Moccasins on the Ground

A group of leaders from 10 sovereign nations dramatically walked out in protest this week from “nation to nation” talks with the US State Department.

Russia?  China? Cuba?

No, it was the chiefs and elders of the Southern Ponca Pawnee Nation, the Nez Perce Nation and 8 nations of Sioux and Oyate people who rejected talks with State Department officials on the proposed Trans Canada/Keystone XL Pipeline.  Their statement read in part:

On this historic day of May 16, 2013, ten sovereign Indigenous nations maintain that the proposed TransCanada/Keystone XL pipeline does not serve the national interest and in fact would be detrimental not only to the collected sovereigns but all future generations on planet earth. This morning [these ten] sovereigns informed the Department of State Tribal Consultation effort at the Hilton Garden Inn in Rapid City, SD, that the gathering was not recognized as a valid consultation on a "nation to nation" level.

The State Department has decision-making power over the proposed pipeline because it crosses an international border with Canada.  But they must also negotiate with native  leaders, who have “domestic sovereign nation” status under US law.  And it seems they underestimated the diplomats from the native nations, who are exercising concerted legal and moral action to stop the pipeline.

The State Department made a fool of itself already last year when it released a report saying the pipeline would have no impact on climate change, in contrast to evaluations by climate scientists, environmental organizations and even the U.S. Government’s own Environmental Protection Agency.  All have expressed grave concerns about the proposed project, because of its environmental impacts, cost, potential damage and spills,  and because all the oil will be shipped oversees, thereby not reducing our oil dependency one drop. (See my Feb. 17 column re Ash Wednesday and 350.org protests.) 

President Obama must decide on the pipeline’s future later this year.  He delayed it once, calling for more study.  Speculation is that he will approve it this time, citing economics and jobs.

The American government has been making and breaking treaties with the indigenous peoples of our nation for over 200 years.  It is in those treaties that the various tribes are recognized as “domestic dependent nations.” The record is particularly shameful and tragic when it comes to who can decide and profit from natural resources on areas designated as tribal lands.  For example the Ft. Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868 designate the land which the XL pipeline will cross as sacred tribal land. 

So last year these ten native nations within the US got together with their counterparts in Canada, where the indigenous people are called First People or First Nations.  The Canadian government is not much of a friend to native people either. 70% of the site where the oil will be extracted is under treaty-recognized stewardship of the Lubicon Lake First Nation of Canada.  With 10 nations in Canada they signed an International Treaty to Protect the Sacred Against the Tar Sands.  The United Nations has also recognized the legal right of these nations to prevent corporate grab of their lands.

But the native folks know that laws and treaties are often broken or ignored, especially with them.  So in good American populist style they are also organizing non-violent protests at the construction of the pipeline, should it be approved.  At a training event earlier this year, held at the Wounded Knee District School in South Dakota, 300 people, mostly native, learned the tactics of non-violent resistance and pledged to lay their bodies on the line should construction begin.

One of the organizers of the training was the group “Moccasins on the Ground.”

US Army generals and politicians often say they are working to get “boots on the ground,” shorthand for troops ready for action.  “This bill will guarantee that by next week we have boots on the ground in Lower Slobovia.”

The native folks in Northern Great Plains are lacing up their moccasins for action, putting their moccasins on the ground.

Moccasins, says the dictionary, are “footwear of soft leather like deerskin designed for outdoor wear.  They protect the foot while allowing the wearer to feel the ground.” 

I picture Chingachgook of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, wearing moccasins and loincloth and not much else, running silently through the Eastern woodlands, his moccasins sensitive to each branch and leaf, making not a noise, outsmarting the British. 

The job of boots on the ground, unlike moccasins, is to make it so you can’t possibly feel the ground.   Or much of anything else.

In the fantastic Tony Hillerman books set in the southwest desert, Navaho police detective Joe Leaphorn tracks mostly white killers by following the destructive path their boots have left even in barren wilderness.  He’s probably required to wear police boots, but he seems to have moccasin memory, tracking those booted bad guys even in dark canyons.

Boots are also designed so you can kick.  People proudly call their boots “shit kickers.”

Boots are the emblematic American footwear.  Kick shit, and do all you can not to feel.

In a video made by the young people at the Moccasins on the Ground training one young woman turned their slogan into a rap:

Moccasins on the ground for Mother Earth
Keeping it sound.
Yeah, keeping it sound and on the ground.
As we plant ourselves here,
As we plant the seeds to reawaken and let the light grow,
I keep my feet down,
But I’m not down.
We all got feet,
And it’s time for us to stand.
Moccasins on the ground.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

Would Jesus Go to a Conference in Reno or Las Vegas?

I’m at a church conference at a hotel by San Francisco Bay.  Yeah, I know, poor me.  The fancy swimming pool and bay view are right outside the ballroom where we’ve gathered for worship and passed resolutions on immigration reform and divesting from fossil fuels.

For decades this same annual meeting of 120 churches took place down the coast at Asilomar, a beautiful, cozy, coastal YWCA conference center, redwood Art Deco buildings and vast beaches.  Sadly, Asilomar has become trendy for corporate events and out of our price range.  So we found a cheaper and more flexible package for our 350 attendees at a Sofitel hotel that caters to the Silicon Valley tech crowd.

Sofitel Hotel San Francisco BayYes, it is cheaper to go to the fancy hotel in the French luxury chain.  Our planning committee researched various options in our region and found only one place even cheaper than the Sofitel.  That would have been the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno, Nevada.  I went to a church meeting once in a hotel/casino in Las Vegas, but we couldn’t stop talking about how weird it was to walk through the gambling floor packed with slot machines on our way to sessions about church growth – I doubt we would go back to the gambling state.

Which of course begs the question – what would Jesus do?  Pretty obvious actually – he’d go to Reno, or Las Vegas.  He’d be hanging out with the low paid workers in the casinos, the prostitutes on the street, the undocumented workers in the hotels, the alcoholics at the gaming tables.  And the school teachers and bankers.  The folks. 

Going to the cheapest place would also help us be better stewards of our resources, saving money for mission rather than spending it as we are here on feather beds and TVs with 2 French channels and $7 croissants.

Asilomar, where we met for decades, is a made-up word meaning “refuge by the sea” (asylum de la mar.)  When our church group met there we snuck out to walk under the mysterious cypress trees to the wide wild beaches.  We felt a kinship with the place’s creation story, how Phoebe Hearst, made rich by the Hearst mining and newspaper fortune, hired the young Julia Morgan, first American woman graduate of the Beaux Art architecture program in Paris (whom the family later engaged to design their Hearst Castle), to build a simple camp for young single working women to get out of the cities for a weekend respite. 

The Sofitel Hotel, where we are meeting this weekend, has a rather different mission; to give people a sense of French luxury and style in hotels around the world. Here’s how they pitch it:

"Step into the sleek sophistication of Sofitel San Francisco Bay. The perfect mix of French elegance and California charm it surrounds you in an ambience of eclectic chic infused with contemporary artistry and welcomes you with an awe inspiring view."

Please join us for a Magnifique stay in San Francisco where you will be treated to a unique combination of modern decor and traditional French art de recevoir.

Life is Magnifique in San Francisco.

(Is the translation just bad, or intentionally cute – “the perfect mix of French elegance and California charm it surrounds you”?  And the bad capitalization – life is Magnifique?  The poor staff all wear T-shirts with “Life is Magnifique” on the front and I could buy shirts and cups likewise branded.)

The creation story for the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino in Reno would be about the heritage of rough and ready mining towns (Nevada produced a silver bonanza as California did gold) encouraging or at least tolerating lawless behavior.  For many years Nevada was the only state with legalized gambling and the most liberal divorce laws.  People would fly there for the weekend to do both – get free and get rich.  Or not. Lots of sad stories there.  This history is the source of the iconic phrase about Las Vegas, Nevada: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”  Ie, come here, be bad, never get caught.  At our church meeting in Vegas we tried to turn that around, “What you learn (about church growth) in Vegas, don’t let it stay in Vegas.”  I don’t think it was very successful.

Circus Circus, RenoBut our churches in Reno and Vegas are actually growing, and new churches are forming.  The Reno church folks said they’d love to host our conference.  They remind us that the residents and workers live there not to escape reality, but to live real lives.  It’s not an asylum by the sea (or the desert), nor is it pretending to have a Magnifique ambience of eclectic chic.

I think I’ll be advocating for our church meeting to move to the Circus Circus, Reno.  Early Christians had their faith tested in the Roman Circus.  How would we do?

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

St. Joan of the Arches: McDonald’s Heir Super-sizes Liberal Causes

McDonald’s hamburgers make me sick.  I abhor the whole fast food ethos.  I’m embarrassed that every day 68 million people worldwide visit the Golden Arches, rub their stomach happily and say, “America’s greatest accomplishment - the Big Mac.”

Joan Kroc But I adore McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc.  I’m with those who call her St. Joan of the Arches.   

Her husband was Ray Kroc, a small town milkshake machine salesman, who bought a small regional restaurant chain in the 50’s and turned it into the biggest fast food empire in history. Today, in 119 countries, 34,000 McDonald’s restaurants serve those 68 million customers every day. 

That’s a lot of Big Macs.  550 million to be exact, consumed each year.  Made Ray lots of money.  When he died in 1984, Ray left Joan $2.3 billion. 

By the time she died twenty years later, Joan Kroc had given all that money away.

Ray was an outspoken conservative, and his charitable giving was small gifts to medical research, trade schools and Richard Nixon.

But Joan did it differently.  She gave big gifts and she gave to progressive and humanitarian causes.  National Public Radio, the Salvation Army, University of Notre Dame’s Joan Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies - even black activist Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1984, all got millions, and each got more money than Ray ever gave Nixon. 

Some accused Joan of betraying Ray’s wishes, but she said he had trusted her with the fortune.  Announcing her $1.6 billion gift to the Salvation Army to build and staff 50 community centers in poor neighborhoods, she told a crowd, “I’m sure this is something that Ray would have like me to do.  I’m sure he’s looking down – ah, I hope he’s looking down….”

Joan Mansfield and Ray Kroc fell in love in 1957 over a piano bar; she was at the keyboard, he was the new brash owner of the small fledgling Macdonald’s hamburger chain and was trying to sell her boss a franchise.   Both were married at the time, to other people, but the flame was kindled.  11 years later, they met again, she now in her 40’s, he in his 60’s, and married.  Though different in age, style and politics, they loved each other deeply.  When Ray died 15 years later he left Joan the Macdonald’s fortune, $2.3 billion. 

Many successful American business executives become very generous people; folks like the Rockefellers and Carnegies and Gates have set up foundations and supported all kinds of cultural institutions and public health work, encouraged by the generous tax breaks that come with charitable donations.  Kroc’s 50 Salvation Army youth community centers are reminiscent of Andrew Carnegie’s gift of hundreds of small town free libraries that continue to educate and inspire people nationwide.  Joan’s care for the common person evokes the Gates Foundation’s work worldwide on public health and women. 

But most American foundations are very cautious and conservative in their giving, fiercely protecting their assets, demanding strict control over grantees, and giving away only the minimum 5% annually require by law. 

But even though Joan had become a big time rich person, she retained her small town Midwest ethos.  She did start a foundation, but she disliked the paperwork and the cautious advisors, the fawning applicants and the slow return on generosity.  If you asked her directly, you were usually turned down.  She preferred anonymous cash gifts to folks like those she knew growing up in the Depression – flood victims, the homeless, abandoned animals, hospice care for the poor.

But she reluctantly went public with some gifts, like the huge Salvation Army donation, the largest single charitable gift in history.  University of Notre Dame and the University of San Diego both named Peace Studies Centers in her name; she was a strong proponent of nuclear disarmament. 

She and Ray owned the San Diego Padres baseball team.  While Ray is remembered for going on the stadium address system during a losing game and saying “This is the stupidest game of baseball I’ve ever seen,” Joan started the first drug and alcohol support program for employees and players in Major League Baseball.  After Ray died she tried to donate the team to the city of San Diego, but Major League Baseball (the owners, that is, major oligarchs in the Kingdom of Baseball) wouldn’t allow it.  So she sold the team and gave that money away also. 

Receiving a terminal diagnosis, she stepped up her giving in her last months.  One of her last big gifts was $250 million to National Public Radio.  Conservative lawmakers are constantly trying to eliminate NPR’s already meager budget, saying its news is too liberally biased.  When Joan made her huge gift to NPR, one conservative commentator called her a “McNut.”

Every time I hear the NPR announcer say that the program I just heard was funded in part by the Estate of Joan Kroc, I feel slightly less bad about those times on the road when I’ve succumbed to the lure of the Golden Arches.  My excuse has always been whiney kids or the only lights on a late night highway.  But now I can say, “Those Chicken McNuggets I bought helped kids learn how to use computers at a youth center, gave immediate cash to flood victims, countered the lies of Fox TV with NPR.  That’s a tasty meal.”  Or, as McDonald’s current slogan goes, “I’m lovin’ it.” 

_______

I got a lot of this info from a Washington Post article about Joan Kroc with a great headline: “Billions Served.  McDonald’s Heiress Joan Kroc Took Her Philanthropy and Super-Sized It.”

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

Beautiful Day in the Boston Neighborhood

It was a beautiful day in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood Monday, especially at Old South Church.  Affectionately called The Church of the Finish Line, the 344-year-old church is located at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, on the city center Boylston Street block where 20,000 runners, cheered on by half a million spectators complete the 26 mile race, as they have every year since 1896. 

Old South had held their traditional “Blessing of the Athletes” worship service the day before, the Sunday service overflowing with runners in their sweats receiving prayers and laying on of hands and encouragement from scripture; “May you run and not be weary, may you walk and not be faint.” 

Old South Church by Nancy RichardsonThe Boston Marathon is always held on Patriot’s Day, the April Massachusetts sacred holiday marking the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord that began the Revolutionary War.  It’s a full weekend; not just the Marathon and a Red Sox baseball game, but historic reenactments on the Lexington Green, patriotic speeches about Paul Revere and Bunker Hill, reminders of all those names and dates we learned in American History class.  Amidst all the hoopla and cheers we are reminded that these old towns were the site of battle deaths as well as victories; we feel gratitude for the sacrifice of those men and women as well as pride that they eventually won our freedom.

This year’s race, those 26 miles, was dedicated to the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting earlier this year, and each mile marker had the name of one of the dead kids or their dead teachers.  Folks from Newtown, Connecticut ran and received louder cheers than most.

And then the noisy cheers turned into noisy explosions, the yells of encouragement became yells for help, cries of pain.  The beautiful day in that neighborhood became a bloody scene of smoke and shrapnel and lost limbs and death. 

Old South’s minister Rev. Nancy Taylor was up in the church tower Monday afternoon watching the race. She had preached about the Marathon, about Boston’s pride in how loudly their spectators cheer on the runners.  “In this race, as in life, we never run alone.”  Usually the church building is open to the public on Mondays, as it is every day, 9-5, unlike most churches shuttered tight except Sunday morning.  But it was a holiday.  So she watched alone as the sidewalk turned red with blood, bodies and limbs exploded, people ran.

Two days later, speaking alongside President Obama at the Interfaith Memorial Service at the Catholic Church across town,Taylor said, "And from the church's tower, this is what I saw that day - I saw people running toward, not away from, toward the explosions, toward the chaos, the mayhem, toward the danger, making of their own bodies sacraments of mercy...We are shaken, but we are not forsaken."

(Old Sound is still shut down, as is the whole neighorhood, because it is an active crime scene; there are still barricades, trash, runners' gear. Informing her congregation that they would worship Sunday at a nearby church, Taylor said, "the last time Old Sound Church was closed this long was in 1775, during the British siege.")

Taylor's words about folks running towards those in need reminded me of the words of another pastor, Fred Rogers, the Presbyterian minister who for decades hosted a popular daily morning TV children's program, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...won't you be my neigborhood?" he would sing at the beginning of each show. (I read a profile of him once and the author said they were walking around New York and got on a subway train and everyone in the car recognized Mr. Rogers and spontaneously broke into the song they had learned as kids, as the train rattled underground, "Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood...")

The electronic church known as Facebook has been passing around another quotation from Mr. Rogers in recent weeks – I think I first saw it after the Newtown shootings.  “My mother always told me, when scary things happen,” Mr. Rogers once said  - Mr. Rogers had a mother?  What was she like? - “My mother always said, in scary situations, to look for the helpers.  There are always helpers.  Don’t just look at the scary things.  Look for the helpers.”

Old South Church has been around for a long time, especially for America, nearly 350 years.  Benjamin Franklin was baptized there on the day he was born.  Abolitionists preached there.  Since then, and today, they are involved with all kinds of programs, promoting justice and service, sometimes in controversy, in what can be a conservative town.

The church has been in the news for a very different controversy recently.  Among its many historic treasures are two copies of the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, two of the only eleven copies still extant, which was the first book printed in then British North America.  A psalm book in English prepared for the residents of this new land, an early chapter in the book of American reformation and revolution.  Those freedom fighters then found comfort in those psalms of lament and praise.  How long O Lord?  I was glad when they said, let us go into the house of the Lord.  God restores my soul.   (You can read a digital copy of the book here. 

The church has decided to sell one of the copies.  In good congregational polity all the members studied and deliberated and then voted as a group.  They expect to receive up to $20 million for this rarest of books when it is sold next fall.  They intend to use the money for their ministries of justice and compassion; the 17th century could gift the 21^st, they decided.

The decision was controversial, but the local paper affirmed the decision.  A church, the Boston Globe wrote,” is more than a collection of assets and artifacts, a church is a group of people.  The future is valuable too.”

Those psalms of praise and comfort can help serve modern Bostonians as well.  The church will be able to keep those doors open every day, tend to the wounded and weary every day, cheer on the fainthearted and offer comfort to the city today, every day, next year on Patriot’s Day at the finish line.  The church is for this city now.

This city now, these people running towards the dead and wounded, this nation, shaken but not forsaken, this beautiful neighborhood.

Copyright © Deborah Streeter

As American As Edgar Allan Poe

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary.
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore -
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visiter,” I mutter, tapping at my chamber door –
    Only this and nothing more.”

…..

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure not craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore –
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
    Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe got $9 for the poem, The Raven, when it was first published in 1845 in New York’s Daily Mirror.  The poem turned him into a national sensation overnight, but Poe continued to struggle with money, alcohol, publishers, illness and the deaths of many dear friends and family; he was dead himself four years later at age 40.

Many consider Poe’s 1841 classic short story, “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” to be the very first detective story.  Indeed Poe helped to birth and shape the short story form itself.  Likewise his own personal strange, dark appearance and character seem to live on over 150 years after his death.  He is widely admired, parodied, marketed, recreated in fiction and film, and, oh yeah, read.

Poe’s gothic romantic style appeals to all ages, but especially the adolescent.  Its dark and creepy stories of mystery and loss fascinate proto-Goth youth, especially girls.  I devoured Poe as a teen, and so did my daughter.  Picture this sweet mother-daughter scene; my 12 year old daughter, home sick from school, asking me please to read her “The Fall of The House of Usher.”  It seemed to cheer her up to hear about the “rank miasma of the tarn.”

On a trip up the Oregon coast when she was 15, we stayed at the Sylvia Beach Literary Hotel, with its theme rooms for Jane Austen, Tolkein,  Dr. Seuss and many others.  She was very disappointed that the Edgar Allan Poe room was already booked.  No raven on the bureau and pendulum over the bed for us.

Poe lived briefly in Baltimore, Maryland, and died there, buried in a church graveyard.  For decades an unknown fan, known affectionately as the “Poe Toaster” has left three red roses on his grave in the early hours of Jan. 19, his death day, and reportedly toasts him with cognac, a Poe-ish act of mystery and gloom.  (Of course we Poe sisters visited the graveyard on our own Poe fan tour in 2001, an incredibly hot July day as I recall, walking blocks through a poor decrepit neighborhood with our own wilting roses.)

When Baltimore got a new (U.S) football team in the 90’s, after the owner of their beloved Baltimore Colts (named for a nearby racetrack) had moved the team to Indianapolis, the new owners had a fan contest for the team’s new name, and hence mascot.

Mascots Edgar, Allan and PoeSports teams names and mascots are a huge deal in the U.S.  Many are warlike (Titans, Warriors, Spartans), many are racist (Indians, Redskins, Chiefs) and many are sort of scary animals (Bulls, Diamondbacks, Bears.)  The fans of Baltimore overwhelming chose the Ravens, in honor of their favorite poet native son and his most famous poem.  And the team mascots, those comical characters or critters than prance around the field inspiring fan support?  Three sort of snide looking ravens, dancing and prancing, and squawking, named Edgar, Allan and Poe. 

Baltimore is a fine American city with a proud history, world class universities, museums  and landmarks, but it doesn’t immediately come to mind when one thinks American literary history.  But what other football team begins its broadcast introduction of the starting lineup with a stanza from a poem?  Sure, it helps to have a great poetic chorus, like “Nevermore!”  Even ESPN, the sports media monopoly, punctuates highlight film of the Raven’s record setting defense with the cheer, “Quote the Ravens, Never score!”

In 2000, a mere 4 years into their new hometown and new name, the Baltimore Ravens won it all, culminating in a Super Bowl victory.  This past year, 2012, they won it again, making them the only NFL team with a perfect record in multiple Super Bowls.  My Poe-fan teenage daughter became, in 2000, needless to say, a Baltimore Ravens fan. A poet herself, she loved that the only team named for a writer was victorious over all those militaristic and racist-ly named teams.  Go writers!

Poe’s last published poem was “Annabel Lee.” Like The Raven, it is one of his many poems and short stories about the untimely death of a young woman.  I heard it first from my mother, who helped us get to sleep by reciting poetry to us.  I still get a little drowsy when I hear the final stanza:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea –
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter