long overdue post but….

I met my biological family last week.

After years of search and paperwork and praying, it finally happened. And I am thrown for the biggest loop of my life.

The first meeting was so interesting, and happy, and completely natural. After calling through the phone book looking for people who matched the names on my original birth certificate (which I had just received) I found a potential match with no phone number, only an address. My partner and I showed up at the stranger’s house (my dad’s?), left a phone number and lo and behold — he called almost immediately. It was him. We both cried.

It turns out I have a sister, a full sister, who I never knew about at all but was delighted to meet. She is 22, and her name is Carrie. My father’s name is John. My mother, Vickie (Victoria!), has already passed on. She died alone in 1993 from gin, or as some would say, “from the drink”, or (as I rather suspect) from a lifetime of abuse and uncertainty, since it’s rarely a drink alone which does people in without warning.

So a lifelong quest has come to fruition and I don’t quite know what to feel, think, say or do. “Our family comes with a lot of baggage”, Carrie said the other night and while it’s true I was nearly falling off my chair at some of the horror stories from the past, somewhere in my mind I knew they weren’t really any different or more or less despicable than millions of other people’s stories in this world. And that possibly it’s only the suburban upbringing which was always so foreign to me, the one I always found so judgmental and out of touch with reality, making me start and panic as though my adoptive family never had problems of their own.

There’s a touch of the surreal in every interaction now, a bit of confusion about the honest truth and what that is even supposed to mean. It’s intermingled with a fear that I won’t fit in, that it will now be not just one but two families that are legally or technically mine that I can’t relax with or see things eye to eye. And maybe that’s just too much to really expect from a family, and the illusion that I’ve harbored that everyone else has this and I don’t is just that — an illusion.

I am not sure I know what family means. I am not sure I know how to have these relationships and maintain in them the genuine truth that encompasses both compassion and decision. I am not sure what to call dad, if he is dad or if he is John, or what it means to love the strangers who are my genetic kin and have loved me for all this time, wishing happy birthday to “Erika” (me) on the 13th of September every year.

So instead of coming full circle I am instead standing at the start of a spiral, a labyrinth, like the one in the back yard of the house I was born in. I’m not looking to get flighty and overly spiritual when I say that this spiral of brick laid flat on the ground constantly comes at me like a metaphor and if it’s true that religion, folklore and superstition are all different ways of us humans assigning patterns to a world we can’t comprehend then I am full on for this method if it can help decipher this new code of unusual feeling.

Indigenous Call for Action Answered by Youth/Environmental Groups
Black Mesa Project permitting process re-opened! Deadline for comments: July 7, 2008
Diné elder Pauline Whitesinger faces threats from government officials

Black Mesa, Arizona, home to the Diné (Navajo) and Hopi tribal reservations, is also home to massive mining operations run by Peabody Coal. In the past 30 years the mine at Black Mesa has contributed 325 million tons of carbon dioxide to atmospheric levels. Mining officials, with backing from the U.S. government, are responsible for capping local water supply (to supply mines) and harassing, threatening and in some cases assaulting Black Mesa residents, many who are elders resisting being driven from the land their ancestors have occupied for hundreds of years.

Peabody Coal now wants to expand the mining operation at a potential environmental cost of 290 million tons of CO2 and an unfathomable personal cost to all who continue to live and fight for their lives on Black Mesa. In related news, area residents continue to face threats and intimidation at the hands of the U.S. government, and it is no coincidence that the afflicted live on what Peabody Coal clearly sees as “their profit”.

Diné grandmother resistor Pauline Whitesinger (above), 76, was recently served a notice by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officers and Hopi Tribal Rangers to immediately halt repairs being made to her ceremonial earth lodge (hogan) on penalty of fines and criminal charges. Officials also attempted to harass Pauline’s on-land supporter/sheepherder. Threats of intimidation accompanied the “notice” and have continued unabated. Support has been requested for Pauline Whitesinger in the form of phone calls, letters and on-land support to let the BIA and Hopi officials know that their unacceptable actions are under scrutiny.

The overarching story here, that of Peabody Coal, lies at the core of environmental and human devastation. Peabody’s proposed expansion would detonate coal on a daily basis polluting the air and affect health of miners and residents, deplete residential water supplies (already scarce in the desert thanks to mining), accelerate climate change and, perhaps most significantly, sacrifice human dignity and planetary health for corporate profit.

The Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) has responded to the calls for action by mailing a statement denouncing the harassment of Pauline Whitesinger and also collecting signatures to add to a comment letter expressing opposition to the Peabody mine expansion. Similar actions have also been taken up by other national groups such as Black Mesa Indigenous Support, Student/Farmworker Alliance, and Black Mesa Water Coalition (heading up the call for action). Together, we can connect the dots of coal industry devastation from Appalachia to the mesas of Arizona, standing together in solidarity.
Coal is the liver of mother earth – let’s keep it in the ground and keep her healthy!

*Sample letter for coal comments and info and address for Pauline Whitesinger letter at blackmesais.org (also see attachments)

*To provide on-land support email blackmesais@riseup.net

See BMWC and BMIS websites for more ways to help!

“Today we are one step closer to building a world where we, as farmworkers, can enjoy a fair wage and humane working conditions in exchange for the hard and essential work we do everyday. We are not there yet, but we are getting there, and this agreement should send a strong message to the rest of the restaurant and supermarket industry: Now is the time to join Yum! Brands, McDonalds and Burger King in righting the wrongs that have been allowed to linger in Florida’s fields for far too long.”

–the Coalition of Immokalee Workers

see the full story here

read the Nation article here

]]> http://aramia.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/burger-king-agrees-to-ciw-demands/feed/ 1 aramia http://aramia.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/as-the-tide-recedes/ http://aramia.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/as-the-tide-recedes/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 03:41:01 +0000 aramia http://aramia.wordpress.com/?p=69 ]]>

I am just waitin for tomorrow’s news.

The economy’s getting worse. The earth is getting worse. People are dying by the 10’s of thousands. My horse is lame, my financial aid revoked, and I have no health insurance.

There are a million reasons to worry and a million ways to psych yourself out. But that’s still no excuse for going out and living like you just won’t stop. And I don’t mean by going to the mall Ms. “I love life I just shop all the time!”.

btw: 1st test in Pan-African Studies = A for Aramie!!

I am riding horses again! It all just kind of happened (like so many worthy things in life). By great fortune it turns out there is a very nice horse who has been off since last year recovering from a leg injury and needs someone to work with him. I was sort of bewildered when I first met him last Friday because, while beautiful, he is also extremely spoiled. And smart and big and pushy, all of which can lead up to unintentional disaster. But we have been working and bonding and in less than a week he already feels like a different horse.

This is the barn where I have been riding since the age of 9, with a recent hiatus of close to seven years. I was always the poor kid at a barn of rich’uns, hoping for chances to ride others people’s horses and feeling constantly inferior but trying not to care. And now somehow none of that matters, I am relishing working with a “difficult” horse, and I don’t envy they who have the horses which cost more than a luxury sedan…because I can no longer be fooled into thinking that money buys happiness. Although I admit there are some right beautiful animals in this stable, some of them truly take my breath away!!

But as for me, this horse and I are working on getting back into shape together. Updates to follow, and maybe a photo. This new horse’s name is Trickey. And he is.

Most excellent article, from Gonzalo’s new blog…

http://colours.mahost.org/articles/martinez2.html

it begins

“If ever there was a time to break the habit of calling this country “America,” as if no other nations existed in this hemisphere, it is in the current era of Permanent War and arrogant empire-building.

“If ever there was a time for people in this white-dominated super-power to reject its racist contempt for 20 other American countries that happen to be of color, it is right now as Bush charges from one racist war to another.

“If ever there was a time when all of us need to expose the denial of truth, the hidden histories of crimes against humanity by the U.S., it is today when monumental lies have become the real weapons of mass destruction. . .”

Gonzalo’s blog, mostly about life as an immigrant to United States from Peru (and shenanigans ), is eloquent and powerful, and can be found here.

Kombucha batch #3 started today. First two batches were 6 bags gynostemma tea but the taste was a bit strong. This time it’s two bags gynostemma, 2 bags black tea, 1 bag green goji berry. I’m hoping it will taste like spring….

Also now have enough kombucha starter scobies to share with friends. Ask and ye shall receive…!

So I was just remembering a time, back in the day, when we all used to blog constantly. Back when I first got to Immokalee and had never heard of Myspace and all these people I now know and love were just concepts in my mind — badass folks and revolutionaries I never thought to have the good fortune to know much less to learn from — and we all got to know each other by updating our livejournals all the freaking time. I remember being the only one up at the house past 10 pm, checking all the doors at night like a watchdog, and then pouring over the events of my friend’s lives. It was a pretty good way to pass time in a place with nothing to do but work. But no one blogs anymore. I don’t even blog anymore. Maybe, I think I am just better now about picking up the phone and calling folk, also, I have more people that “get it” to talk to these days. The lack of that was the main impetus behind putting my innermost thoughts up on a computer screen for whoever chanced to find them.

I also had a deeply-held belief that writing about myself was ridiculously indulgent. I still do think this from time to time.

We were having this conversation about imagination the other day at work. One of my coworkers was saying that it must be great to have imagination. I still can’t believe anyone could actually lack imagination though. I mean, in this society? To not have that faculty? It would be horrible — there’s no other way to get through some of this shit without a rich fantasy life, at least of some sort. Like last week when they decided mountaintop removal would continue, for instance, after all the tears, I had to dream up the kind of resignation which comes naturally only to family pets crossing the country to California to find the owners who left them behind Maine; the kind of resignation that leaves your mind blank enough to separate from the trivial. Blank enough to be fascinated by the novelty of whatever you’re doing right then. It’s actually a pretty good state to be in — I think some of my friends are naturally in that state, all the time.

I started some cosmos flowers yesterday, and re-potted the growing spider plants. In the garden out back, all these onions have been growing underneath the eight inches of snow. Them things is resilient! I never thought to be inspired by an onion.

So much has happened in the past few months. Not that you would know it by how often I update this blog. We took a major road trip this summer, and stayed with the Lane family on the Navajo reservation in Arizona…and the fact that I even have to type the word “reservation” makes me close to sick. It’s almost just as bad that I can’t seem to connect the dots for other people when they ask about this experience. It was another way to stand in solidarity with affected people against the tradition of indigenous exploitation of this country.

And now, sitting here, and reviewing the past few weeks, what I remember well is the feeling I always had in east KY. The connection to people and the past, a connection that gets lost here somehow. Maybe it’s the turnover rate of the cities, maybe it’s the beauty of the mountains, I don’t really know.

And folks keep asking, wanting to understand. But I don’t nearly understand, myself.  

I know that people generally mean well, and I know that people generally do the best they can with what they have. I know that me being disaffected doesn’t help anything, and doesn’t let me give the best of myself to this world. But damn it I miss living in a place where it feels good to wake up in the mornings, to walk to work, to meander home and watch the mist in the mountains, to square dance til you can’t barely walk. And yeah, occasionally to swig whisky from a jug. I wish I knew where to be most effective.