"When the Bones are good the rest don't matter" words from Maren Morris' song The Bones. This has become the theme song for what's happening in my world, and ours.

When the carpenters came during this pandemic to do that essential service on the bones of my home, I moved out. When they tore off the flooring, then the floor boards, then looked beneath, the report was the bones are good. Just not enough of them, not enough support for the house that came upon them all those years ago.

The Earth got a good report this week, too. Her bones are good and the skies are clearing and the quest for fossil fuels got a whole lot less profitable, making this a great time for the energy producers to change their ways and provide for our energy needs in the new ways that will give us what we need and in a way that gives companies the chance to be the saviors of the earth while we still pay them for it.

50 years ago the Earth needed help and people 20 million Americans demanded it. We got the Environmental Protection Agency and isn't it ironic that 50 years later its initials could almost be EPA for Environmental Pollution Agency since so many of the rules and regulations to protect human health and our environment are being rolled back by the current administration. A dear woman who worked for us at LEAD Agency came into my office and gently shut the door, sat down and looked at me, then asked, if the president who had been elected was good for the environment. That was early in the term, but that answer certainly and positively stayed NO, not good for the environment. Elections have consequences and voting matters.

And 50 years ago people 20 million people stood up and spoke up for the Earth and as Earl Hatley says, "Look on any April calendar, Earth Day is listed. We made it happen." Regular people made us all recognize the importance of appreciating the only real mother we all have. Martin Lively, LEAD's Americorps/VISTA pointed out through a series of photos that our environmental footprint can have long and lasting impacts but living in different ways and doing the work we do can demonstrate that footprint can be smaller and we are modeling how that can look.

The Rose Foundation's Grassroots Leadership Foundation helped LEAD Agency's bones this week when we received a $5,000 grant to pursue the work we do for our community. We join with other grassroots groups all over the country who like us pull the energy forward to change the places we live and make them safer and healthier. It was a humbling experience to meet their board members in a ZOOM meeting and learn the expertise they each bring. We will be well served through this organization and our relationship with them. They understand deeply about the environmental and personal struggles flooding causes and how leadership, local or global political leaders can influence our futures.

Groups all over the world held virtual Earth Day events, so of course LEAD Agency hung right in there with our own. Music was provided by the Picher Project with a song from their musical and from Moondoggy by Jordan Zable. We had a discussion with reflections and our deep desire as yours would be to find us all physically together with friends and family without the fear of the contagious virus. The Earth was in a terrible mess 50 years ago, some things got better, but she is still our home and we can look deeply into how we extend the years she can give us. We can believe the changes we are making now can be personal changes that can benefit us and make our lives and our own futures better.

Our bones are good. "The house don't fall when the bones are good."

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

P.S.
Earth Day -- The Beginning: A Guide for Survival Compiled and edited by the National Staff of Environmental Action is a book on the shelf outside the room I am currently sequestered while my house is getting her new bones. On the dedication page the simple words:
                                                                                                 To the tree
                                                                              from which this book is made

40 years ago I completed building a house I could call my own. From scratch, without a loan from a bank and actually without real plans drawn by an architect. Back in those days if you wanted to learn how to do something, you could study it, where else? The local library. The Vinita Library had 5 books on how to  build your own house, and I checked them all out and pondered over them and compared this how and that why until, finally it was time to begin.

It was a summer vacation I will never forget, or the summer that followed since it took both summers working almost non-stop to be able to walk in and shut the door behind me.

Well, 40 years later, it became impossible to ignore that the 5 books and their best suggestions had left some basics the builder has found she had not quite got right.

My son was 6 when we moved into the house and the very first thing he did was put his marbles at the threshold and let them loose to roll across the kitchen floor. I asked him what he was doing, "Marble races." The marbles rolled without any assistance to the exact middle of the house. That was the moment that has haunted me until this very evening.

This is the eve of the great fix. IT begins in 8 hours. And will basically mean tearing through my floors to fix the floor joists that are failing. Those 5 books had let me down. Or the reader just missed the point they were all trying to get across, the, upon this rock I build my ... that the whole structure depended upon the base.

It was a dream to live in a homemade house, knowing every nail and how many bent nails filled the nail apron, so much the weight of it is a memory. And on the eve of when it gets its fix, I am nervous to see how quickly taking it apart can be.

But in only 3 months, so many things will be different in all of our lives and I am imagining what laying back and reading again in the bed I got 65 years ago will feel like. I remember the day my parents found my bed at a "junk shop" in Lebanon, Missouri. The gentleman was asking $5 for it, and for whatever reason my day said, "FIVE DOLLARS? that's not enough!" So he asked: $25? and the bed has been mine ever since. It is solid walnut with a headboard that is seven feet tall with burl trim and a top knot on both sides that actually can be removed and used as a strange sort of wooden bouquet, or as a weapon  if needed.

 So much of what we are all going through now we hope in 3 months will begin to show we have reasons  to hope. 3 months all those years ago, got the roof on this house and it closed in for the winter while it sat waiting for the next 3 months to complete the finish work.

We can wait it out. We can figure what's next in our lives. We can study up our next projects. large or small. Time is the thing many of us are experiencing in ways we never thought possible. We do these things, while our protectors are doing the essential work that keeps our lives in place. One of those essentials will be at my house at 8 in the morning to make sure it doesn't collapse with me inside. A worry that I had characterized by our insurance company's inspector and his 30-page report on what was happening beneath my floors and what damage it could cause to the whole structure. It took me awhile to get the courage to actually read the report and have been on edge since. It is a process to find carpenters who are not just into building from scratch, but will also find "saving" homes a path to take these days. And his work on this homemade mess could not begin until it got to be MY TURN!
In the last 12 hours, I have lugged out the stuff of 40 years and crammed it into every space available to provide empty, but that old bed will be the last to go!

I will greet the carpenters wearing my handmade facemask, let them in and then walk away.  It took 3 months to get a house built and another 3 months to make it livable. It has been not even 2 months since the first death from COVID-19 in the US. And the first death here in Oklahoma happened only  3 WEEKS ago. We have to starve it and not be where you can become a host for it, that means protecting yourself from everyone, social distance your friends and even family members who are not housebound with you. AND wear the mask of your choice. It hasn't even been 3 months since this virus got here.

Don't let it see your pretty face.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

This is the very first Spring I have experienced without the distraction of working away from home. My home is set on the prairie but at the edge of a gully that falls off to a creek below. Just up the way, it is possible to follow the rock bottomed creek bed currently alive with life all along it. Up the sides huge rocks create foundations for rooms not built beside the dogwood and redbuds bursting in full bloom.

The asparagus peaked up this week and presently became dinner. The winds do their best to dry us out between rains and the grass every day is greener than any green in the Crayola box. There was time one morning to burn some brush, but the breeze changed into wind as the embers were thankfully cooled. Each day time is allotted to removing a bit more of the invasive honeysuckle, saving back the longest runners to use for baskets later in the season. There is a guarantee plenty of product will certainly be available for later use. Clearing it out will let the native buck brush produce the runners I prefer for Cherokee double-weave baskets though both will work beautifully.

I am working remotely on LEAD Agency issues, our latest newsletter will be out this week, planning our virtual 50th Earth Day Anniversary celebration and making sure our Community Garden volunteers get what they need to put in this year’s crops. This is a year fresh foods will be appreciated since they will keep folks out of the grocery stores, saving money while actually keeping our gardeners safely distanced from people, besides who can beat fresh vegetables?

Out back the "bottle bed" got remade this week, reconstructed and filled with our compost and soil ready to seed. There are a variety of raised bed styles in our Community Garden, lots of ideas for folks who wander through it. Right now the carrots are nearly ready to pull, but the onions not quite yet, though the wild onions are certainly in season. Peas are popping up already. There is always more to do in a garden, so if you want to volunteer, call our office and we will direct you to the greatest need and put you right to work. You will have tools to use, or you can bring your own. Our office doors are locked, but the rain barrels will be full to wash your hands before you leave with a bar of soap you get to take home with you.

Plant a garden, plant a few flowers. Spring forward with what you can do with the time you have on your hands if you are sequestered at home. Get a pot for your porch and grow a thing. We are all surrounded by stress and stress can make you sick. Try planting a vegetable that you tend. It will give you hope where there was none and you then of course, the added satisfaction when you get to eat and enjoy what you grew!

Your spring can take you forward in a new way. Use the new lifestyle you have to widen your views, care in new ways for the life-long friends you have ignored. Take a little time to research the new Small Business Loans and write a comment letter before April 10 asking large corporations like poultry producers to quit being able to USE that avenue to avoid their own monetary investments. Keep those funds to ensure really small businesses get the help they need during these uncertain times.

Take yourself and whoever you have found yourself huddled up with outside to see just what Spring looks like where you are. You may find wild plums growing and in full bloom, like I have near my mailbox. They produced the wild plum jelly the mailman will get as a thank you for keeping me connected with the wider world. Our essential workers deserve the appreciation we are more currently aware to give.

This could be a real opportunity to practice kindness. It does take practice, and it is something appreciated long after you may have long forgotten having done it. The who, or whomevers that surprised LEAD Agency with flowers and candy delivered for Valentine’s Day only nudged all of us to pass it on, to others through the work we do.

Stay put, stay tuned, and learn as we all will how we protect ourselves from the unseen virus in our community. But take this moment to enjoy the time with your children, or the ones you get to see out your window. Write children letters and enclose a stamped envelope so they can write you back. Think back to the old days and value Jera Wyrick Rendel for creating a drive down memory lane so many people got to share with their kids.

Spring forward, each of these days, get up with a spring in your step and know our world can be better if we protect it, so write that other letter to the EPA asking for regulations on polluters to be reinstated since the President rescinded these last week. All we need now is to have toxins allowed while we are just trying to live through this pandemic.

Respectfully Submitted ~  Rebecca Jim