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.

Sagoroe

I had forgotten Will made this short video when we went to Glen Cover, Sagoroe Te, to join the encampment there to save the shell mounds and protect that sacred area on the Vallejo Bay and estuary of our salmon: