Recently in one of the assignments for the Women's Earth Alliance Grassroots Accelerator program I was selected to take part this fall, we were introduced to the word Sankofa. Originating in Ghana, symbolized by a bird looking back, as learning from the past, fetching what is at risk of being left behind, to ensure a strong future.

I was asked to identify a person who represents the feminine upon who's shoulders you stand.   I first reached way back to my unnamed grand-ancestors who because they existed and loved and lived, I live now. But after truly considering who has brought me to this actual place in my life at this time, I have to share with you the closer truth is, that woman, the singular woman who has helped allow me to make the decisions that have helped make me be me, was my little mother, who would be 103 if still living.

She was born in 1917 a few hours away from where the 1918 Flu was born only a year later. Bea Bradshaw grew up in the Missouri Ozarks, attended a country school and had to leave home and live with relatives to finish high school, where she impressed her sister's husband enough he paid her way through medical school, graduating  as a doctor in 1939, just in time to take over the small hospital in Welch as the only physician when men were all called to war.

Just as COVID-19 came upon us months ago several items of hers appeared that she had worn to both protect herself but to be most protective of others. I found masks she had worn in surgery, that she would have tied behind her head snugly and the cap that went over and tied in the back of her head. The mask was made out of a multi-layered white cloth and still had her name printed inside. How had those masks survived 75 years and just randomly surface?

How was I to find these items now? in the middle of a pandemic where masks worn at this time is one of the only ways we know individually we can protect ourselves and others from the spread of the same kind of virus that my mother was born to. My mother throughout my life, was always there being that example of what kind of woman I wanted to be. Smart and ethical, delighted in learning and challenging herself to keep asking and finding ever more to learn.

Even just a few years ago I was still meeting people who all those years ago remembered a leg she had set, or that she had delivered them. She married my father and never practiced again. She closed her medical bag AND became the best mom to me and my brothers.

Bringing her forward, realizing the amazing woman she had been in my life, always encouraging, always accepting, knowing now she truly was my Sankofa. The person I never knew to identify as such, as the woman who had the influence that made me who I am. I will persist on this journey because I know she is still with me.

So this evening, I opened her medical bag and reached in to experience the reaching in she must have done under extreme conditions during home visits, as the medical emergency team, herself, a woman never weighing more than 100 pounds, attending to the sick, the injured, those broken and in pain.

She cared for my brothers and me throughout our childhood, as our first defense on all health and of course our broken hearts. And as she aged, I got to be there for her to the end of her life.  She is continuing to be there for me and leaving me just what I need to fetch. Her masks were used as patterns for the multicolored masks of the day. From the pandemic she was born into, to mine.

One of my former students lost his mother this week to our pandemic flu, she was a friend and a great supporter of our Cherokee Volunteer Society and later LEAD Agency efforts and countless other good deeds moms like her in our world do, all ending with her passing.

I asked all those months ago what sort of monument we will be inspired to erect to the dear ones we are losing. Think of the monuments we have constructed through the decades to honor those who have been lost to wars. Is this not a war? against common sense and decency? Let's pull together and do the simple things people around the world did over 100 years ago to protect themselves and put a flu to bed. Let's learn from the past to ensure a strong future.

Respectfully Submitted ~  Rebecca Jim

The four sacred elements of water, air, fire and earth were known by the original peoples of this planet. The power of each experienced vividly by the hurricane only last week and the fires burning throughout the western states turning sky blue to red and air loaded with ash.

Women's Earth Alliance members from all over this continent and the islands from Micronesia, Guam from Alaska to San Salvador participated in an assignment to gather water samples of our water and describe our watershed, her original keepers and what is the work we are doing for it.

I had already walked down below the edge of the prairie where my house sits, lined up all those years ago, not with the sun, but with the creek below to visit, or as I say to "Go to Water." But the next morning had me off to Tar Creek to collect a sample in a mason jar, not unlike the ones John Micka collected over 40 years ago to demonstrate how trapped water can demonstrate how the metals separate out of the water when it is collected and allowed to sit for a period of time. John had taught chemistry at NEO College and with his demonstration project simply used 2 salad dressing bottles filled with Tar Creek water and in one he added simple fireplace ash. He wanted to have an easy way to demonstrate how something as simple as ash could help settle out the heavy metals found in Tar Creek's water. He had them captured together and when you picked them up and shook them water that had looked clear in the jars would cloud with the sediment that had gathered at the bottom.  It was a simple yet now time tested project that keeps allowing the generations of students later to consider some simple questions. Do you know what is in your water? And is there anything you can do about it?

Twenty-six women Zoomed together, those who woke to red skies and ash, pulled together while one appeared though sick, another while on call for her elderly parent, we sat and listened, smiling at the samenesses we shared.
The topic: Water. Water makes up half the weight of every person on earth. Our waters, clean or damaged, abundant or scarce, pulled from the ground, caught water retained, sustaining us and those dwelling within it. We were asked who is doing the water protection for our watersheds and who were the original waterkeepers. WEA had begun each of the last 15 years of  introductory programs by somehow introducing ourselves through our water. I envisioned how they could have while physically together, then been able to pour all of the waters and combine them, symbolically joining the team and the water as one. Traditions of all kinds are changed while we all gather in different ways together, don't they? 

A friend of mine once told me that is how new traditions begin.

We actually took some time to breathe in and consciously breathe out. As they say, Centering, clearing the mind, focusing on the act of breathing, the motion and effort it is to live. “Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things, a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come. Our breath is a part of life’s breath, the ocean of air that envelopes the earth.”  … David Suzuki

Air and water. But the thought on air that came was the fact learned that day that was known.

It is in the air, our President said months ago, acknowledging the corona virus is airborne and that is deadly.
It is airborne and deadly.
The facts were acknowledged, understood. We might not have mobilized as a nation then but now we act upon these words, we use protection, we create the barriers, we will live through this because we know it is in the air. Knowing will muster our teams together to combat what is in the air and lives will be saved. There can be on over.  Another president summed it up simply:

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.   
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal. - John F. Kennedy

For fire to burn it must have air. For us to survive water we must have air. For the Corona virus to survive it must have a body of some sort and to get to it, it can travel by air.

Spend some time reflecting on and being with the people we know who with all their efforts are trying to breathe and all those health professionals who are extending every effort possible with every moment attending to those who will not survive without air.

I am proud to be the Tar Creekkeeper, but aren't we all our brother's keeper?

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

When the box labeled BLUE JEAN BOND paper came off the shelf, it was like finding an old friend. I don't think you can find paper made from blue jeans anymore, at least my weak computer search skills didn't find the company still in business or any others, but I am okay. I still have a nearly full box of stationary to use. I will use it, the texture of it feels good and accepts ink well.  When I opened the box, it was easy to brush away the dried spider body and extinguish the lone silverfish, but there were no inserts explaining the value of recycling denim and twice blessing someone's old jean cutoffs. On the front of the box there is a notation of it being 100% rag content from denim cuttings making it a heavyweight bond paper.

Using blue jeans to make paper, made the paper a nice light blue color, but before the big switch to cellulose, paper was most commonly made from cloth rags, and other fibers like rope, recycling done for  centuries, even then at a cost to the environment and the workers.

Connecting that box of found stationary to the fact so many of the environmental issues we face in Ottawa County stem from legacy mining, and it was a tailor in Reno, Nevada who made pants for miners that could stand up to those rough jobs using metal fasteners and riveted them using Levi Strauss' denim fabric.

But making those jeans also links us since manufacturing them creates pollution and water quality issues much as our legacy mining has. According to some references, "It would take 13 years to drink the amount of water it takes to make just one top and pair of jeans.

"While cotton only takes up 2.5% of agricultural land, it accounts for 16% of all the insecticide and 6.8% of all herbicides used worldwide by cotton farmers. Between 1 and 3% of agricultural workers worldwide suffer from acute pesticide poisoning with at least 1 million requiring hospitalizations each year. Furthermore, pesticides can pollute nearby soil and water systems, threatening food supplies and creating health risks!"

Indigo is a native plant that used to be used for the blue dye to make blue jeans BLUE. I have some growing in my pastures, but have never used it that way, tending to use the dyed pods as entertainment as I love the sound of the seeds rattling. Harmful chemicals are used now in the denim dyeing process, some like azo can release carcinogenic amines.

Which is why, though I like BRAND NEW JEANS, they always get washed right away to wash away any chemicals that were used. But washing any jeans that first time and every wash after releases 56,000 microfibers of denim AND microfibers from denim is even being found in the Arctic now! other microfibers are there but scientists looking at them can determine anthropogenically modified dyed blue cellulose and that there is a lot of denim in the environment. 

Knowing this could have added to how I feel. Am I blue?

We are all having so many changes, our lives are so very different. A song by Stevie Appleton, Feeling Blue Without You, might sum it up for all of us. Or some of us. I am missing people, and know we will have time together again, but that would be quicker if in mass we do all we can now to believe in a real future, a healthy one for all.

Collectively our mental health is being impacted, even in June there were estimated to be 82 million people distressed. Since this virus has lingered so long it is a mental stressor, there are economic challenges, schools, closing and re-opening. No football? AND an election and the holidays all coming. Hold on to your hat! This is going to take a while. Accept that. Our rush to the how it used to be "sets us up for failure." But it also is why we are seeing risky behavior, because when people don't feel like they have control, they often throw caution to the wind.

Wind it back in, talk to your friends about these feelings. We might all be feeling blue? Pull on your old blue jeans, reach out, do something that helps someone else, read, express yourself. And listen to great music, maybe even check out the Blues.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim