of sirens. I don’t miss the sirens.

As for seasons: In Lake County there are four: winter, haying, fire and deer. Oh and gardening which starts Mother’s Day and ends at first frost, more or less early October. Holly hocks bloom right through the heat and drought of the high desert, like crepe myrtles do in late August in DC. Lilac bushes bloom in both places, as do roses.

In DC, there’s Congress in session and Congress in recess. Tourist season, and “thank God everyone who isn’t from here has left” (see Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.) The prettiest season is definitely Spring, when azaleas and cherry blossoms blanket the city.

For KULCHUH, DC isn’t New York City: but you can find excellence in every artistic medium. In Lake County we do have the Playa Artist & Scientist Residency, adorable theater by the students of Paisley School, a tiny local all-volunteer theater, Cowboy Poetry at the annual Mosquito Festival, and some live music now and again, of the country variety. My favorite ‘country music’ is the kind fiddlers play. Women seem to quilt more than they knit or crochet, but there is a fancy yarn store in Christmas Valley, which opened right after I arrived, and I’ve spent a lot of $100 bills there. A choral group comes to Paisley for Christmas. I do miss an actual movie theater, although someone resurrected an old one in Lakeview and they are starting to show classics. We’ll see how that evolves.

For fauna, the city limits of Paisley do not deter the local herd of deer, the many birds, and the occasional cougar which gets people very excited and menfolk hoisting rifles around town. Everyone also seems to have many dogs, and they need dog sitting at regular intervals. I’ve decided I am a cat person. Me and Moe kitty, we’re good, thank you very much. By the way there are also, chickens, goats and llamas in people’s yards. And horses.

In DC there are large dogs cooped up in small apartments. In fact, one sign of gentrification is that white people move into previously entirely black neighborhoods, with HUGE dogs. Outside of pets, there are pigeons, rats, raccoons and possums. In Rock Creek Park, there are so many deer that hunters are invited to cull the herd, complete with protesters.  I have yet to see a squirrel in the outback; however, there are many chipmunks. Also, wild rabbits who have a death wish. I’ve run over four since I got out here.

Diversity. There are a few Mexican, and First Nation people. I think there are about as many Black people as gay ones, but obviously they are more noticeable. We are a lily-white county, over 85% melanin-challenged, and much of that is Irish. The first families of Paisley have names like Murphy and O’Leary. Both democrats and queer people are closeted. According to the Oregon government, (https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/registration/mar16.pdf), in 2016 there were slightly over 700 democrats in Lake County, and three times that many republicans.  What I want to know is, where ARE the gay people? Once folks who are born here figure out they’re queer, they leave toot sweet. I mean, if 5% of the Oregon population is gay, and there are 8,000 residents in the county, where are the 400 gay people who should be ‘naturally occurring’, biologically speaking?  Personally, I know of the existence of exactly 12 gay people, and I’ve spent over 2 years looking for them. Around here, if I’m asked which one of us is the fork, I say, think chopsticks.

Safety and crime? Most people don’t lock their doors, but there is thievery of stuff because there is poverty and methamphetamine use. I read on Facebook that some knucklehead sneaks into people’s homes in Harney County and only takes prescription medicine. Good luck with that stool softener, fella. Every death is known by the entire county by the end of the same day, and is almost always car or gun related, and accidental. The death that shook me the most this year was the one by the 13-year-old who killed his best friend. Accidentally. Don’t get me started about gun culture.

If you are a smart urban person, you can be pretty safe. But lock everything and don’t keep anything of value visible in your car…. In my 56 years in DC, I’ve had my bicycle stolen pretty regularly starting in childhood. Various homes have been burgled. I’ve been robbed twice. I was sexually harassed verbally on the street too many times to count when I was young and nubile. I have never been assaulted or raped, I’m glad to report, by anyone, stranger or known to me. What a cheerful list of crimes. I don’t miss being paranoid about safety.

Why did I move out here? See this adorable face?

I’ve adjusted to living in Valville by accepting her large and engaged family, her status as a retired meemaw-for-hire, her tendency to forget to tell me crucial plans because, as I tease her, she lives in the Eternal Now. She tolerates my clutter and the yarn, which takes up maybe 15 percent of the available square footage in our loft home. I bug her to see the doctor about her cough and she bugs me about my eating, but then buys me an ice cream cone. She loves me and this enormous body I carry around, and few chubby, gay, 50-something femmes could resist her charms. At least I couldn’t.  I make her laugh, and she makes me laugh. That makes for a lot of laughing. Her basic messages to me are, I love you, and Fret Not. I’ll take it.

I took a big risk to move out here. But as my latest coloring project reveals:

Of course, Oregonians don’t call it the shore, though, or the beach. They call it the coast.

mid-September, 2018

Playa on Summer Lake is an art and science residency program, a 15 minute drive from Paisley. This past Saturday, Valerie and a healthy contingent of Paisley residents visited an open house they sponsor monthly. One of the artists/scientists is working toward a PhD in ecology, and she had a map on the wall of her studio of the ecoregions of the USA:

Paisley and Lake County are in the #80 region. I looked it up. Paisley is in 80e, to be very specific (I doctored the map to show Paisley in red, see?):

Says Wikipedia about 80e:

High Desert Wetlands (80e)

The nearly level High Desert Wetlands ecoregion consists of high desert lakes and surrounding wetlands that provide critical habitat for nesting and migratory birds and associated upland birds and mammals. Elevation varies from 4,000 to 5,200 feet (1,219 to 1,646 m). The fine-textured soils are poorly drained, and basins collect water seasonally. Although water levels fluctuate from year to year, lakes and wetlands in this region hold water more consistently than on the coarser, better drained soils of the Pluvial Lake Basins. Sedges, rushes, black greasewood, tufted hairgrass, mat muhly, meadow barley, creeping wildrye, and Nevada bluegrass occur in wetter areas. Drier areas support basin big sagebrush, Wyoming big sagebrush, silver sagebrush, bluebunch wheatgrass, basin wildrye, Idaho fescue, Thurber's needlegrass, and cheatgrass. The region covers 1,651 square miles (4,276 km2) in Oregon, including the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and land surrounding Malheur Lake, Paulina Marsh, Summer Lake, Lake Abert, and the Warner Lakes.

 Who knew that there was such a thing as a Desert Wetland.

The young scientist took us on a walk out onto the playa, the lake bed, which is dry and cracked now in the first days of Autumn.

I believe this rock is a bird outhouse. As the child’s book says, Everybody poops.

It was a strange light that illumined my fellow walkers. An overcast day in DC means a chance of rain, but does not mean that at all on the playa. See how odd we all look? Without landscape, or context. Otherworldly.

But right next to this desolation, there is green grass, and hills, and Winter Rim, so named because white man explorer Fremont trudged along it during winter, and gasped at the lake he saw on the edge of it, so beautiful and inviting that he called it Summer Lake. Back in the Pleistocene epoch, he’d have seen a vast deep lake, healthy and full of life. As we have it now, Summer Lake evaporates to just a wee bit of water that is a couple feet deep and miles wide. Close to shore there is cracked mud like this, with alkali dust a-blowing on the edge.

 There is plenty of life along the edge of Summer Lake. This is what free range and grass fed looks like.

You can see the alkali dust kicking up in the background from the edge of the lake.

I’d never walked on the lakebed before Saturday, and I didn’t have the proper shoes. But I was elated to walk along the patterned mud and see the world from that perspective. I was expecting more of a beach feeling, with sand, as the grass gave way, since my only reference point is the beach of the Atlantic, or the Chesapeake Bay. But this crusty dryness, and breezy, dusty air, is new.

We all turned around and walked back onto the Playa land, which is watered to an emerald lawn, and has a fresh water pond, human made I think, so lovely.  I look forward to walking closer to the Summer Lake water and Spring is apparently the best time.

I googled and looked up images from artists at playa and found art installations like this one:

Here’s another one, in the dry lakebed.

Check out the giant horseshoe crab on Rebecca Welti’s blog:

There are also art installations in the water that must happen in wet Spring, to wit:

 Here’s a picture by an artist in residence of Playa in winter:

On this particular Saturday’s open house, we guests and artists walk back from the playa lake bed and meander over to the main building, which is very beautiful. We munch on pita chips and hummus, tortilla chips and salsa, and down big glasses of water. Then we got to listen to poetry. The tallest guy in the picture on the playa is the poet. I should have written down what he said, at least a few phrases: he wrote observations of this place, and that is poetry indeed.

Next up was some strange sonification of natural phenomena woven together by a musician. As I listened to the 9-minute recording, I thought of Harley motorcycles, the ocean waves, and some sort of underwater booming. She explained after it was over that we were hearing sounds from Jupiter (brought to us by NASA), whales, a cat’s purr and lots of other vibrations-made-audible. It was not a relaxing listen: Toni said rightly I think that someone with war-related PTSD would be a nervous wreck following such a concert. That would be her husband, a Vietnam Vet.

A lovely young woman named Julia Connor played on her violin, a variety of fiddle tunes, one of them from Scotland, a place where a wee bit of my DNA comes from (see, middle name, MacFarlane.) I loved what she played, all of it. And then her husband, also a Playa resident, joined her on the grand piano and rich full sounds came from the two of them. What a treat for the ears. She is going to release her first solo album and I’ll try to remember to look for it.

Time to go.  

One of the deep gifts of living in Lake County is going to Playa events. These artist and scientists stretch my mind with ideas that would never occur to me without their example. These folks come from all over the US, but most come from within the Pacific Northwest or California. Even so, most are not familiar with this kind of landscape. And I think it’s safe to say that the work they do while here is refreshingly grounded in a sense of place.

I would like to be a part of this residency at some point, and I will apply eventually. I’d do a combination of extreme knitting/crochet, and working with wood as a sculptor and mobile-maker. I want to make things that hang and move in the breeze, and make gentle wooden or chiming noises. I would happily schlep my stuff, yarn, sticks, and the half-wheel from an irrigation system that Valerie rescued and I want to yarn bomb:

(Common Use photography)

I’ll keep you all posted.

 Back in early August, we went to the lawn of Playa to hear a young man play a grand piano. Hunter Noack drags that thing all over rural Oregon and plays for free at places like Alvord Desert and Fort Rock, the crater of a volcano. That one Friday night, the smoke cleared and we feasted on music, with poetry readings between the pieces.  I will leave you with a video of one of his shows, and the playing of a piece by John Cage called In The Landscape.  The setting is Fort Rock, Lake County.  Enjoy.

Wednesday, August 29, 2018

It’s a sunny crisp fall morning, even though it’s still summer. Yesterday morning, with the temperature still in the 40s, there were blue sky and puffy white clouds visible from my recliner as I look out over the orderly but still very full yard. There are many benefits of having a Level Two Evacuation leveled at a small town, and one of them is that many yards are cleaner than they were. Brush and grasses are cleared from the area around the fence of our little property, in the armpit of the hill upon which stands the town cemetery and the best views of the fire from town during the ‘heat’ of it. It’s not as hot now. The smoke has cleared for the most part. It’s blowing west, and there’s less of it, because the bulk of the fuel, the dead pine, has burned already. Today’s total, 56,895 acres, 75% contained. The fire is pretty much finished growing. Alleluia.

Valerie and I went to the third community meeting about the fire Monday night. Instead of talking about evacuation, like we did in the second meeting, there was talk of a contingency line (a ‘just in case’ line around the perimeter of the fire), ‘mopping up’ (putting out spot fires, making sure all the fire is dead), suppression and repair. I’m not sure what repair means when it comes to a forest fire, but a whole lot of logs will be removed.

One of the officials explained that the fire camp will be here for a long while to come and the town won’t be back to a population of 250 until the first snows, to make sure it’s really OUT. Awesome! I’m fine with that!  Apparently, the assignments last a certain amount of time, and firefighters will rotate out, so the camp will shrink through attrition. Plenty of other fires to attend to.

There were a few questions, from one particularly classy lady in a cowboy hat and a grey braid down her back, about who or what caused the fire. Very diplomatic answers came from the communications officer saying that Fire Investigators are very busy and doing their thing on this fire and lots of other ones, too. Might have been lightening. Probably not, apparently.

This city slicker has learned a great deal about how to cope with a nearby wildfire, that’s for darn sure, and I didn’t have to grieve the burning of my possessions in the process. Gratitude abounds.

1.       Put stuff in a suitcase or a box and label it ‘evacuation.’ Keep the stuff in there as storage for the next fire. And when I look for my passport, I know where it is! Also, high school yearbooks, old family photos I don’t hang on the wall, because #nomorewallspace, and other trinkets.

2.       There is some time between Level 1, 2 and 3. Unlike the hot huge fires in California in populated areas, wildfires here in the Oregon High Desert, they move more slowly. So I don’t have to flee with only the clothes on my back. This is deeply good to know.

3.       Valerie is a good barometer. If she starts packing, the fire is at the door. Her most repeated phrase to me, after, I love you, is, Fret Not. And so I will not. Or try not to. Fretting is in my nature.

4.       Given that I’m a world class fretter, it did help to have my car packed. For five straight days.

5.       Fighting fire is kind of like making a movie. A camp is set up at a location. Everyone has a role, a territory, a hierarchy of orders, a protocol, a checklist. And when it’s all over, everyone packs up and it’s like it was never there. The camp that is, not the fire. The result of one is a lot of charred ground and dead animals. The result of the other is a film.

6.       Tee shirts with the name of the fire and some sort of graphic is a thing with firefighters. They collect them. I’m getting two, by different vendors with different designs. Perhaps these shirts are the trophies fire fighters collect, like runners do at races.

7.       People are generous. They offer to help, offer space, food, time, something to haul belongings in  or a field to house livestock. Very cool.  One of the forest rangers said that Paisley has been a model town in terms of welcoming the firefighters. I’m glad to hear that! I haven’t done anything but pack my car and go to my job. But I’m glad there are many neighborly neighbors here.

Downsides of wildfires, at least in Oregon:

1.       Anxiety. With a few moments of terror and tears. No fun.

2.       We cleared the brush and now the deer have gotten to our tomatoes. No more tomatoes. Next year we’ll do an actual chicken wire fence around them. I was so looking forward to lots of tomatoes.

3.       Smoke is really icky stuff. Visine doesn’t help the eyes from feeling like you haven’t slept in a week. And if anyone has ever smoked cigarettes or has asthma, the smoke really impairs breathing. Not meant for inhaling.

4.       The beautiful canyon of Fremont Winema National Forest will look, aesthetically speaking, like a denuded charcoal pit for a while. The lakes were slurped up, but not drained. Still learning about this, too: the regeneration of forest. I bet there are other blessings about this fire for the forest. I’m not sure. It’s going to look sad for a long time, though. The non-forest service populace won’t be allowed to drive ‘over the mountain’ west to Bly until next spring. But apparently, Campbell Lake and a bunch of other sites look just fine.

5.       People will snipe. Accuse the ‘liberals in Washington’ of leading to fires like this one. Of suspecting that fires are allowed to burn so that someone can make money. The firefighters? Who’s making money? I don’t understand that one but I’m open to hearing. I also heard that local ranchers were ready to put out the fire with ‘dozers and cats’ but the Feds said stand down and thus it burnt and got away from everyone. I heard that one from 2 different folks on opposite sides of the county. Conspiracy theories abound. Our monkey brains have to come up with something to do, I guess. The Watkins Creek Fire started on federal land. It was the Forest Service’s job to stop it. The politics of logging and land use is still way beyond me. But the firefighters saved our town. I’ll just keep reading about the rest of it.

 Meanwhile, life goes on. Yesterday was my Lakeview day, and I got to have lunch with a friend (I do this every Tuesday and its lovely), go shopping at Safeway (always do this, too), grabbed books at the Lakeview Library to bring up to Paisley, saw two clients, and checked in at the main office of our agency.  I didn’t hit the thrift shops, since I don’t need to buy anything inedible ever again period end of sentence. (Maybe next week.)

 I am grateful for all the support and well wishes, prayers, and admonitions to put safety first from friends and family near and far. Valerie says if I don’t post about it in Facebook, it didn’t happen. That’s only a slight exaggeration. Moving out here to the hinterlands, the high desert at 4,000 feet, the middle of a county with no traffic lights, I enjoy staying in touch, however superficially and sporadically, with my old friends, coworkers, parishioners, and kinfolk through Facebook. Thank you for reading. How do you like my new tee shirt? What sugar skulls have to do with wildfires I do not know but it’s really pretty, isn’t it?

***********

Here are my Facebook posts from the start of the fire, just so I can revisit the process of my enlightenment about fires near my adopted home. The fire started on my birthday, August 15th, but I didn’t know about it until Thursday, the 16th. My first post, of many, obviously.

 August 16, 10am

Well blech. Paisley is just to the east of the Watkins Creek Fire, one of many burning around here.

August 16, 6pm

Watkins Creek Fire, from my evening commute on Route 31 looking south.

August 18, noon

This is what the air is like around here. Thank you, Shelly Rutledge Leehmann, for sharing your beautiful picture.

 August 20, 7am

So, this is my first "Fire in Paisley." I'm taking my cue from the locals, as i am a transplant from the big east coast (aka, "wet") city. At last night's community meeting, everyone seemed very calm. All the officials from all kinds of agencies did their job capably. They explained this is a tricky fire, there is a lot of 'fuel' from a beetle-caused die off of lodgepole pine 10 years ago, and the terrain is mostly Forest Service land and rough. Safety of the people (mostly men?) fighting the fire is paramount, of course. Bulldozers and caterpillars ("Dozers and Cats") are very helpful and faster than people with shovels. We got to hear from a meteorologist, which was pretty cool, since fire creates its own weather AND the way the wind blows will be the difference between Paisley-Flambé versus a whole lot of dead trees only. And maybe a few unfortunate cows and many other non-human animals, most of whom ran, flew or hopped to safety.

 So I’m feeling pretty okay. One woman asks, should we pack? And the gal with the mic says, always a good idea. And another asks, how contained is the fire, and she says, zero. Oh!! Adrenaline rush. Not so okay.

 After the meeting, we drive up to the highest point in the city where the cemetery is: we can see the smoke and there's a red glow to the west and south. Ominous.

 I already have an anxiety disorder. But, anxiety can be useful. I came home and packed up my clothes. I put a few bags of things that won't suffer in the hot car in the trunk. I found my passport and my birth certificate, and my grandfather's dog tags from 1917. My kids' dad has all the baby albums, but i have some important photographs, so I’ve packed them. I will need a cooler for my insulin when the time comes, IF it comes.

I'm more or less ready. And Valerie is very calm. So I’m going to let the current of "evacuation anxiety" just flow along, and it's okay if I obsessively check the twitter page for the South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership for updates. Now i know that infrared photos from helicopters is how they estimate the acres once a day. I know that a lot of agencies are coordinating. And one of the forest service guys lives in Paisley: he promised he'd put flyers in the post office and other spots in town ASAP if there's real news. Like Level 1 evacuation orders. And Level 2 and 3 news will be delivered by the Sheriff's office. Door to door.

Just another day in Paradise.

As everyone says, we are all very grateful to the professionals as well as our local volunteers. The town has tripled in size and the traffic (traffic?!!??) is noticeable through town. There's a tent city on Murphy's ranch: looks like Cirque de Soleil has come to town.

Now that would be fun.

Alas, it's time to go about the business that needs to be done, which in my case is get organized about my application to become a CADC 1. Certified Alcohol & Drug Counselor. Better get crackin'. Thanks for reading.

August 21, 1145am

I emailed about Level 1 Evacuation and got this response. I don’t know why this hasn't been mentioned?

Hi, Jane,

Yes, there is a Level 1 Evacuation for residents west of Highway 31 between mileposts 79 and 105.

Residents in the area should be aware of current conditions. If evacuations become necessary, it will be coordinated through the Lake County Sheriff's Office. It's recommended to always "Be Ready" when living near a fire-prone area.

Thank you,

Jodie Barram Watson Creek Fire Information Center Paisley, Oregon

 August 22, 2018, 6am

Evacuation is on my mind this morning. I found a guide seems particularly thorough. Put buckets of water around the house. close windows. put ladder alongside the house for firefighters to use. I worry if the propane tanks are empty on the front of the camper that we use for storage. (Val says they are.)

I can smell smoke in the house this morning. My eyes are stinging. I'm packing up my car with more of my stuff and driving to Christmas Valley to my job. My guess (wtf do i know) is that if there's an evacuation, it will happen tomorrow, so I’m anticipating driving to and from Christmas Valley today to work, packing up MORE stuff, and heading back up there tomorrow, maybe staying up there. Valerie Little would go to Lakeview to her daughter's. In order to see my clients, i would rent a room in Christmas Valley or impose on one of my coworkers. Then stay in Brothers (i hope y'all don't mind.) But seriously, i am an anxious snowflake. I'll tell you true, folks, this is pretty awful. I don't fear for my life, but i do fear for this beautiful small town that has a very active world in it. We may be tiny but we are mighty.

Everyone tells me, stay safe. I want everyone to be safe from fire, of course. What does safe mean? A dense fog has descended and it isn't fog. It's smoke.

I need more coffee.

  August 23, 2018  3:15pm

The community meeting tonight in Paisley about the Watson Creek Fire told us that there's a moderate chance of evacuation due in part to windy weather predicted that will push embers toward our town. Folks with no pets and nowhere else to go will be welcomed at the high school in Lakeview, the Red Cross coordinating. Apparently, there are 2500 head of cattle normally grazing in the fire area, and some brave cattlemen (and women?) are finding them and bringing them out.

We're told that if we get out of town ourselves after a Level 3 evacuation announcement is made, we're to tell the sheriff's office where we went and what our cell phone number is so they can tell us when we can come back. Our town has less than 300 souls in it so if we call the main sheriff department in Lakeview, hopefully they won't be overwhelmed with calls.

We have 3 different family members we can impose on, in Lakeview, Chiloquin and Brothers, if it comes to that.

My car is packed. I have a cooler with ice and my insulin. Val's truck has a cover and it's filling up. I have lots of art. Most will stay. Family photos will come with.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting or spot on. Packing to evacuate is sort of like packing to move but we are of course taking no furniture. And very few books. Sort of feels like the Swedish notion of “death cleaning”, the kind of decluttering one does so that the descendents don’t have to deal with your stuff after you shuffle off.  All my stained glass treasures, and most of my yarn, stays. Valerie says, worst case scenario, i get to buy new yarn.

Everybody's a comedian.

I'm not panicking this evening. I am tired in a buzzy-anxious sort of way.

I saw a helicopter flying over me as i drove home in my packed car tonight. it had a red thing dangling underneath it. Valerie says that's a bucket of water. It looks so small. Apparently, fighting a wildfire like this one, in rugged national park land with lots of 'fuel', means using dirt and 'back burns' pushed toward the periphery of a fire. The fire is bordered by the Sycan, the Sprague, and the Chewaucan rivers. Hopefully, the talent of our firefighters will hold the line, and the town will be spared.

 I do not feel personally endangered. I worry about the structures in this cute town I've adopted (and which tolerates me.) I'm okay. Just worried. And the sharp smell of smoke is everywhere in town. I don't have a proper mask, so I’ll just cough and squirt my newly purchased drops into my eyes.

 Thank you for the expressions of concern, prayers, and admonitions to stay safe. We are indeed. The cat is oblivious, and we are pretty much ready. Maybe we won't need to evacuate. Which would be great: I really love my late father's old cherry desk and it weighs a TON.

A huge thanks to the local firefighters, like Dustin Withers, who volunteer and know this city deeply. (Yeah, Paisley is one of two 'cities' in Lake County, the other one being Lakeview.) And to all the other professionals, from 14 states we were told, deep and profound thanks to you as well. I hope it's comfortable in that tent city just outside town. I hope the caterer is decent.

This shot is of the poplars that mark the north edge of town. you can barely see them for the smoke.

 August 23, 2018, 9pm  

All's quiet on the eastern front of the fire which is also the western front of this tiny town. Val and i drove up to the cemetery to see what we could see after the sun set. There's a field full of caterpillars and bulldozers, sitting silently, ready for battle. We cannot see the red glow that was so visible on Sunday evening. We decided it is safe to go to sleep in our home.

The "Emergency Notice: Level 2 -- Be Set" language is pretty urgent: "An evacuation notice has been issued for this area." The entire flyer is in all caps of different sizes. Underlined it says YOU MUST PREPARE TO LEAVE AT A MOMENTS NOTICE [sic] and THIS MAY BE THE ONLY NOTICE THAT YOU RECEIVE. So I ask Valerie, this sounds like we should get out of Dodge NOW: how will we know in the middle of the night if we should boogie? She says, because all hell will break lose in town and people will be running around like headless chickens. Well we ARE located very close to the local volunteer fire department, and the only road going up to the cemetery is right in front of our house. PLUS, we did not see a glow over the ridge to our west.

This rural wildfire thing is tricky on my emotions. A few times since this fire started (on my birthday, for pity's sake), I've been near tears and quietly panicking. And then I hear more news from someone, or Valerie has some nonchalant practical piece of fire wisdom to impart, and I immediately feel better. The fire is 6 direct miles from town, 13 miles by road. It's being held in by 3 rivers, near as I can figure from the daily infrared fire maps: the Sycan, the Sprague, and the Chewaucan. The most recent notice from the South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership says the fire has NOT jumped the Chewaucan, which is one of the major barriers keeping it from town. I'm afraid my emotional reverberations are amplified by the frequency with which we moved when I was a kid, and the unpleasantness that always accompanied those moves. This insight helps a little to know why I am seized by panic periodically.

We are totally packed. I feel like i evacuate the town every time i drive to work, which is an hour north, and then I come home, and stuff more stuff into my Honda Fit. Which is not that big a car. Valerie is traveling light; she isn't packing much partly because she doesn't think the house will burn and partly because she doesn't care that much about her stuff, I guess. Every morning since Tuesday, I've packed my c-pap machine, and every night I bring it back into the house and set it up. I'd rather be prepared.

I asked Valerie, who used to look for fires on top of Indian Rock Lookout near John Day, Oregon, what the difference is between the Carr fire that's still burning in Cali and decimated whole neighborhoods, and our Watkins Creek conflagration. She says our dead trees do not have sap in them anymore so they don't burn as hot. The temperatures in that part of California are 20 degrees hotter there than here in summer. And the winds blow the fire very fast. Here in rural high desert "Great Basin" Oregon, the fastest the fire would move is one mile per hour. And from what the Fire Management Partnership is saying, the lines they are building are holding, mostly. The fire grows every day, but percentage wise, much less. It's at 40,000 acres. It will be with us for a few more weeks. But the fuel of dead trees will eventually be used up. And maybe these 'lines' of which they speak, will hold.

I hear various comments from people that i don't understand, and i guess the longer i live out here the more i'll get it. A woman served me fish and chips for lunch in Lakeview on Tuesday (don't judge. I had nothing but vegetables tonight) and when she learned i was from Paisley she says, you know it's the liberals in Washington who caused this fire... So i ask Valerie (my memoir from life in Paisley should be titled "So i asked Valerie) is that true? And she says, well, no one can agree on what the best policy is on dead timber, and the Forest Service has done stupid stuff through both Republican and Democrat administrations... Okay. I heard that the firefighters are happy because they're making money, getting overtime and night work differentials. Well i hope so. I don't like heat, thank you. I hear that initially our local volunteers had things more or less under control and then the officialdom showed up and said stand down, and the fire whooshed up. From two different sources in different parts of the county. Is that true? Or is it a sturdy rumor that's traveled? I heard the fire was called by a ranch hand who took a chainsaw into the woods and a spark caused the fire. No one will cop to that. The cause of the fire is labeled "human" (versus lightening). I wonder if there is one human responsible and how they're feeling. People make mistakes. I do multiple times a day. But... were they wantonly foolish? I dunno. It's another committee I’m not on.

I've received wonderful generous offers of homes to evacuate to, and questions about whether we need anything. There is so much kindness that flows at times like these. People are offering pastures for cattle and goats, places to park their RVs (which folks use for extra bedrooms around here.) I am privileged and grateful.

I'm going to bed. I know all of us in Paisley will be checking our phones and computers first thing, we'll look around anxiously, our eyes will sting from the smoke (Visine alas does not help), and we'll cough and wheeze. If everything is much worse, i won't go to work and we will evacuate, probably to Chiloquin where there's room for us and the cat. If everything seems stable, I’ll still pack up my c-pap and head north to Christmas Valley, I’ll catch up with 'paperwork' which no longer involves any paper, and i'll text Valerie frequently. I'll also continue to obsessively check the various sites that post information, and the Facebook group called For Sale in Paisley which is our electronic bulletin board.

I honestly don't think the house will burn up. I do not fear for my own safety. i think that these 800 or so fire fighters will work hard to keep the fire to our west, and we'll suffer through the dense smoke for weeks. My beautiful framed Pakistani prayer rug will survive, as well as my art photography. The house that Valerie and Jer built from the inside out will stand comfortably for another year.

Then again, if i have to evacuate in my jammies, I will grab my keys, phone, computer and c-pap, and my car and her truck will exit stage left.

'Night all.

  August 25, 2018, 11 a.m.

It's Saturday morning here in Paisley Oregon, Day # 11 of the Watkins Creek Fire. We're still on a Level 2 Evacuation and a few families have left. It was much less smoky up north yesterday, which was delightful, but it's really smoky here in town still. My car is packed, but we're busy taking all kinds of dead limbs and trash to the dump to reduce the hazard to the house and clean up a bit.

I have so many questions, like, if the 'fire lines are holding', why does the fire grow thousands of acres every day? Why did i see a bunch of smoke columns, like 5, along the east side of Winter Rim as i drove home to Paisley yesterday? Maybe there were firefighters by them, putting them out, but they were disconcerting.

I am grateful for many things, not the least of which is i am much less anxious for some reason. My car is still packed, but it's gotten through my thick head that the fire moves slowly and I’ll have time to beat feet out of here if i need to. I'm so glad to feel calmer.

Off to the dump. More anon.

  Saturday, August 25, 2018, 8pm

This article says it is not the fault of ‘liberals in DC’ that there are destructive forest fires…

http://mailtribune.com/opinion/guest-opinions/the-inconvenient-truth-about-forest-fires

 Sunday, August 26, 2018 5pm

The fire has grown a cerebellum!

Excuse me while I let my imagination run wild. Better call the Paisley Volunteer Fire Department, the South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership, the Keno Oregon fire department (I’ve seen their trucks here), the Forest Service, Oregon Department of Forestry, the Bureau of Land Management... to put out my imagination. Oh wait! They're pretty tied up at the moment!!

It's sunny and breezy here in Paisley, town of 250 souls normally, and now we are at 1300 souls, more or less. We also welcome the Burners (the Burning Man folks) who are passing through apparently, as they do every year. The Summer Lake Hot Springs is full of them. It's hunting season for antelope by bow hunters. Might see a few of those hunters parked outside the Mercantile while they stock up on beer. It's a regular Grand Central Station. If you hear an accent that's not quite British, and not quite Australian, those are fire fighters from New Zealand.

I found a web site that lists all the active fires in the USA each day. I know, such cheerful google-searching I'm doing here. I've learned that, in Oregon, the Klondike Fire is twice the size of our Watson Creek Fire in terms of acres, and each fire is 40% contained. Nevada has a big one near Elko, 129,000 acres. Idaho has a big one, too;  65,000 but it's mostly contained. Contained is not controlled but it is better than not contained. Colorado's marijuana caught fire and caused 108,000 acres of damage, and it's 91% contained. Kidding about the cause.

Poor California. The Mendocino Complex Fire is about 78 per cent controlled and torched 430,000 acres more or less. The Carr Fire is at about 230,000 and finally is 95% contained. I'm not hearing much about Alaska, but it is on fire, and this site says none of the fires are above 4% contained. Big fires: the Zitziana Fire at 59,000, Dulby Hot Springs at 44,000 and several more.

The Watkins Creek Fire is the fourth largest in the USA right now. Our friend (and massage therapist) Toni Bailie said that in her daily update, so of course i had to look it up. Yup. We're #4. Not that, as i used to say to my children, it's a competition, for pity's sake.

(Here's the site with the state by state lists, updated on weekdays:  https://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/nfn.htm)

 It was clear and lovely last night. Smoky and grey this morning. Now it's sunny, a few puffy white clouds in the blue sky, and windy. We are at the mercy of the wind: how strong and what direction. Although the reports from the SCOFMP folk sound increasingly confident, the darn fire keeps growing thousands of acres each day.

 (The latest news from 448pm: “The #WatsonCreekFire has been exposed to gusty winds today coming from the southwest to the northwest, and the containment lines have held well as of 4:00 p.m. this afternoon. Some burnout is being conducted in the northwest corner of the fire, where winds are favorable. The Lake County Sheriff's Office, in collaboration with Northwest Incident Management Team 6, has agreed to retain all evacuation levels at their current status and will re-evaluate tomorrow at 4 p.m. after the wind has diminished.)”

So we go about our business on this glorious Sunday, with sunshine and a breeze, temperature in the 60s, as if everything is fine. Except for traffic. And the smoke that descends from the ridges each night.

It's so normal around here that Valerie decided to weed-whack. As if we'll HAVE a lawn in the near future? She shrugged. She told her niece over the phone that she's in denial and I’ve been evacuated for a week. A slight exaggeration, but only slight. Paisley is still under a Level 2.

You know, I have to say, the sound of helicopters is just ominous. I know they're here to measure the fire, and carry buckets of water to some spot that needs water; even though the buckets look pathetically small way up there, apparently bucket-dumping is one of the effective tools of fire 'management.' The helipad is out by the rodeo corral, which is near our airport strip, just north of town. There's a sign on route 31 by the goat pen on the edge of town that points to this spot. It says in a handwritten sign: FUEL. Helicopter fuel, i guess. I'm certainly glad they're here. But i don't like the sound of them.

It will be great when we don't need them.

I went to church today for the first time in months, to hear the new preacher. He's married to a lovely gal who's joined our writer's group. I appreciated the former preacher's sincerity and humility, but i just couldn't glean much from his message. This guy has a sense of humor, he uses power point to help us read the scripture he's referencing while he talks, and he had stories to tell. Alleluia, a story. With a beginning, middle and end. I enjoyed his sermon very much; needed to hear it.

At the beginning of the service, our neighbor asked if there'd been any birthdays, and i raised my hand. "I turned 59 on the first day of the fire. I didn't mean to blow out the candles quite so hard!" Folks laughed. One asked, are you being investigated? I said yup. I'm the human referred to as 'human caused'! More laughter. And they sang me the white person's Happy Birthday song.

(The Black person's birthday song is the chorus of Stevie Wonder's song, Happy Birthday, which you can watch here as he celebrates Nelson Mandela's birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inS9gAgSENE.)

I had a bit of a revelation while sitting in the pew. I hold different tenets of faith than many if not most of the folks who attend. I do not believe that the only way to salvation is to declare that Jesus is my savior. I believe that, for me, tuning into Jesus is my favorite way to catch the radio station called "God", but there are many other radio stations. Alice Walker said in The Color Purple that we don’t go to church to find God but to share God. Here in church, we can share faith, and good and bad news, and disagree about whether the ONLY way to salvation is through Jesus. Just like we can also disagree about whether I'm going to hell because I'm gay. I figure, there are more adulterers in this county than gay people, and they go to church without a qualm. Thus, so can I.

I'm a bit thick. But these thoughts were helpful, relieving even, and instead of feeling a little bit defensive in the pew, I could feel compassion. None of us here gathered know shit, really. We hope and trust and do the best we can.

And we know shit happens. Fire happens. And once again, I turn to the wisdom of Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Our town is full of helpers, together, and therefore we are not alone. We will still be here, or at least nearby when this fire is 100% contained.

 August 26 at 12:24 PM · 

 South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership - SCOFMP

August 26 at 12:20 PM · 

The #WatsonCreekFire was subdued overnight. However, light winds overnight are expected to increase throughout the day and test fire lines on the eastern perimeter. Get the full report: https://goo.gl/Zye7DP

 Monday, August 27, 2018

Here in the Oregon Outback, there are all kinds of skills that are necessary for survival. There are also unquestioned reflexes for which I am deeply grateful, and dependent. To wit: the automatic behavior that makes everyone traveling on the road STOP when they see someone off the road in the ditch or upside down. You stop and help anyway you can. Especially in the winter. There is some risk involved, like when Valerie’s son Jeremiah stopped because he saw a car skidded out into a field, only to be struck by yet another vehicle slipping on the same patch of ice that felled the first car. His leg has since recovered, but it took surgery and months of physical therapy to get well again.

There are risks, but the risk of allowing a fellow human to die out there is the deeper risk. There are so few humans (and so many gaps in cell coverage) that the responsibility lies on you. Not a question. Except that, if it’s me that sees you and stops, I’ll try to find a signal to call for the kind of help that will actually help, because… the knowledge of how to fix a car, or hook it up so you can tow it, or basic first aid, is the next layer of knowledge you need. Jer, and most of the men out here and many of the women, seem to be able to eyeball a car or truck and figure out what’s wrong with it, if not how to fix it. Valerie, and many other women too, know about machines. I am tickled to listen to Jer and Valerie talk about engines and water pipes and pumps and the caterpillar (referred to as “the Cat”) which hauls and digs and I don’t know what all. Their minds work in problem-solving three-dimensional mode, rather like mine tries to figure out how to get a wary new client to trust me. Very different skill set, obviously.

I supposed after I found a signal and called 911, I could go near the car and see if anyone needed words of encouragement, or a granola bar, while we waited for real help.

Valerie knows a great deal about birds. She knows their names, and what they hunt. What season they appear, and when they couple up. She loves to watch them, and her job as ranch-hand gives her the opportunity. I’ve recently learned to notice turkey vultures. They are huge and dark of feather, with a wingspan of maybe 30 inches. They swoop and dive, and sometimes they sit on a fence post with their wings open as though sunning themselves or drying out. (Do they have sweaty armpits, too?) I’ve learned about the magpie, apparently one of the few animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror, as in, that’s me, not another bird. Part of the crow family, Magpies are noisy and gorgeous. I might get a magpie tattoo just because they are so beautiful, and because they were the first birds I noticed when I moved out here. I still can’t tell a heron from an egret from a goose, but I think I have pelicans nailed. Previously in the city, I was aware of pidgeons, Ravens because of the Edgar Alan Poe story, and the bald eagle, because it is a ubiquitous image in the Nation’s Capital.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGp-b0pIu3c/

Valerie and lots of other Outback residents know how to read cows. Val can look at a cow and tell how old it is, how healthy, what it might be used for if it were butchered. I’m like, it’s a cow. If it’s a little cow, it’s a calf, if it’s a slightly larger cow, it’s a yearling. If it’s in the middle of the road, it’s traffic.

When I moved here, I looked up the rates of graduation from college. For Lake County, it’s 19 per cent. For Washington DC, it’s 46 per cent, more than twice the number. I’ve often said that when I lived in D.C., I was never the smartest person in the room. Although there are many kinds of smarts, what I meant by that is that in any given room, including the Sunday morning adult forum at church, I was regularly astonished by how much folks knew about stuff I had no idea about. Smart, well educated people come to Washington DC to change the world. Once they figure that the world is hard to change, they stay anyway.

Liane is a woman I’ve known since I first came back to St. Stephen’s Church after college in the early 1980s. A Harvard graduate, I got to know her when we both were lucky to join a small group of young people from the church who got some vocational training from a wealthy member of the congregation. We enjoyed three days in which we took the Myers-Briggs test and did exercises to imagine what kind of jobs would suit us best. She came out of that with an idea about film making and went on to make films for the Census Bureau and some museums. Years later, she adopted a teenager with her partner, a young black man whose last chance for a forever family was this light skinned black woman and her white wife. His habits of stealing followed him into the family, and pretty soon both moms were helping him navigate the juvenile justice system. She became an advocate in the state of Virginia for ‘adjudicated youth’ and has moved into yet another career. She works for a foundation as a senior policy associate on juvenile justice. Liane is relentlessly, efficiently, and calmly improving the world.

When I was coming up in public school in D.C., I was exposed to people who had way more money than we did. This exposure was due to the fact that my father wanted his daughters to go to the best public schools in the city, which are of course located in the wealthiest neighborhoods. He was a genius at finding affordable housing as a man with a middling management job in government, a wife who did not contribute income (or much of anything else) and two girls. We lived in drafty old apartment buildings filled with old ladies and cats, in the same neighborhood as embassies and mansions. I figured out that my fellow students had many more skills than I had: they could play a musical instrument or tap dance, and they spoke more than one language because they spent time overseas.

You know the joke: a person who speaks three languages is trilingual, someone who speaks two is bilingual, and the person who speaks one language is American. That would be me.

I felt deeply inadequate around all these smart, poised children. It was my therapist Pat who helped me to see that I had a different kind of smarts.  I was busy surviving while my friends were taking violin lessons. I am good at reading people in part because I had to be good at reading my mother’s moods. I had to steer my own academic life and pick a college sight unseen because my parents were too preoccupied with their own troubles to guide me. I was navigating a world all by myself, and doing a pretty good job of it, she pointed out. Who had time to learn tap dance?

So I’ve moved to Paisley and I feel a bit like I did in the rich part of DC: kinda stupid.  I’m learning, though. Since I moved out here, I can tell the difference between fog, smoke, and alkali dust, most of the time. I know that both heifers and bulls can have horns. I know that there is no way to rush through a cow drive on the road, and frankly, the longer I live here the less of a rush I’m in, period.

There is knowledge I don’t need anymore, like how to act on a city bus when I’m the only white person. You get to the back of the line, letting others get on ahead of you, until some courtly black gentlemen gestures for you to get on. You wait because white bus riders in the whiter parts of town tend to push to the front of the line. You don’t sit in the front of the bus near the driver, again because fearful white folks sit there. You sit in the middle or toward the back, because ‘the back of the bus’ is too symbolic to ignore. You, as a white person, can be bold and ask to sit where there is a purse or backpack because a) you are showing that you are not afraid of talking to a black person and b) you are not afraid of sitting next to one, either. And generally speaking, you are super courteous, offering a seat to an older person and standing out of the way if you have to stand, so that other riders can get on and off the bus. It’s bus etiquette for white people. Nobody taught me, I just figured it out.

I don’t need that knowledge here.

Valerie is teaching me how to notice who is a preacher and who is a cowboy by the way they dress and how they shave. We were sitting in King Wah, a Chinese restaurant doing a brisk business for brunch one recent Sunday afternoon. She identified a preacher and his wife right off. At the Easter egg hunt, she pointed out to me the clean cowboy boots, clean blue jeans, white shirt, and clean hat on a young father: he was dressed up. Valerie is my tutor, and my interpreter.

I have the ability to see the fear underneath hostility thinly veiled. I can read body language in most any body. I have these skills, and I thank my crazy mama for them. I’ve also had a wonderful education in the commonality of people across cultures in D.C. Hanging out with people from all over the world means I had a precious opportunity to learn how to establish rapport with just about anyone, if I try. Including conservatives who’d call me a libtard. Because my Dad was a conservative, and his mother was a Steel Magnolia from Tuscaloosa.

I also have world class gay-dar.  Happy Pride Month, by the way.

Among my clients, who are, by definition, the poorest and most troubled residents of this sparsely populated county, there are some strange belief systems that have come to light in the course of our work together. I am working on my biases here: the immaculate conception is a pretty strange belief and I’m not sure I believe in it. Before I came to Lake County, I’d never met anyone who believed in Creationism. People believe that evolution is a plot to discredit the Bible. I can’t do a thing with that, and I won’t try.

One of my clients is part of ‘the militia’. He told me one day that #45 was going to increase the social security disability minimum payment, which appears to be about $700/ a month. Because no one can live on that. I’m like, what is your source for this fabulous news? He knows a guy who knows a guy who knows Trump. Uh huh. Nevermind that INCREASING what is essentially welfare for sick people is anathema to #45 and his party. This client got turned down for disability and is appealing. I did not tell him that tax cuts mean fewer workers to review disability applications.

Did you hear that the world was supposed to end last September?  One of my clients refused to set any goals because, what was the point? Months later, the world is still here and he’s still on probation. Apocalypse or no apocalypse, he still needs to give me a clean urine test.

Strange ideas are not unique to the Outback of course. I’ve been following with interest a controversy in DC that popped on the news surrounding the youngest, newest member of the DC City Council, from the poorest Ward. To quote the Washington Post: D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) gained international notoriety for endorsing a conspiracy theory that the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, are manipulating the climate for financial gain.

That was a new one on me. I looked him up and found this in Wikipedia:

Trayon White was born … “in Washington, D.C. He was raised by his mother after his father disappeared. His family was very poor and lived in a terrible neighborhood. In his early teens, he stole cars, and was arrested several times. Apparently, one of his school teachers started mentoring him. When the teacher died in an automobile accident, White turned to the church. His grades radically improved, and eventually he graduated magna cum laude from University of Maryland Eastern Shore.”

Mr. White is clearly no dummy and has a bone marrow deep understanding of what it takes to overcome poverty and a life of crime. His apparent insensitivity to the concerns of Jewish members of the wider community is salt in the wound of a swiftly gentrifying city that is leaving poor black people behind.

Perhaps the conspiracy theories of my poor white clients sprout from a similar need.    Poor people of whatever background try to make sense of why they are suffering, and a solid conspiracy theory is as good as any explanation. A suspicion about Jewish greed and people who hate the Bible must be the cause: capitalism is too hard to understand.

I’ve noticed that one male client in particular is highly ‘emotionally intelligent’.  He is as heterosexual, and cowboy butch as they come, and at the same time, he is a brilliant reader of people. Of all my clients, he was the only one who noticed how troubled I was last fall before I went on that retreat and straightened some of my craziness out. His astute observations of the world around him reinforce my theory that emotional intelligence should not be relegated only to the female half of the population. I have hope for this young man that he’ll come out of his current travails with a wisdom and strength that will serve him well.  Despite his disbelief in evolution.

I may not have attended Harvard nor learn to ski in the Alps, but I’ve traveled the US widely by train and car, and I’ve been to southern Africa and Eastern Europe. Never been to Rome or Paris, but Prague and Cape Town are amazing cities. Many of my coworkers here have never been east of the Mississippi River. I went to a fine, progressive liberal arts school and then to graduate school, thanks to wealth of my grandmother and my generous therapist. Many of my coworkers have online-only master degrees and paid every bit of their way on their own.

Luke 12:48 says, From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. I am privileged here in Lake County. I am lucky that I have some skills that the county needs, as I plug along in my work as a “behavioral therapist”. I know enough to be useful. I can’t fix a car, but I can bring books up from Lakeview to Paisley and run errands for people. I guess I’m doing alright for a city slicker in the high desert among the cows and the magpies. Maybe someday I’ll lose my self-consciousness and feel like I, sort of, belong.

I am hugely grateful for a thank you note from a client who finished his substance use treatment with me. He is old school to the max, Medicare-age, and knew, unlike most of my clients who might be grateful to me, that the best way to thank me is to write a letter of praise to my boss.