Blogger Meet-up, Awards, Protest, Inspiration--this post has it all!

When I began blogging here at Border Explorer, I met so many wonderful people. I especially remember the moment I discovered Carol, of A Peace Carol (although at that time she was blogging on a different site). I identified with her immediately because of her activism. She'd participated in Camp Casey in Texas, Cindys Sheehan's attempt to engage George W Bush in dialogue on Iraq. She had stood with Women in Black locally for years.

We struck up a blogging friendship. With my stepson and 2 grandchildren living in the next town over from Carol, I harbored a secret hope that one day I'd be able to meet her. My opportunity arrived last month, when in a best-case scenario, I was able to meet her at the Women in Black gathering (!) and stand in solidarity with that committed band.

I stand for peace weekly in El Paso, but this was something different, and I felt it. The black. The silence. In my mind I was standing for all the women who mourn in this war-torn world. Mr. Carol for Peace stopped by to take some photos, and I can see now that my emotions were evident on my face:



Not the smiling, happy, joyful, peace-filled presence I try to embody in El Paso. The hour was profound for me: a somewhat grim hour of being present to those who mourn due to wars we cause in lands far away. But I'm sure it means something different to everyone who participates as well as to everyone who observes it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon together at the home of Carol and her husband. It was amazing. We chatted as though we had known each other all our lives with mutual interests galore. It happened to be our birthday weekend--for both of us!--and we each felt like our time together was a gift. Carol delivered me to the wedding I was in town to attend. I felt like a visiting dignitary, she and her husband were so good to me.

Our conversation turned to the spirituality of peacemaking. It was providential for me, who perhaps tends to move too quickly into action and neglect the meditative underpinnings that maintain a peaceful presence in the world. This was all so meaningful and has stayed with me in the ensuing weeks.

I want to pass to Carol this award I received from Utah Savage. It means a lot to me: a sisterhood award. The relationships we form here are so real. So authentic. We put our hearts and souls on our blogs. Some people denigrade "virtual relationships" as inauthentic. They are wrong. Pure and simple. I am so happy that my family has expanded through the relationships I've made here. Carol, you're my sister across the miles, and I love you. Give your sweetie my best regards and thanks, too.

We shared favorite movies, books and authors that afternoon. I want to close with the words of one we discussed:

The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves.

Terry Tempest Williams
from Talking to God: Portrait of a World at Prayer (anthology)

The time I spent with you was unforgettably holy time. Thanks so much, Carol!

A Statement of Courage: Why a Honduran Woman Still Resists the Coup

It is confusing and painful to me that events in Iran receive so much attention and coverage by the mainstream media while the dramatic Honduran military coup and mammoth popular resistance to it is almost ignored.

The following statement was hastily translated and provided to me by Carlos Marentes, a US citizen and member of Via Campesina, who traveled to Honduras to accompany the people's resistance last weekend. I hope you'll read it:

TESTIMONY OF WENDY CRUZ OF THE HONDURAN PEASANT MOVEMENT

Sisters and brothers of the World,I write this testimony with my eyes full of tears and a sadden heart after an intensive day of struggle with my sisters and brothers of Honduras.

I am a woman from a humble family. I am a peasant. I have gained my militancy and class consciousness along with the peasants who work every day under the hot sun, and who see no future for their sons and daughters who have to migrate to other countries seeking better living conditions because in our country, Honduras, the bipartisan political system (Liberals and Nationalists have shared the power for more than 100 years) the majority live in extreme poverty, neglected, without access to health, to a dignified home, without access to a piece of land because the national oligarchy owns the whole country and have pushed 90 per cent of the population into extreme poverty and social exclusion.

Today, Sunday July 5, we have completed eight days of peaceful resistance. Today we marched, more than 500 thousand persons in the city of Tegucigalpa towards the airport of Toncontín, with the expectation of welcoming president Manuel Zelaya Rosales. While us where waiting the arrival of our president, the army started to shoot us with tear gases and real bullets. Three Honduran were killed only because they were demanding peace and the right to live in a country with real civic participation, and not the false democracy we have been living for 100 years. The dead persons included 21 year old, Isis Oveth, from the village "Alde de Santa Cruz", Guayape, municipality of Olancho and another young man, Alexis Zavala is among the many persons who were badly injured by the army' repression.

Alter the violent attack I was afraid to be arrested by the police because we have a curfew and by the time we escaped the repression it was already night, past the curfew hours. But despite the repression, my spirit is stronger, because I have the dream that one day my son (15 years old) and my daughter (10 years old) and all the future generations will enjoy a country with equality, equity and more than that, a day when all of us will be the actors of our destiny.

I would like to tell all the men and women of the World who have expressed solidarity with our struggle, that all of us in Honduras are determined to achieve VICTORY and to restore the legitimate government of our president Manuel Zelaya in the memory of the martyrs of this Sunday July 5, 2009.

Long live the martyrs for the defense of our rights to be actors of our own destiny!

Long live ISIS OVETH and all the brothers killed today!

WE ARE HONDURAN PEOPLE AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE IN PEACE IN A TRUE DEMOCRACY!

GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE, GLOBALIZE HOPE!

THANKS TO THE WORLD FOR THEIR GREAT SOLIDARITY...THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES BECAUSE AS EMILIANO ZAPATA SAID: "IT'S BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES FOREVER!"

Tegucigalpa, MDC. Honduras, C.A., July 5, 2009.

Mexico Builds Border Wall to Keep Out US Assholes

Mexico Builds Border Wall To Keep Out US Assholes

Have a laugh! Thank Godde for The Onion!

4th of July: Quotes from Howard Zinn

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”



“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children”


“Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.”


“In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.”


“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

I can't believe we did this on our summer vacation, Part 3

On our return to Iowa, we camped in a riparian (Part 1), at the Grand Canyon (Part 2), and...even better than that, we tent camped at the Fisher Monuments in a Federal Land Reserve primitive site in Southwest Utah. The landscape reminded me of the stage background if the senior class play at a small country high school was a western:


The northern boundary of our little allotted tent plot was the shore of the Colorado River!

When the sun lowered, we took off into the warm desert and explored the monuments...up close and personal:



They were rather humanoid in appearance and amazingly otherworldly:

This is my current laptop screensaver. I still can't believe we were here. (Actually, the campground had a pit toilet, so it wasn't too primitive.) Mr. B.E. referred to the tree as "The Hanging Tree."


We watched the moonrise over the ridge. There was a fairly strong windstorm that night, but we were snug and safe in our tent.

This was my happiest camping experience on the trip, so I wanted to share it. Stop on over and visit us and I'll show you (ahem) a few other photos from this Utah site.

This is why I love the Southwest

I dragged my feet all the way to El Paso three years ago. I did not read one nice thing about the city prior to my arrival. But my husband wanted to give it a try, and I thought I owed him that chance. I tried to shut my mouth and keep an open mind before I got there.

I fell in love with the place.

It was stressful for us in El Paso this last go-round. Now that I'm in Iowa, that's what I say. But, a video arrived in my email inbox this morning, igniting my heart. It's a performance from April's Border Book Festival [when I saw Amy Goodman speak] by two visiting artists: Perla Batalla, singing La Llorona and Luis Rodriguez reciting his poem "My Name is Not Rodriguez."

I don't know why this grabs me so hard. There is nothing in my past that connects with any of this. But it grabs me hard:




My Name's Not Rodriguez

It is a sigh of climbing feet,
the lather of gold lust,
the slave masters' religion
with crippled hands gripping greed's tail.
My name's not Rodriguez.
It's an Indian mother's noiseless cry,
a warrior's saliva on arrow tip, a jaguar's claw,
a woman's enticing contours on volcanic rock.
My real name's the ash of memory from burned trees.
It's the three-year-old child wandering in the plain
and shot by U.S. Cavalry in the Sand Creek massacre.
I'm Geronimo's yell into the canyons of the old ones.
I'm the Comanche scout; the Raramuri shaman
in a soiled bandanna running in the wretched rain.
I'm called Rodriguez and my tears leave rivers of salt.
I'm Rodriguez and my skin dries on the bones.
I'm Rodriguez and a diseased laughter enters the pores.
I'm Rodriguez and my father's insanity blocks every passageway,
scorching the walls of every dwelling.
My name's not Rodriguez; it's a fiber in the wind,
it's what oceans have immersed,
it's what's graceful and sublime over the top of peaks,
what grows red in desert sands.
It's the crawling life, the watery breaths between ledges.
It's taut drum and peyote dance.
It's the brew from fermented heartaches.
Don't call me Rodriguez unless you mean peon and sod carrier,
unless you mean slayer of truths and deep-sixer of hopes.
Unless you mean forget and then die.
My name's the black-hooded 98mm-wielding child in all our alleys.
I'm death row monk. The eight-year-old gum seller in city bars and taco shops.
I'm unlicensed, uninsured, unregulated, and unforgiven.
I'm free and therefore hungry.
Call me Rodriguez and bleed in shame.
Call me Rodriguez and forget your own name.
Call me Rodriguez and see if I whisper in your ear,
mouth stained with bitter wine.

Happy 80th Birthday, Anne Frank! We need you more than ever.

"With a diary kept in a secret attic, she braved the Nazis and lent a searing voice to the fight for human dignity." --Time (1999), naming Anne Frank with the heroes and icons of the 20th century on their list of The Most Important People of the Century.

Anne Frank was born just 80 years ago in Frankfurt, Germany on June 12, 1929. A Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis with her family, Anne kept her sanity before her capture and subsequent death in a concentration camp by recording her thoughts in a diary. That diary, given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944. It became a classic when it was published after her death: The Diary of a Young Girl, one of the most widely read books in the world.

As we reel this week from the fatal shootings and deaths in Washington DC's Holocaust Museum, initiated by a man with a virulently anti-Semitic past...

when we view photographic evidence of unspeakable acts of torture inflicted by our military in prisons far and not-so-far away...

when indigenous defenders of the Amazon jungle are gunned down like criminals...

...we ponder with broken hearts our own human capacity for evil and struggle to find the hope we need to remain faithful to working for justice and peace.

These quotations, taken from Anne's diary, are worth recalling today as a celebration of her life, her voice, her courage, her open heart. In Anne we find the antidote to despair that we sometimes desperately need:

On our infinite possibilities:

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

On optimism:

"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."

On the restorative power of nature:

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be."

On personal power:

"The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands"

On gratitude:

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."

On human nature and hope:

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. ... I think peace and tranquility will return again."

On happiness:

"Whoever is happy will make others happy, too"

On human potential:

"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

Happy birthday, Anne! Your life, your spirit is as relevant as ever. May we, the living who are blessed with your example and inspiration, live today more fully and humanly.

Insurance Profits Make Us Sick!

• Inspired by Utah Savage's excellent personal experience post
• by Democracy Now's excellent segment on single payer healthcare
• and by the Des Moines activists.....today I'm fired up to change US health care!

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"Enough is enough!" exclaim Iowa activist friends. With 20,000 dying each year and millions suffering needlessly, a coalition of peace groups has launched a public campaign called "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick." Focused on the abuses of health insurance corporations, their first measure is a weekly vigil in front of Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield headquarters in Des Moines (insurance capital of the USA, I'd say).

The national healthcare crisis in the United States springs from the stranglehold that profit-driven private insurance corporations have on the system. Not sure we're in a crisis? Activists cite these bullet points:

■ 50 million Americans have no insurance or access to medical care and, with the economic crisis, this number is skyrocketing.

■ 20,000 (probably more) die each year due to lack of health care.

■ Millions suffer disability and chronic conditions that would have been prevented by access to adequate health care.

■ Millions who have health insurance are denied necessary care by their insurers.

■ Health care bills (of people who HAVE health insurance) are the single highest reason for filing bankruptcy in the U.S.

■ Untreated disease and injuries hurt those who do have access to healthcare and make us more vulnerable to pandemics.

Does the healthcare industry care about us? Or about profit? These folks say coverage by health insurers is based on profitability not on providing health care for those who need it. The industry makes money by only insuring those who will likely remain healthy and by denying coverage to those who do or might get sick.

■ 20-40% of every health care dollar goes to profits and overhead and things other than anyone's healthcare.

■ Precious health care dollars are wasted on symbols of wealth: anything from private jets, to skyscrapers, to capital investments.

To add insult to injury, they say healthcare insurers lie, hiring lobbyists (with outrageous salaries) to protect their interests. Here's what lobbyists won't tell you:

■ Other nation's national healthcare programs work efficiently.

■ National healthcare will ultimately create more jobs. (They just won't be in the health insurance industry.)

■ No one will have less ability to choose a doctor or wait significantly longer for medical procedures with a single-payer healthcare plan.

■ Mainstream media and members of congress are financially controlled by insurance lobbyists, campaign contributions, and advertising revenue.

These Iowa activists support single-payer healthcare as the viable way out of the crisis.

Single-payer healthcare (H.R. 676) cuts out the middle man (i.e. the health insurance industry) and earmarks all healthcare dollars in one public fund to be used for healthcare only. Experts (and even Presidents Clinton and Obama) have agreed it's our best option, but claim the public doesn't have the political will to make it happen.

Let's prove them wrong and demand equal health care for all. Take it to the streets...the internets...the congress...the media...because:

Healthcare is a human right!

Puny Thoughts on the Grand Canyon

Semi-annually, Mr. B.E. & I migrate between our spring/summer Midwestern abode and our fall/winter Border abode. The upheaval is complete. I think of our lifestyle as a split-screen existence; this year I termed it "crossing the Great Divide." Coincidentally, since we decided to return North via a Grand Canyon visit, we literally crossed the Continental Divide a couple times in the process.

Looking at the Grand Canyon is an other-worldly experience. Gazing over the rim, I felt like I was standing on the hologram deck of the Starship Enterprise. Alternatively, I was a child again, looking into a View-Master at a friend's house.


The cool thing about the Canyon is that it is always changing, depending on the time of day and angle of the sun.



Visiting in early May is good. Numbers are down. There were many AARP-couples there, not so many children.



The campground was far from full. I preferred tent camping to staying in a resort hotel. It seemed more authentic to the experience.

An important aspect of the visit is the heightened sense of time and place this natural phenomenon imparts. Mr. B.E. has since taken to library books about geology and the creation of the Canyon: how water works and how it will change the future face of the planet. Much like looking upward at the stars, looking into the canyon--gazing back in time--is humbling.

Homeland Security Detains Nobel Peace Laureate!

The US Department of Homeland Security detained Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire earlier this month when she entered the US at a Houston airport. According to information provided by the Free Gaza Movement, Maguire was returning home to Northern Ireland from a three day conference that she hosted in Guatemala with three sister Nobel Peace Laureates: Rigoberta Menchu, Jody Williams and Shirin Ebadi.

Officials held Maguire for two hours. They questioned her, fingerprinted her, photographed her and questioned again in a second session. Due to the insistence of the Nobel Women's Initiatives representatives, she was released; however, because of her detention, she missed her flight.

Maguire had just finished hosting the conference "Redefining Democracy, Human Rights and Peace" that one hundred fifty international women activists attended.

Maguire released the following statement about the incident:

"This kind of behaviour and treatment is unacceptable. They questioned me about my nonviolent protests in USA against the Afghanistan invasion and Iraqi war. They insisted I must tick the box in the Immigration form admitting to criminal activities. I am not a criminal, my nonviolent acts in USA opposing the war on Afghanistan, and Iraqi, are acts of conscience and together with millions of USA citizens, and world citizens, I refuse to be criminalized for opposing such illegal policies. Every citizen has a right, indeed a moral obligation, to nonviolent civil disobedience in the face of illegal and unjust laws, especially war. If anyone is to be criminalized for these illegal and immoral policies it is the USA Government, who must be held accountable before the International community for these acts of crime against humanity.

I am most disappointed at this harassment which I believe is because I do not remain silent on USA Foreign Policies which I believe to be causing a great deal of suffering around the world. I stand in solidarity with many Human rights defenders, whose only crime is to stand for the dignity and right of everyone to life, freedom and human and civil liberties. Many people in the USA, voted for President Obama (and millions around the world supported him) on the promise that changes would be made, civil and human rights be upheld, and today we await the fulfilment of these promises. We hope that President Obama will not disappoint the millions of people around the World, like me, who believed in him when he said we can change things, YES WE CAN.

The world looks to him to give moral and political leadership by upholding Human rights and International Law, and leading America to live fully by its Constitution and commitments to freedom and democracy for all. I have travelled to USA many times in the past 30 years to share the message of peace and reconciliation, but I have also undertaken my world citizenship responsibility to join with the American peace movement in protesting USA foreign policies which are causing much suffering in the World. I will continue to visit and plan to return to USA in August to join with the American Peace Movement at Los Alamos, New Mexico, in protesting USA Nuclear Weapons Programme.

I have always been inspired by the American Peace Movement and consider an honour to be able to support them in their work for a peaceful humanity, truly in the spirit of the American people and their inspiration Constitution of freedom and justice for all."
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photo: I obtained the photo of "the questionable person" pictured at the top via Google Images.
Disclaimer: The report of this incident angered me to the extent that I have crossposted this article everywhere I possibly could. Feel free to go and do likewise!