Hand on her heart

Before I can begin to polish yesterday’s writing, I have to acknowledge the shock of waking up this morning to a strange, unfamiliar deep silence, a white sky...and SNOW.  The snow is about two inches deep and nothing is moving in my part of town. Sue’s at the airport in Sacramento, and I blithely expected to do a little shopping this morning and drive out to meet her at 11 a.m. But that’s not going to happen. Snow is so unusual for us that the city has few snow plows and everything pretty much stops when it snows. Will her plane be able to land? Will public transportation or cabs be running when she arrives? How will we get to each other and when? We don’t know.

And meanwhile in Eastern Oregon a gang of 150 heavily armed white right-wing men have taken over government buildings with very little push-back from authorities. They say they're doing God's work. They say President Obama is the devil's representative. They have assault weapons. The article calls the response by authorities a “laid back approach.” No guns, tasers, pepper spray, tear gas. No water cannon. No armed helicopters flying overhead. No snipers on rooftops. We know exactly how “laid back” the response would be if these 150 so-called protesters were black, Muslim, or even unarmed, peaceful, meditating Occupiers. 

There is a huge flaw in my plan. THIS present moment is completely different from the present moments I wrote about yesterday. Why didn’t this occur to me? I am laughing at myself.

I do want to write, however, about January 2. On a freezing cold day while snow-breath blasted my shivering body and whipped the scarf off my neck, I went into an unfamiliar coffee house to meet Diane, a joyous young woman I had seen being arrested at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in August. We friended each other on Facebook and followed each other for a while, and we decided it was time to sit down and get to know each other. She told me about her life--moving to Guam at 19, crafting a life like no other, activism and travel, becoming an art therapist. I quietly slipped my camera out of the bag onto my lap. When she started talking about a project in which she facilitated art workshops for Jewish Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab Israeli young women, she touched her heart. Great project, read about it here. 


Just now Sue’s plane landed. What next?

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