Easter Thoughts

These were my thoughts on Easter Weekend.
We are at the McCloud River.  The Children's Rock stands out along the grassy banks of the river.  We walk down the steep incline from the parking lot.  The boys have hidden the eggs while we all ate breakfast, and we women and children follow, the young ones scampering down the hill to find their eggs.  There is not ready set go the Winnemem way.  It's just "GO!"

Our daughter Maki grew up with this around her birthday every year she lived with us.  Sometimes Easter would happen on her birthday.  No grander party, in my opinion, than to be with all her cousins and Granny, Uncle Emerson and Auntie Margie.  Not only was there an Easter Egg Hunt, but a delicious lunch and a run.  Maki loved to win!

I don't write these thought this morning, the day after Easter, to offend anyone.  It's something I wanted to write down for awhile, a journey I personally took, and which led me out and at the same time come round where I ought to be.   It is a story of Christianity and America.

Most Japanese families, Nikkei families, use the term American to mean white Americans.  I suppose that mirrors a certain group of white Americans, those who see only Europeans as Americans and everyone else forever foreign, including the First Peoples of this land, never belonging, not the norm, the "other."  Some would say that this view of American we held is the colonized mind.

Part of living in America and adopting the American way was to adopt Christianity.  Grandma was Zen-shu with her solitary time in the bedroom, meditating.  Grandpa was Shinto, and Shizen was his path of life.  He practiced it every day as far as I witnessed and his followers were his two granddaughters.  He taught us the names of all the living beings.  He taught us that even a small bug or little worm was filled with life just as we were and if we left it alone we could live side by side.  He taught us not to fear nature, not to kill anything.  He taught us the names of the trees, the animals.  He told us about ancient stones in the mountain forest near his village which were sacred, and could help people if they prayed there and left an offering behind.  He taught us about the river which was the name of the village.  Kawai, his name, meant where two rivers meet.  These stories made our foundation.

When I started school at 5, my mother took my sister and I to Christian church -- the First Methodist Church in Caldwell Idaho, a bigger town near where we lived in Marsing by the Snake on our first family farm since the Alien Land Law was lifted.  It was a stressful year, school, then church, with all these American teachers and children staring.  I always felt very unsafe but gritted my teeth to make it through.  Japanese was my first language and I was born right after the war.  Timid, shy, small, I was still 'the enemy.'  An oddity at best.  Where my little sister was in Nursery where there were toys, and focused on the play at hand, I was in Primary and intimidated by the expectation to socialize and burst into tears, my tongue locked down by language.  At school if I spoke Japanese, I was put in the coat closet so how different would it be here, was my thinking.

Going to school and church turned me into an avid Christian and year after year I would describe myself as being emotionally tied to Jesus and the stories of the Bible, reading a comic book style telling of it given to us over and over and over again.  Whenever I felt scared, there was grandma, grandpa, momma, and also Jesus.    I was a little girl of faith, a praying little girl.

In high school while my friends matured into a more abstract understanding of the Holy Trinity,  Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I continued my child's faith in the goodness of Jesus and a grandfatherly, perhaps like my grandfather, God.  Holy Ghost was not really part of my understanding, and I remember my girlfriends laughing and saying, do you think there are really pearly gates too?  No, but there was a place in my mind, a place of light and lots of ancestors.

All of this came crashing down with the rest of my beliefs during the long and drawn out war in Viet Nam.  Really, there is no way to understand how it is to be young at that time to anyone who was not.  For those who lived through it as parents, they do have their own experience, but to be young in the decade of 1963 - 1975, especially 1965 on, the time of the most men drafted and the least trained and the most casualties, had a huge impact on all of us, men and women, whether we were drafted or not, whether we served or left, or dropped out.  I won't go into it, but in my experience it was time of a great crisis of faith, of no praying, of giving up, believing we were not going to survive this.  I remember going to the Methodist Church one dark time, after hours, and somehow, though I should have known, being surprised that the door was locked.  That locked door took on a huge significance for me in the context of the times.

Loss of faith and a national cultural shift to "questioning values" and searching the libraries, and taking classes of new perspectives we quenched a hunger for something right, something just, to make sense of the chaos, turning to Latin American, Africa, Asia, Caribbean, and from First Nations, as well as from the poets, philosophers and political people of the American working class, exploited labor, immigrants, and for many of us who did not see ourselves as the "norm" of Americans, to our own family stories.  The doors to these were open, as were the circles of youth studying together, and the circles of our peoples, multi-generational with "talk story", and sharing, always sharing across the cultural divide, young people growing together into the beautiful mix of America, claiming ourselves -- called pride -- claiming America -- called responsibility.  But that too is another story.  And it is a longer story in which a little girl from Korea taught me that faith in ourselves would never be enough, not only to get justice, but also to do anything in this world.

Along this path, there was a time to meet Jesus again.  And for me it was with Granny.  I had heard that during the Harmonic Conversion thousands of people converged upon her sacred ceremonial area on Mt. Shasta during her annual August ceremony.  I also heard that as she went about her way doing what she always did, being who she truly is, she offended a few of these encroachers.  I believe Granny was talking about her healing history.  She said, "I'm just like Jesus.  I have healed the blind, raised the dead.  I've doctored for 80 years -- cancer, diabetes, all kinds of disease -- and never lost a patient.  I tried to walk on water once, though, and almost drowned."  That is my Granny.  That is the great renowned Indian Doctor of the Winnemem Wintu who took my family and me under her wing who saw Jesus as I always saw him, from the time I was a little girl -- a good doctor who took me under his wing, someone I could talk to when I needed help, was sad, was alone -- but a Jesus, as I grew older, was lost to me through the Christian mythology.

In a moment of stubborness, as a student of a College of Idaho required Religion class taught by our neighbor and Calvinist Professor, Ruth Grob from Switzerland, I just could not answer the finals question she posed "Is it by faith or by good deeds that you are saved?"  I just could not.  It never translated cross culturally to me to even be decent to celebrate that someone else was sacrificed and died for our sins.  Never mind the raising from the dead and ascending to heaven to sit at the side of his heavenly father part.  I felt that there was somehow a cowardly, irresponsible aspect to this by faith and faith alone stuff and I just could not stomach it.  There it sat, waiting for me, in purple and white on the mimeographed test sheet.  I looked at my blue book's blank pages and fretted.  What to do.  Regurgitate back the lecture notes, or just go with my heart.  And so I did.

I was enjoying my first day of spring break when I heard a loud knock at the door.  My mother must have opened it because it was she who came down the hall and said, "Dr. Grob is here and she wants to talk to us."  I felt like a high school child being lectured in front of a parent.  I begrudgingly came out to the living room.  I knew I was in trouble.  Dr. Grob is a very frightening figure when she is angry.  Rather than scholarly professor, she really resembled any child's imagination of a wicked witch, meaning no disrespect.  It seemed with rage, her hair stretch out farther, her eyes seemed more wild behind her thick glasses, and she became very expressive with her arms, gesturing and hitting my blue book to stress her point.  She spoke very distinctly and loudly as if I did not understand English, and there my mom and I stood as she re-did her lecture on by faith and faith alone.  She paused to ask why I did what I did.  I started to answer but it just pissed her off , "The Devil is in YOU!" she screeched, and my mother's elbow nudge shut me up.  Mom looked at me, trying hard to communicate with me with her eyes -- and I got her message.  When Dr. Grob said I was to re-do that essay question, I said I would without arguing, and when the door shut behind her, my mother said, "this is just a test.  Give her what she wants.  She does not want to fail you."

That is when I learned that a Christian needed to believe in one thing and one thing only . . . or else.  All that Jesus did in his life was of little importance.  I know this because I listed them all in my essay answer when arguing the point (which was not to be argued) why good deeds counted to be a Christian.  Courage was not expected.  Social responsibility was not expected.  Right thinking and action was not to be expected.  Love for your fellow beings was not to be expected.  Treating everyone like a brother or sister was not to be expected.  All we were supposed to do, or we would FAIL as Christians was to believe that Jesus was crucified, dead and buried and on the third day arose from the dead and ascended into Heaven to sit by his Father God and by believing that, we gain salvation and all our sins are forgiven.

A caveat is we all know Christians who are good people, giving people, people who live by the example set by their Jesus and there are probably many more than the loud voices of judgement, hate and greed which are such poor representations in politics today.  When I hear them, I do not think Jesus.  I do not even think all Christians.  But I do think the voices of hate, intolerance, ignorance are lesser than Jesus, follow Paul, stealing Jesus' life having killed him to build a imperialistic religion lifting up Mammon by making of Jesus' life a mythical cynical State religion.

So these stories, my original childhood faith and finding comfort under Jesus' wings during a very stressful initiation into American society, my faith forced into a mold as a young adult, silenced, going underground, my faith tested  and lost during a time of upheaval  during the Viet Nam War era, and my relationship with Jesus regained as a Winnemem Wintu through my relationship with and following Granny describe my path with Jesus as well as with America.  It is all the same.

One day while I was sitting with Granny who was resting in her bed, she told me another story.  She pointed up to the crucifix which hung over her bed.  "See that?" she said.  "It bled real blood once.  I saw it, and I reached up like this and touched it.  I looked at it and it was really blood.  I told my friend who was a preacher and asked him what it was and he told me not to tell anyone about this, but wouldn't tell me what it was."
      "Do you want to know Granny?" I asked.  When she nodded I said, "It's called the stigmata.  And if you had told anyone, there would be tens and thousands of people who would have come here from all over the world to be healed because by touching the blood of Jesus on this crucifix, they believe, would have been healed."
      She didn't react one way or another.  It was just an answer to another question.

But through Granny my relationship with Jesus was mended.  The door was no longer shut between us.  There were no Religion professors or preachers in between us telling me what a good believer or a devil person was.  For me it is about believing in the good of Jesus, not being a good believer.  I believe he is a strong spiritual doctor, a healer of the body, heart and soul  I believe he lived with courage and goodness and accepted all people just as doctors are supposed to.  I believe that the State could not abide with his commitment to his way of life and it threatened them, his charismatic leadership and his belief system threatened their empire and their wealth.   They made his true way of life as a Jew criminal and  unjustly sentenced him to die a tortuous death as an example of what would happen to anyone who acted like Jesus.  Unfortunately the State's treatment became the underpinning of Christianity -- do not seek to be like him -- and the symbol of one's faith is the execution method, the cross a constant reminder of what will happen to you (on a subconscious level) if you every try to "be the change you dream."  Don't dream.  He did it for us all.  He is the lamb.  But Jesus was no sheep.  Jesus was an eagle, a warrior, a doctor.  That is as close as I can come as an adult to understand the Jesus who took me under his wing during a very harsh time in my life.  No pearly gates -- but a place where all of Olelbis' beloved creations go -- so many extinct now -- all as one with our ancestors.

A very good friend of mine gave a group of Sisters a bracelet for the holiday.  I treasure it.  One thing only did I change, and this is what brought me to this understanding of myself and my journey with Jesus.  All the little trinkets which dangled symbolizing love, light and goodness, and there also was the cross.  I understand that for my Sisters, most of whom are Catholic, and with deep goodness, giving and personal sacrifice in their hearts as devout indigenous Catholic women, this is a symbol of Faith and goodness.  I honor that.  But for me, I realized at that moment, how the cross plays in my life is very  very different.  It is not faith but fear.  I went to my computer and googled salmon, which came within a week -- a little sterling, jumping chinook salmon -- which I put on my bracelet in place of the cross.  The Nur (salmon) is the symbol of faith and following for me.  I have the faith of its return, and the faith that to follow the Nur and meet the challenge to make decisions which would make the rivers home again to the Nur,  we can make it right again.  It is the symbol because I am Winnemem and the Winnemem speak for and follow the Salmon who gave us voice so we would have a sacred responsibility too.  We share that responsibility with the salmon, and historically our lot is tied to the salmon.  It happens at the same time, the challenges, the destruction, and the ceremonial times, on salmon time, in salmon country.  And like Granny but not as personal because I did not walk with him in his time, Jesus is now for me,  a doctor, my first doctor who got me through the first harsh barbs of racism, who forgave me when I turned away from him at a man-locked man-made door, and who is just like Granny so is found as I found him beside Granny.  I am blessed.

On Easter, we Winnemem go down to the river by the Children's Rock.  The colored eggs, dozens of them are hidden and all the next generation of Winnemem children go egg hunting.  We wonder about people celebrating bunnies who lay eggs, and have our jokes, but celebrate Easter too.  As for Jesus, this good Doctor who was killed by the State, he is an ancestor now -- at least of Granny -- and his goodness is celebrated and remembered by me.  I picture me in Granny's bedroom, the crucifix above her bed, and across on top of the bureau, a portrait of Jesus, her Jesus, my Jesus. 

Red Letter Day!

I call this a Red Letter Day!!  I went to my first medical doctor's appointment.  I'm now on Medicare, and since its federal government and greatly influenced by insurance and medical lobbyists, it discriminates against Naturopaths --and I have been going to one for decades.  What sent me to Dr. Borg, ND, was the breast cancer.  My original medical doctor said that there was indication that I had breast cancer, but the good news was that it would not affect my lifespan.  A small surgery would take care of it and let's make an appointment for that.  I said I'd be back to him on this.  And disappeared.

I immediately called my Doctor, Indian Doctor and Chief of the Winnemem Wintu, Granny, and she told me to come on down and I did that weekend with my daughters.  While they played with puppies, Granny and I sat out by the garden.  She said that most of the time people come to her when they are death's door having gone the medical doctor's way and by then it is very hard, but she has never lost a patient in her 80 years of doctoring.  She was glad I came to her now.  She said I would need to listen to her instructions and do it to a tee.  "Prayers don't cure cancer," Grams said.  "You have to take the herbs, every day."  She told me about incidents where people would quit when they felt better, or would quit a piece of it.  And they didn't make it.  I was determined.

It was hard work, a year of hard work.  I learned a lot of things about our bodies and I learned a lot, ironically, about the medical way of doctoring.  I learned also about the medicines.

After a year, I returned to Dr. Halpert who had in his hand a new mammogram result and he shared with me, "Well I have good news."  He had been concerned when he called me a couple of times and I finally wrote a letter assuring him that I was aggressively working on healing and not to worry about me. 

That morning he looked down at the report and said, "you're fine.  You're clean.  Congratulations.  Whatever you did, worked!" and asked me.  I was vague.  "I took some teas."  He paused.  Then he went on, "Well, I see you're about the age where we need to be talking about hormone therapy."

When I left that day, after saying absolutely not, I left the medical institution forward -- I left pharmaceuticals, 15 minute doctor patient visits, anxiety, gadgets, pills which hurt your liver and kidneys forever.  As the years go on, I realize left behind medicine which may have kept me alive and sick longer than natural medicine but for sure I left behind the hype, the unsaid, hidden info, like the medicine which keeps the heart attack away will also rob your mind.

Now . . . the Red Letter Day.  I am no longer insured through the School District.  I am a Medicare senior and that means I am not covered at all for most things from the healthcare of my choice.  Naturopaths are not covered at all.  I am forced to have a medical doctor.  I asked Dr. Sharon Meyers to take me on because she would allow me to keep on being who I am and using her when needed.  She had to retire, and assigned me to Mary Gabriel, a sticky note in my file "Does not like Western Medicine."  It's really not that personal, but that's the only way it can be described in this framework.

I faced my first visit with Dr. Gabriel with the usual apprehension and anxiety I feel toward American medical system.  When I had called to make an appointment I had been asked why, what would I like the Doctor to know.  So I said, high blood pressure, cholesterol level, I have eczema and was interrupted, "We typically can handle two or three things so that should be enough."  That set the tone -- so different from my ND, Dr. Borg who spends all the time the patient needs, asking questions which will help her make a diagnosis and apply the correct homeopathic or herbal remedies.  Sometimes there are questions about my emotional life.  Sometimes there are questions which are a mystery -- does hot or cold cause it to flare up?  do you like salty or sweet?  And if in talking, I should say some things which are about belief, the spiritual, that is definitely part of the whole.

I drove to the complex, PeaceHealth, and parked in their underground garage, took the elevator up to the second level.  There I stood in line and it was very much like I remembered it, receptionists asking questions, complaining about computers being down, officious, questions about insurance, numbers, names, birth dates.  Then it was my turn.  The usual confusion, my insurance info under my English name from information from the early Sixties.  Why can't I remember to say "Donna" when asked for my name, a name I haven't used for most of my life.  However, it was interesting when filling out my form to see "Any cultural information we should know" or something like that.  For the first, it was relevant information, my culture and everything which comes with it in terms of healthcare.

I sat and waited in the waiting room, and my name was called.  The tall brown haired woman greeted me with a smile, and then as she weighed me and took down information she asked me and once again, is there anything I would like them to know regarding cultural information.  Absolutely.  "I'm Winnemem Wintu so my way of life includes our Traditional Doctoring, and I go to a Naturopath." 
"Winnemem!"  she lit up, "I'm Cherokee and my husband in Blackfeet!  It's nice you still follow your own way of doctoring!"

Then later the Doctor walked in, as tall as I, warm smile, dark skin, curly hair, -- "Asian?"  "African American?"  I will have to ask Mary Gabriel sometime.  She shook my hand and said she had a person who shadowed and assisted her if that would be ok.  I nodded, and in walked a dignified older woman, sharp short haircut, glasses, Anna, Latina.  Exhale.

Dr. Gabriel and Anna spent comfortable conversational time with me getting my information, and even one of this big laughs women of color share rolling up from our bellies, head flung back.  Dr. Gabriel asked about my last mammogram, and I couldn't remember.  Ana looked at the notes and said 2010, September.  "Wow, I don't remember that at all."  Dr. Gabriel whisked over and bent over the file in Anna's hand, "OH!  Wrong person!" as she came back to her seat while Ana reached for the second file as I said, "Whew!  Last time when I saw Dr Meyers she was definitely asking dementia questions because of my mom," and both women talked over me with their cracks as we all laughed out loud.

She could tell by my reaction, mammograms were not my favorite things.  And she told me about another way, which was not so effective as early as mammograms but uses light, not radiation.  It was more expensive and probably not covered by insurance.  I was interested.

She asked me what she could do for me.  I said, cholesterol check, high blood pressure.  Her sharp eyes focused, "Well, you got something on your forehead there."  AH!  number three allowable!  Then we talked about allergies.  She said, "Have you ever considered PCB's?"  I told her I pretty much tried to avoid that but maybe I don't know enough and she explained about canned foods, the seal has that.  Which led to gardening.

As she wrote down notes, she murmured, "I was so disappointed when the President signed that Monsanto thing." And we talked about that.  We talked a bit about the Winnemem struggle.

She gave me the lab request, smiled broadly, shook my hand, as I left, and again, with Anna, we shook hands, big smile, "Very very happy to have you as my doctor.  Very happy to see you!'

I felt light and happy as I went down to the lab.  I walked in, and was greeted by a big smile from the Anglo receptionist, and taken back to the lab by the med tech.  She was my height, dark, black hair, with a distinctive Filipina lilt in her voice.  Of course!  We talked about sisters as she drew my blood.  It did not even hurt.

Red letter date.  Sacred Heart thirty years later has the beautiful Mix and it made all the difference in the world about how 15 minutes with the doctor and the officious way a big hospital must be run worked.   The Mix -- Black White Brown Red and Yellow belong together for a sense of humanity to light things up.

Scott Prouty

Scott Prouty.  47 percent video. 
The fact is  6 corporations own and control 90 percent of the newspapers in America.  But they don't own Scott Prouty, a Florida bartender hired to work a Republican fundraiser where people paid 55,000 to attend a dinner, drinks and hear Romney's speech who videoed Romney saying things opposite of what he was saying in public, like going overseas to buy a company of underpaid, exploited women workers.  Prouty was a proud, hardworking worker so that caught his attention and he filmed it.  He also filmed what Mitt Romney thinks of 47 percent of the American people -- almost half of us -- lazy people who think we're entitled to healthcare, homes, and the good things of life.

Unlike him.  The man born in wealth so much so that the people who put food on the table and poured his drink were mere "hands."  If he saw Scott Prouty perhaps things would have gone a bit differently for him.

So the only good reporters in America -- make that, the only good reporter in American -- was a working class bar tender in Florida.

Thank you Scott Prouty.  Thank you to your parents that you say out loud that you have ideals, you recognize news, you struggled with your conscience and looked in the mirror and said "you coward" and then sent those few seconds of video out in the world, definitely out to the American People, during a time most still were not so tamed that they wouldn't vote their self interest as working people.

April 13 Friends of APASU Leadership Conference

April 13 is a personally exciting day for me -- when eras come together.  I come from a generation of University of Oregon students who changed the landscape of our campus from the humble WW2 barrack blessed as the first Native American Longhouse on an American campus.  As Asian American Student Union (AASU) students and Asian American Community Coalition (AACC)  allies we went into the late hours working on a project Gary Kim took on his senior year -- discovering federal funds earmarked for "minority" students buried in remediation classes -- to retrieve their funds and put them to use as they were meant to be.  Our plan was to design a program for the campus, sadly light years behind on equity and inclusion, which would put our campus on a fast track.  For that, we needed a plan designed by us, for us, about us.  We needed a plan which was dynamic, creative, visionary.  We needed it to come from a circle of people -- every student union, all four communities, faculty.  We needed it all.  Gathering at the old Longhouse, our communities gathered together to plan.   I remember that Bob Tom, Grand Ronde, took the lead, facilitating the meeting.  Gary was definitely looked to provide the inside story.  I don't remember the professor's name who came to every meeting.  I took notes which I discarded with all my other college detritus twenty years later.

This is the plan which we designed, got passed through the Faculty Senate and brought to life under the name of Council for Minority Education (CME).  Gary was the first director.  A representative from each of the four communities, a representative from the student unions, two people from the Faculty Senate sat on the board which worked with the Director to make things happen.  First, there was a tutorial program.  Second, there were grants accessed by student unions, community or faculty to do projects, build programs or design classes targeted toward students of color.  So much creative, exciting ideas came from that times where we shared and learned from one another specific blocks stopped our students from coming to and succeeding in the university, stories of a system of white supremacy and colonialism.  We learned how border towns of reservations simply did not put Native students into college prep classes.  One of my close friends Roger Amerman came from Umatilla and dreamed to be a geologist -- but what about the math?  CME was able to hire a teacher of math designed to students who were never put into college track math.  The same was true for writing.

Our histories, stories lived by our ancestors, stories on the other side of white supremacy and colonialism was the focus of many other classes.  We were still unearthing our histories, "lost, stolen and strayed" in those days.  These "talkstories" as our brothers and sisters from the Islands called them were still not published into texts yet.  These talk stories were being researched, and written at the same time we were opening up the campuses to us, writing our own stories, talking together in circles about our grandparents, our parents and what happened.  In California, Nikkei youth and allies were driving out into the desert and discovering for themselves a white obelisk in the middle of nowhere -- with Kanji written on it!!  Manzanar!  They were taking Brown Berets and AIM and Panthers out there with them the next time, with Issei, Nisei, and holding a "pilgrimage" first hand accounts shouted through bullhorns for the first time, the dirty secrets of this country breaking the silence.  The Reparation Redress Movement was born.  And we were part of it.  

Everything we did those days went up and down I-5,  self-published books, our stories and poems carried in backpacks.  Speakers, musicians, activists spread like wildfire up and down the freeway which connected our communities, LA over the border to BC.  And so it was with CME.  This was not a program built in or for the institution, the Ivory Tower.  This was an alive program!!

So in less time than it took to struggle for it, and to experience those lively dynamic years, it died a destructive death.  Gary moved.  He was not made to stay in Eugene.  Derrick Bell became Dean of the Law School, a wonderful thing for us.  And his wife, Jewell, nice lady, under the spousal agreement of the UO, was given Gary's job.  Our precious CME was now in her hands.

I have nothing ill to say about Jewell.  She was formed by these times in a different place, and there she was very much part of her community.  But in her community, unlike Eugene, Black, Brown, Yellow and Red did not write the story together, is what I want to say.  They did not share their oppressions together in a way that a flash went off!  Just as Paolo Friere wrote.  The dots were connected.  We were not the enemy.  We were in complete solidarity.

It must have been a total hassle for anyone raised in another city, a bigger city, married to a Dean of law, to be working FOR a multiracial board whose style was more Native than bureaucratic -- long meetings, collaboration -- and to deal with grants and basically manage those many diverse and creative grants.  I don't blame Jewell.  I blame all of us who could not protect it or communicate it well.  The pattern which was to be repeated again and again began.  Those inside the UO was on one side.  The students reached out to community and we were on the other.  A very divisive time followed which Peggy and I met and promised one another that we would never let this interfere with our long friendship.  And agreed to disagree.  Because in the end, the CME became what the UO felt comfortable with anyway.  Another office, tutoring students.  They kept the English and math class.  They got rid of the board and the grants immediately.   I want to honor Jamileh Stroman who by herself stood with the students and protected the vision for each second she was there and she protected it by keeping it close to her heart and holding no hatred.  And with CME, Jamileh was pushed out of the UO.

Many of us will be back on April 13.  Mike Kan from L.A. had come to the Multcultural Alumni doings for Homecoming with Alan Osaki, Seattle, buddies still.  I ran into them in the APASU office, now the Asian Pacific American Student Union.  There are so many differences now.  And yet, there is a wonderful similarity.

The differences.  I remember in those days we were vociferously American -- Asian American, that is.  Asian American is so different from the American of our Nisei parents, forced into concentration camps, yet pledging to the red white and blue every day, joining up for the 442nd and going into what seems more like suicide campaigns, the most obvious, more Nikkei dying to rescue the all white Texas Battalion from behind gothic lines, a battle my Uncle Sak was wounded in.  We were a new American, the progeny of great struggle and sacrifice by our ancestors.  We had Rights and acted like we knew it, owned it, and we were on fire.  Our relationship with the mother country was complex.  Our relationship was defined by war, those days -- Japan, Korea, Philippines, Pacfic Islands, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand -- always having to claim insist our solidarity with independence struggles internationally but asserting our right to citizenship third generation and fourth generation here.

Today, the APASU students include first generation immigrants and international students.  These young people go to Viet Nam to visit their grandparents.  They have a different  sense of self.  And for me, from my perspective, this is a sign that the struggle was worth it.  Add to that, today, the APASU students have evolved to a point, locally, that they are networking -- networking with the community, networking with the other student unions.  What do I mean networking.  With their heart.  Building a family.  With respect.  With building alliances, being allies.   With the work.  Quang Truong traveled to Huston to be part of the Tar Sands Blockade.  Quang came to the Asian Celebration to talk about it.

Today, the APASU students are as excited finding out about their roots as an organization as any other group of APASU students.  There was even a time when AASU broke away from the community, soon after the CME fiasco.

Today, the APASU students share their home culture in a way we never did.  We brought out taiko.  We brought out our poems and performance.  But we did Obon at home.  We did Moon Festival at home.  

Today, APASU shares their office with KP, the Filipino Club while we were so possessive of our little strip of a room right next to the bowling alley.

Today, APASU is more generous, more heartful, more full of laughter than we could be.  The are like young people who belong, not forcing the door to open to us.  Today, Steve Morozumi works there and there is a Multicultural Center co-owned by all the clubs there -- the ethnic student unions, yes, but also the LGBTQ, the environmental activists, the socialists, and ethnicity is also international, Jewish, Arab.

So April 13, Martha, Peggy, Marcine, Chisao, Alan and Mike are coming "home" and Bobby from twenty years after us, and we will work with the young bright excellent leaders forty years after us to do something good together, which they will mold and mold, and leave for the next group.  It will be lovely!

And as it is with the UO, they are going through something just as painful and awful as the demise of CME but very much not like the demise of CME, too complicated to talk about.  Typical UO.  When things blow up, the guck flies all over the place.

Dr. Cornell West

Dr Cornell West is, for me, the great American Thinker of our time.  The TRUTH of his words brought tears to my eyes this morning.

Precious Grandson Born, December 10, 2012, 11 am.

I think I might get to be a grandmother at long last.  Here is granddaughter Celeste and our grandson, still unnamed.  They are beautiful children and a blessing.  I hope they will always feel that inside their hearts.

I hope I can be a grandmother consistently for a long time and influence in a good way these two young souls.  They deserve to have an easier life than their mother and grandmother did.  They deserve to be surrounded by goodness.  They deserve all that life has to gift.

Will and I will do our best to put all we can into it as if we were like those mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers who took being parents and grandparents for granted.   Will and I, however, know all too well what a miracle, what a vulnerable miracle, how out of our hands that great gift is.  We don't have much to say about it so we pray.

Malcolm X

This is the philosopher, world political leader, who had the most influence on our generation, Malik el Shabazz, Malcolm X.