The next thing

Friday was my last day at work.

Regular readers may not be surprised, given some of the things I have said about my work situation. However, you could also be surprised knowing that money is tight and some of the tolls that other times of unemployment have taken on me.

I'll tell you how it happened.

I have been waiting since the new year for the volume to go down, but it was not. Neither was the frustration.

I had been fighting this urge to walk away. That was probably more true since around my birthday.

I had taken a sick day on a Thursday, then worked Friday, had a three-day weekend due to President's Day, worked Tuesday, and then had my birthday off. It wasn't a full vacation, but those days where I was not working felt so beautiful. 

Ahead of me was a stretch with no holidays until Memorial Day. The frustration was growing. I was tired and stressed and unhappy; and not "sick" but not well.

On February 5th I checked the calendar and saw that no one had the next two days off. I requested them as mental health days. I had been planning on saving my time off for an actual vacation, but I needed to not break down before then.

One of the last things I did Monday was call a member who had been having issues due to a formulary change. I had been trying to help her and if I was going to be out I wanted to update her. She was not happy and I could not blame her.

I felt okay for those two days, but I was not exactly recharged. 

Thursday I had e-mail about the one incident, saying that I had needed to cancel this request and I missed the deadline for doing it, and had refused to do so.

It was not exactly a scolding; just a reminder of the rules. I had in fact been refusing to pull the request because I was waiting for something that would work for the member. The alternative they had mentioned had not gone through. I know I was saying that, but we were speaking at cross purposes.

All the bad feelings were back, but I needed to respond to that. I needed to point out the ways in which we were not getting enough support to do right by our members and to maintain sanity and keep our heads above water.

I did not see any way I could say what I needed to say and stay working there. 

I didn't see any way I could stay working there.

I didn't write anything that day. I prayed, but I didn't respond.

I didn't start writing until late in the day Friday. I meant to send it sooner, but then when I was writing calls came in and the work day had actually ended when I got off the last call. 

I wasn't sure if they would take the two week's notice. Usually once someone is gone we find out after they are gone. In retrospect I think that means most people are not giving notice. That impulse I kept resisting may have been more irresistible for them.

I did get an announcement while I was still there, and some people reached out.

Honestly, everyone has been pretty good. 

I do understand that they are swamped, across positions and departments. The lead time for appeals went from 45 days to 120 days. That is a serious problem.

In the end, though, I can't make it my problem.

I was feeling like "I can't do this", but I can do it. I do it pretty well. Doing so was grinding me down, physically and emotionally. I can't do it with quality of life.

I know there is privilege in walking away. There are other people who are working jobs that are bad for them that can't quit. That's not a reason for me to say.

And there is still risk. I am deeply aware of that.

I had this list of things that I wanted to do, jobs and programs to apply for and things like that, but I wasn't getting anywhere because I was too tired and busy.

Well, now I have the time. The steady income is gone, but I think we are good through May.

That's some time. 

I'll be praying more.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/01/professional.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/01/sick-day.html

NAHM: Indigenous people and the environment

One of Indian Country Today's regular features is "Global Indigenous" with features not only about Canadian First Nations people and Native Americans in United States, but also the Maori in New Zealand, Aboriginal Australians, and more. 

Colonization had a far reach.

There is plenty to think about there, but that is not the point of today's post.

Featured stories often came from Mongabay, which I had assumed was a news source focusing on "Global Indigenous".

Mongabay.com focuses on environmental science and conservation.

If there are frequently stories about Indigenous people, it is generally because of environmental damage that they are fighting, or from which they are suffering.

Two books in my recent reading focused on this:

Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature by Peter S. Knudtson, David Suzuki

Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples: The Cultural Politics of Law and Knowledge by Laurelyn Whitt

Of course, it has been a recurring theme. 

Both Indians in the Making and Seeing Red dealt with it in part as part of the legal issues.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/02/native-american-heritage-month.html

Indians in the Making was inspired by a legal case about fishing rights. 

I have also recently read these articles:

https://ictnews.org/news/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-boldt-decision-is-a-celebration-of-native-leadership?

https://www.yakimaherald.com/30-years-after-salmon-scam-trial-david-sohappy-is-still-on-the-river/article_5dc2f63e-27d6-11e7-9b2f-276b99f27bf6.html 

One interesting thing to note is that sometimes the attempts to limit treaty fishing rights were in the name of "conservation", but commercial fishers were taking 85% of the catch, compared to 5-7% by Native fishers.

One has to doubt the sincerity.

Seeing Red's focus on the "political economy of plunder" really helped me see that settler colonialism and extractive colonialism are not mutually exclusive.

As settlers, we should be invested in the land and its health, but greed gets in the way.

It has been shown time and time again that to successfully restore the environment, you need to involve local Indigenous people. That was not only demonstrated in the Wisdom of the Elders and Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous People, but was also featured in a recent World Economic Forum study, Embedding Indigenous Knowledge:

https://www.weforum.org/publications/embedding-indigenous-knowledge-in-the-conservation-and-restoration-of-landscapes/

As hard as residential schools and relocation and other factors tried to eliminate this knowledge, it is still there, and is still necessary.

Greed gets in the way.

One of the warnings in Embedding Indigenous Knowledge is that profit cannot be the only consideration or marker of success.

That will require many more people being wise.

Grief and anger

I want it to be “no”,
But I know it's “yes”.
I had hoped for more for you,
then regret that you've reached infinity.
Logic fails, but memory will not,
and may not always feel like grief.

I am angry and sad. 

Back in November I wrote about going through e-mail messages. There were a few replies to direct messages from the previous year, where I was worried about losing contact and not having told them that they meant something to me and I cared. I didn't want to leave that unsaid.

One of them, Shafiqah Hudson, "Sassycrass", has died.

I think our last Twitter exchange was agreement that if I have food, you have food, because that discussion of Swedish hospitality had come back.

I know our last e-mail exchange for sure. I was reminding her that I was not far away, and if she needed something to let me know. She assured me on a few things she did not need help with -- at least for the moment -- and I replied with a few more things that I could possibly do.

That was February 1st. February 16th I saw that she had died the night before.

One of the last thing I offered was that I always have extra KN-95 masks. Those can be very important, but of course what she needed most was to not have had COVID. She had it three times, and that pushed her blood pressure up badly and kept it there, wreaking havoc with her system.

That is a big part of my anger, but there is another aspect to it as well.

 

There have been a few deaths over the years on Twitter. I engaged more with Shafiqah then the others, but you can still admire someone's caring and wisdom and feel their loss. 

 

There were two others who were Black women. We had commiserated together over one of them, and then all of these memories keep coming back.

 

I am angry that Black women keep paying the higher price, and being expected to do so.

 

I am angry that she had to ask for financial help getting to medical appointments. Many people benefited from her work, and never reimbursed her in any way.

 

I am grateful that Trudy collected her work into an online repository:

 

https://t.co/xx7yY6WvFU 

I am angry the she faced medical racism, along with the weaknesses in medicine that have come from ignoring women's issues for so long.

I am angry that so many people have given up on fighting COVID.

 

I am angrier that so many Americans gave up on fighting it when they learned that it affected people of color more, so that even being careful on their end is not enough.

 

Wear a mask!

I am angry that COVID brought back Tinu's cancer, and afraid that she will lose her fight too. 

I am angry and I am tired and sad.

 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/11/connected.html

Native American Heritage Month: Spotlight on Julie Flett

Julie Flett's name has appeared on this blog before.

The Cree-Métis illustrator worked on one of my favorite children's books, Little You by Richard Van Camp, and reliably appeared on lists of recommended books.

Birdsong came up more than once, and I think it was looking at it again that made me want to review all of her work. She often illustrates with digital collages, but not exclusively. I find her work very visually appealing.

I was able to check out almost everything. There is one book showing on Goodreads as not yet released (Best in Show, September 2024), and one compilation that may not be in general publication (A River of Stories, Volume 3: Air).

There is a strong connection to nature throughout that I appreciate. 

Books read this time were mostly picture books, but there was one other book that was a little more complicated that I really loved.

The Journey Forward: A Novella on Reconciliation 

There was a foreword by Alison Gear, then two short books:

When We Play Our Drums, They Sing! by Richard Van Camp and Lucy and Lola written by Monique Gray Smith and illustrated by Julie Flett

Both books center on young protagonists, too young for residential schools themselves, but having parents and grandparents who did go to residential schools.

It is the first time I have seen attention paid to the parents after the children were gone, and what it was like for them, and also a good explanation of how that affects the generations. Having the two books together makes it more effective.

Without shortchanging the pain or problems, both stories are ultimately optimistic, and it is good that they are out in the world.

I highly recommend them, even for adults, though the target audience is probably early adolescents.

Flett's work is not as prominent here, which makes sense for the context, but it was something I was very glad that I read, and that happened because I liked her work and sought out more.

That is a good pattern.

Picture books read this time around:

by Julie Flett
Wild Berries
Owls See Clearly At Night: A Michif Alphabet 

illustrations for other authors

We Sang You Home by Richard Van Camp
Just Like Grandma by Kim Rogers
Dragonfly Kites by Tomson Highway
Zoe and the Fawn by Catherine Jamison Johnny's Pheasant by Cheryl Minnema Dolphin SOS by Roy and Slavia Miki, and Richard Cannings The Moccasins by Earl Einarson

2024: The New 52

This title has other reasons, but there was a major DC relaunch of all of their characters in 2011, ending existing series and starting 52 new books. 

I like titles that hold references to other things, but I should mention that I really hated those relaunches. They were messy and sadly lacking in nuance and subtlety. While I am harder to please than some for superhero comics, that was not just me, That relaunch is largely remembered as a train wreck.

Catchy title, though.

I like using titles for posts that play or pun on other titles. I like those types of connections. I like incorporating them into themes.

For example, when I was turning 31 I thought about having a birthday party that focused on 31 flavors or Baskin-Robbins or something. I didn't get on the ball in time. If Bresler's had still been around I would have just started planning then for a party in two years, but they were sold in 1987.

Also, because my birthday is so close to the new year, I often make that my real new year, like maybe that's when I start my resolutions.

Around this birthday, I was thinking about 52.

There are 52 weeks in a year, and 52 cards in a deck. 

There is a movie called 52 Pickup, and a card game, kind of. ("Game" may be too strong a word.)

I had also thought about the different forces that are in my life right now. Certainly death is a preoccupation, with my mother in hospice, and my need for money, but also I was starting to think about what gardening I will do this year, and other things that could happen.

Death. Growth. Love. Wealth.

Well, "hearts" and "diamonds" fit in pretty easily. Spades seemed like death, but you use a spade in a garden, right? And you could club someone to death, but it just didn't work.

Spades are death. Clubs are clearly some kind of tree or rosebush or a trillium.

Therefore, I decided that I would get a deck of cards, and each Sunday I would pick one and then write about it.

It was much easier to decide what the suits meant than what the different numbers mean.

I mean, I may not have been completely certain on which suit meant death, but then the first time I reached in I came up with the Ace of Spades. That was clearly the impending loss of my mother. Spades gets to be Death! 

At least for the face cards I kind of had in mind that the king could represent patriarchal forces, and then the queen could be my own energy, and the knave could be chaos or luck. That's what the Jack of Diamonds did represent when he came up, factors beyond my control in relation to money.

However, then I was thinking about Hearts, it could make sense to work down with family members. If my father is the king and mom is the queen, my brother could be the jack and then I guess my older sister is the ten. Fine, that's logical, but what do I do with the Nine of Hearts?

I mean, I had been thinking about the symbolic value of various numbers, and I even checked out a book on Tarot for ideas. Time to look at that. 

Apparently, nine can stand for completion, as it is the last of the single digits. For hearts, maybe it could be about the termination of love, or whether it had run its course and what that meant.

There are still various numbers where I don't know what they will mean, and it seems unlikely that they will be consistent across suits.

However, if there's one thing that we should all know, it's that writing prompts do not behave in an orderly manner.

Or, perhaps the name doomed it, and it will be a train wreck.

Daily songs for January

One reason I extended "December" into January by four songs (because I certainly could have done three and possibly could have done five) was that there were twenty-seven artists featured in Legends, Icons, & Rebels: Music That Changed the World.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/01/native-american-heritage-month.html

I probably did enough complaining about Bob Dylan in that post, so I won't harp on it now. 

For each artist there were five songs mentioned, but then sometimes other things were mentioned too; perhaps there was a biographical connection or one album stood out. For my purposes, that led to extra listening with The Beach Boys, Carole King, and Joni Mitchell.

Most of the artists were pretty familiar, especially the songs mentioned. That being said, I had no idea that the original version of "Hard to Handle" was by Otis Redding and that The Black Crowes version was a cover. I associate Redding with slower songs, but I guess with "Try A Little Tenderness" I could have known.

In the description of The Beatles, Robertson writes that you know the words even without actively listening, like it's "musical air". I realized how true that was when song titles I thought I did not know at all ended up being very familiar songs.

They are still not my favorites, but I am capable of realizing when something is important, and even well done, regardless of my own appreciation. 

And there are some pretty good ones on the list.

There were certainly things I didn't know. One of the most encouraging was that a lot of these musicians, while known for some way in which they broke new ground, were also good about mentoring other musicians and sharing.

Generally I tried to use a musician's "best", and maybe best known song, so this list in some ways does not reflect the learning. 

For example, Hank Williams has a song, "Move It On Over", about getting the dog to make room when coming home late gets you in the doghouse. I had never heard it, or heard of it, and yet it was very familiar, with a clear influence on Bill Haley & His Comets' "Rock Around the Clock".

Still, I used “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry”.

I was a little surprised that while there was a mention of the opening riff on "Johnny B. Goode", there was no mention of it coming from "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" from Louis Jordan, also one of the Legends.

Of course, Jordan was in there as "The Jukebox King", with so many hits, that wasn't even one of his main ones. Maybe Robbie didn't know. I only know it because of Wikipedia. Also, that riff specifically is more Carl Hogan.

So, while I did not love everything I listened to, there was a lot of interesting stuff, and stuff I will return to.

Also, the next listening material I pulled from a book was more annoying, though I still learned from it.

Sometimes that's all I can ask.

Daily songs"

1/5 “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry
1/6 “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash
1/7 “Respect” by Aretha Franklin
1/8 “She Loves You” by The Beatles
1/9 “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong
1/10 “Get Up, Stand Up” by Bob Marley
1/11 “Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly
1/12 “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell
1/13 “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles
1/14 “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley
1/15 “People Get Ready” by Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions
1/16 “Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)” by Billie Holiday
1/17 “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard
1/18 “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams
1/19 “My Way” by Frank Sinatra
1/20 “What's Going On” by Marvin Gaye
1/21 “So Far Away” by Carole King
1/22 “You Send Me” by Sam Cooke
1/23 “Caldonia” by Louis Jordan
1/24 “Wouldn't It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys
1/25 “They Can't Take That Away From Me” by Ella Fitzgerald
1/26  “I Got You” by James Brown
1/27 “Crazy” by Patsy Cline
1/28 “These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding
1/29 “Mona Lisa” by Nat King Cole
1/30 “Higher Ground” by Stevie Wonder
1/31 “Blowin' in the Wind “ by Bob Dylan

"Fast Car" discourse

I didn't have a big reaction initially to Luke Combs doing a cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car". 

I mean, I understand he was respectful and asked, and that is important, but I am really not a country fan; it was not likely that I was going to hear it.

Then there was the Grammy win. Apparently it is a Grammy first to have a Black woman with the sole writing credit on a country Grammy, and then she performed. I really like Chapman and had not heard much from her lately, so great.

It also means that people have been expressing opinions a lot. That doesn't have to be terrible, but now we have discourse, and now I have something to write about.

There are tweets about how the emotion of the song is enhanced by the extended wait to get to the chorus. I never thought about that, but it seems valid.

There are tweets about the difference between working class songs and the songs about trying to even get into the working class. I appreciate those now more than I would have a few years ago.

Then there is this one tweet, which is the real reason I am writing:

https://twitter.com/heavyredaction/status/1754671190701154815

"Fast Car” was always a sad song, but in 1988 when it released, you arguably *could* run away with your partner and make a life on the salary of a grocery-store checker. 35 years on it reads as much sadder"

That triggered some reaction, to which the author responded by posting comparisons of minimum wage and rents for then and now, clearly with a sense of superiority to those people getting "mad" about the tweet. It was all very white academic, removed from the subject matter, which of course makes it easier to feel clever.

The most obvious sign of missing the point is that on the salary of a grocery-store checker, they are still living in the shelter. That is not a good sign of being able to make it. It is also clear from the last verse that history is repeating itself. She may run -- and run more than once -- but she will not get anywhere.

It is easy to feel scorn about someone missing the point of a song (especially an academic), but it may be more important why the point is being missed. 

Remember I said a "white" academic? Structural racism has an economic component. 

Yes, if someone can afford to be an associate professor in San Francisco now, they probably come from money anyway, so thinking about escaping poverty is going to be more of an intellectual exercise anyway; what an interesting set of variables!

However, if that grocery store checker was white, and from a family that truly was working class (instead of actually poor), they would probably be earning more, with more housing options, and have a better footing for holding their ground. 

It's actually less hopeful now. Economic inequality has spread more, with more wealth consolidation at the top and a harder time scrambling for crumbs at the bottom. Since about the start of the 21st century, we have children doing worse than their parents, with less chance of keeping afloat.

The reason I feel compelled to write about it is that it happened because of racism. When people were deciding that domestic and agricultural workers did not need Social Security, and that wait staff did not need to make a true minimum wage because of tips... well, even if there were times when it was not specifically racism (though that happened a lot), it was still deciding that other people don't need or deserve this level of stability. 

It will just make them lazy. (Which they already are, or they wouldn't even need those jobs, am I right?)

As it is, the people at the top will never have enough. They don't have a way of comprehending what enough is because they are so far past it that they can only think "More!"

They will keep extracting more, and more people will not have any chance of escaping the trap.

There may be times when they are young and excited by a new relationship and they get this hope. That can feel exhilarating, but it is not nearly as effective as a fair and equitable society can be. 

That will take working together, abandoning all illusions of superiority to others.

If you can do that before the decline reaches you, you can do really good things, and escape a lot of bitterness.

Or, you can say things that you think show you are smart and help no one.

Decisions, decisions.

Native American Heritage Month: Legalities

I like the ways that books work together. 

American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children: A Reader and Bibliography by Arlene Hirschfelder, Paulette Fairbanks Molin, Yvonne Wakim 

It was a collection of pieces, some of which dragged but were necessary, and some that were fascinating. I wish "The Thanksgiving Epidemic" by Kathy Kerner was more widely circulated.

There was a section on how the mental image we have of all Indians came from Plains culture, until eventually other tribes had to start using the feathered headdresses. Sure enough, another book gave me a photo of Puget Sound tribes wearing the headdresses for tourists, because otherwise they were not perceived as Indians. 

Indians in the Making: Ethnic Relations and Indian Identity Around Puget Sound by Alexandra Harmon

American Indian Stereotypes is an older book, so the focus is on children wearing the headdresses on toys, without really getting into Coachella. Before the disrespect of relegating tribal members to the best, where they can become costumes, there was requiring a costume of contemporary Indians to accept them as such, with a host of additional complications on the ways in which that acceptance helped and harmed them.

Indians in the Making was interesting being relatively local. Many of the tribe and place names were familiar, and it largely focused on fishing rights, which was the most common type of case that I remember from youth. 

It also referenced McLoughlin and Ermatinger, familiar from our Oregon City explorations, but of course the Hudson Bay Company was not just on the Pacific Coast; at least one Ermatinger also came up in a recent Pulitzer Prize winner: 

Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John Witgen

That "political economy of plunder" in the title is an apt phrase, repeated often in the book and more appropriate every time. I think I may return to it after some colonialism based reading. For now, I need to bring up one other book:

We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle

A common thread with these books is how much of importance ends up documented due to court cases.

Harmon wrote her book after working on a case about fishing rights where the argument against upholding the treaties was that the people with the claim to the fishing rights were not actually descended from the tribe who had made the original treaty. 

There was arguably some difficulty in determining that. There were many tribes around the Puget Sound (this tended to focus on the Suquamish people), and they often intermarried, not just as a coincidence but for establishing trade relationships and alliances. They would move around, and sometimes move back. So, when there were attempts to determine land allotments or annuities, sometimes they would go by where someone was staying, or whom they were related to, but it could be paternal or maternal, and it wasn't always consistent.

The legal question then becomes not just what is documented, but what is defined. 

Harmon wrote her book because as interesting as the story of the case was, there was also more to it in terms of how social ties and customs were maintained, and how that contributed to identity.

Gayle's book runs into similar issues, with Black people who were historically members of the Creek tribe (especially focusing on descendants of Creek chief Cow Tom), all of whom were expelled in 1979. 

One important part of that was that as rolls were being worked out, at one point various members were referred to as "freedmen", a term for former slaves. There were former slaves among them, but there were also people who had married in, people who were adopted, and people who had never been slaves. It was supposed to be related to how they entered the tribe, but it made the assumption based on skin tone, with at least one pair of sisters falling on either side.

Yes, the obvious point is racism, but part of the legal question is whether the tribe is viewed as a racial group or as a sovereign nation. If they are a sovereign nation, citizenship can have factors beyond blood. Maybe it would go by geographic residence, but forced relocation disrupts that.

Seeing Red has more stolen land and broken treaties, but part of that is who gets to be Indian and who gets to be white. Often that is mostly decided by political and economic expedience. We can't punish this murderer (who is an important trade partner) because the (Eastern-educated, half-white) victim is not a member of civilization and under our authority. His Indian half gets us off the hook.

There is going to be more on that next week, and then I think I might be done with this identity topic. It does seem worth pointing out that the definitions made by the white man are generally a way of getting more of one's land, and with less reimbursement.

There was not always a great possibility of resisting historically, but it certainly bears thinking about now.