This Holiday Season started out with a bang for one of LEAD Agency's board members, Grace Goodeagle when she received word that the case she had brought against the United States had been settled and she had won. You and I don't know very many people in our lifetimes who fought the government and ended up winning. She did and several other members of the Quapaw Nation have also won. So when Grace walked into the LEAD Agency office with a gift we opened it right away, and found a sign that summed that up ever so simply with the single word: JOY.
Isaac Watts wrote the words to what we know as the Christmas Carroll: Joy to the World while the tune may have come from several sources, I found myself focused on these words:
        
                                      Repeat the sounding joy,
                                               Repeat the sounding joy,
                                                       Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

It seems like you have all the time in the world, and then suddenly there are only days, perhaps hours to bring people together who may have known each other decades ago. For me, that was how it was one day last week. My friend Diana Duran has lived in Miami for the last few years and worked at the Miami Public Library. She had told me her mother had known Leaford and Barbara Bearskin twenty years ago and had asked if I knew how to find Barbara. Of course, I said yes, but had not brought them together yet and suddenly there were few days left to make that happen before Diana was set to move from Miami for keeps.

We arrived at Quapaw's premier elder estate where Barbara currently lives and marched right in on her, the day after the facility's Christmas party. We found her sitting beautifully covered with the softest red velvet cover with white fleece trim.

I introduced Diana and she began describing her mother and where she lived in Wyandotte and how her antique business might have been the connection between her and the Bearskins. Diana gave clue after clue and then it was the most amazing thing, Barbara remembered Diana's mother's ashes had gone to Scotland and wondered why.
As we visited, Barbara provided more and more remembrances to Diana of her mother while she had been living locally. Bobby had died twenty years ago of breast cancer at age 66, near the age Diana is now, so to hear stories of her mother, things she would have said, details on her "attitude" and how she looked. Well, I have to tell you each remembrance was like a brand new gift. Each comment relished.

There are few things you can give a friend, but these words Barbara Bearskin shared with this daughter,  a woman she had never met, were treasures that could not be bought. The acknowledgment of the love Leaford emitted to people he encountered was voiced only then to become an endearment deepening Diana's connection to her mother. The graciousness Barbara gave, to listen and to remember will long be treasured by that motherless woman, my friend Diana.

Diana's mother had lived in a beautiful home I understood was near the old Seneca Indian Boarding School.  The conversation came to describe the home and the surroundings near the Boarding School, which had been prominently on my mind lately. I had been given the opportunity to review the results of a project Juanita Bigheart  had completed involving the former boarding school. She had learned by listening how those who had attended school there described the site, their days on that hill in Wyandotte and their recollections included the sounds of the bells ringing and the friendships they developed that lasted throughout their lifetimes.

It becomes more important to value not only the stories, but how very important it is to be asked to remember, to then take the time to pull out, perhaps slowly at first the strands and then to accept and take the time to listen to the flood that may follow as these memories begin to flow more easily from that bank account we have stored in our brains.

Big gifts or small, breaking the silence with answers to questions left long unspoken, sharing time with old friends and celebrating lost acquaintances and wrongs made right. All good, all real. These are bringing lasting JOY this year.
 
Find the things that bring you joy and fill your life with them.
And as poet Mary Oliver would say,

                                           "Tell me, what is it you plan to do
                                         with your one wild and precious life?"

Surely your answer will include what brings you joy.
 
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

 Last Year I got a word cloud for Christmas. It was a brilliant gift Martin Lively gave me.  You might wonder what a word cloud is. It is a way to view text visually because our brains prefer visual information over any other format.

And how did he make mine? He has secretly been LEAD Agency's webmaster for the last several years and as such, he used a bit of what it held to build the one he presented to me. He clicked on the Tar Creekkeeper drop down page and simply copied all my articles, lots of the ones you have read in the Miami Newsrecord get posted later on my blog there. He then used a "word cloud builder" and ever so quickly these words appeared. Larger words were ones I used more often and tiny ones way less often. He and Lois then chose the heart for the shape to contain the words, I guess they figured it was appropriate since they were written from the heart.

Bold words like WATER, PEOPLE  LEAD TAR CHILDREN GOODRICH CLEAN NOW look like they are being yelled as they appear in various colors, but the YEARS WANT OTTAWA PROTECT LAND are easy to find. I often have felt like when writing my pushy self is out there for the world to see, and there the words pop as proof.  Yes, it was quite a gift to boil all these columns down to the core like this, but It felt like the curtain was lifted or in the old days, my slip was showing.

So who could top this as a gift? You won't believe it, I certainly didn't, it was the Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ for short. Lots of times, year after year, I suggest, wish, nag and repeat how valuable it would be for our community to have an interactive map of all the clean / remediated residences in Ottawa County. Only about 1/4 of all of the properties have had their yard tested or remediated of legacy lead so far and we have been at this since... 1995! Which yards have been tested? which ones still need to be checked?

If you have had your yard cleaned up or want to find out it has already been cleaned before you moved there, you can click on the pink dot by your house and it will confirm it! It is like being famous for doing the right thing! If you zoom in with the interactive map, you may see that you and NONE of your neighbors have any dots.... YET. It is totally free and easy to call DEQ and get on their list so you can be a PLAYER on the map.

Why wouldn't you want to? Your property values? Can only get better if little children can play in your yard without the threat or promise of becoming lead poisoned. That is the whole reason this cleanup business is happening. It is because our kids are only little once, and if they are exposed early in life, it most often happens at home and your home sits in the middle of your yard, right? Little children can not become lead-free after being exposed without possible consequences that will follow them throughout their lives. How children learn can determine how their lives end up and lead can change how children think and process sound.

Prevention is how we protect children and DEQ is giving you a great big gift of a brand new yard or driveway if they are contaminated. Try going out and pricing gravel and how much it costs to haul in clean dirt, that isn't cheap and a little bull dozer to spread it out. Put a pencil to that and think FREE Tell me you can beat that? The other things you can save that you can't purchase are I.Q. points for your kid, or the cost kidney damage will set you back. You also can be sure you will be getting "Peace of Mind" all wrapped up from DEQ with a brand new pink dot on the interactive map for all the world to see.

You end up a hero to your family, to your neighbors, to all the people on the block and the ones on the other street will like you more. All for free.

I guess DEQ didn't just give the interactive map to me for Christmas, they gave it to all of us. Let's open it up and get with covering the board pink. All your country neighbors can get on board, all those rural roads could be lined up with pink, then we would be set and by next Christmas, we will all be sitting around wondering like me, who can beat this as a gift?

Want in? Call DEQ at 800-522-0206. Check out their website click on Tar Creek. go pink.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

My son was just a getting his "sea legs" when the 1973 shows caught his attention in a little apartment where we lived across the street from a steel factory. We could hear the pounding and racket of the work, so he stood at eye level at the little black and white portable TV to watch what came to be his favorite shows: Mr. Rogers and the Senate Watergate Hearings.

It seems improbable that the year the movie, we believe will be an award-winner Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks as America's best friend, Mr. Rogers AND the Impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives would be what we are once again watching together. On a bigger screen of course  at the Center Theater in Vinita and our home TV 8 times bigger than that old black and white portable.

It was not that long ago, but here we are again. That familiar question of Mr. Rogers' "Won't you be my neighbor?" is still remembered by the tune the words conjure.

Always be kind. Those words echo in the Miami community as words and a way of life Angie Douthitt lived each day. People loved her immediately. Angie engaged and shined on you. But one day she asked me a question and I fear the answer. She wondered if her love of running, when running a route by BF Goodrich could have exposed her as she breathed deeply near the plant. I have to say yes. Why wouldn't it? for 5 years piles of the rubble we know were loaded with friable asbestos could have been exposing the public. As soon as EPA discovered this they have been here removing it.

I believe she is a casualty and I fear there will be more. Who caused this? A Rush for Greed and a hasty bankruptcy.
BFG never became a superfund site, but superfund is there now. If the community decided they wanted, no if they demanded real action to occur on the site, and ask for a complete cleanup and a real evaluation of the safety of the neighborhood, while superfund is still here we might get it.

What I know is silent citizens hopes for justice will not get justice. Only more casualties.

I go home everyday to a piece of the prairie, clean air, clean water. No fear for toxins in my garden or the wild plums, the rose hips. I want that for the citizens only 25 miles away. And for the life of me, I can not understand why it is not demanded as a right, a human right at every council meeting, county commissioner meeting, MAEDS meeting, Rotary, Lions and the Masons, much less the women's groups and every teacher in the county. It is not wrong or outrageous to want justice.

We have had role models, and we got them again when Angie became one for us. She and Mr. Rogers right now are reminding us to take the time to listen and be with who you are with. The moments we have on this earth are numbered and each one precious. It is always possible to be kind. It takes more time, but what on earth have we been given but time, and their lessons show us how best to use it.

I apologize to all the marvelous people who got tapped on the shoulder during Miami's Christmas Parade and thank the dozens  who signed postcards along with citizens all over the country who spoke up for us. We had hopes this "be kind stuff" might be contagious. We flooded the mail center at the capitol with cards with hopes for leniency from our senator, to reconsider and pull his amendment. The City of Miami fought hard on this but the wording is much the same as it had been and the lawyers will have to explain it to us, but overall, it doesn't seem like kindness won this one.

My friend Jim Shine, worked with LEAD Agency as a researcher from Harvard a decade ago, occasionally would quote his favorite poet Mary Oliver and was aghast when I had never heard of her, sent 3 volumes to begin catching me up.  The poem that summed me up after our campaign to encourage Senator Inhofe to remove the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act is called,

"I Worried" and begins with:
 
"I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?
...
"Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning and sang."
 
I didn't sing today, but went out to our office porch to watch Academy students and Marla Stidham, their Alternative Teacher of the Year, cross the street to help us sort seeds and fill packets for the seed library. The room filled with the delightful aroma of basil as we  processed and sorted our dried collection and ate our version of Butterfinger candy we had made in the kitchen from equal portions of peanut butter and candy corn, heated gently and spread out to cool.
 
Submitted Kindly with Respect  ~ Rebecca Jim

I have been thinking a lot about coal lately, especially with Christmas around the corner and the old threat to children who had been naughty of receiving coal in their stockings instead of toys.

Coal is made from plants that were alive even before the dinosaurs. Coal as such is a non-renewable source of energy and has been used as a source of heat for centuries but 2 centuries ago, it began being used to generate energy that basically moved humans into the Industrial Revolution.

The United States uses coal primarily to generate electricity that runs our appliances for example a household refrigerator would take a half-ton a year, an electric water heater uses 2 tons a year.

The US has more coal reserves than any other country in the world, and we learned lately that Oklahoma is targeted to have coal leases let on tribal lands held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. BIA has not always handled leases well on tribal lands and we know that by how well they handled the land they leased for lead and zinc for members of the Quapaw Nation. 

If you want to see what surface coal mining looks like in action you don't have to go far, just go to Vinita and then put yourself on the road to Nowata and you won't be able to miss it as the earth opens up so close to the road it will mesmerize you. Not all coal mined sites get cleaned up and put back to good use like the "strip pits" just north of us in Kansas. Oklahoma hasn't always made sure this happened. But this latest notice from the Bureau of Land Management and BIA over 800,000 acres in Oklahoma could be affected.

LEAD took a shot at making a protest about the coal leases in Ottawa County. Gosh, what else can we take? We already have BF Goodrich Benzene, the Tar Creek Superfund Site that runs right through us, but add that to the flooding, that then spreads those toxic sediments farther each flood, which is always a threat, but now nearing a promise if Senator Inhofe's amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act doesn't get pulled.

People talk and lately I heard GRDA's coal fired power generates more electricity than is generated when Grand Lake is as full as it can be, like when it is flooding Miami.

When LEAD Agency was doing the Grand Lake Mercury Study, a research project with the Harvard School of Public Health and the Oklahoma Health and Sciences Center, we all learned a lot about coal and how burning coal releases heavy metals, especially mercury. We were interested in learning more about local fish, since we knew we ate fish and lots of other people did, too and since there were fish consumption guidance on lead in local fish and since lead and mercury can harm young children in much the same ways, we thought it would be important to learn how much local fish could be consumed and what kind and how big they should be to eat, and how big they should be just put back to have ... more babies. Check our website for more information on our results.

We learned coal is actually a dying industry. Lots of coal plants across the country and around the world are going to bed. They expose us to mercury and other heavy metals, but coal is a fossil fuel, from the age of the dinosaurs and it has outlived its time. Burning it also releases gases that effect climate and we know better now and have generally outgrown it. Except GRDA of course, which could have put theirs to bed when it got struck by lightning? yes, which could have been a sign for them. They decided to invest in natural gas but also continue to use coal.

When coal is burned we have what comes out of the smoke stack, but when it is cleaned out of the furnace, the ash has to be removed and stored because coal ash (known as flyash) is then a hazardous waste.

If you have ever picked up a hunk of coal, you know that their slogan "Clean coal." It's really a dirty lie.  There is nothing clean about coal. Wind and solar, that's what clean can look like and no trace of toxic ash. Our hope for coal:  Keep it in the ground, we know better.

The lump of coal naughty little children might have woken up to on Christmas mornings, linger long in our environment, too. Coal is a dirty lie but flooding is in reality the dirty deal we get long into the future unless we act in unison now.

Send a message to our senator, make a call, sign a postcard during the parade. We'll be there hoping he won't flood us and wondering what he will get in his stocking?

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

How awesome it is to wake up each morning and go to jobs All my life that have been challenging and engaging with purpose.

My dad loved to work and put his whole self into it. Hard work and later before retirement he was supervising, and the harder they worked, the better his day was. I know that was true because even when my brothers and I were young, our dad loved to give us a Saturday morning jobs that would take grown men all day, and stopping to encourage our progress.

Later when I was a grown woman, he would pull up on a Saturday morning, I had hoped would be a day off, honk his horn and expect to find me dressed and ready to go fix fence or add on the barn, work in the garden that was a practice football field long. But it worked, I learned to love to work and we got stuff done.
I have had the privilege to work with dedicated people. And value the time and effort they put into serving the children, the people and later the environment.

Not everyone has been privileged to work at jobs they love. But work done to put food on the table and pay the house payment, and put gas in the car and hope it lasts another season. I value and respect the work done to provide the services we all depend upon to be there when we need them. The emergency room never closes, fire is never planned, and our police come when we call as if each call may save our lives. We want the lights back on, no matter the weather they are on again. Fast food lines are fast because the staff is trained to serve you quickly.

But down the street from where 900 children go to school, over a thousand workers reported for work every day, with 3 shifts of people making the tires America put on their cars, their pickups, farm tractors and tractor trailers. They worked hard and made friends that lasted a lifetime, though some of those lives were cut short on the job or because of the toxins they were exposed to working there.

And now 33 years after the gates were shut, the gates are open and workers are inside again doing the work that will protect those 900 children from exposure to one of the toxins left behind at that site. Two teams are working behind closed doors and below ground removing asbestos forever. LEAD Agency wasn't around when the tires were being made, but is now and we have with many locals been providing our thanks to the cleanup crew with cookies and donuts. And will continue until they complete their work mid-January.  Bet we will get a second round organized if and when the benzene crews make the rest of those worries go away.

During seven decades in the last century, there were others who were working below ground providing for their families, too. They worked without sunlight in large and small spaces and some whole rooms that glistened with light hitting the crystals of quartz, zinc and lead. Those fairy rooms came apart and turned into pieces that went right up the shafts and made some folks rich and most of the others a living. They too made lifelong friends and friends they buried long before their time, because of accidents that were not rare beneath the ground and when they no longer could breathe when their lungs failed them with miners comp or silicosis.

We have lost a lot for the opportunity to work. We have lost grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers. So many men never made the memories I had the opportunity to have with parents who lived long lives and taught me to love to work.

There are over 60 people reporting for work every day now and may be doing it for as many decades it took to make the mess we know as the Tar Creek Superfund site. We honor their work and will invite you to join us as we cookie this team a few times before Christmas for the work they are doing, clearing land, selling what can be of use building roads and building a mountain of the toxic chat that will be capped and left on site as the mesas of our mess. They are employed by the Quapaw Nation, the first tribal nation given the right to use federal funds to cleanup superfund messes on their own property.

Work, grateful work. Don't we all long for work that provides the living we want with a safe work site to protects us and our future environment. When the horn sounds in the morning the joy of walking out the door to do a thing that needs to be done and the joy it brings to having completed it. 

From the poem

                 To be of use by Marge Piercy

                The people I love the best jump into work head first...
                 do what has to be done, again and again
                The work of the world is common as mud...
                But the thing worth doing well has a shape that satisfies but were made to be used.
                The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.
 
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim