Got Plans?

On Sunday March 7th, join us for a fundraiser for Dave Holbrook.  For years at Kooter Brown's Music Tavern at Caney Ridge (Barber), Dave hosted fundraisers for every cause and every person in need.  When Granny Sowers needed a truck, Kooters hosted a bikers' event.  When STIR needed a place to host a 3-day Songwriters' Earth Day Weekend Jam, Dave kindly offered Kooters--- and organized a Poker Run too.

A week ago, Kooter's new location in Tahlequah caught fire and much of the restaurant and bar were destroyed.  This fire also took the life of Jewely Herrington next door who owned Jewely's Pet Grooming.  Dave claims he had some hand in naming Jewely's business.  (She had intended to call it Jewely's Doggy Styles but Dave pointed out the ambiguity in that business brand.)   Jewely was a sweet and beautiful woman, and she will be missed very much.

So tomorrow, we're going to try and balance the scale of Karma just a little bit, by raising some money to help Dave with whatever is next for him in his life-- whether it be to start over or just walk away from his business and his baby that he had just opened on New Years' Eve or thereabouts.

Sometimes in life we seem to have our path in front of us in a clear way, only to discover that fate has moved the foot path.  But when it happens we can find the best in everything and not let fear of changes be an added obstacle. Our ability to cope is directly related to our ability to cope.  In other words, the sooner that we accept facts and look to the future, the sooner we can move on and adapt.

Sunday, come to Scooter Music Tavern at SH51 and the Bypass for great music, free food and some of the best folks you could ever call friends.  There, you can get a sense of  the kind of friendship that pulls people thru tragedies.  Dave and I both lost a parent within the last 5 weeks, and   we know first-hand how much we're loved by the people we love too.  There will be some good musical jam.  Hours are 3 pm to 1 am Sunday at Scooters.  Bring an auction item, or bring money to buy some cool stuff from the auction table.  Dennis Tibbits will be the auctioneer.

IllinoisRiver Slime

I usually look for aesthetic objects to blog about.  And I'm running the risk of being untimely, since this blog is being written before the ruling in the Big Chicken lawsuit.  But on February 19, I took this pic coming down Highway Ten between Jay and Tahlequah.  Its slime.  It is river slime from a bar ditch that will be running right to the river.  I also photographed a chicken feather just two feet away. 

The Illinois River in Northeastern Oklahoma runs thru the heart of the Cherokee Nation.  I've played on that river since I was a little bitty kid, either fishing, camping, or just going to the water to play music or have a picnic.  It didn't use to ensnarl one's feet in slimy green ooze.  But the economics are such that huge monoposonistic poultry companies in Arkansas consider this watershed "out the back door" and establish contracts with growers urging them to expand this direction, thus keeping the White River Basin pristine for the companies' executives playground.

What to do?  In Tulsa, there may yet be a lawsuit as yet unruled upon, where AG Drew Edmondson has found attorneys taking it on a contingent fee, to enforce the laws which are aimed at preventing this type of collusive and individual corporate irresponsibility.  One law says you can't dump solid waste in this manner.  That would apply to the solid waste these farms spread on the land.  One law says you can't pollute the waters of Oklahoma--- regardless of whether it is ooze, protein, liquid manure, beneficial fertilizer that gets away.  Another law says that when activity within a company's control results in a nuisance to another person's use of the public arena it is actionable.  There are other laws too-- the Clean Water Act and its subsequent Safe Drinking Water Act.  The SDWA says you can't pollute so much that downstream water treatment plants give people cancer because of all the disinfection by products used.  They have a magic number saying what risk is acceptable--- and what risk is more than downstream water users ought not have to put up with.  And when the consequence of pollution is measured in number of deaths, that's a pretty tough hardship.

Why on Earth would a neighbor do this to downstreamers?  Money.  Pure and simple.  See, it costs fuel and time to move poultry litter from over-concentrated areas to needy areas elsewhere in other watersheds where every bit of nutrient is captured by a hungry plant before it can dissolve and slide into the water to feed algae.  IRW plants are overfed, and can't eat another bite of the stuff... or else there is so much water that drains.  Pick a flat, dry watershed, and you'd have the perfect place to apply poultry litter to the surface where it can be used as a fertilizer instead of as a waste disposal sham.

No matter how Judge Frizzell rules, the loser will appeal for about a dozen years and we may not see anything but foot-dragging for as long as Big Chicken can pay lawyers to hold off the changes.  When you think about an infinite number of years that waste would have to be trucked away, you can see the logic of foot-dragging.  These companies are looking at the long-long perspective and spending money up-front to forestall the day they will have to do right by the river, because it will change their economics.

The first day I sat in on the trials in Tulsa, I was stunned at the contrast.  Big Chicken had about 35 lawyers on its side of the case.  Oklahoma had seven lawyers and 3 support personnel on its side.  Big Chicken made very imaginable objection and tried to twist the Judge's logic.  At one point they obtained rulings that vastly changes the possible outcomes, by applying a definition so restrictively.  The Judge was ruling that some routine governmental reports were inadmissible, and that really slowed down the State making it very hard and tedious to prove the case.  Last time I counted in December, the record was about 16,000 pages of testimony and there were thousands of exhibits.  Another trick was to agree to certain documents and then later Big Chicken's attorneys would argue that the documents were not admissible.  That crippled Oklahoma by whittling away the evidence.  It was, in my opinion, underhanded fraud by the Defendants in the case because they used timing to keep Oklahoma from admitting certain evidentiary facts.

But the outcome is unavoidable.  Poultry waste leaves their land in water, which runs into the river and is like vitamin water for algae to grow super-well.  The algae changes the habitat for stream biota until it dies, and then it takes the oxygen out of the water making it lifeless for fish and other life forms.  Some algae is toxic when it dies.  And cities have to bleach the water to make it drinkable... and that bleaching process adds poisons too.  To be safe, cities limit their disinfection to a certain level, but sometimes they can't make safe water because the bacteria, dead algae and bleach are too high--- its so polluted that it can't be brought back to safe drinkability.

That's just a thumbnail overview.  These companies are very powerful and will tell you that they want to sell cheap chicken so poor people won't starve.  To that I say, "Eaters should pay the price, not those who have the misfortune to be a neighbor to these colonizers."  The language of conquest applies even today. 

In Memory of Bertie Kirk Carter

I've learned something about cancer this year.  I thought all cancers were kinda alike.  It turns out that some grow slowly, or are more capable of treatment than others.

After Christmas, my mother, Bertie Carter felt tired and listless--- even to the point of not being terribly clear-headed.  When my father and sister finally talked her into going to the ER, they kept her and gave her five pints of blood for anemia.  It turns out that her hospital visit led to tests which led to a visit to the cancer treatment center in Muskogee, where capable Dr. Vasseraddi (sp.) told us, "She has acute, or fast-growing, myopathic leukemia.  Statistically, the 10 to 15% who do live five years out from a diagnosis, are not those who are 72 years of age.  There is treatment-- chemo-- but it would not be successful for you."  The next week, we embarked on Nana's first week of dacogen.  She had four hour-long IV injections of it, but on Friday there came an ice storm and everyone was snowed in.  By Monday's treatment time, she had passed.

So many people have expressed their regards and offered to assist us in this time.  I speak for all of us in saying that we have felt the loving bond with so many friends and family over these few days since Monday, February 1 when she passed.

It has been a journey of less than three weeks, but a very hard one.  Words can't encompass how capable, funny, sweet, beautiful, compassionate, tirelessly energetic, creative, patient and clever my mom was.  She left behind two girls with advanced degrees, 2 at OU, one with an NSU degree and a grandson who loved her very much.

She got to know her first great-grandchild for a bit over one month before passing.  This pic is from November at El Zarape, where she always ordered the chicken lime soup.

The last night, Sunday January 31st was a turning point for her.  I had called her before bedtime and our plan was that I'd drive her to chemo in Muskogee in my truck with four-wheel drive, since snow and ice were still packing some of the streets, highways and bridges.  "OK, Sugar-Babe.  I'll see you at 9:30.  Love you," she said.  We've never been shy about saying we love each other.  My father went to bed early with her.  At 1:30 he noticed she was gone, and found that she had gone to the other bed but was breathing shallow, perspiring and ill.  He stayed awake concerned, but she fought him to keep him from calling an ambulance.  At dawn, he called my sister who came over and called them over Nana's protests.

She was frail but polite going to the stretcher, and thanked the medics.  On the way, her blood pressure bottomed and she was resuscitated-- and again after arriving at the hospital.  She had tubes everywhere when I went in to see her.  The doctor had braced me for it.  Her heart flatlined as my sister and I  sat holding her hand and kissing her forehead.  Now she could be free of the pumps and beeping machines, the painful pricks and the aches and stinging.  She could be beautiful again and free.

When I think of her, my favorite (recurring) image is of a coifed 60s mom, age 30-something in pink lipstick wearing a shorts set and holding a trowel from having just planted roses.  She wrote all over her final instructions "Closed casket, please."    And that was so others could remember her from better times.

In our family, we're not weepy nor regretful nor angry.  My little sister says it like this:  "We just put on our Big Girl Panties and deal with it."  We know Nana is over the pain.  At the memorial, Dennis sang, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  I like to think of her as a flitty little sparrow, who has flown away because she has important sparrow business to take care of, and she has done her best to give us the tools in life to carry on with things earthly. She was never just ours anyway--- she belonged to NSU, to the Hospital Board, the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, the sick, the elders, the children, the teens who needed chiffon-dreamy gowns for Prom, the mentees, the exchange students, the pastor's crew, the pitch players and domino players and golfers and History Day students, the intern teachers and the local beauty pageants and fashion shows, the renters and grandchildren.  The pastor remarked that her accomplishments were so great that the Energizer Bunny would be giving up and waving a white flag in concession to her.

Bertie Kirk Carter was b. February 6, 1937 at Braggs Oklahoma. She attended school at Stone Chapel, Boudinot, and Bagley, and perhaps other places.   In 1955 she married Eugene Clinton Carter at the home of Reverend Krouse at or near Welling.  They made their home in Tahlequah, having built a house in Boone Addition.  Then they built a house in Monks Addition at 601 Victor Street.  They had two daughters, Kathy Jean Carter and Karen Jane Carter.  She succumbed to Leukemia on Monday, February 1, 2010 just sixteen days after having been diagnosed.  Donations to NSU foundation will support scholarships in her honor.

Shadow, King of Cats

Last September, our darling elder gentleman cat passed away.  He was briefly ill, and it gave us the opportunity to say our final goodbyes to him.  His name was Shadow, and he was a huge British Shorthair classic blue neutered tom cat who lived the good life and dominated the rhythms of our house.

Each morning he waited somewhat patiently until Dennis donned his shoes, then he'd yeow loudly and the both of them knew it was time to go to the kitchen to fix Shadow's breakfast.  Toward those latter years, I'd taken to feeding wild cats we couldn't pet or vaccinate, but which would at least eat on the back deck (thus saving my songbirds here).  Shadow was King of Cats, and these outdoor cats were his subjects.  They would peer in the door when hungry, and Shadow watched for this.  I swear it, and witnesses have heard it... Shadow would say this when the outdoor Cats were hungry:  "Hellow?  Hellow?"  It was loud and clear.  Most unusual and remarkable and rare.