April aka Overwhelm Your Local Environmental Activist Month

So April is drawing to an end thankfully. I used to really love April. All the flowers. The cool ocean breezes. The promise of warm ocean water and nights of fog.

Since forming the Friends of Rose Creek I've renamed April to "kill you local environmental activist month" (I left kill out of the post title as it seemed to easy to take it literally). San Diego Earth Fair is behind us. Great day. Lots of people stopped by our booth eager to learn about Rose Creek and our vision for the future. It was a twelve hour day for me not to mention the eight hours of preparation time over the prior two days. The last two hours at the fair I was doing squats in hiking boots and picking up cigarette butts, beer bottles and scraps of plastic.

Saturday is the Creek to Bay Cleanup - yet another massive day. We have a 40 yard roll off dumpster coming and hopefully 75 + volunteers to fill it in under three hours. Plus raffle prizes to give away, an ice cream social to plan. So I'm out humping for volunteers, trying to find people whose idea of an awesome Saturday morning is hauling sofas, tires and spray paint cans out of the creek. Logistics on this are huge and I haven't tracked my time.

There's trees that need to be watered weekly and a host of events I had to say no to because there is only so much a middle aged worn out woman can do. So I ask everyone, why does it have to happen in April? I know April 22 is Earth Day and having earth related events is cool. But what about March? Don't we love the earth in March? Or November or May?

I secretly suspect it is a plot to kill off environmental activists - maybe give us a heart attack or a nervous break down or leave us babbling in the corner. With the new greening of America, I would hope that loving the earth is an twelve month affair, but so far, the only real change I've seen is in corporate advertising. Go figure.

TC Boyle & Opening Sentences

I've been reworking the opening of my novel and trying to create an opening sentence that packs a wallop. Today I went to the library and read the opening paragraph to all the Boyle novels on the shelf. There were seven or eight. While the exercise was very useful for my opening sentence, (I hope), it left me feeling rather discouraged. I'm 47 years old and have yet to complete even one novel, let alone the cornucopia of ideas that Boyle has produced so far.

Of course the only option to not trying to finish anything is never finishing anything so I continue on. But just for giggles, take a quick comparison and you'll see what I mean.

Falling From the Moon's first sentence: "He vaporized fifteen years ago leaving faint traces of patchouli, the echo of an acoustic guitar in the hallway and festering lesions on her destiny."

Drop's City's first sentence: The morning was a fish in a net, glistening and wriggling at the dead black border of her consciousness, but she'd never caught a fish in a net or on a hook either, so she couldn't really say if or how or why.

Gathering Magic

So Sunday was the first day we held the Rainbow Gathering 101 Back to Basics Circle.

We were small in number, but in true Rainbow Magic the San Diego version of Glowing Feather or Diamond Dave showed up and joined us. Now mind you, this man had never heard of Rainbow before (or open mikes for that matter), but he held hands with us as we circled, then let loose with some beautiful love and spirit filled poetry raps that would challenge the best the gathering has to offer and he was a 40 to 50 year old self professed virgin.

He sat with us in circle and shared thoughts and ideas in poetic rap format. Amazing. And very mystical. He apparently lives near the park and there's been a Rainbow Circle in that approximate location for over ten years and yet the first time he connected with us was to join the Back to Basics Circle.

My hope for Sunday's circle was to talk about the importance of non-tangible connections and energies in creating a safe, fun and meaningful gathering for everyone. To that end, I told a story from the last Wyoming gathering in 1994. A beautiful sister suggested that lots of people are more plugged into the Internet than the park and that I should make this story available electronically, so here goes.

The 1994 Wyoming gathering was in a beautiful bowl shaped meadow with a creek running through it. Unfortunately, there was no rain. And things got dry. Very dry. And the fire danger
rose. Family counciled on how to handle the situation. We talked a lot about root fires and evacuation routes and how to fight a fire. Not that fighting is very Rainbow, but sometimes... Fire patrol was in full force and 5 gallon buckets of water and shovels were the most commonly spoke about tools.

The general plan was that should a fire break out, those prepared to fight were going to put on boots, long pants and long protective shirts and head towards the fire with all the buckets, shoves and axes they could carry. Everyone else would evacuate into the meadow and follow the creek down hill and out of the area.

A few small fires erupted here and there but were always adjacent to a camp and were put out as fast as they started.

So one day I'm sitting in a Southern California family council and the call of fire rings out. We stop what we're doing and my friend and I run back to our tents. Put on our boots and jeans. We grab shovels and all the buckets we can find.

Then we head up the hill, which seems to be the way everyone was going. Things were a bit chaotic at first as first people were running up the hill along the trail, then turning back, then running up, then turning back. I later found out that there were some people who felt it was too dangerous for gatherers to fight a forest fire, but in the end that big loving beautiful rainbow can do attitude won out and we all charged up the hill.

This was not a little fire. This was a fire in dry trees. A real forest fire and I had never been near one before, let alone helped to put one out.

As we ran up the trail, there was a small tree and four or five old men with long grey hair and long grey beards dressed all in flowing white clothes holding their hands up to the sky. "Om for the wind to stop," they called out. "Om for the wind to stop."

My friend and I stopped, looked at each other and scoffed. We had a forest fire to fight, we didn't have time to Om. So we continued up the hill and joined the bucket brigade. Hundreds
of people passing five gallon buckets of water from the creek below up to the fire above. Some of them naked or next to naked. Others covered up a bit more. Sparks flying. Ash everywhere.

At some point after things were settling down a bit and the fire seemed to be somewhat contained, the Forest Service brought in a plane to drop fire retardant on the area that had
burned. I was able to get some great photos of the drop.

After that we just kept slinging the buckets full of water. Family came by with food and passed zu zus and water up and down the line. A beautiful magical crew came by and gave five minute
shoulder and neck massages - thank you beautiful family, it was wonderful.

And then it was over and we were drop dead exhausted and collapsed into bed. I didn't hear that night or the next, but at some point I heard that all the people in the know: family with experience in forest fires, the Forest Service resource people, and others that the only reason we, meaning family on the ground working our butts off, were able to contain the fire was because the wind, unexpectedly and unusually, died down.

Just some food for thought.

So join us every Sunday in April and May, 1 PM in Balboa Park at the usual place except for April 20th - the day of the huge Earth Fair and the huge drum circle by the Museum of Art.

As always, http://home.earthlink.net/~scrollinfo/

Be the peace you want to see in this world.

I was in denial

For months now, the washing machine has been acting up. Sometimes it works great for a week and then the motor overheats and it shuts down. If I don't turn it off then, it blows the circuits on my house. It didn't happen all the time and usually if you turned it off for an hour, you could turn it back on and all would be well.

No longer. So a repair person (probably a man) is on the way to replace the motor. $100 labor plus $150 to $200 for a new motor. Still cheaper and less wasteful than a new washer, but I hate it. I hate that we do at least one load of urine soaked clothes everyday - on a bad day it could be two loads and we can add bowel movement to the mix.

In the old days, I used a laundromat. Once a month I would load up my clothes in my little-old-lady laundry cart and drag it two blocks to the laundromat. Then I would read for an hour while my clothes swirled in soapy water. It was great people watching drama: husbands and wives bickering, children whining and on cold winter nights people with no place warm to go just reading the newspaper and defrosting.

When the load finished, I'd load the wet clothes back into the cart, take them home and hang them on the line to dry. The next day I would take the clothes off the line, fold them and put them away and I was DONE! Done with laundry for another month.

These days the first load starts by 7 AM and at 10 PM I'm folding the last of the day's laundry. I guess in the olden days, old people just wore their dirty clothes.

(Re)Experiencing Death

So this week I have been (re) experiencing the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The reprocessing of my emotions is the only explanation I have for my frustration, my anger, my inability to stay calm in the face of the very small upsets that have occurred in my life.

I've discussed this with many people - the ways in which a child experiences things and then (re)members them, not as conscious memories, but as emotions. I was seven that year when Dr. King was murdered, assassinated in an attempt to erase his vision from the hearts of the people. Sitting here at my computer I try to recall how my seven year old self lived through that day, but am unsuccessful. I don't get upset when I recall the day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated or when the Russian Czar was executed. Yet the fear in my heart is strong for this event that I lived through as a child. Relived due to the helpless way that children flop through the tragedies that adults think don't impact them. After all, what concern would a bunch of white parents in suburban San Francisco place on the impact of Dr. King's murder on their small white children.

My parents grew up in Europe and I don't think they ever consciously acknowledged the privileges they received in America because of the color of their skin. They jumped ahead of natural born citizens in job opportunities and standard of living despite having arrived with nothing but a suitcase and the promise of a cousin's couch to sleep on. So how could they understand, truly understand what was at stake and if they didn't feel their guts spilling on the ground, how could they understand the impact Dr. King had on their children - first generation American born and entwined in America's long standing discrepancies between dreams and reality.

And what does it mean to me. The white offspring of European immigrants who inheirited all of what has come before and enjoyed the benefits that trickled down according to race. I can't undo it, can't revise it, can only try to see the truth of what was and hope that what is to come will work towards the ideals of equality that we claim for this country inspite of so much evidence to the contrary.

So tomorrow I will try to recall the seven year old Karin and how she felt that day long ago. I will try to work through those unresolved emotions and hold onto the dream of an America with justice and liberty for all. And by all I mean Steel Head Trout and Grizzly Bears and wolves as well as people of all colors and abilities.

What ever happened to dreams anyway?