I've been feeling exceptionally low this past week with an infected tooth and all the accommodation malaise, and a feeling that, perhaps, I'm not long on this rolling planet. I haven't left the house for days hardly except to refill my pain medication . I've been dragging myself around like an old man, not like the 65 year old kid I am inside.
Even reading the 'news that screws' on here isn't doing a 'damned thang' for me anymore.
Sarah and Robb asked me over for supper two nights ago and fed me wonderfully healthy fresh vege, raisin and nut stir fry with whole grain rice followed by supreme 'local grown' ice cream and topped off by a magical infusion of local flowers and herbs.
There was a movement of hope.
Last night I managed to cook a meal..that was the first sign of improvement after days of varying forms of 'pobs' (baby food). An old standard of pan fried marinated (in tamari and ginger preserve) British Columbian Pacific (farm grown) salmon filet with the only handful of my porch grown green beans with chinese noodles in some left over way salty but perfect in reduction chickarina soup from the other night.
Woke two hours later propped up in my recliner by my airline sleep pillow.
Today still in marginal condition although the swelling is down and following Robb's advice in taking several Sudafed to open up my sinuses and remove the nasty dollar sized pain on the top left of my scalp (caused by blocked sinuses apparently) ... ate a bit midday and fell asleep again.
Up here on the computer I scan the piles around me, the results of many a summertime scavenging trip to garage sales and Salvation Army thrift shops.
Second in the pile was...
The Best Of Buffy Sainte-Marie
24 of her great recordings on the Vanguard label.
I tossed into my computer and hung on for dear life !
Oh my, how music can resurrect the soul !!
Hearing Saskatchewan's First Nation Piapot Reserve Cree/Canadian Buffy Sainte Marie warbling, in her inimitable manner, all these wonderful songs, many of them songs of the revolution we were all hoping to bring about. Many also just classic country and bluegrass songs but no matter what she sings you can visualize her standing up on hill rise, hair flowing as she thrusts up, passionately, into the sky every deeply felt word.
I was in tears in the first few beats of Universal Soldier. It only took those few notes to throw me deep into my memory bank of sounds, feelings, sorrows and varied connections..back to my days , to our days of struggle in the 1960's and '70's.
Don't let anyone ever diminish those days by referring to them as the 'hippie era' to you.
Those days were the most wonderful, the most confusing, the most painful, the most splendid and the most experiential of my life.
Enough that this hippie from Yorkville Village, round the corner from The Riverboat ( where Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Ian and Sylvia, Neil Young,The Original Sloth Band ..yes..and Buffy Sainte Marie 'cut their teeth' performing) even now still bursts into tears as her cries wake up the fighting, life aspiring spirit in me.
Dear, dear Buffy. How remarkable she is .. still. I found her too hard to listen to much back in the late '70's. Her voice, demanding to be heard was too much for me to handle at the time. Now it is like manna.
Born in Feb 20 1941 in the Cree Piapot Reserve, Saskatchewan, Canada this little native girl , adopted by 'white folk' who moved to Maine and then Massachusetts with her where she excelled in her university studies, was such an important voice at such a critical time in our history and who, like many others of her .. suffered under the hand of those that did not want to hear her truths.
When will they ever hear ? ?
My Country 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying.
Now that your big eyes have finally opened,
Now that you're wondering how must they feel,
Meaning them that you've chased across America's movie screens.
Now that you're wondering how can it be real
That the ones you've called colorful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda They starve in their splendor?
You've asked for my comment I simply will render:
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they're taught to despise their traditions.
You forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country's birth,
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it's better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Gran Canyon's caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we're lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you've brought us,
The lessons you've taught us, the ruin you've wrought us
Oh see what our trust in America's brought us.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
Now that we're harmless and safe behind laws,
Now that my life's to be known as your "heritage,
"Now that even the graves have been robbed,
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye
Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Go read about her incredible contributions in http://www.wikepedia.org/
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