"She" For Gloria Steinem

© 2009 by Alice Walker

She is the one
who will notice
that the first snapdragon
of Spring
is
in bloom;

She is the one
who will tell the most
funny
&
complicated
joke.

She is the one
who will surprise you
by knowing the difference
between turnips
and collard
Greens;

& between biscuits
& scones.

She is the one who knows where
to take you
for dancing
or where the food
& the restaurant's
decor
are not
to be
missed.

She is the one
who is saintly.

She is the one
who reserves the right
to dress
like a slut.

She is the one
who takes you shopping;

She is the one
who knows where
the best clothes
are bought
cheap.

She is the one
who warms your
home
with her fragrance;

the one who brings
music, magic & joy.

She is the one
speaking
the truth
from her heart.

She is the one at the bedside
wedding, funerals
or divorce
of all the best people
you dearly love.

She is the one
with courage.

She is the one
who speaks
her bright mind;

She is the one
who encourages young &
old
to do the same.

She is the one
on the picket line, at the barricade,
at the prison, in jail;

She is the one
who is there.

If they come for me
& I am at her house
I know
she will hide me.

If I tell her
where I have hidden
my heart
she will keep
my secret
safe.

She is the one
who
without hesitation
comes to my aid &
my defense.

She is the one
who believes
my side of the story
First;

She is the one
whose heart
is open.

She is the one who loves.

She is the one who makes
activism
the most compelling
because she is the one
who is irresistable
her own self.

She is our sister, our teacher, our friend:

Gloria Steinem.

Born 75 years ago
Glorious
To your parents
& still
Radiant
Today.

Happy Birthday, Beloved.
The grand feast
Of your noble Spirit
Has been
& is the cake
that nourishes
Us.

We thank you for your Beauty
& your Being.

Namaste.

By Alice Walker,
April 20, 1997 New York City
The 92nd St. Y

Italicized portion of the poem written in September, 2009

This poem was written for Gloria Steinem by Alice Walker in 1997, and in honor of Gloria's 75th Birthday will be featured in the upcoming Ms. Magazine, hitting the newstands on November 3. Get a hard copy of this collectible edition, which has a cover featuring both Alice Walker and Gloria Steinem.

www.msmagazine.com

Who Knew?

Who Knew What Would Happen Next? The Chicken Chronicles
©2009 by Alice Walker

Chapter Two

Who knew what would happen next? Who could guess? That I would fall headlong into a mystery. That I would find myself pulled into the parallel universe all the other animals exist in, simultaneous with us. In other words, before a couple of days had passed, watering and feeding the chickens, I had fallen in love with them. They were so undeniably gorgeous; their feathers of gold and orange and black, the designs on them. I couldn't believe I had gone years without seeing such extravagance of wearable art. And of course I did not know who they were. I asked E.G., who calls me Mom. I call him Hijo. Son. Hijo, how did you manage to find such beautiful chickens? He shrugged: Well, Mom, I just said five of these and six of those and three of the other guys. And it was true, they were different. The Barred Rocks were black and white and I'd seen their kind before. There were three of them, already aggressive and jumpy, we thought they'd turn into roosters. The others though, who seemed dressed to dazzle?

I looked on the Internet (another dazzling creation: the thing most like the wonder and spontaneity of Nature, it seems to me, that humans have conjured): there are so many kinds of chickens! Who knew? Growing up, my mother had mostly ordered, from the Sears Roebuck catalog, Rhode Island Reds.

At first, going by their feathers, I thought they might be Araucanas, a South American breed. But it turned out those chickens are rumpless. Imagine. And that the people who raise them like this because....without a rump it is harder for creatures, in the jungle and out, to catch them. This is too basic. Anyway, looking further, I saw the tufted ear feathers, the glowing, perfectly variegated back and tail feathers that my new chickens were sporting. They were Ameraucanas, and apparently, among other wonders, they lay blue and green eggs. Aquarians love these colors. But for eggs, I have to say, I’ve always preferred brown. It’s content of character though, as we know.

Years ago I had bought a tiny metal stool and for a good twenty-five years never had time to sit on it. I had painted it green, though, with a bit of hope. I found it, placed it in a corner of the chicken yard, and sat.

They were making a sound I hadn't heard since childhood, maybe infancy, and had forgotten. A kind of queraling (I made up this word because that's what the sound is like: part chortle, part quarrel). When I offered cracked corn they crowded round and ate it from my hands. When done, the one I would name Babe, jumped into my lap, much to the interest of Gertrude Stein who considered my other knee also a lap. They liked to roost, I saw, and chose any elevation above the ground: the garbage cans in which their food is stored, the water dispenser, the roosting bars that I made from a few odd sticks. Babe settled into my arms (Gertrude S. having hopped away in search of a bug) like she’d always been there, drowsy and quiet, as if she were a cat.

Who knew?

***

Adopting An Orphanage - JOIN ALICE WALKER in Sonoma County on Sunday, October 25!

Adopting An Orphanage
©2009 by Alice Walker

Alice thinks Africa is a magical and worthy Mother of Humanity, whatever may be happening there; and she has had the honor, and the pain, of experiencing Mother Africa in some of its most challenging situations. She has ceased trying to explain, even to herself, why the eyes and smiles of African children never leave her, or why the quiet strength and tender wisdom of African elders stir her emotions. Or why her friends, the writers and artists, musicians and dancers of Africa strike her as human miracles. Like so many contemporary people Alice's ancestry is mixed: African, Native American, European, and yet it is Africa that seems to have a permanent call to her heart.

Alice went to Africa for the first time as a college student, in 1964, under the auspices of The Experiment in International Living. In a remote village in Kenya, she and her companions built a school for the local children out of sisal stalks,the only material available. Later she would return to Africa to research the practice of Female Genital Mutilation, which led to a novel POSSESSING THE SECRET OF JOY, a film, WARRIOR MARKS: The Sexual Blinding of Women (directed by Pratibha Pamar) and a book by the same name. She would return many times to monitor the advance of the abolition of FGM and to visit her friends.

Alice's belief in education is total, having been raised in a poor, highly intelligent family in which education was prized almost as much as food. Her parents led the effort to build the first school for black children in their community: it was immediately burned to the ground by descendants of slave-owners who wished to keep tenant farming families ignorant. She has understood, since her first visit to Africa, how the West has used African labor and resources to enrich its own people, while leaving Africa with less than it needs to support and sustain itself. The "mystery" of Africa's poverty, its lack of a strong, well educated middle class, has never been mysterious to her.

Alice has found the reality of upwards of 12,000,000 orphans in Africa, whose parents have died of AIDS, especially hard to wrap her mind around. For a while she thought her obligation was to adopt at least one, possibly two, of these children. However, thinking rationally, this did not seem feasible, given Alice's age and her great distraction of mind, which has often been pointed out to her.

Once, while in Rwanda, she met a young boy, David, whose mother Vestine, she was supporting through the organization WOMEN FOR WOMEN INTERNATIONAL. Vestine's family had been murdered, Vestine has AIDS. There were four children living in a mud apartment whose dust was so thick that Alice, having spent only an hour inside, coughed for weeks afterward. David was twelve years old but looked five. He had never had enough food to eat. He was, in spite of all this, gorgeous, and he and Alice took to each other immediately. He owned only one toy, a truck so tiny it fit his hand; he could close his fingers around it. This toy made him happy, as did walking with Alice to the vehicle that carried her away from him. Take me with you, he cried. Alice didn't know how to take him with her; nor how she would manage to take care of him, if the Rwanda government would let him go. His voice, however, haunted her. It does still. It always will.

What to do?

Maybe instead of adopting an orphan, she finally thought, I can adopt an orphanage. And she tried a couple on for size. What was missing, in each case, was a sense of connection with the adults running the orphanage as well as with the children. At one orphanage in Kigali she was sent a bank number, for deposits, but no word of how she might learn the day to day activities of the children. Or see pictures of them. At another, pretty much the same. It was only when she met Kwamboka Okari, whose niece was already a friend of Alice's in Berkeley, and they talked over dinner, that she realized that, perhaps, she had found her orphanage.
The Margaret Okari Children's Foundation.

Alice realizes that Earth is in dire straits, and that there is everything to be done, but she also knows the earth is forgiving and very willing. If everyone does even a little, all that needs to be done will be done. This is clear to her from her own life as one small being from one small place in the world, but with a belief in service inherited from her parents, and a deep love of people, and a faith in them, that she apparently brought in at birth.

Adopting an orphan still appeals to her. After all, as we say these days: Sixty-five is the new Fifty. If one appears, she will receive it with joy. But if one does not, she is happy to be Auntie to any number of children in orphanages, having adopted the institution itself as guardian of the child.

--

Alice has written some thirty books(four to be published) and received numerous awards, but nothing comes close to the feeling of happiness she receives from knowing she has helped one little Being climb onto her/his bed at night, with a full tummy, with dreams of new books to read and new sums to configure, when morning comes.

Join us for a delightful afternoon conversation with Author, Activist and Visionary, Alice Walker in Sonoma County on Sunday, October 25, 2009. Click on the link below the image for more information about the event and to purchase tickets.

A CONVERSATION WITH ALICE WALKER

Well Done - Obama and the Nobel Prize

When I think of Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, for which, after all, he didn't audition, I think about that photograph of him with his feet up on a desk, and there's a hole in one very worn shoe. This is someone who has stood up for himself and for the good of the human group for a long time, even though he's still relatively young. I personally think all prizes are risky, they often come with strings, even if a "string" is just other people's freedom to tell you how much you didn't deserve to win. But this one is a timely confirmation of Obama's dogged faith in humanity and more particularly, in Americans: that if talked to as if we have sense, we will, possibly, act sensibly. The Prize recognizes that we are at long last being guided by someone who deeply cares for us, wants us to have peace (though how to achieve it will take everyone's best behavior and thought and a bit less blaming of the recently elected Commander) and who is, as he has stated, "not naive" about the politics of the world we live in and the frightening war machinery he has inherited.

It's healthy, I think, to face the reality that, having built so much war technology, our military may well be unable as well as disinclined to refrain from using it. War is big business, and, as one of our former presidents put it: the business of America is business. Still, the Nobel Peace Prize is confirmation that one's peaceful intentions have been noted, and, as well, in Obama's case, the deep inner peace that appears to be his very nature.

Pax Ameraucana or The Chicken Chronicles

Pax Ameraucana or the Chicken Chronicles
©2009 by Alice Walker

Chapter One

For my fortieth birthday I had two wishes. To sing with Sweet Honey in the Rock and to visit Bali. I fulfilled them both: Singing with Sweet Honey for Sisterfire, a celebration of women artists in D.C., and going to Bali where my partner and I rented a house that faced rice paddies and waterfalls. Bali enchanted me. I was returned to a relaxed openness of spirit I had thought lost. (Back home the heat was on because of a novel I had written and a movie that was about to be based on it.) One afternoon, returning from a fire dance (real fire, not criticism) and the stunning Ubud market (that would change drastically and not for the better I would observe in later years) I noticed, as if for the first time, a chicken and her brood crossing the path in front of me. She was industrious and quick, focused and determined. Her chicks were obviously well provided for and protected under her care. I was stopped in my tracks, as if I had never seen a chicken before. And in a way, I hadn't. Though I grew up in the South where we raised chickens every year, for meat and for eggs, and where, from the time I was eight or nine, my job was to chase down the Sunday dinner chicken and wring its neck. But had those chickens been like this one? Why hadn't I noticed? Had I noticed? I wrote about this episode in an essay: "Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road," which appears in a collection of essays that charts my re-awakening to the Natural world, called Living By the Word. In that essay I interpret this odd encounter with the mother hen and her chicks as an attempt by “the Universe” to help me along in my vegetarianism. Having been raised on a diet that prominently featured Southern Fried Chicken, it was proving difficult to stay the vegetarian course.

Years went by. As they do.

Once I stopped moving about quite so much my interest in chickens, and memory about that particular chicken, asserted itself. I realized I was concerned about chickens, as a Nation, and that I missed them. (Some of you will want to read no further). I also realized I ate so many eggs, I should get to know the chickens laying them. Whenever I visited someone with chickens that they tended with respect, I felt reassured. I wanted chickens of my own.

One night at dinner with the Garcia-Balandrans, a young couple and their sons who are my neighbors, I broached the subject of my longing. The youngest boy’s eyes glowed at the mention of chickens, which I thought a good sign. He is five. The older boy, nine, seemed interested as well. Their parents and I, and my partner, theorized about how to handle the logistics of raising chickens for their eggs, and of course, sharing the eggs. At first we thought we’d have a cage on wheels that we could drive back and forth from my house to theirs, letting the chickens fertilize our respective gardens on a rotational basis. We soon dropped this idea because it seemed cumbersome and messy. Plus we both have raised beds. What we decided might work would be for them to get the chickens started, when they were chicks, and then transfer them to my place when a chicken house I was dreaming of building had been completed.

This actually happened. The boys loved the chickens, and enjoyed caring for them. By mid-summer when the beautiful chicken condo was ready for occupants, more chicks had been ordered to raise at their house, and their parents had bought them a dog. The day of transfer was joyful. Everyone loved the chicken house and yard, right next to my garden, so the chickens would have plenty of fresh produce, and admired the spacious interior of the chicken house, it’s roosts and its laying nests which I had lovingly and with hopefulness filled with straw.

Sitting on the ground inside the chicken yard, I was astounded when a chicken strolled over and hopped up into my lap. The boys had interacted with the chickens so tenderly that they had no fear of humans. Instead this one sat very still, as I instinctively cradled it and began to coo and stroke its reddish colored feathers. I instantly named her Gertrude, and later would call her by her full name: Gertrude Stein. She looked nothing like Gertrude Stein, of course, but I found whenever I called her Gertrude (I soon abandoned “Gerty”) the Stein naturally followed. Over the next few weeks there would be Babe, Babe 2, Hortensia, Splendor, Glorious, Rufus and Agnes of God, to name a few.

***

--

What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?

From Turning Madness into Flowers: A Book of Common Praise

What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?

© 2009 by Alice Walker

His posture

From so many years

Holding his robe with one hand

Is odd.

His gait

Also.

One’s own body

Aches

Witnessing

The sloping

Shoulders

& Angled

Neck;

One hopes

He

Attends

Yoga class

Or does Yoga

On his own

As part

Of prayer.

He smiles

As he bows

To Everything:

Accepting

The heavy

Burdens

Of

This earth;

It’s

Toxic

Evils

& Prolific

Insults.

Even so,

He sleeps

Through

The night

Like a child

Because

Thank goodness

That is something

Else

Daylong

Meditation

Assures.

You could cry

Yourself to sleep

On his behalf

& He

Has done that

Too.

Life

Has been

A great

Endless

Tearing away

For

Him.

From

Mother, Father, Siblings, Country, Home.

And yet

Clearly

His mother

Loved him;

His brother & sister

Too:

Even his

Not so constant father,

Who

When Tenzin was

A boy

Shared

With him

Delicious

Scraps

Of

Succulent

Pork.

He laughs

Telling this

Story

Over half a century

Later

&

To who knows

How many

Puzzled

Vegetarians:

About

The way he sat

Behind

His father’s chair

Like a dog,

Relishing

Each juicy

Greasy

Bite.

Whenever I see

The Dalai Lama

My first impulse

Is to laugh

I am so happy

To

Lay eyes

On

One

So effortlessly

Beautiful.

That balding head

That holds

A shine;

Those wire framed

Glasses

That might

Have come

From

Anywhere.

That look of having offered

All he has.

He is my teacher;

Just staying alive.

Other teachers

I have had

Resemble him

In some way;

They too

Were

&

Are

Smart

And Humble;

Fascinated

By Science & things like

Time,

Eternity,

Cause & Effect;

The Evolution

Of the Soul.

A

Soul

That

Might

Or might not

Exist.

They too

See all of us

-Banker, murderer, gardener, thief –

When they look

Out across

The world:

But that is not all

They see.

They see our suffering;

Our striving

To find

The right path;

The one with heart

We may only

Have heard

About.

The Dalai Lama is Cool

A modern word

For

“Divine”

Because he wants

Only

Our collective

Health

& Happiness.

That’s it!

What makes

Him

Lovable

Is

His holiness.

***