I watched a special about N. Scott Momaday and heard a voice that didn't age. He had spoken at an event in Santa Fe, New Mexico when I was much younger, his same voice carried with him the stories  he says were superimposed on the historical events of his tribe.

We each in us carry the voices and the stories we remember, but deeper are the ones we know through instinct or intuition, our embedded knowledge, the old ways and why we did them and how come we thought that way and how we came to be. Our origins.

Tuesday morning I went on a walk with two young women: Elizabeth Elliott, an Oklahoma Wildlife biologist and Rosalee Walker, with the Grassland Restoration Incentive Program. We took off to walk to the end of the world. The end of my property, where the road had long washed out to see what had become of the edge of here. The briars and the Sumac mingled with some cedars and beneath along  the way we found a carpet of honeysuckle. Not climbing but nesting beneath the grasses. Some of those native grasses were taller than me, the Indian Grass, but the Little Blue was putting on a show  as they are heading out with their fluffy seeds. We ventured farther and headed to the stream that runs clear and sweet through the bottom lands.

The invasives have not needed water and have left it as I remembered. The adventures of finding it and following it as it snaked back on itself. All this made me think of how sometimes, you can't go back? But sometimes you can. Suddenly I was a child again, leaping from rock to rock, climbing over the roots and up on the stream beds and then back down again as the creek turned again, all heading us back to where we began.

It was like a month long vacation without a clock, no time, though all time set backwards and decades were gone and the adventure reigned.

While walking backward into the past, my past, the land's past and the water, the ever present water, still good, not tainted from a neighbor or his neighbor's wrong choices. How incredibly precious this place is and that my grandfather knew it before statehood that this place must be part of our lives, it must be kept.

And then I knew the why I work and push and hope so much, it is for the bad lands, the harmed lands the little streams containing toxins and metals and less life found in it. How this is just wrong and knowing all of it can be undone. Rights can be righted for the water, the silent always running water and willing it so must work if only enough of us do the willing, right?

And enough of us speak up for the what needs righting as the time is fitting might be what works and why not try it, since silence has not worked. One easy speak out would be to call Senator Inhofe and ask him to remove his amendment from the National Defense Authorization Act, which can be found in section 6021. He could listen, just because he doesn't always, doesn't mean we don't ask when we call 202 224 4721 every time we call.
Use your voice.

My grandfather was born One hundred years before me, my grandfather who found this piece of land I now live upon. So his voice, I never heard, as Momaday would explain, I never heard the spirit that lived in his voice. I never thought to ask my dad, to tell me about that voice and did he speak about this land? the little creek that runs through it? The clean water he would have seen. Did he remember or was he a witness for his father in old age that he had outlived his valor? Or did he remember my grandfather telling how he had been alive?

And can we remember when we were alive? And how that felt? Then begin to think of what made us feel that and that the generations to come should be, also alive with where they live and how it is for them. Which takes me and us to what we do to protect this one precious earth for those who come.

We have only this much time to right it for them and by golly to do it for ourselves. We can buckle down and begin and with that begin to be alive again and find the spirit in us our future ones will know existed. We fought at the end of our lives before the end of time, to protect us from flooding, to stop that eternal flow of evil running down Tar Creek, to celebrate the last fiber of asbestos as it rolls out of town wrapped in the protective blanket that protects us from it.

We have together time to share seeds, read N. Scott Momaday, find out how alive feels again and discover, reclaim the sacred places we value. Put your boots on and if you stomp dance and write poetry, like poet laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo, I suppose you would attach your turtle shells to your yellow cowboy boots and get your culture to move you through these times to come.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

Debbie Clark Seely had been out of my life for over 36 years, losing track of her once she left Will Rogers Jr. High and went on to high school. Then a couple of years ago she attended one of our LEAD Agency meetings and talked about a dream she had.

She dreamed of developing a housing community for people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity who are deemed "Canaries" and fail to thrive in the regular world with all the chemicals  there are to be ingested. Think Canaries like the ones used in the coal mines, if the bird died, the mine would be evacuated to protect the miners from carbon monoxide and other toxic gases before they hurt humans.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity is noted as controversial on the OSHA website or still under debate at Johns Hopkins. But think about it. Chemical companies have power and they certainly would not want that category of disease recognized, as it deems their life's work a potential danger to society. Through the years those suffering symptoms had even been labeled with "environmental illness,” or "sick building syndrome.”

This week Debbie posted a poem she had written, Taken for Granted filled with the whats she would love to do, places she would love to go. She was always a bright and gifted student and still is continuing her education, on-line but longs to:

                                                                          to sit in a classroom, peruse
                                                                          the shelves in a library, walk across the
                                                                         stage to accept my diploma;
 
As it turned out earlier that same day before reading her poem, Jamie, one of LEAD Agency’s new volunteers lined out what she was planning to do the next day, how she was going to mop and leave the place with a really nice smell. We really value each moment a volunteer offers, but my thoughts went straight to Debbie and others who come to our office as a refuge from added chemicals they must work around. We have tried to make the office be “Kings X” for our Canary friends.

You will catch a whiff of real lemon, cinnamon, fresh baked cookies but not artificial or harsh chemicals at the office. These Canaries reminded me of a soon to be rare bird, the Bluebird of Happiness, the beautiful blue glass birds made in Arkansas at Terra Studios.

About the same time I knew Debbie as a teenager, the Chaplin at Baptist Hospital worked in partnership with me in counseling several youths and their families and out of the blue, he gifted me my cherished Bluebird of Happiness which was probably one of the first ones made. This week the makers of these beauties announced they could no longer make them. They were choosing to no longer make them because of their contribution to climate change.

"It’s time now," James Ulick said. "We can’t wait any longer not if we’re going to protect this wonderful planet that we have for our children and grandchildren." He went on to explain in one year they use more than one-million cubic feet of natural gas to make the birds, which produces a tremendous amount of greenhouse gasses that threaten the earth.
He did not want to be hypocritical and continue the process because it goes against what they stand for — "protecting the planet." During their 37 years they had contributed to greenhouse gasses by using 37 million cubic feet of natural gas, contributing to the threat to the earth.

Protect and cherish those little blue birds and as you do, think about your Canary friends, people you don’t see very often and wonder why. They can’t go to most stores for the bombardment of the odors and smells that they must walk through to shop. They can’t as Debbie said go to church and sing in the choir because of all the shampoos and perfumes mingled in the choir loft. Going out to eat sits you by those lathered with aftershave and freshly applied name brand perfumes that can be detected by a sensitive.

So enjoy your Bluebird, protect your Canary friends, be mindful as the season with the most associated scents. Use real cedar or pine, not artificial. Bake plenty of cookies or bread and quit using the candles artificially scented when you might use bees wax candles produced locally.

And consider the songbirds you have enjoyed throughout your life and understand since 1970 US and Canada have lost 2.9 billion birds including the canaries and blue birds. Their habitats are declining, the quality of our water, air and the availability to find insects gone due to agricultural practices. What affects our "canaries" we must be woke to know can affect us, as Silent Spring author Rachel Carson called out in her book at the beginning of these die-offs.

"If bird populations across all habitats are declining, that means something systemic is happening out there that is no doubt going to be affecting us too," according to John Fitzpatrick, executive director of The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. "Isn't life just better to be having these beautiful things around our yards and over our heads?"
Time has come to change our ways, protect what we have and those who already are allergic to life.

The following is Taken for Granted by Debbie Clark Seely and shared with her permission.

Taken for Granted
I want . . .
to plan a party, open my door to
guests, accept the bottle of wine, pass
a tray of canapés;

to take a bus tour, hike
a trail, walk a shoreline, suck down
raw oysters and champagne;

to go to a movie, immerse
myself at the opera, dance all
night at an open-air concert;

to soak my feet in a bath |
of warm water, get my nails
painted, my hair cut and styled;

to push a cart with a woogedy
wheel, try the samples, buy large
boxes of brightly-wrapped goodness;

to worship in a church pew, sing
from a hymnal, pass the collection
plate and take communion;

to sit in a classroom, peruse
the shelves in a library, walk across the
stage to accept my diploma;

to go to my friend’s parties,
lick sauce off my fingers at
their barbecues, visit their homes;

to crunch frost underfoot, taste
the rain on my tongue, smell
the damp earth at dusk;

to scrunch my bare toes in
the grass, pull a carrot, rake
brightly colored leaves;

to sit under a weeping willow, cast my
jig into the pond, watch children
toss bread to the ducks;

a pat on the back, a
handshake, a massage,
a seduction;

to hug, and
laugh, and touch, and
smile and feel.

Then I will become whole again.

Debbie Clark Seely

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

A Latin phrase in the news lately means "This for That," but in my life, the gifts that walk into the LEAD Agency office don’t seem to be a this for that. Genuine people drop by and bring this and that’s for us. It is a thing that happens, not solicited, but honored for the what the who has brought.

Just yesterday Elaine Irvin came by just for a moment with a brown paper grocery sack and when I peered in, there were the seeds from the low growing yellow flowers she has along her walk way that I had admired this summer. She like some others of us, find the treasures left behind after the first freeze as treasures for the spring and this sack contained enough to get us ready to be able to share our own come this time next year.

Brown paper sacks used to be a thing we all had, but now they are the tool used for the Pollinator seed collecting done by people from places like the Euchee Butterfly Farm. I keep some in my car to reuse each time I go for groceries or stop at a dollar store along the way. But I have to peek inside first. One time recently I got one out of my car for the groceries and to my surprise, when the grocer attempted to fill it with my purchases… the milkweed seeds tried to float out of the sack and get loose!

Some gifts are just like that, light as a feather or a milkweed seed, others like the next surprise to come through the door this week were I would say some of the heaviest gifts we had ever received. Buckets and a bushel were lugged into the office and immediately ogling began. That is a thing that had to be done with the things my friend Dale’s Uncle George had spent his prime collecting.

In these containers was the proof when I talk about the miners having the first viewing of the underground fairy caverns they would chisel into and lug out the pieces to make the batteries that still start our cars to get us to the grocery store or made, as we know the bullets that won both World Wars. Heavy, yes, but the light made the chunks inside shine and glitter, like gold! But the dominate color was SILVER with lead and zinc brilliance twinkling inviting the common man to reach in and lift it to admire. We could not resist it ourselves. But the mothers, the grandmothers who go home to the babies in their lives must be protected from the tiny bits of dust we might create with our delight to explore the ore within these most appreciated lugged in treasures.

They are the teaching tools we will use when the batches of students and researchers come as they do in waves to the largest abandoned lead and zinc mining site in the lower 48. What is the fuss about this place? What was the work, what did the dads and uncles, the grandfathers we never knew because they died too young to tell these stories fail to be allowed to tell us? These weighted gifts will demonstrate how strong these men got to be, the able ones, tearing the walls of the earth beneath us down and finding the minerals men were paid living wages at the time to pull down and haul out to feed their families and provide the whats to make their children watch for them each day the whistle blew.

Dale Allen’s Uncle George collected these specimens bringing them out in the pockets of his overalls piece by piece. And this is the what Dale hopes we will do with them now. Let each one take one. Not this for that, but this one from Uncle George, to pass along a bit of treasure in what we now may call a teaching stone.

Before this collection leaves, we will invite our “rock” loving friends to come for a viewing of sorts, a naming of what piece of the history of the world might be in each of these treasures hauled out by a man who spent his youth, his productive life bringing them out, only to have their dangerous dust enter not just his pockets, but his lungs, his bloodstream and that dust took his life, injuries to his organs no man is strong enough to endure. These specimens are the poison that took him and the men in our county for the generations the mines brought jobs. But the jobs took their youth and made them old men too soon, and even sooner gone.

This for that. What a teaching tool, my friend Dale has brought for us to use. The minerals that made this county cost us all. Some more than others.

This for that, whether that in the lives of our dead relatives, or the substitutions we use in the kitchen when we don’t have buttermilk and have to add vinegar to milk for a recipe. Or the lives of the Ukrainians on the line waiting for military aid to protect their homeland from an invader while their leader and our leader negotiate over what might be said so their lives might be saved.

Respectfully submitted ~ Rebecca Jim