The Triangle of Life

I woke this morning thinking of Howard Zinn (see remembrance below) and of how much he loved us! Us, you know, humanity. And someone sent this piece about earthquakes from a person who reminds me of this caring. Caring is what will see us through. And yes, take a few moments to say, as we almost always do: What, even about this, earthquake survival, they lied? So they did. (Maybe they didn't know). But one of us found out, and told the others! That is the joy, and hope, of our age.

AW

DOUG COPP'S ARTICLE ON THE: 'TRIANGLE OF LIFE'

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article can save lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

The first building I ever crawled inside of was a school in Mexico City during the 1985 earthquake. Every child was under its desk. Every child was crushed to the thickness of their bones. They could have survived by lying down next to their desks in the aisles. It was obscene, unnecessary and I wondered why the children were not in the aisles. I didn't at the time know that the children were told to hide under something. I am amazed that even today schools are still using the Duck and Cover instructions- telling the children to squat under their desks with their heads bowed and covered with their hands. This was the technique used in the Mexico City school.

Simply stated, when buildings collapse, the weight of the ceilings falling upon the objects or furniture inside crushes these objects, leaving a space or void next to them. This space is what I call the 'triangle of life'. The larger the object, the stronger, the less it will compact. The less the object compacts, the larger the void, the greater the probability that the person who is using this void for safety will not be injured. The next time you watch collapsed buildings, on television, count the 'triangles' you see formed. They are everywhere. It is the most common shape, you will see, in a collapsed building.

TIPS FOR EARTHQUAKE SAFETY

1) Almost everyone who simply 'ducks and covers' when buildings collapse ARE CRUSHED TO DEATH. People who get under objects, like desks or cars, are crushed.


2) Cats, dogs and babies often naturally curl up in the fetal position. You should too in an earthquake. It is a natural safety/survival instinct. That position helps you survive in a smaller void. Get next to an object, next to a sofa, next to a large bulky object that will compress slightly but leave a void next to it.

3) Wooden buildings are the safest type of construction to be in during an earthquake. Wood is flexible and moves with the force of the earthquake. If the wooden building does collapse, large survival voids are created. Also, the wooden building has less concentrated, crushing weight. Brick buildings will break into individual bricks. Bricks will cause many injuries but less squashed bodies than concrete slabs. Concrete slab buildings are the most dangerous during an earthquake.

4) If you are in bed during the night and an earthquake occurs, simply roll off the bed. A safe void will exist around the bed. Hotels can achieve a much greater survival rate in earthquakes, simply by posting a sign on the back of the door of every room telling occupants to lie down on the floor, next to the bottom of the bed during an earthquake.


5) If an earthquake happens and you cannot easily escape by getting out the door or window, then lie down and curl up in the fetal position next to a sofa, or large chair.

6) Almost everyone who gets under a doorway when buildings collapse is killed. How? If you stand under a doorway and the doorjamb falls forward or backward you will be crushed by the ceiling above. If the door jam falls sideways you will be cut in half by the doorway. In either case, you will be killed!


7) Never go to the stairs. The stairs have a different 'moment of frequency' (they swing separately from the main part of the building). The stairs and remainder of the building continuously bump into each other until structural failure of the stairs takes place. The people who get on stairs before they fail are chopped up by the stair treads and horribly mutilated. Even if the building doesn't collapse, stay away from the stairs. The stairs are a likely part of the building to be damaged. Even if the stairs are not collapsed by the earthquake, they may collapse later when overloaded by fleeing people. They should always be checked for safety, even when the rest of the building is not damaged.

8) Get Near the Outer Walls Of Buildings Or Outside Of Them If Possible - It is much better to be near the outside of the building rather than the interior. The farther inside you are from the outside perimeter of the building the greater the probability that your escape route will be blocked.

9) People inside of their vehicles are crushed when the road above falls in an earthquake and crushes their vehicles; which is exactly what happened with the slabs between the decks of the Nimitz Freeway. The victims of the San Francisco earthquake all stayed inside of their vehicles. They were all killed. They could have easily survived by getting out and lying in the fetal position next to their vehicles. Everyone killed likely would have survived if they had been able to get out of their cars and sit or lie next to them. All the crushed cars had voids 3 feet high next to them, except for the cars that had columns fall directly across them.


10) I discovered, while crawling inside of collapsed newspaper offices and other offices with a lot of paper, that paper does not compact. Large voids are found surrounding stacks of paper.

In 1996 we made a film, which proved my survival methodology to be correct. The Turkish Federal Government, City of Istanbul, University of Istanbul Case Productions and ARTI cooperated to film this practical, scientific test. We collapsed a school and a home with 20 mannequins inside. Ten mannequins did 'duck and cover,' and ten mannequins I used in my 'triangle of life' survival method. After the simulated earthquake collapse we crawled through the rubble and entered the building to film and document the results.

The film, in which I practiced my survival techniques under directly observable, scientific conditions, relevant to building collapse, showed there would have been zero percent survival for those doing duck and cover. There would likely have been 100 percent survivability for people using my method of the 'triangle of life.' This film has been seen by millions of viewers on television in Turkey and the rest of Europe, and it was seen in the USA, Canada and Latin America on the TV program Real TV.

Spread the word and save someone's life... The entire world is experiencing natural calamities so be prepared!

Take Care

Thank you, Doug Copp. Wherever you are, know we are grateful for this teaching.

Saying Goodbye to My Friend Howard Zinn

We have lost a gift, which having received it, all of us might become.
AW
Photo: @1991 by Jean Weisinger
©2010 by Alice Walker

On hearing the news of his death.

Me: Howie, Where did you go?

Howie: What do you mean, Where did I go? As soon as I died, I went back to Boston.

I met Howard Zinn in 1961 my first year at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the tall, rangy, good-looking professor that many of the girls at Spelman swooned over. My African roommate and I got a good look at him everyday when he came for his mail in the post-office just beneath our dormitory window. He was always in motion, but would stop frequently to talk to the many students and administrators and total strangers that seemed attracted to his energy of non-hesitation to engage. We met formally when some members of my class were being honored and I was among them. I don’t remember what we were being honored for, but Howard and I ended up sitting next to each other. He remembered this later; I did not. He was the first white person I’d sat next to; we talked. He claimed I was “ironic.” I was surprised he did not feel white.

I knew nothing of immigrants (which his parents were) or of Jews. Nothing of his father’s and his own working class background. Nothing of his awareness of poverty and slums. Nothing of why a white person could exist in America and not feel white: i.e. heavy, oppressive, threatening and almost inevitably insensitive to the feelings of a person of color. The whole of Georgia was segregated at that time; and in coming to Spelman I had had a run-in with the Greyhound bus driver (white as described above) who had forced me to sit in the back of the bus. This moment had changed my life, though how that would play out was of course uncertain to a seventeen year old.

One way it did play out was that the very next summer I was on my way to the Soviet Union to see how white those folks were and to tell as many of them as I could, even if they were white, that I did not agree to my country’s notions of bombing them. I didn’t see a lot of generals, but children and women and men and old people of both sexes were everywhere. They were usually smiling and offering flowers or vodka. There was no “iron curtain” between us, as I’d been told to expect by Georgia media. I love to tell the story of how I was so ignorant at the time I didn’t have a clue who folks were queuing up to see in Lenin’s tomb; nor did I even know what “The Kremlin” was. I also didn’t speak a word of Russian.

Coming back to Spelman, I discovered Howard Zinn was teaching a course on Russian History and Literature and a little of the language. I signed up for it, though I was only a sophomore and the course was for juniors (as I recall). I had loved Russian Literature since I discovered Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky back in the school library in Putnam County, Georgia. As for the Russian Language, as with any language, I most wanted to learn to say: hello, goodbye, please and thank you.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it also. We did. My mother, who earned seventeen dollars a week working twelve-hour days as a maid, had somehow managed to buy a typewriter for me and I had learned typing in school. I said hardly a word in class (as Howie would later recall), but inspired by his warm and brilliant ability to communicate ideas and conundrums and passions of the characters and complexities of Russian life in the 19th century, I flew back to my room after class and wrote my response to what I was learning about these writers and their stories that I adored. He was proud of my paper, and, in his enthusiastic fashion, waved it about. I learned later there were those among other professors at the school who thought that I could not possibly have written it. His rejoinder: “Why, there’s nobody else in Atlanta who could have written it!”

It would be hard not to love anyone who stood in one’s corner like this.

Under the direction of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) many students at Spelman joined the effort to desegregate Atlanta. Naturally, I joined this movement. Howie, taller than most of us, was constantly in our midst, and usually somewhere in front. Because I was at Spelman on scholarship, a scholarship that would be revoked if I were jailed, my participation caused me a good bit of anxiety. Still, knowing Howard and others of our professors, the amazingly courageous and generous Staughton Lynd, for instance, my other history teacher, supported the students in our struggle, made it possible to carry on. But then, while he and his family were away from campus for the summer, Howard Zinn was fired. He was fired for “insubordination.”

Yes, he would later say, with a classic Howie shrug, I was guilty.

For me, and for many poorer students in my position, students on scholarship who also worked in the Movement to free us of centuries of white supremacy and second-class citizenship, it was a disaster. I wrote a letter to the administration that was published in the school paper pointing out the error of their decision. I wrote it through tears of anger and frustration. It was these tears, which appeared unannounced whenever I thought of this injustice to Howard and his family – who I had met and also loved – that were observed by Staughton Lynd, who realized instantly that a. there was every chance I was headed toward a break-down; and b. the administration would quickly find a reason to expel me from school. Added to the stress, which nobody knew about, was the fact that I was working for a well-respected older man who, knowing I had to work in order to pay for everything I needed as a young woman in school, was regularly molesting me. Lucky for me he was very old, and his imagination was stronger than his grasp. As a farm girl and no stranger to manual labor, I could type his papers with one hand while holding him off with the other. What rankled so much, then as now, is how much others respected, even venerated him.
Perhaps this was one of many births of my feminism. A feminism/womanism that never seemed odd to Howard Zinn, who encouraged his Spelman students, all of them women, to name and challenge oppression of any sort. This encouragement would come in handy, when, years later, writing my second novel, Meridian, I could explore the misuse of gender- based power from the perspective of having experienced it.

With Staughton Lynd’s help, and after he had consulted with Howie (I did not know this), I was accepted to finish my college education at Sarah Lawrence College, a place of which I had never heard. I went off in the middle of winter, without a warm coat or shoes and ice and snow greeted me. But also Staughton’s mother, Helen Lynd, who immediately provided money for the coat and shoes I needed, as well as a blanket that had been her son’s. In my solitary room, and knowing no one on campus, I hunkered down to write. Letters to the Zinns, first of all. To inform them I had been liberated from Spelman, as they had been, and had landed.

I was Howard’s student for only a semester, but in fact, I have learned from him all my life. His way with resistance: steady, persistent, impersonal, often with humor, is a teaching I cherish. Whenever I’ve been arrested, I’ve thought of him. I see policemen as victims of the very system they’re hired to defend, as I know he did. I see soldiers in the same way. In some ways, Howie was an extension of my father, whom he never met. My father was also an activist as a young man and was one of the first black men unconnected to white ancestry or power to vote in our backwoods county; he had to pass by three white men holding shotguns in order to do this. By the time I went off to college, the last of eight children, he was exhausted and broken. But these men were connected in ways clearer to me now as I’ve become older than my father was when he died. They each saw injustice as something to be acknowledged, confronted, and changed if at all possible. And they looked for signs of humanity in their opponents and spoke to that. They both possessed a sense of humor and love of a good story that made them charismatic teachers. I recently discovered, and it amuses me, that their birth dates are remarkably close, though my father was thirteen years older.

Howie and I planned to rendezvous in Berkeley in March, when he came out to spend a few weeks with his grandchildren. In April we planned to be on a panel with Gloria Steinem and Bernice Reagon at an event in New Orleans for Amnesty International. I had decided not to go, but Howie said if I didn’t come he would “sorely miss” me. I wrote back that in that case I would certainly be there as “soreness of any sort” was not to be tolerated.

Over the years I’ve been in the habit of sending freshly written poems to Roz and Howie. After her death, I continued to send the occasional poem to Howie. Last week, after the Supreme Court’s decision to let corporations offer unlimited funding to political candidates, I wrote a poem about what I would do if I were president, called: “If I Was President: ‘Were’ For Those Who Prefer It.’” My first act as president, given that corporations may well buy all elections in America from now on, would be to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, both men accused of murders I’ve felt they did not commit; both men in prison for sadistically long periods of time.

Howie’s response, and the last word he communicated to me, was “Wonderful.” I imagined him hurriedly typing it, then flying, even at eighty-seven, out the door.

The question remains: Where do our friends and loved ones go when they die?

They can’t all go back to Boston, or wherever they’ve lived their most intense life.

I fell asleep, after leaking tears for Howie most of the day: my sweetheart’s shirt was luckily absorbent and available to me, and after tossing and turning almost all night, I had the following dream: We (Someone and I) were looking for the place we go to when we die. After quite a long walk, we encountered it. What we saw was this astonishingly gigantic collection of people and creatures: birds and foxes, butterflies and dogs, cats and beings I’ve never seen awake, and they were moving toward us in total joy at our coming. We were happy too. But there was nothing to support any of us: no land, no water, nothing. We ourselves were all of it: our own earth. And I woke up knowing that this is where we go when we die. We go back to where we came from: inside all of us.

Goodbye, Howie. Beloved. Hello.

This piece ran Sunday, January 31st in the Boston Globe.

To the Wife and Children

©2010 by Alice Walker

Dear Ones,

I realize you and your mother have been hurt and embarrassed by the infidelities and bizarre behaviors of your father. This is a common problem for many. Because your father is famous, you may feel exceptionally exposed, but be assured there are millions of wives and children feeling as sad, confused, angry and distraught as you do. I know you are lonely for your father, and that you love him too. Loving our parents is natural, and I would advise, whatever else you do, that you not fight this natural tendency to care about one of the persons responsible for delivering you to this world.

Where were you before? And what were you doing? You may wonder.

I tacked on these questions to remind us how huge the mystery of all behavior really is.


Once, I was so angry with my own father, and embarrassed by him too – he dared discuss my dating life with my mother in front of me, when I was a teenager, as if I were not there; plus he had personal habits that filled me with distress – that I didn’t speak to him for a year. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and at the end of the year I felt as though I had seriously damaged my heart. Which might be true. Only later I realized, whatever his faults, this was someone who loved me, and in our culture it is still difficult, fathers and mothers alike, to know what to do when a young girl sprouts breasts or a boy grows a beard and starts talking all the time about “going out.” My father, by then exhausted as the parent of eight children, had insulted my integrity, I felt, by distrusting my ability to take care of myself. But from his point of view, as a man, he was probably doing the best he knew. My inability to understand this, and far more, when I was younger led to a great deal of regret and a couple of bouts of literal wailing as the years rolled on.

I happen to like your father’s name. I wish more of us, not just indigenous people, would name ourselves after animals and plants. Even so, you might wish to consider the option of non-attachment to this parent by removing his name, if the stress of attachment is too great. One way of doing this, later on when you are older, and for your mother, when she is not upset, is to change your name. You could easily change your name to that of a tree or trees, for instance. Then you would be known as Ms. Or Mr. Pines or Oak, but would not be named for the entire forest. There is power in names, and it would not be favorable, as the I Ching would put it, to labor a lifetime under a name that stresses you. Besides, if you chose a tree (which is a kind of earth parent: it helps us breathe) you would remain connected to the forest in a simple and elegant but entirely impersonal way.

You may wish to read this paragraph once more. Wishing a measure of privacy for you, I am writing in a kind of code.

Sometimes people think that demanding and receiving an unnecessarily large sum of money from someone who has harmed us will help us feel better. I don’t see how this could be true, though I have never been in the position to have this experience. It is right to require a parent, if he or she can afford it, to offer all that you need for healthy growth – love and affection, food and shelter, education and travel; even a down payment on your first house – and in your case this could be substantial. Your mother should be well compensated also. Giving birth is not easy, and raising even one child, in our consumerist, violent, gadget-addicted society, takes more than many women are able to offer. Proper child rearing is heroic, largely unappreciated work, and this is a global situation; though you, as wife and mother, may be feeling alone, presently, with this awareness.

Personally I have felt happiest living on money I earned myself, though when I was married and my husband made more money than I did, it felt wonderful to pool our unequal financial contributions as we went about spending money on such things as a car for me (in which I drove to work in a poorly paid appointment at a local college) health insurance, and excellent professional attention to my poverty stricken teeth. I was raised by my parents to understand that work mattered, and that learning to save what I earned mattered also. I think there is a danger, in accepting quite a lot of money from anyone, of becoming disconnected from the masses of people who work for a living, and they/we happen to be most of the folks living on the earth. It is often our work that keeps us juicy and capable of having opinions about some of what goes on for the majority of our sisters and brothers, ourselves; confident in the ability to freely express what we observe.

None of this may apply to you. It isn’t as though I’m following your journey through this passage in your life. And it is only a passage. I’ve seen a clip of a few seconds of your faces on a television that was on in an airport. (I don’t understand why they torture us with TV in airports). I wrote an open letter to your father/husband some weeks ago and a friend, concerned for you, as we all should be (and for all parents in your situation) said: What would you say to his wife and children? At first I thought I was not called to say anything to you. Presumably you, the wife, are from a different land, and have a family, a country, and a culture, which will support and cushion you and your children. For people of obvious mixed culture and race in America it is harder, sometimes, to find the inner compass we all must steer by, because the outer compass, our very Being in a divided society, is so confusing. That was part of my thought in writing to your husband/father, whom I also do not know. And, I must admit, I was thinking of Michael Jackson. It has seemed to me billions of people the world over, and over decades, clapped and sang and danced along with him as he hovered on the edge, obviously lacking counsel from elders that might have prevented him from going over the cliff.

In some ways, the counsel to you is the same as for the Formerly Cherished: there is healing in Nature, turn to it. Let your heart remain open, even if having it break is the only way to do this. Time passes, and pain does too. Meditation helps. This is a birth experience while it is also a death. You will all be reborn as other than you were; there is every possibility of great excitement, amazement and joy, in this. Who knows, you may find it is your habits with each other that will change, and not, ultimately, the configuration of your family; errant spouse included. This may seem unlikely, but where there is love anything can happen, and usually does.

Ok, this was my “Dear Abbey” paragraph.

In my experience the only thing that prevents joyful rebirth, with or without original participants, is inability to forgive. There are practices that help with this. One I can wholeheartedly recommend for opening the heart is tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation that works I would think even with children, if they are old enough to enjoy sucking in their breath and imagining that by doing so they’re clearing all the smoke out of a room! If they can also grasp the concept of inhaling their own hurt feelings fearlessly, and exhaling what they’d prefer everyone on earth to have instead: joy, happiness, a new pony! (For me it is always a peaceful walk on the beach). There is a CD set from Sounds True on which to find instruction: Awakening Compassion, by Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. The teaching is droll and thorough, fun to hear, even if the practice doesn’t stick.

For stranded moms, dads, kids and anyone going through a tough time, I would also recommend living with a dog and cat. One of the greatest teachings from animals that seem quite different from each other is how readily and easily they can learn, most times, to get along. And especially with dogs, how quickly they forgive. I find myself sometimes thinking of my friends and myself as dogs, when we are sharing a difficult period with each other. Dogs tend not to outlive us; my own dog Marley Mu, recently died at the age of thirteen. She seemed always to grasp, by steadfastly loving, licking and sniffing, me, something that appears hard for humans to comprehend: we’re all headed in the same direction; toward the non-existence of the bodies and personalities we presently claim. There is not a moment to waste! How long would dogs carry on this nonsense? I ask myself, realizing I do still care for my friends with whom I’m feeling at odds. Maybe five seconds, I answer, learning to breathe and to let nonessentials fade.

Dogs have an undeserved reputation for being faithless because they’re curious, loving, eager to please and non-discriminating. They will stick their noses anywhere. Men who do this are sometimes called dogs, some women too. Where does nature, human and non-human come in? This aspect of infidelity is worth considering, too.

It probably goes without saying, but especially during times of great emotional challenge find company with those who embody the equanimity and growth that you seek; and who understand that a focus on revenge by it’s nature distorts one’s view of life.

All Directions Home,

AW

A book that might be useful in exploring the backdrop to mixed race and culture in America is The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed. This book is so well done that one says, reading it in wonder: This could not have been done better. It is like something that grew (an old cactus, maybe, with one bloom every hundred years) rather than something that was painstakingly researched, written and pieced together. Or maybe reading it is like peering through a microscope at the bark of a very old tree. If there was ever an American ancestral founding family that deserves our compassion, the Hemingses/Jeffersons are that family. I would also recommend my favorite CD by Nina Simone, Baltimore, which, in a way, is a compilation of songs about family, and one song in particular expresses a double belief: “Looks like only God can save the family,” the chorus, and, in Nina’s voice “Looks like even God can’t save the family.” However, if God is love, as many believe, what’s left is our own hard work.

If I Was President ("Were" May Be Substituted by Those who Prefer It)

© 2010 by Alice Walker

If I was President
The first thing I would do
is call Mumia Abu-Jamal.
No,
if I was president
the first thing I would do
is call Leonard Peltier.
No,
if I was president
the first person I would call
is that rascal
John Trudell.
No,
the first person I’d call
is that other rascal
Dennis Banks.

I would also call
Alice Walker.

I would make a conference call.

And I would say this:

Yo, you troublemakers,
it is time to let all of us
out of prison.
Pack up your things.

Dennis and John,
collect Alice Walker
if you can find her:
in Mendocino, Molokai, Mexico or
Gaza,
& head out to the prisons
where Mumia and Leonard
are waiting for you.
They will be traveling
light.
Mumia used to own a lot
of papers
but they took most of those
away from him.
Leonard
will probably want to drag along
some of his
canvases.
Alice
who may well be
shopping
in New Delhi
will no doubt want to
dress up for the occasion
in a sparkly shalwar kemeez.

My next call is going to be
to the Cubans
all five of them;
so stop worrying.
For now, you’re my fish.

I just had this long letter
from Alice and she has begged me
to put an end
to her suffering.

What? she said.
You think these men are the only ones who suffer
when Old Style America locks them up
& throws away
the key?
I can’t tell you, she goes on,
the changes
this viciousness
has put me through,
and I have had a child to raise
& classes to teach
& food to buy
and just because
I’m a poet
it doesn’t mean
I don’t have to
pay the mortgage
or the rent.

Yet all these years,
nearly thirty or something
of them
I have been running around
the country
and the world
trying to arouse justice
for these men.
Tonsillitis
hasn’t stopped me.
Migraine
hasn’t stopped me.
Lyme disease
hasn’t stopped me.
And why?
Because
knowing the country
that I’m in,
as you are destined to learn
it too,
I know wrong
when I see it.
If that chair you’re sitting in
could speak
you would have it moved
to another room.
You would burn it.

So, amigos,
pack your things.
Alice and John and Dennis
are on their way.
They are bringing prayers from Nilak Butler and Bill Wahpepah;
they are bringing sweet grass and white sage
from Pine Ridge.

I am the president
at least until the Corporations
purchase the next election,
and this is what I choose
to do
on my first day.

***
Three deep bows to Noelle Hanrahan, Angela Davis and Gloria LaRiva. Champions of Liberty; Long distance, Unwavering.

For a fuller comprehension of this poem please view these videos: Incident at Oglala, In Prison My Whole Life, Trudell, and Why We Fight.

Edwidge Danticat, the Quiet Stream

©2010 by Alice Walker


All this time, silenced, speechless, grateful for my meditation cushion, I have been thinking about the writer, Edwidge Danticat, whose writing for me, so pure and grounded and wise, is the quiet stream flowing in the background of the present chaos and noise in Haiti. Danticat explores with acute attention and tenderness the complex reality of Haiti and its people, and like Arundhati Roy of India it is impossible to think of her native country without her.

I remember reading not so long ago the exquisite, word perfect memoir of Danticat’s childhood in Haiti, living in the home of her uncle, her father’s brother, before being sent eventually to America to live with her parents, who, desperate to find a better place and life for their children, had gone there years before. The love and respect between the brothers moved me profoundly; for such fidelity and trust as existed between them aroused my longing for a more prevalent example of honor in our day to day lives, an honor exemplified in the relationship, lasting decades, of these two men.*

A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart, is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world; more mysterious, beloved, insane and precious for the sparkling and jagged edges of the smaller enclosure we have escaped.

Edwidge, my younger sister, couraj, ma cherie.

There are millions of us thinking of you, with you, of Haiti. Learning what we must. Doing what we can. Understanding that someone labeled “criminal” for “looting” a box of candles may have a loved one crushed and bleeding to death in the dark. Who among us – so plump next to almost any Haitian – is put to this test?

Know the sturdy structure of words you have constructed about and for Haitians no earthquake can destroy. Your words will be part of the mortar that rejoins the soul and self-confidence of your people, so beloved by you: as they rise, once more; which being Haitian, they will.

Wherever you are.

Sharing strength,

Alice Walker

*Brother, I'm Dying.

“Re: Haiti: Passing on to you something that may help lift us from this sorrow.”

Sasha Kramer sent a message to the members of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL).

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Subject: Kouraj cherie: Update from Port au Prince


This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are staying which has been transformed into a field hospital. Since we arrived in Port au Prince everyone has told us that you cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the flattened buildings , in the shadow of the fallen palace, amongst the swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity. We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed to get to the hospital. Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us to those who were suffering the most. We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier. When they saw her she was lying on the side of the road with a broken leg screaming for help, as they were on foot they could not help her at the time so we went back to try to find her. Incredibly we found her relatively quickly at the top of a hill of shattered houses. The sun was setting and the community helped to carry her down the hill on a refrigerator door, tough looking guys smiled in our direction calling out “bonswa Cherie” and “kouraj”.

When we got back to Matthew 25 it was dark and we carried the patients back into the soccer field/tent village/hospital where the team of doctors had been working tirelessly all day. Although they had officially closed down for the evening, they agreed to see the patients we had brought. Once our patients were settled in we came back into the house to find the doctors amputating a foot on the dining room table. The patient lay calmly, awake but far away under the fog of ketamine. Half way through the surgery we heard a clamor outside and ran out to see what it was. A large yellow truck was parked in front of the gate and rapidly unloading hundreds of bags of food over our fence, the hungry crowd had already begun to gather and in the dark it was hard to decide how to best distribute the food. Knowing that we could not sleep in the house with all of this food and so many starving people in the neighborhood, our friend Amber (who is experienced in food distribution) snapped into action and began to get everyone in the crowd into a line that stretched down the road. We braced ourselves for the fighting that we had heard would come but in a miraculous display of restraint and compassion people lined up to get the food and one by one the bags were handed out without a single serious incident.

During the food distribution the doctors called to see if anyone could help to bury the amputated leg in the backyard. As I have no experience with food distribution I offered to help with the leg. I went into the back with Ellie and Berto and we dug a hole and placed the leg in it, covering it with soil and cement rubble. By the time we got back into the house the food had all been distributed and the patient Anderson was waking up. The doctors asked for a translator so I went and sat by his stretcher explaining to him that the surgery had gone well and he was going to live. His family had gone home so he was alone so Ellie and I took turns sitting with him as he came out from under the drugs. I sat and talked to Anderson for hours as he drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point one of the Haitian men working at the hospital came in and leaned over Anderson and said to him in kreyol “listen man even if your family could not be here tonight we want you to know that everyone here loves you, we are all your brothers and sisters”. Cat and I have barely shed a tear through all of this, the sky could fall and we would not bat an eye, but when I told her this story this morning the tears just began rolling down her face, as they are mine as I am writing this. Sometimes it is the kindness and not the horror that can break the numbness that we are all lost in right now.

So, don’t believe Anderson Cooper when he says that Haiti is a hotbed for violence and riots, it is just not the case. In the darkest of times, Haiti has proven to be a country of brave, resilient and kind people and it is that behavior that is far more prevalent than the isolated incidents of violence. Please pass this on to as many people as you can so that they can see the light of Haiti, cutting through the darkness, the light that will heal this nation.

We are safe. We love you all and I will write again when I can. Thank you for your generosity and compassion.

With love from Port au Prince,
Sasha
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The Old Fox

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Fifteen
©2009 by Alice Walker

One of the books I would like to read to you next summer, assuming most of us survive that long, is The I Ching. Mommy loves it for its profound observation of non- human animals. It does a marvelous job of understanding humans, too, of course, but it is remarkable in its grasp of how much we learn from our cousins who study and comprehend us, but cannot, in human language, speak. For instance, there is the story of the old fox crossing an ice-covered pond on tiptoe, because she knows the ice may break. She/he is fine until he almost reaches the other side. Then the ice breaks! She almost falls in (which would mean drowning) but instead, because she has been careful, she only gets her tail wet! This is to say that Mommy, having traveled from the most southern part of India, Kerala (very hot) to the most Northern part, the foothills of the Himalayas (very cold) had avoided getting sick until the very last day of her visit.

And, My Children, air pollution, a major health hazard in the urban world of humans (the atmosphere to my lungs in New Delhi, and later, Cairo, looked like a thick dust made from your chicken mash) was a big factor, also.

But really, what is not amusing in this world, or at least thought provoking, once we stop coughing?

So on the very next to the last day, feeling fine, but tip-toeing across thin ice, high in the foothills of the Himalayas, almost on a lark, I accepted an invitation to consult a doctor of Tibetan medicine about some old health challenges I thought I’d already overcome. Though I didn’t plan to say what they were: he or she’s the doctor, I thought, let him/her tell me. The doctor came in, golden skinned, black haired and radiating health, placed me in a chair close to his side, and proceeded to hold my wrists for about five minutes, pumping up and down on them with his fingers in time with my heartbeat. He looked into my eyes but unlike a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, did not ask to see my tongue. He then proceeded to tell me everything I had been told by my Iranian acupuncturist less than a month before!

You will be happy to know that Mommy is basically healthy. That is because of our garden, which, with your rich poop, we shall continue into infinity. He informed me that climbing hills is something I should avoid, even though I’ve done it for so many years. Walk, but walk flat, he said. I should also not eat late at night because at night is the only time the liver gets to rest. Who knew? The most interesting thing he said though was that I must overcome a tendency to impatience. It turns out impatience is the thief of serenity! The moment he said this, I knew it was true, even though I like to think I am the soul of patience: like most humans, I am most patient and serene when I’m alone. But guess what? Dharamsala (the locals say Dharamshala) is one big hill. By the time I’d climbed the hill to the clinic (even though, truthfully, we climbed it in a van) I’d already climbed hundreds of steps and stairs and wandered up a couple of trails. And the air, very thin, and with a needle like cold embedded in it even in the sun, had hardly seemed sufficient to get me from one level to another. However, Mommy, having walked up so many hills, has a strategy: which is to walk up hills that are steep, on a slant, and sideways. The Tibetans who dash up and down their hills with the grace of mountain goats may have been amused at my way with hills. But another time when I return to visit them and they’ve aged a bit, I’ll explain it to them. This way of climbing hills saves the knees.

I meditated on what the Tibetan doctor said about my impatience and realized something to ponder: I am most impatient with people who don’t think the way I do. This isn’t the same as feeling impatient with people who have different opinions; I like this, for the challenge of it. No, I become impatient with people whose minds seem beamed from a completely different universe. In the world of astrology, one might say: Oh, Cancers and Capricorns. Maybe Librans. But it isn’t as simple as that. My mind, I realize more calmly now as I enter late middle age, is the classic monkey mind; it is non-linear in the most profound way. In short, without training, it is capable of being all over the place. Like a real monkey it seems to jump from imaginary branch to imaginary branch and then, as if by magic, it lands where the nuts are. Or the fruit.

But this is why Life gives us teachers. And you, My Girls, have been very helpful to Mommy in this regard. Remember when, after Glorious was eaten up by the chicken hawk, and Mommy was withdrawing from you out of fear and sorrow, and we humans thought bringing in more chickens would help us all feel better? Remember that? E. and L. and G. and Mommy had a long (by chicken terms) collaboration: How to do this? Would the “old” chickens get along with the “new” ones? E. thought we should introduce one new chicken at a time. But I thought no. One new chicken probably wouldn’t last long, from what I’d been reading in my Chicken Manual. I thought we should bring in the whole gang of new chickens and, in their numbers, they could duke it out with the gang of chickens already established in the chicken house. Ultimately, this is what we did. We introduced six new chickens at once, the Red Gang of Six.

Oh, the way you treated them! I was heart-sickened. I was appalled. I had only known you as gentle and cuddly, blissed out on Chardonnay grapes and kale leaves. You were vicious to your new mates. You pecked and scratched them; you wouldn’t let them near the food and water. You didn’t want Mommy to be Mommy to anyone other than you. When I tried to share goodies with the Red Gang of Six you wouldn’t allow it, unless I forced you out of the way. I was so embarrassed for you. Were these the “children” I thought I was raising? But, guess what? From your point of view, as chickens, you were doing what comes naturally to chickens to do: you were creating the pecking order that chickens live by.

My impatience with your behavior led to a withdrawal from you. I felt disappointed and deeply saddened. This made me stay away for days (at least two). When I went back to visit, you were still at it. Mean as could be. Abusive and ugly. Yes, ugly. Mommy found this brutalizing behavior so hideous she could hardly look at you. And when you jumped into her lap, wanting a cuddle, sometimes she stood up. It was this event, when she felt she simply could not bear you in your meanness, that was probably the most serious threat to Mommy’s health and heart.

That moment of pushing you away - while you looked at Mommy as if she’d lost her mind -was the flowering of impatience.

Mommy Is Not Pure!

Garrett Larson, Mommy, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Devaki Jain, Mommy and Daddie's newest beloved friend!
Christmas With His Holiness/Dharamsala, India, December 25, 2009 © 2009 by Lhamo Tsering

The Chicken Chronicles

Chapter Fourteen

©2009 by Alice Walker

Dear Girls, Mommy is missing you terribly, even while she is having a wonderful adventure; So many new ideas to digest, so much good food to enjoy. In India it is easy to be vegetarian because the Hindus who live here don’t eat meat. Some of them do, I guess, along with meat-eating Muslims, but there is a tradition of non-harming and non-meat eating among them, which makes a Hindu person pretty safe for chickens. Though some of them are quite violent against other humans. Alas! Which reminds me of your aunt Pratibha, Hindu born, when she came to visit and make her film. She said to me as I was extolling your virtues: Do you still eat chickens? And I said to her, truthfully: Yes, about ten of them a year, some years; other years I might eat none; but I brush my teeth and gargle before coming down to hang out with mine. She laughed, but I have felt the seriousness of the question. So on this pilgrimage, as I’ve visited Gandhi’s cremation site, and then the place where he was martyred, and while I was led around the grounds by his granddaughter, Tara, whom I liked instantly, the way I liked you when we first met, I’ve determined not to eat the flesh of any creature, and certainly not chicken. I managed pretty well, because in addition to having this intention, I found I was drawn to the delicious variety of vegetable dals and curries that is the foundation of classic Indian cuisine.

Once, on a plane from Delhi to Bangalore the flight attendant handed me a chicken curry by mistake and I bit into it. I ate a tiny sliver and could go no further. The only other time was at a dinner in our honor in Dharamsala with the political leader of Tibet in Exile, Prof. Rinpoche. Tibetans don’t seem as dedicated to vegetarianism as Hindus, perhaps because in the Himalayas, which has a short growing season for grains, animals are traditionally raised for human sustenance, as they were in my childhood and as they are in many areas of the world. I bit into a gravy-covered piece of chicken that I thought was a mushroom, but recovered myself quickly and left the uneaten portion on my plate. It is my hope that this piece of uneaten chicken did not go to waste, after the sacrifice of the chicken’s life, but that some dog – of which we’ve seen many in Dharamsala – would be the beneficiary.

We spent part of Christmas day with a human much loved by many, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. I don’t know if he eats chicken, but as a boy his family ate pork; he tells a funny story about that, and about how much he enjoyed it. He’s very honest and down to earth about things, including eating. I find his attitude, about much of what we might consider our shortcomings, forgiving. I don’t know what one would have to do to fall completely outside his grace. How relaxing this is! I wanted a blessing on an upcoming attempt to hold a freedom march in Gaza, where 1.5 million humans are confined in a tiny space you would find intolerable, and also to ask his counsel on what the world can do to free Aung San Suu Kyi from the generals in Burma. He laughed as he spoke about the Myanmar (Burmese) generals – that they are so obviously dominated by the Chinese government – and advised working with those Palestinians and Israelis who all along have been working together to bring peace to their land; to strengthen our connection, and offer support and encouragement, to both peoples.

This seemed wise to me and it is the commitment and discipline also of CodePink, the women organizers of the march, as well. If we choose one people over the other, forgetting there are peacemakers in each group, we risk harming people who are really our allies and friends.

But that is not what I wanted to write you about. I wanted to tell you how odd it is to experience Christmas in far away lands. It is a strange holiday anyway, perhaps the strangest; devoted almost entirely to buying and selling; you would not understand it at all. Probably. Though you might enjoy leftovers from the gigantic dinners that are prepared, if they were still crunchy and not cooked to death. It is a day supposedly celebrated as the birthday of a venerated spiritual teacher, a person I happen to love very much; you would have liked him too, though I’m sure he ate everything, including chicken and the lamb he is sometimes depicted holding; and though he lived quite a long time ago. His name was Jesus, and he was from the same part of the world where we are planning to hold the freedom march; it has been a problem area, with groups of people dominated and treated badly, for some time. To try to connect the people frenetically shopping to the life of this person who grew up to teach tolerance and love, and who never shopped, going by his clothing, the current holy men come out in droves. The main one is called the Pope and he zooms around in something called a Pope Mobile. The few times I saw a television in India, usually while in transit in airports, he was everywhere. In newspapers too, there were endless pictures of him.

Guess what happened, though? Whenever I looked at an image of The Pope, he turned into One Of You! What fun this was! You were dressed as you always are; splendidly; in your iridescent feathers and vibrant red combs; only now you also wore a pointed white cap covered with jewels.

I realized, later, while visiting temples of thousands of Buddhas and Lamas and Goddesses, all graceful and intense, that as far as I’m concerned, You are missing from this realm. Not one chicken memorialized and worshiped in all these shrines. I don’t understand it. With your flesh and eggs, surely holy, you feed the world. Yet no one bows to you. How can this be?

Gandhi Samadhi

The Chicken Chronicles

Chapter Thirteen

© 2009 by Alice Walker

The elephant makes a gurgling sound, from the throat, on seeing his favorite mahout or owner. Similarly it may excrete dung, or urinate, to express its happiness. All these are considered good signs.
Wikipedia

So, girls, we went today to pay our respects to a man who never ate a single chicken!* Mahatma Gandhi. Like you, he ate only plants and grains. There is a beautiful garden surrounding the place where he was cremated. Cremation, a notion of which you are innocent, and I will not attempt to explain. And, as we were getting out of the car, guess what we saw? A big neat pile of fresh elephant dung! Right there, in front of the Samadhi entrance, in front of our feet. It was too thrilling! Of course I thought of you. It was in huge yellow balls, and I wondered about the kind of grass that bright color represented, or whether the elephant had been eating his or her lei of marigolds? Sometimes elephants are decked out beautifully with many flowers. Still chained, though. In any case, it looked like something you would spend hours scratching and pecking in. And I knew, even before I checked with Wikipedia, that this was a good sign, a message from “the Gods” of Earth: elephants and chickens and trees and so forth, that all was in divine order on this and all travels.

I also read this:
If the elephant remains motionless (without flapping its ears), when approached, then one must be wary of it. (The elephant I’d touched had flapped its ears – I sighed with relief.)
Also: In Malayalam (the language of Kerala) elephants are called kanveeran, meaning “the black hero.” So there!

All my love,
Mommy

*Mommy was mistaken about this: Rereading Gandhi's autobiography after many decades I re-discovered he did have two periods in his life when he was a meat-eater, which particularly distressed his mother. This autobiography The Story of My Experiments With Truth is invaluable for many reasons, not the least of which is Gandhi's candid assessment of child marriage: he and his bride were both thirteen. He offers insight also into how, in a patriarchal society, out of control feelings of sexuality can lead to tyranny over one's female spouse. How Gandhi treated his wife,Kasturba, as a young man, was one of the great regrets of his life.

How Many Lost On the Journey?

The Chicken Chronicles
Chapter Twelve

©2009 by Alice Walker

Losing Babe was hard. Losing Bobby, whose personality was so different, was as bad. It happened this way: a filmmaker came with a crew of four to begin a documentary about my life. I had almost forgot I’d made this commitment. There we were, the girls and me, maybe one or two roosters, guys, (we thought) all immersed in the bliss of high summer. Long days golden to the bone; plenty of food dropping off every vine and bush, fish jumping and cotton high… you get the picture. We had begun to establish a routine. Each afternoon around four o’clock, as the day was beginning to cool, I let the chickens out of their house and yard through the magic door to the outside world, and herded them over to the arbor and a daily feast of insects. I even used something that resembled a shepherd’s crook, a tall Huichol walking stick with a deer, the most revered of symbols among the Huicholes, carved at one end.

Of course I thought of Babe. How could I not? Her dried and fading blood was still on the side of the chicken house; I should have scrubbed it off, but I didn’t, which I later realized was one reason predators increased their visits. What I did instead was more typical of my kind of mind: that of a believer in art, shamanism, and inter-species magic. I hurried down to our local African Store; thank goodness one exists on our coast, and there bought a beautiful dreadlocked Haitian angel, hammered out of a metal drum, to nail over the ill-fated door that had closed on Babe’s head. This angel’s crown and halo is her hair, and at her feet are birds and in her hands are birds, and she is setting one or more of them free. In her role as angel, she is both protector and liberator. In Western thought her presence over the place where Babe died would represent a tombstone; in my thought she represents blessings, loving memory, sorrow. And, as well, a desire to be more mindful. To do better. Though as we shall see, doing better was not immediately implemented.

I feel an affinity with Haitians because of their art. Whenever boats filled with Haitians are turned back from our shores or I learn of a boat wreck with loss of hope and loss of life, I think of the hardheartedness of our country’s political machine, and the waste to our own spiritual growth. How many artists have we lost in our ignorance? Haitian art has unmistakable soul; it could surely connect with, help us grow, our own. I remember once taking a boat from Jamaica to somewhere – St. Thomas, Cuba? Just before leaving the wharf I noticed a jumble of paintings various Jamaicans (who are sometimes fabulous artists, of course), were selling cheap in an effort to make money off the tourists: lots of sunsets and palm trees and people in straw hats. In the large pile there was one painting that was like no other, though the economical use of paint and the cheapness of canvas looked much the same. It was of a green hillside overlooking a boulder-punctured ocean and there were many small white, orange-roofed houses. That was all. It was clearly Haitian in passion, in longing, and in an aching serenity that was quite unexpected, given the trials of Haitian life. Stunning. I bought it for a few dollars; it has hung in my bedroom, the first work of art I see every morning, ever since. There is a book called The Miracle of Haitian Art that explains why Haitian art sometimes has this effect. Though I seem to have parted with my copy, it is one of my most valued books. Once, on the front page of The New York Times there was a photograph of a Haitian woman, clearly A mother, The Mother, Our Mother, carefully making round white biscuits, spreading them out before her on the ground to dry. They were to be consumed by hungry Haitians and were made out of clay. This image, like the reality, is heartbreaking and unacceptable. If we can develop our sense of collectivity with others, and compassion for our collective self, it need not signal our fate. It is true we can look away from such a scene for a short while, but it will eventually catch up to, and include, us.
But I digress.

Tired of talking about myself, after many hours with the film crew - though this was done in front of redwoods and pots of lavender - I withdrew to have supper and a rest. All along I had been aware of, distracted by, something new happening with the chickens: they followed the sound of my voice. Lovely! So, wherever I was being interviewed, there they turned up. I adored this, and enjoyed the way they looked as they scratched and explored fresh terrain in their newly acquired freedom. Is there anything more captivating than the complete self-absorption of insect hunting chickens? I don’t think so. As I was leaving the last interview though, they decided they still had a few insects to locate and consume and so could not be sung down the hill to their house. The film crew offered to see them home. It was getting late, the sun about to go down. Chickens look for their roosts as soon as they lose the sun. It should be easy for the film crew to drop bits of corn in front of them and thereby lead them down the hill. So I thought.

In the middle of the night, though, I woke abruptly from a deep sleep. I could feel something was wrong. Grabbing boots and flashlight and jumping into the “whoopdi” a vehicle I use to drive down the hill at night, I went to check on the chickens. I entered their house and carefully counted them as they slept soundly on their roosting posts. I was one short. I went round and round outside the chicken yard looking for whoever was missing. There was not a movement, not a sound.

Next morning, early, I came down to see what I could do. I discovered it was Bobby, a member of the Barred Rock Trio that was missing. She/He had a habit of running past the ladder that led back into the chicken house, and getting stuck in a corner outside the yard. This was amusing to me; it made me laugh to watch her misunderstanding of the nature of corners, being backed into or stuck in one. A corner is always temporary; it can be backed out of! Humans forget this also and flail away fruitlessly whenever they find themselves stuck. It is better to sit still, maybe take a nap, right there in the offending “corner” and see what comes to one. Like magic, after a rest, all corners develop windows! Passageways, doors! Besides, there’s always the space directly over one’s head that is hopefully (many believe) inhabited by one’s Higher Power. Perhaps Bobby would have learned this, had she lived.

I looked everywhere. Having no success, I decided, though it was morning, to let the chickens out again, before the film crew woke up. This I did. However, as they happily ran over to their favorite insect hunting area beneath the arbor, and I turned to close the garden gate, I heard a loud squawk and turned just in time to see a figure, as big as a dog, dark gray, already in the midst of the chickens. I ran to their defense and the creature disappeared into the woods. In less than a flash, it was gone. The chickens were so disturbed, however, it was easy to talk them back to the shelter of their home.

I searched the area again and, near the corner of the chicken house where Bobby used to get stuck I saw a tiny nest of feathers. Not even enough feathers to notice, unless you were really looking. The predator, whatever it was, had more or less inhaled Bobby. I wondered if Bobby had made the sound that, though I did not remember it, had awakened me from sleep.

I went to the Internet. There I learned of the many creatures, other than humans, that like to eat chickens. Foxes, raccoons, snakes, rats, bobcats, mountain lions, hawks, gophers and coyotes, maybe even voles and moles.

I blamed my exhaustion for not seeing the flock home safely, myself. And the vanity it requires to help create a documentary about one’s self. The hardest part was watching Gertrude Stein day after day wait for, and look for, Bobby, who had been her special friend. They had napped side by side in the heat of the day, their bodies half-buried in dirt and straw. They had hunted insects together under the wood chips in the garden; they had roosted side by side each night on the roosting post. Gertrude’s face was wistful, sad, waiting. I wondered if she had witnessed Bobby’s disappearance; if so, it must have shocked and frightened her. I wondered if she was still pondering “death,” as she had seen it; the unexpected nature of this encounter we must all experience, the incredible mystery.

I took her on my lap and talked to her the way the old people talked to children who lost loved ones when I was little. I was astounded to hear myself talking about Bobby being up in heaven, with angels playing on harps and sitting on golden settees. I don’t believe in a heaven other than earth. Still, since these were all chicken angels and the golden settees resembled nests of straw, and Gertrude Stein seemed to like the story, I, like the old people of my youth, went on and on with it, embellishing as I went.