Lois Lively helped remove the poison ivy patch last week from LEAD's Community Garden and made sure it will not be part of anyone's experience there. We took precautions, but not enough.

Poison ivy can cause rashes and blisters and Poison Ivy Blaster the magic elixir created by Miami, Oklahoma's own usually works for me and I will go nowhere without it.  But when my eyes almost swelled shut, I sought medical care this week from a little splat of exposure. The doctor asked about my airways and breathing, explaining the reaction had gone systemic which for some sensitive people can be life-threatening.

I often hear people say they are immune to poison ivy. That can change at any time, then the immunity to the allergy is lost.

I am finding out Poison ivy today isn't your mother's poison ivy. Climate change is making it more potent. Rising carbon dioxide, CO2, levels feed plants and poison ivy is effectively using it to grow bigger and produce more urushiol, the oil causing rashes. Evidence shows the urushiol gets more concentrated, in each part of the leaf, and the plants produce more leaves, stems and berries.

You surely were taught, "leaves of three let it be," to help remember what poison ivy looks like. 80% of us react to poison ivy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have figured out how much of that oil it takes and it is 50 micrograms which is less than a grain of table salt!

We are understanding Climate Change is responsible for the early snowmelts, according to the National Climate Assessment because the planet is warming. Add to that all the heavy downpours this season in the Midwest and the resulting flooding.

To take a look locally Earl Hatley, LEAD Agency's Grand Riverkeeper will be the guide on a LightHawk flight beginning with Tar Creek to document the width of the Grand Lake watershed. LightHawk, an international non-profit based in Colorado uses aircraft and volunteer pilots to "accelerate conservation success through flight." Photographer J. Pat Carter, will document where our Tar Creek width and metals have gone,  and how she joins the Neosho and drops a load and proceeds on with more of them to Twin Bridges and helps the Neosho fill our lake with Kansas soils and her precious metals. We and of course the Spring River have been sending our sediment loads into the bathtub our lake is for decades. Waterkeeper Alliance made the flight arrangements for LEAD Agency's Grand Riverkeeper and Tar Creekkeeper.

The water loading can pass right through the dam, but we are filling the lake as all man-made lakes do, they fill and become more shallow, but GRDA is in the business of generating energy from the discharge of the water and in order to continue doing this, the lake has to have the power and the power comes from the height of the lake. So the Grand Lake watershed continues to grow, to be enlarged and as it does, more lands, homes and lives are affected.

We know that every Oklahoma County is under a State of Emergency and along the Arkansas River: Every large community will see major flooding within a week or less according to the National Weather Service. We are not alone with this slow motion disaster. Once the flash flooding subsides, the rest comes often slow enough to watch the worms "run for their lives."

Before my grandfather married my grandmother, he had been married to another Cherokee woman from Fort Smith and when she died, was buried there, but during a serious flood, her grave was washed away. Fort Smith is flooding this year which reminded me of the endless list of losses floods can cause.

The Illinois, the Missouri, the Arkansas and the Mississippi Rivers are all at risk of spilling over in the coming days. We are not alone, but joined in the newest worst flooding for many states  since 1927. That year, the Arkansas River was 80 miles wide in Arkansas. According to Christopher Burt that flood "was the seminal event that led to the federal flood-control program and gave the Army Corps of Engineers the job of controlling the nation's rivers via the erection of dams, dikes and other measures of flood abatement."

Tulsa and Sand Springs are closely watching 70-year-old levee systems for signs of a potentially catastrophic failure and have asked whole neighborhoods to evacuate for safety. Some levees in Arkansas have failed already causing flooding. We are all watching the lake levels and the amount of water allowed to be discharged.

We know the Army Corps of Engineers very well as they GRDA, and FERC are intimately involved with Miami's future. Perhaps at times we might sometimes know them as our other "Leaves of Three."

Respectfully Submitted  ~  Rebecca Jim

Another night watching colored screens with tornados on the ground and listening to the weatherman dance from one to another, enough so, his team expanded and 3 others take on the other cells throughout the state.

Tonight, the smell of wood took us all off guard. None of us had heard of that. But this week, I traveled through Peggs, OK and slowed. Downed trees, broken uprooted lined the highway, but also along the side roads, large trees that had made summers shadier, more tolerable for the heat we all endure in Oklahoma. But the trees were cut in sections, segments removed so roads were accessible for the residents. Trees down for miles through the countryside and white trucks working on restoring power  and knowing they had miles more to accomplish.

But all along there, I was only looking, I failed to notice, to follow the smell of wood, as the weatherman had mentioned I know it would have been there, had to have been. The fresh woods were only taken down 2 days before, just as tonight more of the shady woods were going down again, as a series of tornados were being tracked by the colors of the wrapped around features throughout the state.

We wait and watch and wonder whose lives are changing as they and we settle in with the weather as it comes upon us. Others wait for the all clear signal, still others wonder how much closer the water will come as it rises, higher so very slowly.

Weather watchers we all used to be, when that was the way we determined what was coming at us. We watched the color of the clouds, the temperature, the wind and the hail we knew would be coming. At night we sat on the porch and watched the lightning as it lit up the sky and counted until we heard the thunder to determine how many miles the storm was from reaching us. We were good at it, but somehow we turned it all over to the “weathermen” and the colored screens and radar. And days like we have had lately and endless nights, I am grateful they have the stamina to keep it going, keeping ever ready to be our fulltime weather-watchers.

But what we have done to amplify our own weather? What ways are we all complicit in the changing climate we are experiencing? Each of us can do better. Changing can be satisfying, and each of us can become members of a grateful nation as we each make those decisions.

I read the coal miners chapter in Hidden America by Jeanne Marie Laskas and what their work was like and how the world beneath us is for them and why they toile to help keep the lights on. And it made me want to simply turn the light off and give them a break.

And then just that suddenly the lights, all of them and the colored screen with the multiple colors indicated headed this way and that way went off. The wind died down and the rains have stopped. I stepped outside to not listen but to smell for the new broken wood and am pleased not to find it.

Out on the prairie, the only sound is the water rushing in the gully. No wind. No rain. Just dark upon us all. And in my mind are the people in shelters coming out, those others up and wondering what has happened to neighbors, towns, the country roads that connect us. And wait for daylight for news of who have been affected, lost lives, or property.

Not even the birds can be heard, what a night they have experienced, nights in a row for them. They who are left with us also wait for the daylight and wish for one more moment of the power of coal to light up the screens and bring back the weatherman to assure us of what we are assessing. The storm has passed.

The first bird is speaking, sending that message out she has survived. The crickets made it, the wind still, the gully water rushing and then just for a moment the moon, the only light.

Peaceful it is, and peace be upon you all as we learn the rain has returned and filled the whole sky wet  yet again.
Just how much can the gully hold? When will it breech the mudroom and fill the floor? Why keep the lake level so high? How do we begin the work of clean up when more keeps coming? Homes filling with water, the water filled with what all we have left to change it from the life-giving water to the toxic waste of the blends of what we left in the garage, what was spread on our lawns, all the dog poop left in the yards all the cow manure stacked up in feed lots and chicken waste, at the edge of poultry houses.

Here in the dark, the questions keep coming and the resolve to do the small things tomorrow to help others and respond to ways I contribute to the bigger picture.

Reflectively yours ~ Rebecca Jim

It was summer vacation after the Cherokee Volunteers had started their Tar Creek Project. They were learning everything Tar Creek and all things associated with the superfund site when I called Rokho Kim about his research.

He had conducted a study predicting lead exposure by examining baby teeth in 1995 that linked extreme obesity to early exposures. A high school student asked me a simple question while riding in my car one night after an EPA meeting held in Picher. Did I think she might have been lead poisoned as a child?

She explained she had grown up in Quapaw, with a chat pile in her yard that she climbed, but also played in the sandbox her dad had built and filled with, not rough sand, but the softest sand ever, sand we know now was loaded with 10 times more lead than the regular chat sand he might have used. Dr. Kim suggested bringing her to Boston for a bone lead scan by an instrument I learned later he had a hand in developing, but later explained a baby tooth is like a "Time Capsule" and perhaps I could send one of her baby teeth. Knowing as an only child, her mother would have saved her baby teeth, I asked if he could analyze hers and other teeth from additional residents and... be our Tooth Fairy? 

He didn’t laugh because he was a serious student, a medical doctor and a Korean activist in his home country, risking his life for freedom and justice and had never heard of the Tooth Fairy. But he did agree.It is because she asked that question, we got answers. It isn’t always quick to get answers, as we learned, but the answers did come. All of the teeth we sent had lead in them, but the girl’s, the girl who asked the question, could she have been lead poisoned?

She got her answer, but the Harvard School of Public Health found many more questions to ask about exposures to metals our babies and the health and behavioral consequences that may follow. Harvard sent their brightest to ask many more questions and seek answers for our community.

I think looking back on these years since meeting Kim on the phone and know that the years may change many things about us, but they have not changed my quest and yours for answers. Is our environment making us sick? Are there long term effects from our exposures? If those questions are answered with YES, then my next question is: Can we make our environment safer? And the next question is to you: will you help by asking your questions?

I met Kim a number of years later. He was working with the World Health Organization, based in  Geneva, Switzerland and was back in Boston visiting his Harvard colleagues.

There was a lot I never knew about Dr. Kim. But I marched with him and 10,000 other people in the streets of  Boston March 16, 2003, while millions of others were marching around the world for peace and no war with Iraq.  He marched with other Koreans and I marched with Earl Hatley, wearing our Cherokee Volunteer jackets with Ghandi's message on the back: You must be the change you wish to see in the world. And 3 days later the Iraq War began.

It seems like war is edging closer to us again, all these years later, another old man’s war where young men and women do the dying.

There was a lot I didn’t know about Rokho Kim back then, and why laughing about the Tooth Fairy” I had asked him to be for us wouldn’t be funny to him then, and probably with his life experiences might still not bring a smile of recognition now.

When Rokho graduated from Harvard shortly after our phone conversation in 1995, he was awarded the Albert Switzer Humanitarian Award, For his "reverence for life" for his devotion to the Korean workers suffering from occupational diseases.  He was a founding member of Korean Physicians for Humanitarian Actions in 1987.  He was a leader in the Great Labor Uprising, the democratization of 1987 when millions filled the streets to end authoritarian rule. He is known for untiring activities promoting "health as a human right" and advocating for the workers and the urban poor since then in South Korea.

I am thinking they knew a lot more about his struggles and work in Korea under the authoritarian regime than I did, but what he has done since touches my heart as well.

We know climate is changing and the polar ice is melting at such a rate, there will be a northern passage open for shipping. The oceans are rising and Rokho’s latest work with the WHO has been in Figi and other Pacific Island nations most at risk from shrinking land base, infectious and non-transmittable diseases.

Ottawa County's island residents from Micronesia, may never be able to go back to their island homes due to climate change and its health impacts there. I stand with Dr. Kim and I invite you to do so as well for Health as a Human Right, as is peace and our right to ask the serious questions.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim 

Elizabeth Elliot from Natural Resource Conservation Service sent me a link to the Plants of the Monarch Butterfly, Southern Great Plains Staff Guide. I spent an hour looking through it and pondering which plants are living in my yard and the surrounding fields. The guide shows the flower, the stem, leaves and get this: the back of the flower.
 
All these years, I never peaked behind or under the flower, never really paid attention to the unique features of the leaves and how they attach to the stems. But as I looked through the pages, my wildflowers are exactly what the butterflies need.

It got dark too quickly, but morning will come so my camera can fully see these most admired flowers more clearly. An old rose is blooming on the LEAD Agency office fence but the wild roses are blooming in the field and the fence rows. The milkweed by the backdoor and the one near the walnut tree are cousins with unique differences.
 
The Audubon Society recommends native plants for their resilience and identifies the favorite trees of a number of birds though not all birds nest in trees. Not the barn owls who actually have lived in my barn for perhaps an owl generation or two. The phoebe at my mother's house made a mud nest over the front door that we haven't been able to use in at least 10 years because she or her little ones return and use it again each year. A fellow painted her house and said it was the only time he ever painted around a bird nest since we wouldn't let him remove it!
 
Birds are getting a lot thrown at them right now as the climate changes and insect species they depend on go extinct and their territorial boundaries shift.  Oklahoma University Master's student Heather LePage is doing a study on the swallows nesting in the chat piles. Those birds are dealing with silica and heavy metals found in the chat as well as the water they drink there. All of us can learn more about her study at the National Environmental Conference at Tar Creek  September 17-18 at NEO A&M College.
 
Humans are changing the environment. What we use, what it's made of and how long it lasts. Things I used to do to "Help" birds included putting the dryer lint out along with strings and bits of fabric for birds to pad their nest and maybe even add a bit of color to their surroundings. I don't add dryer lint to their nesting materials any more since understanding the clothes we wear made with polyester or other man-made synthetic fibers breakdown in the washer and go down the drain unrestrained at waste water treatment facilities and become 35% of the micro plastics found in the oceans!
 
35% of the micro-plastics are from our CLOTHING/Textiles. That is our pollution out there. Straws, plastic bottles and those white plastic sacks are there of course, but what you don't see is there, too and fish are consuming our micro-plastics and we consume the fish.
 
No one would indulge scoops of plastic by choice and no one knows for sure how what we are consuming will ultimately affect us. The on-going research done both by consumer advocates and by industry oddly give differing opinions. But the little ones, the insects, birds and the fishes may all be the canaries for us on this subject. They can do nothing, but we can make decisions on what we purchase and certainly be more mindful of how we ultimately discard it.
 
Rain, we have surely had some and the LEAD Agency Community Garden is way behind where we thought we would be by now. But the rains will cease and it will flourish and our Garden Parties will begin on June 6 with Grant Smith performing during his hometown visit.
Rain has my own garden way behind too. But intense rainfall damages crops throughout the Midwest when the flood water recedes the soil may be washed away. As the climate changes the models predict the region will experience even more frequent and intense precipitation events in the coming decades.
We have been treating our soil like dirt. Our gardens and cropland don't need dirt, they require soil which is alive with microorganisms. Soil grows 95% of all the food we eat, so we better start respecting it and quit taking it for granted since it has always been there. Grow your own compost and your garden will thank you. Feed your soil and it will feed you. But mind what you add, the OSU Extension Office can analyze your garden soil and give you a prescription for what you need to add before you over apply and get it loaded with too much phosphorus, which has occurred here in Ottawa County.
 
I never met Louis Armstrong, but I got to hear him sing What a Wonderful World, and isn't it?
 
I see trees of green
Red roses too
I see them bloom
For me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
 
Respectfully Submitted  ~ Rebecca Jim

Grumble. Then fuss about a wrong, or a right, maybe cuss out loud in your kitchen or in your car. Allow a person to hear you. Then say it in the grocery line or at the big store at the edge of town. Complaining is actually great practice for a budding activist.

What pushes some to the next step? A personal experience or a longing can do it.
I have a friend a year older than me who said while at college he watched from his dorm window  protesters rallying to end the war in Viet Nam and his greatest regret was not walking down the stairs and joining them. He waited all his life and one of his proudest moments has been joining the teacher demonstrations at the State Capitol years later, asking for education funding.

There are a couple of songs that get in your head but could have been written for budding activists. Remember that song by Aaron Tippin: You have to Stand for Something or you'll fall for anything? It is the standing for something that can work for you.The other song demands a story. Years ago at the Little Mr. Cherokee Contest for the 4&5 year olds, three little boys sat on the step in the Cherokee Council Chambers in their ribbon shirts with finger-woven sashes when one of them suddenly began a verse of Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American and just as quickly the other two covered their ears with their hands so as not to hear it!

That's how I feel lots of times when a friend asks me what issue I am working on at a particular time, and I burst out practically in song quickly telling it. It's as if the hands virtually cover the ears of some, but demonstrating clearly: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Who will speak up once I go home and stay on the farm? Land that lies ready for attention without toxic waste or bad water. It needs exploring, butterfly watching and wildflower walks. Fish to catch and clay to dig, process and charm into form. So in preparation for that day, come by the LEAD Agency for private lessons on activism. Sign your kids and grandchildren up for the Youth Activist Trainings that will be held monthly beginning this summer. The pecan tree Janet Humphrey brought for the orchard I am starting there was symbolic. “If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children. ” ― Confucius

Learn how to be brave enough to speak up.

How do you become brave? Try something new, even a recipe, learn what wrongs need righting and how much this community and others deserve justice. Start with the Declaration of Independence, the right to pursue happiness and focus on the phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag "justice for all."

Activists from the 60's went quiet. We knew how to change the world. Stop wars, clean up the environment, desegregate schools, big stuff like PEACE. But once we accomplished these huge goals and stopped the DRAFT, we got jobs, became our parents and what I say, went to sleep. To replace them or wake up who's left of them, coffee's on at LEAD Agency.

People power can change the world and save sacred and natural areas by speaking up, standing up until the impossible happens.

Chaco Canyon in New Mexico is magic and ancient. I went there once and walked through the canyon with a group of Native 8th graders. The Navajo lived there for several centuries and within the canyon grew peach orchards that helped sustain them. When the Army forced  them to leave, Kit Carson and his men cut down the trees and signed the wall in the canyon claiming their work.

100 years later, my son as a 16 year old carried out a service project with the 8th graders, planting a peach tree to begin rebuilding the orchard of the Navajo in the canyon.

This sacred space will be protected from oil and gas extraction because that was banned this week. Protection can come slowly, slower much slower than the river when it rises with flood waters. But it can come.

Two years ago an astonishing event occurred in New Zealand when the government granted the Whanganui River legal personhood—a status in keeping with the Maori worldview that the river is a living entity and conferred on it “all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities” of an individual. The Maori say:“I am the river, and the river is me.” An activist involved in this movement pointed out, "It wasn't the politicians who toppled the Berlin Wall, it was the people."

It can take a movement and you can join it. We have mountains of chat, we have Tar Creek, we have our rivers and what was once the Grandest Lake ever. We have benzene and asbestos at BF Goodrich bordered by a neighborhood, schools and soccer fields and we have children to protect from lead poisoning. And air issues.
Imagine you standing up, taking on our issues, it just takes the people.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim