Waiting for "Above the School"

Will and I are escaping Halloween. We're leaving town for Nye Beach in Newport. My sister Marti and husband Chuck are coming for the weekend to take care of mom. Mom will be all ready for their visit, new haircut, Halloween t-shirt and orange socks with black cats all over them. She will have fun.

When we go to Nye Beach we stay at "Above the School," a cozy cottage like apartment, Mary Englebert style, above the Montessori School. The greyed ceder shake building with a well rusted gate through which you can see window boxes of red gernaniums is surrounded by purple hydrangeas, bright yellow margarites, iris. We climb the stairs on the side of the building and let ourselves in with the hidden key. No neighbors; the whole space to ourselves. The front room with its colorful chintz futon couch and wood stove welcomes us. Down two steps from the small kitchen area are two bedrooms. The one on the left has a bed carved into the wall with down mattress, just enough for one person to curl up into, like a squirrel in a nest. The bedroom we pick has a big feather bed with iron headboard. The pillows and comforters are all down. It's usually dark when we get there. It's a favorite thing for me to wake up as the morning light streams through the white organza curtains from windows which fill one and a half walls. I roll over and open my eyes in the room which is small enough that the bed seems nestled into the view, coastline, all the way around.

Will always laughs at me because wherever I go, I always completely unpack and put things away in drawers as if I'm moving in. I hide the suitcase from sight. In New York, the first thing I did even before unpacking was to pick up a bouquet of flowers for the room. Here on Nye Beach, I usually go to a specialty store the next morning and buy some handmade soap with lavender essential oil, and a bag of China Rose tea from the tea shop, and make myself a fresh pot of tea each day to go with a good book. There's a teapot there because I bought one at a Newport second hand store for a very good price and left it there last time for all of us who share "Above the School" as a special hideaway.

Will and I bring books. Will usually brings non-ficgtion. I usually pick something very Victorian English, a mystery or Jane Austin spin off. But this time I am taking Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min. It's a "true novel." Anchee Min fleshes out the characters with details of their feelings and lives so that the reader becomes lost in the characters. No objectivity. This "true novel" is a well researched story of Mao Tse Tung's third wife, known to us as Jiang Ching, former actress and known to the West as one of the infamous Gang of Four, responsible for the bloody Cultural Revolution. I am intrigued with the protagonist who is referred to in the beginning only as "the girl," fatherless, raised by a single mother. "The girl" rebels against having her feet bound and throws them off as her feet begin to fester and swell and rot. Eventually, the mother must leave the girl with her grandparents, and disappears from her life forever. The girl is taught opera by her grandfather who has no grandsons to pass his knowledge to and is given a name Yunhe. I have followed her through her Shanghai days as Lan Ping, Blue Apple, her men, her illusive brush with fame.

I like the device Anchee Min uses where the point of view changes continuously. It doesn't get in the way. It imitates human relationship, going from one layer to another and then back again. I will take with me to Nye Beach Mao's young third wife, named on her wedding night Jiang Ching, Green River, by her husband Mao Tse Tung. The wife of the most powerful, known man in China, Jiang Ching lives in a cave hidden from Chiang Kai Shek as well as the Japanese, washing dishes, sewing in the background as her husband and his chosen comrades meet for hours and at all hours of the night. In her words, "I am playing a strange role, a queen who is a maid."

Will has put up with me this past month playing along with my questions, "What do you think we'll do when we get there?"

We will walk on the beach,"

"We can go to the gallery, maybe a movie?"

I go on the internet to see if there is anything at the Performing Arts Center. It's the Red Octopus Theater presenting Chekov's "Cherry Orchard." We enjoy live performance and the Center is justa short walk down the road from "Above the School" toward the beach .

"Can we go for tea at the tea shop?"

"Of course. And Friday, we'll go to Arr Restaurant right next door."

I'm excited because the food is wonderfully cooked, always changing, organic and fresh. Soft classical music plays in the background but the host and her husband the cook carry on lively conversation with their steady stream of local and out of town customers, New York style. We know so much about them. I wonder, did they buy their daughter the car? Did they visit Monte Rey again? Are they voting for Obama since they had wanted to impeach Bush.

"There's that little cafe where the tables are outside and there's a big rock fire pit and musicians too," I say.

"ummhmmm."

"And to the wharf to see the sea lions?"

Tonight is the night before the day we take off! We hear it'll rain. Luckily rain is one of my favored weather. Everything smells better in the rain. But if it doesn't rain, and stays blue skies, we will be just as happy! I imagine the ride through the Oregon Coast Range, the maple turning fall colors against the dense evergreen.

Linda Yapp who owns "Above the School" is the teacher of the Montesori school below. "Above the School" once was her apartment. She eventually bought it, and kept it for sentimental reasons even after she married and moved to a house. Because she is a teacher, she gives teachers, even retired ones, a 10 percent discount. Otherwise, for everyone, the first night is full price, but the following days are less. I am posting this because some of you might be on the Oregon Coast sometime, and now you will know how to access this homey place, the sweetest secret in Nye Beach.

WE'RE HOME!! The weather was perfect! Every walk on the beach was either calm weather or with those gusty breezes which refresh and plays with your hair. And we read with rain spattering against the window, cozy, drinking tea and looking out at the grey seascape with white curls for waves. We saw a community performance of Chekov. It was fun. You know how it is, the performers enjoy themselves, and one can't be picky about ages and costumes. So the actor playing the eldest daughter was the same age as her elderly mother, and Will got confused whether her suitor was in love with the mother instead. (He was just flattering her to sell her cherry orchard.) And the director came out in the dance scene in his 2008 clothes and haircut and I had a moment where I thought Chekov had included visitors who stepped out of a time machine and no one noticed. Perhaps he was doing an Alfred Hitchcock thing where the director walks through the movie. But while Hitchcock's walk through was so subtle, one couldn't help focusing on the director who just stood there, framed by the curtain, and I'm afraid I missed "the action" which went on downstage. Daylight savings time happened during our trip so it did seem like a time warp. It gets dark so early now. Before the trip, dark by 7-ish. Tonight dark at 5:30 pm.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

I have bad techno luck. I was on My Space and one day, they no longer accepted my password. Friend Tom tried to help then disappeared . . . forever. I got on Facebook. My friends who forced me to for the purpose of easy meeting notification said it was easy. Facebook changed their format and my computer couldn't handle the change. I have a new computer, but again, there is a glitch between us that does not allow me to respond to Facebook friends. And what the heck is a superpoke? Now blogspot says I have to have a google account to continue accessing my blog -- and you guessed it. When I tried to start a google account, the little yellow square flashes the message that it cannot recognize my present email and I'm stuck on page one no matter how many times I may push "next."

So I think the demise of misajoo.blogspot.com is imminent. If I disappear, I will try to rise up somewhere else and try to keep my name. Until then, I'll just keep trying to get on blogspot the regular way without the google address.

I'm bummed. They seemed so friendly.

Joo the Blogger says Please Vote!

JOO the Blogger votes Obama!

Forgive me for the "corn" but I've been wanting to say that for the past week. When Angry Asian Man advertised "Cho the Plumber" t-shirts, I was thinking about making a "Joo the Blogger votes Obama" tee for myself.

My last name, Joo, is pronounced Joe. I remember complaining about the spelling to a couple of sanseis with the same last name because so many mispronounced my last name Jue. They were so lucky their name was spelled Jio.

"I wish we spelled it Jio too," I said.

"No you don't," said one.

The other joined in, "Yeah. They mispronounce it anyway. They call us J-ten."

To End the Vietnam War

The three women walked up to sit in front of the audience. Ms. Dang, regal in stature and demeanor, her translator Ms. Huyen and young Ms. Tran whose age is indiscernible. She was without legs, and her rounded face and rose-like complexion made her look much younger than her 22 years. The three women spoke softly without microphones. They traveled far from Vietnam to speak to the American people on the fourth Vietnam Agent Orange Justice Tour on behalf of victims of the Dow and Monsanto chemical companies’ Agent Orange used during the war in Vietnam by American forces. The victims represent the three million affected in Vietnam, tens of thousands of American veterans and Canadians also exposed to the chemicals, and many Vietnamese Americans as well as the second and third generations who continue to be victimized by Agent Orange. As Ms. Dang says, although her health has been greatly weakened, she feels a great commitment to travel and speak on behalf of the many victims who cannot even move or speak.

Accompanying them was a US organizer for the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign who pointed out that the chemical companies used Agent Orange as a defoliant even though they knew that its toxicity would kill humans, that it would get into the chromosomes. They knew that the dioxin was not necessary but, as she said, it was greed and racism that allowed them to create a quick and dirty agent. “They didn’t care about the time and temperature of the materials. They didn’t care about the US
and Canadian soldiers using the agent. They didn’t care about the Vietnamese.”

Amy Pincus, local activist who was videoing the evening gave the audience some chilling news. She spoke up and informed the audience she also was a victim of Agent Orange. OSU professor Mark Newton was given Agent Orange as late as 1975 and it was sprayed as a defoliant over clear-cut areas all over the Northwest. She explained that the toxin bonds to the sediment, that it is carried through the water systems.

The speakers informed those assembled that although there have been some movement, justice is at a stalemate. Dow has only cleaned one hotspot. Although the Vietnamese government and the people do whatever they can to support the millions with their plight -- health care, day care (because of the severe birth deformities of the second generation where most are trapped in their bodies and beds and must be cared for in every way), it is far from enough. On the US front, veterans affected by Agent Orange and their families are stuck in bureaucracy having to prove their eligibility for help. Their children and grandchildren affected by Agent Orange are not covered.

I am posting this because it is something I felt would help the US, all of us, begin to leave the war behind. The speakers ask for very little although the need is great. They ask that Americans bring this issue to the forefront of our legislature and President to push for what would be like a Marshall Plan and which covers the American veterans and the Vietnamese Americans and the victims in Vietnam and the land which has been affected. Once again, it is the former enemies who carry the banner for the American veterans who have until very recently been shoved into a closet by their own country, veterans who have become the scapegoats of the shame caused by the disasterous policies of the Vietnam Conflict. Find out more at www.vnagentorange.org/inhumaneelement

I have learned that there is only one way to leave the war behind and that is to deal with the unfinished business rather than burying the past. An aging generation of Vietnam veterans has spent a lifetime of isolation and non-support. It is a sad statement that for many veterans of the Vietnam war, the first people who acknowledged their suffering and loss, and who welcomed them back into the human family were their former enemies. That is where my own first steps to leave the war began about fourteen years ago -- led by a team of veterans who returned to Vietnam with World Team Sports.

Asia Society put the World Team Sports venture called the Vietnam Challenge on the Internet for school children all over America to access January, 1998. I decided to get my students online for the Vietnam Challenge which brought together veterans from both sides of the Vietnam war to bicycle the length of Vietnam. For many US vets, this was their first time back and some went with anxiety and fear in their heart returning to a land where they had lost their youth and belief in humanity. The team was comprised by men and women, able bodied and disabled. Some were blind and rode in bicycle carts. Some were blind and rode tandem. Some had no legs and rode hand-cycles. Before the winter break, Jefferson students emailed questions to the Vietnam Challenge vets to answer at their various stops along the way. Mildly curious, sixth and eighth grade students logged on after their winter break to read the first words written by the World Team Sports veterans.

I learned the hard way, breaking down in front of my class when I read the emailed journalizing from the American vets, to read by myself after school hours. Their raw honesty broke through feelings which had been buried deep inside me and I couldn’t hold back the tears. For the duration of the Challenge, that’s what I did each evening, sit in front of my computer, sobbing out loud. I wasn’t the only one. Many of us teaching at Jefferson were youth during this era, and most of us were part of the Peace Movement. The Vietnam Challenge cyclists took us all back to our youth. For me, the deaths of Sammy, Chuck, Jim, high school and college classmates who died in ’68, ’69 spurred me to join the peace movement. I remember walking alone downtown at night after a phone call about Sammy Rodriguez dying the first month of combat in Vietnam and turning to the refuge of the First Methodist Church. The church door was locked. I don’t know why that became the focal point of my anger. It somehow represented the nation’s leaders and the policies which had kept us in that war for the duration of my college years, and now Sammy, the first of his family to go to college, drafted out of his senior year when his grades suffered from one bad term, and dead that summer. It was wrong and no one was there to listen. I felt betrayed -- by church, by country -- and fell into a dark hopelessness. The only light, which I grasped onto eventually, was activism in the anti-war movement and the Asian American movement. The Peace Movement in Eugene was city-wide, based both on campus and in community. Returning Vietnam Vets and university students as well as the community formed the leadership. The funny thing is I don’t know how it ended. It just kind of petered out one day with news reports of baby airlifts as hundreds of children were taken out of Vietnam and away from their families. It’s a fog to me still. We just returned to business as usual, cramming everything down inside. And the veterans were swept into a corner with yesterday’s news.

Twenty years later, in my classroom after hours through the Vietnam Challenge, I came face to face with Vietnam again. The students were surprised by the flood of emotion coming through the Internet as US veterans shared generously and honestly their deepest emotions with the young people. Each question was answered with such care and thoroughness. The Challenge veterans were not just the young people’s eyes on a beautiful peaceful country, which had come far from war. The Challenge veterans became their time machine transporting them to a harsh time, which divided their nation, parent against children, brother against brother.

The email conversation between the veterans and American students evolved into a friendship. The veterans were very open and honest with their feelings and all of it poured out. Students had favorites: Jose Ramos who called them “little brothers and little sisters” and cared about their future; Wayne Smith who answered each question with such respect for the youth; Artie Guerrero who promised Jefferson students that he would visit them on his hand cycle. There was “Elvis” a Vietnamese man whose goal was to make 1000 American friends. We told him he had made 530 at Jefferson.

My students learned from the cyclists that this was the first time they felt embraced, welcomed and forgiven, and that feeling of Grace came from their former enemies, not their fellow citizens. They had not been welcomed home, yet, to America.

A student in my class demanded, “Why did the veterans feel that they weren’t welcomed home?” Teachers had to grapple with some tough questions.

The students were also struck with what Jose Ramos wrote, that he learned that Vietnam was a country, not a war. That phrase began the conversation, “what can we do to end the war in our own hearts?”

Twelve students decided they would study Vietnam further. I asked them students to ask 100 or more students in the lunchroom “what do you think of when I say Vietnam?” They came back with the answers -- war, hate, and killing. Only a couple said family or friend because they themselves had family members or friends who were Vietnamese.

Clearly, there was a need if we were to finally leave the war behind.

I recruited a graduate student from Vietnam to meet with the twelve. Their mentor was an international student from Hue named Khoi Truang, gentle, kind, articulate. They learned that almost half of the country was born after the war. The majority of the population was young adults and children. For these people, born after the war, the war that is known as the American War has been over for decades. My students learned that many Americans visited Vietnam. Many of those who visited were Vietnam veterans who were welcomed, much as the cyclists, and who received some kind of closure by doing so. Vietnam was a country of trade and tourism.

Eventually, these twelve students wrote papers about what they learned and studied and decided to organize a Peace Symposium: Vietnam is a Country not a War, inviting speakers from many perspectives: Vietnam veterans, international students from Vietnam, Vietnamese Americans and to present their own findings by reading their papers to those who attended. They decided the symposium should be open to the public.

To their amazement, Asia Society based in New York City wanted to support them by flying in two very special speakers -- Artie Guererro and their favorite bicyclist, Jose Ramos. Artie would be able to keep his promise to show them his hand-cycle.

The afternoon before the conference several eighth graders with hand painted signs went to the airport to greet the veterans. Guerrero and Ramos were met with banners, bouquets and excited students. Ramos said to the TV cameras that if this had happened thirty years ago, his life would have been different.

The students had arranged for the Vietnam veterans and local vets to sit on the small stage to tell their stories. Before they began some students had written some thoughts they wanted to share and one by one stood to say a few words to honor the vets. “Mr. Schwartz, I’m glad you came home safe and taught me math.” “Mr. Dawes, I think you’re a hero for returning to Vietnam to plant an orchard of peach trees where bombs had destroyed everything and for starting an irrigation project,” “Mr. Sixkiller, thanks for coming home and teaching me more about my Native American culture.” “This is for Jose and Artie, I really admire you for all you did. I’m glad you went on the Challenge and came to our Peace Symposium.” Some more students were moved by the moment to stand and give their own impromptu thanks. “Mr. Jorgenson, you’re the best vice principal and I’m glad you came home safe.”

From that moment all carefully laid plans for the symposium went out the window. There would be no staying by the schedule. The veterans were very touched and each responded, some telling their stories, stories they said they had not even been able to tell their family yet. One told about what he had perceived as his act of cowardice for thirty years, but now sees it was an act of survival. Another told about the survivor guilt deadened by alcohol and the loss of everything he held dear from that. Mr. Jorgensen told them that even today, he is unable to sleep without a light on at night. Jose Ramos read his poems emboldened by middle schoolers who visited the night before and demanded “You’ve got to read these tomorrow to all the kids. These poems are really good!” Artie Guerrero told of that horrible night when so many died, about the person he killed because he had to to live only to find she was a woman. He continued that there was one young American kid he still had not been able to put to rest in his tormented mind, but he believed he could do it now with their patience. While he wheeled back and forth on his wheelchair, looking at a distant spot no one could go, the hundred middle schoolers crowded into the small theatre sat hushed giving him his space. After several minutes, he said firmly, “There, I’ve put him down.” As one student said as he left the room, “Wow. This has been really intense!”

There were several forums where the topic was present-day Vietnam. The international speakers were gracious and shared stories of a peaceful, growing and proud country, the country of their friend Khoi. Jefferson students who had researched Vietnam read their papers in the symposium, papers covering various topics of interest -- Cities of Vietnam; Ritual; Foods and Festivals; Ongoing Scars of War; Vietnam Challenge.

Students and staff learned that day after all the other perspectives that even though we successfully presented Vietnam as a Country not a War, the war still continued. A generation of Vietnamese bore heavy casualties. A lot of the land was still affected. As for American veterans, according to Guerrero, 58,000 veterans died in Vietnam and another 60,000 have died since by 1998 through war related causes. More importantly, everyone learned that in giving the Vietnam veteran a forum with a young audience to carry the stories on and in giving the veteran some respect, something important happened. Jose Ramos cautions us from using the word “healing.” He would prefer to say the talking and respectful listening allowed people to “move on.”

The Vietnam Peace Symposium went on each year for the next several years until one teacher and school secretery argued about the word “peace” complaining to the organizing teacher who carried it on. It was 2002, the dawn before the war in Iraq, and suddenly the word peace had become politicized once again. The two disgruntled staff demanded that there be a voice that wanted war. The secretary sent her husband to the panel that included local Arab community speakers to confront them using stereotypes about their country as they tried to share their own real experiences. The symposium persevered one more year but eventually stopped with the weirdness war brings. Over the five or six year that it continued, Jefferson’s friend Jose Ramos returned each year for three years on his own dime. His story is Jefferson’s story also.

He will write a book someday. So out of respect for that I’ll wait until Jose and I talk before I write about his friendship with Jefferson, about the play he inspired, about the "milagro" which happened here, about how he left this town a better town and more prepared. The war in Iraq goes almost as long as the Vietnam War. With this preparedness, the anti war movement and community has not forgotten the soldier and have welcomed home soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. The movement has also stood side by side with families of soldiers, some badly injured, who made the difficult lonely choice to resist. Small groups have stood vigil even through the rain on the corner or marched en masse, filling the streets to end the war and bring our young people home, and lobbied our congressional delegation to vote for funding for veterans benefits and support.

Also we have sent 500 yellow postcards to Washington DC to commemorate a day to finally Welcome Home the Vietnam Veteran, a campaign which Jose Ramos bicycled across the country to spread having caught that vision at Jefferson Middle School. George Bush did not sign the bill introduced by the Congressional delegation of CA and passed by House and Senate.
But the movement Jose Ramos began, the March 30 Welcome Home, Vietnam Veteran Day did not die on George Bush's desk. Check out the website www.whvvd.org and see how you can organize one at your own home. Welcoming home the soldier of the Vietnam War is not a yes or no to the long and destructive war which split our generation in half. It is to take our share of the burden and responsibility and bring "the family together" by showing the love, respect and acknowledgement of sacrifice the veterans have always deserved.

A middle school and a veteran from Whittier, CA led our community’s journey out of the Vietnam War, but with the 4th Vietnam Agent Orange Justice Tour I am reminded how long the road out of war, how long the road that victims of the war have had to travel alone unless we keep learning. Please educate your friends and neighbors about the unimaginable scope of suffering caused by Agent Orange in Vietnam, the people and the land. Millions. At home, the Vietnam veterans’ families and the veteran have had to fight for every bit of benefit they had earned. The panel educated us how important it is for the veteran's descendents to also receive benefits. Every victim of Agent Orange is not recognized by the government and suffer without benefits. I ask everyone to become educated and write your senators and congressional delegation to hold the US chemical manufacturers responsible and to hold the US government responsible to provide significant and meaningful compensation to the Vietnamese and significant medical and coverage for the Vietnam veterans AND their descendents.Please support the work of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange.

As part of an peace movement, I believe our work does not end with the last helicopter out of Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan. All of our work begins after the soldiers come home, between nations, to fix what has been devastated and support those who have suffered in all countries involved. The burden should not be shouldered only by the grassroots people and service organizations, by the medical community, the veteran and families. It must also be shouldered by the governments who waged the war and corporations who profit from them.

Mom's Historic Vote

Mom and I sent in our ballots Friday for this historic election, historic nationally, and historic right here at home.

I admit that no election including this one was from my heart like the Jackson campaign. Jesse Jackson stood for everything I believed in. He represented our generation's mission. Since then I have become increasingly aware that the two party system is tweedle dum and dummer. Change will not come that way. The Obama campaign is really no different than the others, in my heart, except I was inspired enough to vote, to do the bumper sticker and lawn sign, to contribute because he is the first African American candidate to capture the nomination, first intelligent, dignified nominee for the party and that felt good. He is not an embarrassment. I am thrilled that the Obamas will be our First Family, that Michelle Obama will represent women with intelligence, strength and pride. I even tuned in each day to the DNC and enjoyed the speeches, especially Obama's. I was disappointed that he chose Biden, the Democrat's Democrat for his running mate, and horrified as the excited crowd of delegates was so carried away that the even cheered Biden's warlike stance toward Russia. I was moved by Stevie Wonder and the drums for justice. And somehow as the delegate votes during the roll call went to Barak Obama, African American raised in Africa the campaign finally settled in my heart too.

Do I feel theirs will be a voice for what I'm most passionate about? Not on some things, but if our issues can get through the doors, I think they will be listened to without the usual shut minds.

My interest in the Presidential race intensified as Jim Crowe raised its ugly head in the McCain Palin campaign. The turning point, however, came when the senator sneered, "That One." We sucked in air, and "oh, s###"; the Fight definitely woke up the heart. "That One" was the echo of every "fighting word" any of us had to endure from racist Amerika, this time, coming from the Republican Presidential Candidate, spoken like any coward, with his back turned to the Democratic Presidential Candiate of the United States, as if the audience -- the whole world -- were part of his clique. Damned by his own attitude of "white privilege," so cocky sure that his racism was a realistic campaign strategy, McCain will try to win an election with it. From that day I was reading everything I could get my hands, tuning in to anything that might be about the campaign, hanging on to every speech by Obama, every comedy act about Palin, reading all the blogs and you tubes. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNwlJA_OAHo
"That One." I was psyched to vote!! Like that carnival game, Whack-a-Mole, I couldn't wait for my turn with the mallet! "Give me that ballot and whack that mole down!" When the ballots arrived I did not toss them on the table for later. I determined to vote the very next good day for mom.

I mentioned this election is historic in our home. It is. The entire Nisei generation (uncles, aunts and mom) have voted Republican for as long as I remember. The last election when I suggested that Bush's first term indicated that farmers were not helped, Uncle George's pronouncement was "we shouldn't vote for what is good for us; we should vote for what is good for the country."

"Huh????"

The last election when mom and I sat down to fill out the ballots, mom's vote cancelled mine out. "Bush is a Republican and Kerry is a Democrat."

"Republican!" she announced.

This year, we sat down and I said "McCain is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat" and paused looking intently at her.

She stared back, lifting her palms upward and shrugging her shoulder, a wry look on her face.

"Well, Obama voted against the war and McClain supports the war." Mom is a hawk. But she just stared back.

"Obama and McClain both say they will cut taxes, but Obama will not cut the taxes of the richest people."

She's thinking about it. "Whatever."

Time to tell her what has never ever swayed her or Uncle George in the past. They've voted for one Republican after another on all levels of government who shared this trait without batting an eye.

"McCain," I pointed at his picture, "THAT one says I hate all gooks and I always will."

Mom's eyes narrowed. "Hmmmmmmphf. Well, you know what I think about THAT!"

Actually I didn't. I had left my finger under McCain's photo. Mom pointed to Barak Obama, tapping with her forefinger for emphasis --- and history in my family was made.

WHACK! WHACK!!

Senator McCain, you lost another diehard Republican. At 88 years old, my mom stood up on her two feet and voted what's good for her and decidedly, it is also good for the country!!

BTW, like a good Republican, Mom cancelled me out on several measures and other candidates.

Real America

Now, thanks to Sarah Palin, most of America knows how it feels to wear the "unAmerican" bullseye -- painted on us by the narrow few who call themselves "real Americans," you know, the ones who have grown up always with power and privilege and feel entitled, as well as those who have no power or privilege and easily blame all of us for their plight, sucking the toes of those who step on them. Palin/McCain has made anti-Arab hate and fear the heart of their campaign strategy ignoring there are hundreds of thousands of Arab Americans and hundreds thousands more who are assumed to be Arab American in her country.

It must be somewhat of a relief to feel outrage, the wrongness of being labeled, to watch Jon Stewart of the Daily Show and get some relief. You know where I'm going with this. I can't wait to check in to pudgyindian2.blogspot.com, another blog I read, to see if he has a take on it, or afrospear afrospear.wordpress.com or racialicious www.racialicious.com or angry asian man. To be labeled without the nation at your back feels quite a bit different and much more isolated.

So this year, the one trick ponies of this nation are pointing at a Presidential candidate (terroist), northern Virginia (not real America), and the whole Democratic party (disloyal).
In 1942, even if you were a kid coming home from school thinking about the winter holidays, born and bred in California all your life (as Yoshiko Uchida author of Journey to Topaz), even if you were obachan and ojiichan scraping out a living in Washington, Oregon or CA, doing the work no one wanted to do, finally making a home for your family after years of labor, even if you were graduating from high school, played on the baseball team, and coming home to help out the family, even if you were living as American as you could be, in one day, you would be labeled and imprisoned -- "enemy alien" for momma and poppa and "non-alien" for the American born sons and daughters. What the pfuck (to borrow Jon Stewart's phrase) is a non-alien?! You had only a couple of weeks to get rid of everything it took a lifetime to build and were shipped, carrying only what you could in two hands, to holding places at race tracks and fairgrounds and finally to the middle of a desert or swampland crowded, three to four families to a barrack for the duration of the war -- behind barbed wire, guards with guns pointed at you. Your crime? Looking Nihon-jin. You know, like the Aleuts who were forced at the same time into deserted mines and died in great numbers during WWII because they, the indigenous people of their land, never an immigrant, looked Nihonjin.

Or the Nihonjin citizens of Cuba, Peru, all over Latin America, actually, betrayed by their governments to allow the US to come in and kidnap their Japanese citizens to be used as prisoner of war exchange, tearing apart families, shipping them to Crystal City TX, stripped of their passport and not allowed US citizenship indefinitely until Wayne Collins of the ACLU took on their case one by one. Sounds like Rendition.

For us Nihonjin in Idaho, immigrated to the US after the Alien Land Law of 1924, owning no land but working the land, we didn't go to camp (being outside the "zone") but no doubt, the bulls eye target was painted on us too. At least we had our families and obachan and ojiichan were heads of our family, and we had the luxury to say something Constitutionally WRONG was happening 45 minutes drive into the desert at Hunts Camp (aka Minidoka.)

During the war in Kosovo, my good friend and brother Pete Mandrapa, a Yugoslavian American who loved his job as a teacher in a multicultural school/racism free zone, passionate about justice became targeted by ugly forces in town. There were calls to the superintendent to get rid of that Serb. He was reviled by letters to the editor. I remember taking a call in the office made by a hysterically hateful sociology professor who made harassing calls to our school because Mandrapa worked there. And among our students, I remember the pressure the school district received to have us turn into mini-INS agents to turn in Latino students and families and how relieved we were when the District said that would not be our role -- whether or not that meant federal funds lost.

Back in 1962, as a senior at Caldwell High School, I had a government teacher who freed my mind, John Goettsch, who warned us about war hysteria. The Cuban missle crisis had just begun. We were all excited as we would be before the big football game -- bomb those Russians -- and he sat us down and talked very seriously about the truth about war. He talked to us about war hysteria at home, about what happened to his German grandparents' home during WWI. He still wore the bulls eye. He is still Goetssch, not some anglicized form of his name, after all, and here he is in Idaho, teaching government and the Bill of Rights in the early Sixties. My favorite teacher who freed my mind was controversial in Caldwell. I remember popular a bright popular senior boasting that her father, a local lawyer, was on the school board and that he'd get Mr. Goettsch fired for being "a card carrying communist." I think they hired a guy from Alabama to take his place who taught that the South had indeed won the Civil War . . . a REAL 'merican!

I mentioned John Goettsch freed my mind. We had a research paper to do. I didn't have a topic yet. I had joined his class after taking American History (to get it over with) in summer school, where we learned about the Russian subs in the Snake River and where our teacher took us on a field trip to hear Cleon Scowson, right wing reactionary lecturer and gave us extra credit for tuning in to Ronald Reagan on Dr. Ross' Dog and Cat food sponsored radio show "Let Freedom Ring." Listening in, I learned that "Spartacus" was a communist inspired movie and that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a communist sympathizer. So here I was, senior year, in Mr. Goetssch's class trying to figure out my research paper topic. He took the time to talk to me and suggested I check out "civil liberties after WWI" and pointed me in the direction of the town library (as opposed to the school library) and encouraged me to check out the stacks. There I would find magazines going back to the Twenties, like "The Nation."

There in the middle of my town which Sarah Palin would call "the real America" where kids were taught to be real Americans, learning that the South had won the war, that the enemy lurked in the neighborhood river, that we had everything to fear and nothing to contemplate, was the modest brick building called the public library where the librarian still had a collection of magazines buried and dusty, ignored, ready to blast some mind open. I spent my after school hours pouring over the articles, forgetting to take notes, so intrigued with what I read. Sacco and Vanzetti. The Red Scare. Eugene Debs. The hate mongers -- Charles Lindburgh, Henry Ford. I couldn't stop at 1930. I kept going into the Fifties. The Rosenbergs, young Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover. I ate it all up, every Nihon-jin "group traumatized cell in my body" soaked up the truth, and my love for the Bill of Rights was born. You would never catch me taking a short cut around history again.

So those of you in Northern Virginia and the rest of Fake America, and not sitting around the metaphorical Palin kitchen table for a bit of morning toxic tea with Sarah who would be speaking for her god again, you are in good company. You've got a bullseye on your chest anyway, and at the moment, it seems you're safe because those who label you are looking like the Three Stooges right now. I encourage you to take advantage of being targeted and vote, vote, vote. Vote down all legislation which targets people and strips them of their humanity: English only measures, mandatory prison sentence measures, anti-gay measures, measures which would strip public schools, public services and retirement (to replace them private schools, privitized prisons, privitized retirement plans, privatized services if we read between the lines). And we've all found out in the last couple of weeks what would have happened to seniors if social security were in the hands of private investment companies.

The Sarah Palins and the Fox News contingent, John Stewart's Daily Show all have given us in larger numbers than ever, more clearly than before, a glimpse of the ugliness which would divide us, always there barely out of sight for many and all too nightmarish and true for many others

This is my wish. That the public, now that the majority wears bulls eyes, will vote for the Bill of Rights for everyone. Vote for tax measures for education and health. I hope the majority of the public will remember that taxes are simply what we all pay for what we want for all of us, schools, infrastructure, parks and libraries. I hope the majority will vote against measures which target people. I hope we have been able to connect the dots during this time enough to vote against this big move to drain what is public -- school levies drained by building more prisons, measures which would add more financial burden to schools such as English only legislation -- a dispicable move to force us to privitize every aspect of our lives, retirement, healthcare, education. I hope we can see through the "don't trust government" rhetoric. They're just saying "Give me, me, me." I hope that wearing the bullseye turns millions of Americans into community organizers because no matter how it's been derided during this campaign, America is built by those who love this land enough to stand up and work for its highest ideals and honor its commitments and take personal civic responsibility on behalf of universal healthcare, children, the earth and water, prison reform, honor treaties, for libraries, for higher education, for school funding, the list goes on.

Wear the bulls eye proudly. Instead of being Palin's real Americans we can make America real.
Oh, and thank you, Mr. Goettsche!!

"The Princess from Nebraska"

Thanks to Angry Asian Man, my husband and I downloaded and watched "Princess of Nebraska" co-directed by Wayne Wang and Richard Wong the other night. It completely resonated with us. We didn't even have to say one word -- the young Chinese woman from Beijing/Nebraska lost and texting in California (is it SF? LA?), her world caught within a cell phone screen -- and she, trapped by circumstances. One night of sex with an attractive friend happened to her; he didn't want to wear a condom happened to her; pregnancy happened to her; four weeks passing with indecision of what to do about the pregnancy happened to her and meanwhile, HER life is happening to her friends and acquaintances -- a network of friends and chance meetings happening to one another.

Then the perfect ending after she leaves the abortion clinic -- we don't know her decision, I guess -- which closes with this endless shot of her standing, back turned, face in a profile (looking back, perhaps?) against a grey wall. We watched without a word as the minutes ticked by and the music came to a close. As the credits rolled, I broke the silence, "And there she waits for someone to rescue her."

My husband barked a loud laugh. And then the two of us broke into hysterical laughter. You see, we parented a few children. Two intensely and too recent to forget. And one, who is now a young grandmother. When she complained about her first daughter's teen behavior to us, her family and I laughed, without a lot of compassion, and said, "OOOOOOOOO payback." Her grandson is just born to that first daughter, and he's a toughy. Grandma, of course, bought him a little tee saying "I'm payback."

As for our other two young ones, our daughter and a close niece whom we raised from 10 - 13 years old and again when she moved in when she was 24, our experience is that if Princess has the baby, the baby will probably rescue her from ennui and life happening to her. Carrying a baby through pregnancy and having no control over her body as baby grows and grows and kicks, and tumbles inside her body, the surge of motherly hormones, not being able to escape the swelling body, not being able to run away from feeding and caring for this little being because baby's going to take all it needs to grow, -- well, princesses finally have to face front and take steps.

So if the Princess of Nebraska's mother doesn't kill her (she won't), or if the middle aged white guy with the crush on the talented lost beautiful Chinese man they would both like to bed (a Peking opera hopeful turned prostitute who is never going to answer her texts) gives her a roof over her head and fantasizes some more of the three of them raising the child only to be disappointed, princess will be rescued for the time being.

Do you sense a generation gap? Whatever, it was great directing. The princess may be lost but likeable. Real rescue material. Too much of life shot within little squares from the point of view of cell phone screens, and mirrors to not be deliberate. And that end shot. Did Wayne Wang and Richard Wong nail it? Or was it meant to be less reality more art. It doesn't matter because it works for us all -- dreamers, counselor types and parents who have been through the rollercoaster ride.

No sarcasm is meant by my critique because I wish the Princess of Nebraska well in spite of my being part of a generation who might have said "Off with their heads" toward royalty. And now, there's a princess in every home including ours. I love our Princess of southern Oregon and our Princess from Pusan City as well as our grown up Princess of Navaho Nation. I love each of their beautiful babies and say to myself, each baby rescued mommy when no one else could. And I'm very proud of each of our princesses for the courage to make their own solitary life transforming decision and see it through.

That's how our stories played out even if happy endings are not guaranteed. As for Princesses of Nebraska for whom reality is just too much to deal with, eventually, she may become real (ala Pinnochio). And that is not such a sad ending to a story.