Remember Beverly Bell? On November 13 we profiled this visitor to Sonoma who’d gone to a church camp in Haiti at age 14 and responded to the abject poverty with a commitment to somehow become part of the solution.

She’s spent the rest of her life in Haiti and many other world destinations making a huge difference as she empowers folks to bring life-giving change to their communities. Many of Bev’s friends and co-workers perished in Haiti’s earthquake. And, of course, many did not. From Haiti, Bev sends some survivor stories of which I share just three:

Nico is eleven, as thin as a blade of grass. He is standing outside his new home, this one made of a blue tarp and sticks. One wall is completely open to his tens of thousands of neighbors who live in the same park beside the collapsed palace. His voice is so soft I have to lean against his ear to hear. He tells me his story in single lines, each in response to my next question. His story is this: “I was trapped in the house all day long, until nighttime. My house was in a three-story building and I was on the first floor. We all started running toward the garage. Some people got out but I didn’t. I couldn’t move because when the building collapsed, cement blocks fell on my legs. My godmother was in the room with me, and I called to her but she was dead. 

I kept calling out for help but no one heard me.  Finally that night, after 10:00, my father pulled some blocks up and found me there. He’s a coffin-maker and he got back from work. My mother helped him. They pulled me out.” 

Nico admitted he’d been scared and when asked what he was thinking about while he waited for help, he said, “I was lying there calling for someone and I thought I might die.  But I didn’t want to die, and I thought maybe God would save me.”

Bishop André Pierre recounted for Bev what happened to him. “I was on my way to a meeting…in the Port-au-Prince Cathedral.  I waved to a friend up on the gallery and started running up the stairs.  Someone stopped me to say, ‘Oh hey, I haven’t gotten to wish you happy new year yet.’ That greeting saved my life, because at that second everything went black.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  I shifted to the left, I shifted to the right, and then I went up in the air.  I said, ‘Oh no, it’s an earthquake.’

“Then the building fell on top of me.  I said, ‘André, move.’ I rolled and crawled.  I couldn’t see anything; it was black. It was like being under water except it was earth.  I ate so much dirt I can’t tell you. It took me about 45 minutes to get out.

“You couldn’t see my clothes, my face, anything – I was just one solid mass of earth.  Someone came by to wipe my face off and said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

“There were wounded people everywhere. I shouted ‘Bring the wounded.’ I couldn’t open the front door of my car – the car was damaged – but I got in through the back. We loaded people up, a lot of them, to take to the hospital, but there was no more hospital. So I took them to my neighborhood and we created a clinic there.  I called my brother who’s a doctor, and he came over and treated people.”

Gerin Mathieu told Bev his story: “I felt the ground shake and I knew an earthquake was coming. I’d heard you were supposed to get under a solid structure, but the best I could do was jump into my baby’s cradle.  When the shock hit, it turned the cradle sideways and shot me out into the air. I landed and was about to run, and then I suddenly had the idea that if I ran, I could die.  I stopped and let the dust settle until I could see, and that’s when I saw that I wasn’t on the ground, I was on a roof. If I had run I would have fallen off and maybe died. I was standing there in just my boxers, holding my cell phone, which I had in my hand when the event happened.  I pulled two big shards of glass out of my feet, which I hadn’t even felt.

“That night I slept on the sidewalk on Delmas Street without a sheet or anything.  When it started to rain, everyone jumped up.  The man next to me didn’t get up, so I shook his shoulder, ‘Hey, come on. It’s going to rain.’ That’s when I realized he was dead.

You may want to follow up on Beverly Bell’s insightful blogs being published on various sites: Michael Moore, Yes! Magazine, Common Dreams, and other sites. For all of her blogs, go to her journal on Pulsewire.

To learn more about one of the important organizations Ms. Bell has founded and/or donate, contact: www.otherworldsarepossible.org.

For the first time, just joan is providing space today for a Guest Columnist. Confident readers will support this decision … I’m offering a piece of prose written by a friend in New York.

Jacqueline Jill-Rito, a single parent and entrepreneur with diverse skills, has managed to keep afloat throughout the vicissitudes of life. Now a first-time homeowner in her late fifties with her daughter’s college expenses to cover, she anguishes at never managing to get ahead. She always has barely enough to cover outstanding bills.

Last month as she finished writing the monthly checks, she sank into the usual funk. Suddenly, however, her thoughts shifted and you’ll read what happened next.

I’d met Jill-Rito a few years ago at an intensive training event for Compassionate Communication. Ever since, Jill-Rito receives a weekly link to the “just joan” column. When those published on Jan. 21 and 28 arrived, she decided to send me the piece of prose which had flowed for her on the day described above. She added a wish for me: “I hope you feel it as I did.”

I extend the same wish to you.

Empathy
by Jacqueline Jill-Rito

Sitting paying bills, fine-point pen in hand, feeling the fatigue of the workday, alone and afraid, I search for answers about making ends meet and increasing income … no money left, mind clouds and eyes blur. Why have You forsaken me?

I fade in and out of the moment. Words murmured to myself become increasingly muffled as sounds blend into the cracking walls that surround and a stabbing pain shreds through my right arm, extended, groping, pushing against a slab of cement that pins me to the ground…

My skin has turned from a pale cream to a coffee bean brown. The words I utter are no longer familiar to me, but they flow like a bastardized staccato French. Ban mwen, souplè …

My plump white flesh has withered to bare muscle and bone. My arm aches … trapped and irrretrievable. Nou bezwen… Screams and cries deafen me in this language. Kisa pi nou fe? … Names are whispered somewhere in my mind, evaporating amid the wails – Ketty, Brunel, Genevieve, Emmanuel, Mireille – their souls fine spun, rising into the heavens.  Sickness, despair, pain and pressure close me into shadows.

Years of political usury cripple my strength. I breathe in dust, cement and dirt.  Toupatou … Heavy hands of dictatorial oppression squeeze my narrowing throat. My mouth will not open, the words fade into soft moans. I don’t feel my body complete – it is in pieces, scattered, surging pain then numb, as if hacked by machetes. Kote nou ye?… But my mind is racing, sifting in and out, several dimensions, all feel strange, but all familiar, as if I have dreamt these passages all before.

Dust scrapes the inside of my nose. The gritty taste of mudcakes scratches the corners of my mouth. My lips swell parched, cracked and cut. My bones protrude like spikes from the depth of my soul. I smell hardened blood and death on me, around me. Only the Lord can reach me where I am. Only He knows where to find me. My mind darkens. I try to take a breath, inhale, rattling my throat, weak, fading … then …

A burst of strength from who knows where forces me from the padded armchair in front of the computer and I drop the pen. I rise and walk around, shaking off this inexplicable moment of transfiguration, unsure of who I am, where I was, when and how it will once more envelope me.

©28 janvier 2010

When I wrote Jacqueline seeking permission to publish her work, she was magnanimous, as expected. She said she only wishes she could do more, “writing about, going to, being a voice for those who can’t or don’t have the means and being a conscience for those who can’t yet or refuse to see and feel …”

Please write for permission if you wish to use her masterful work. She welcomes comments at jjill21@yahoo.com. Personally, I would feel gratified if some of you had writing assignments for her so she might, for once, have a bit left over at the end of the month!

“Are you okay with that?”

“No! It’s not okay. I try to forget about him, but it just keeps coming up for me and I haven’t a clue of what to do about it. I want it to be different but I don’t know what I could possibly do to make it any different.”

She said she’d kind of created her brother as “someone you love to hate.” But that wasn’t working. She felt that, out of respect for her older brother, she should do something. “But it looks like the Grand Canyon; there’s just no way to get across. I’m terrified to even think of talking to him again. He hurt me so badly and I feel so vulnerable.”

This conversation took place in a Sonoma living room where folks gather weekly to study and practice Compassionate Communication. Gertrude was quite new to the group and a little surprised she could be so open with something so personal.

Others in the room were not there to make judgments about her or her brother. Rather, they coached the newcomer in giving herself empathy, in connecting with what was going on inside herself as she talked about this long and upsetting separation.

Throughout following weeks, Gertrude learned to identify her hunger for reconnection, respect and mutuality with the estranged brother. She considered what her brother might be wanting and practiced through role-playing how she might approach him.

Then came the day she actually created a script, following the simple guidelines of Compassionate Communication. Gathering up her inner strength, she dialed the number and read the script into his answering machine, saying she was coming over to have a talk.

The brother’s first words upon answering the door astounded Gertrude. “Let’s not dwell on the past” provided a marvelous entrée into the new conversation she was there to begin! With the air cleared, Gertrude now stays in contact as the two of them rebuild their relationship.

Compassionate Communication, also known as Nonviolent Communication, offers a practical tool for reconnection, for conflict resolution, for stopping habitual unhelpful responses to things that trigger you. The process, designed by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., provides – in his words – a way to “Create your life, your relationships and your world in harmony with your values.”

Larry got interested in this process when he attended a seminar on a volatile political issue and witnessed a level of emotional response which was so intense as to be frightening. Afterwards, he wondered aloud if a way might ever be found for people so energized and polarized to have a moderate conversation about the topic. Seated nearby was Elizabeth, a student of Compassionate Communication.

Weekly sessions have taught Larry that no matter how different we may be, there are basic needs common to all of us. When we share the same need as the other person, this can be a valuable point of connection. With a note of awe, Larry proclaims, “This stuff really works.”

He’ll never forget the moment Rosenberg instructed him that other people don’t make him angry. What? Challenging as the concept was, Larry came to understand other people only trigger our emotions. He says he now finds it rewarding to take responsibility for his own emotions.

Larry: “When you’re stuck, in anxiety or whatever, you can read about spiritual practices and finding peacefulness, but nobody tells you how to do it. Compassionate Communication gives us a step-by-step process so we can get to that place of peace.”

Meredith brought a life-long load of guilt and shame to her study of Nonviolent Communication. She knew she was on a frightening downward spiral and saw no way out of it. She’d tried but hadn’t found an answer to her biggest questions, “How do I get out of these destructive old habits? How do I get past the anger? How can I really get in touch with what I’m feeling and thinking?”

Finding the answer to that last question was key to finding the others. She learned she has a huge range of feelings she’d never had conscious access to before. Take anger itself, for example. Whereas she’d usually been able to identify she was angry, now, in Compassionate Communication consciousness, she might speak of being annoyed or enraged, peeved or exasperated.

Observing the nuances of her emotions helps Meredith identify more specifically the unmet needs behind her feelings. Then she can consider strategies to help her get those needs met.

Everyone in the Sonoma Valley of any age, ethnicity or political persuasion who desires to learn and practice this language of the heart deserves that opportunity, I truly believe. At the end of February I’ll begin another series of classes.

Come to a free, lively and interactive Introduction to Compassionate Communication, this Saturday, Feb. 6, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. or  Thursday, Feb. 11 from  10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Marion Delong Room, Sonoma’s Library, 755 W. Napa St. Please arrive early as we begin promptly at 2 p.m. or 10:30 a.m.

An intense sense of outrage, I’m told, has arisen in Haiti. Imagine yourself wandering the streets of Port-au-Prince after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake. Your home and all possessions are gone, some family members were killed, others you can’t find though you’ve looked for days. You’ve never before seen so much activity at the nearby airport, so many planes from many countries waiting their turn to land on one of the four runways. You get hungrier and hungrier and oh, so thirsty as the days go by. Yet no one comes around with any kind of aid. You assume those many, many planes are bringing in food and water and medical supplies, and you have to wonder where that’s going. You and the thousands around you, weak and hungry with no place to go, many severely wounded, have not seen one bottle of water or even a Band-Aid. You feel abandoned and desperate.

Working alongside other survivors, you’ve dug with your bare hands for hours in search of people still trapped in the rubble, scared to death in the effort you’ll get trapped yourself. Sometimes you come across someone and sometimes they’re alive. You cannot wash their wounds or slake their thirst or offer a morsel of food.

You’ve helped make tents from bedsheets and rags, you’ve comforted injured as best you could without being able to assure them help is on the way, you’ve held children in your arms who cannot understand, who long for mama and papa. You’ve helped bury dozens of bodies, you’ve slumped to the pavement after nightfall, hoping you’ll sleep a little to face another day. The unbearable stench grows worse by the hour.

Then, a full week after the earthquake hit, you see U.S. military vehicles coming down the street toward you. Your heart leaps for joy and you run to receive a share of the bounty. The soldiers are not carrying water. Or bread. Or medicines. Decked out in full battle gear and helmets, they’re carrying GUNS! Dozens and dozens of soldiers and they’re carrying guns. Zipping past you as though you weren’t even there.

You can’t know at least one U.S. helicopter carrying relief supplies to another location, did not land to facilitate distribution, but only dropped the bundles and rushed away. Your devastated Haitian brothers shouted after them, “We are not dogs! Don’t throw food at us and run away. We are not dogs!”

Meantime, hundreds of doctors and other medical personnel have been tenaciously treating the injured in all still-useable health centers and setting up additional makeshift hospitals. They have run out of medical supplies while planeloads of needed supplies are being turned away to give priority to military personnel with their guns. The United States is in charge of Haiti’s airport.

Doctors Without Borders, denied clearance for landing in Port-au-Prince, diverted their planes to the Dominican Republic and transported the goods into Haiti by truck, adding three days to delivery time.

Dr. Evan Lyon, a surgeon with Partners in Health, reports that in just 24 hours a group of doctors transformed a large empty room into a surgical theater and that 1,000 people are triaged and ready for emergency surgery but the doctors have no pain medication, no medical supplies, and few surgical instruments. “Some of the doctors have gone to hardware stores to buy hacksaws to use for amputations.” Some are substituting vodka for anesthetics.

Dr. Lyon also spoke of operating by flashlight, no electricity yet, and nightly searching the neighborhood for victims until 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. “The military is only concerned about security,” he said. “But there’s no insecurity here. You can hear a pin drop in this city. It’s a peaceful place. There is no war. There is no crisis except the suffering that’s ongoing.”

Then there’s Margaret Trost and the What If? Foundation. The first day since the earthquake that the children’s feeding program was to start up again, Trost sent us this news:

Dear Friends,

This morning I was stunned to learn that there was another earthquake in Port-au-Prince. It registered 6.1 on the Richter scale. “The shaking was so hard,” Lavarice, our program liaison said when we spoke briefly by phone this afternoon. “Everyone is traumatized by the last week and terrified to go into any building.” The cooks at St. Clare’s, who were on their way to the rectory to prepare today’s meal when this morning’s earthquake struck, did not feel safe to enter the building. With gas stoves cemented into the ground, there’s no way to move them outdoors and no way to guarantee safety indoors right now with all the aftershocks. (There have been over 40 aftershocks in the last week.)

Unable to cook rice in the kitchens, the food program staff instead focused on distributing the water and canned food (beans, sardines, corn) that has been trucked in from the Dominican Republic.

Lavarice told me that hundreds of people were served. Lavarice continues to coordinate deliveries and is also working on setting up satellite food distribution locations in other neighborhoods. It’s hard to believe that no relief from the Port-au-Prince airport has arrived in the area to supplement what we’ve been able to do.

Partners in Health: pih.org    What If?: whatiffoundation.org

I thought about legions of Haitians today unable to think shampoo or shower, literally dying for a sip of water to drink.

I’m hopeful when you’re reading this; Jean Bertrand Aristide is back in his beloved Haiti. Aristide was elected president of Haiti in the country’s first-ever free and fair election on Dec. 16, 1991. I know because I was there, watching the proceedings as an official international observer.
I watched the jubilation of the Haitian people over Aristide’s landslide victory. Then from afar, I observed the steps the new president took to improve the lives of the poor. Wept when people who disagreed with those steps performed coups to remove him from the office and from the country.

Now in exile in South Africa, Aristide yearns more than ever to be with his people following the earthquake. In a public statement last week he declared, “We feel deeply and profoundly that we should be there, in Haiti, with them, trying our best to prevent death … to share in their suffering, help rebuild the country, moving from misery to poverty with dignity.”

In my opinion everyone will benefit from an infusion of hope when this great leader is allowed to return to his country. If he’s still in South Africa as you read, we need to get busy with phone calls and faxes.

Though it’s true most hospitals and clinics were destroyed or badly damaged, the primary facility of Partners in Health was just out of range of the earthquake. (I’ll tell you more about Partners in Health and its amazing staff in another column.) Able and ready, Partners in Health treated all quake-injured patients received. Still, as we all know, there are far more injuries than one organization can handle on its own.

Of the more than 100 Haitian physicians Partners in Health employs or funds for service in other clinics, many were unable to get to their clinics so, although suffering their own family losses, these doctors nonetheless maintained their dedication by setting up whatever facilities for medical service they could manage in their own neighborhoods.

I’ve felt irritated to hear news reports of violence and looting because that just doesn’t sound like the Haitian people I know and I have previous experience with news reports on Haiti which strayed from the truth. Thus it was reassuring to receive a report Sunday from someone who is there on the ground. David Belle from the United States, and director of a center he founded to teach Haitian youngsters about filmmaking, wrote, “I have been told that much U.S. media coverage paints Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode. I’m told that lead stories in major media are of looting, violence and chaos. There could be nothing further from the truth.

“I have traveled the entire city daily since my arrival. The extent of damages is absolutely staggering. At every step, at every bend is one horrific tragedy after another; homes, businesses, schools and churches leveled to nothing. Inside every mountain of rubble there are people, most dead at this point. The smell is overwhelming. On every street are people – survivors – who have lost everything they have: homes, parents, children, friends.

“NOT ONCE have we witnessed a single act of aggression or violence. To the contrary, we have witnessed neighbors helping neighbors and friends helping friends and strangers. We’ve seen neighbors digging in rubble with their bare hands to find survivors. We’ve seen traditional healers treating the injured; we’ve seen dignified ceremonies for mass burials and residents patiently waiting under boiling sun with nothing but their few remaining belongings. A crippled city of 2 million awaits help, medicine, food and water. Most haven’t received any.

“Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their dignity and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself staggering.”

We finally have encouraging news from the What If? Foundation, the feeding program for some of Haiti’s hungriest children founded 10 years ago by Berkeley resident Margaret Trost. Many of you have met Trost on one of her visits to Sonoma to tell us about the beautiful Haitian women who prepared mountains of nutritious food for as many as 1,500 beautiful children a day.

Trost sent daily reports last week of her fruitless efforts to make contact with anyone in Haiti. Finally, on Friday night, she wrote, “Today we were able to confirm through phone and e-mail that our partners in the St. Clare’s community of Port-au-Prince – the food and education team, including the cooks, all survived the earthquake and are uninjured.  We’re so happy, relieved and grateful! Jean-Claudel, one of the education coordinators, e-mailed: ‘I am alive. We are alive. But we are hungry. We need your help. We wait with patience.’”

On Sunday, Lavarice, Meal Program liaison, delivered three truckloads of food and supplies to St. Clare’s and headed back to the Dominican Republic for more. By avoiding the paralyzed airport in Port-au-Prince and with the assistance of a nonprofit known as the Zakat Foundation, Lavarice was able to deliver. Precious lives saved.
Partners in Health: pih.org    What If?: whatiffoundation.org

A few random papers made their way to the surface to inspire today’s column. I’m intrigued by the styles of prose and character of reporting that comes through in different eras. Except for introduction of modern elements, the humor doesn’t seem to change much.

I read that a certain famous film star also kept an old piece of paper, actually hung it in a frame over his fireplace. Dated 1933, the MGM interoffice memo issued after his first screen test read, “Fred Astaire. Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”

One clip recalls how short a time ago the strategy for making a spontaneous phone call was to find a pay phone and drop coins into the slot. I remember when it cost only a dime to make a local call. Maybe the rise to 25 cents helped motivate the developers of cellular phones.

Local raconteur Jerry Parker, now deceased, sometimes wrote of watching costs rise throughout his lifetime. New York City provided an abundance of odd jobs to an industrious youngster in the 1930s, even in the heart of the Great Depression. From the age of 12, when he entered high school, Parker worked continuously and remembered, for example, employment by a tailor delivering suits after school on weekdays and all day Saturdays for a sum total of $2. He figured that was all of seven cents per hour.

When Parker became a full-time errand boy, he earned $1 a day six days a week and in his spare time studied typing and shorthand on his own. Thus when The New York Times advertised in 1939 for an office boy, he nailed the position. With only one cent per hour for Social Security deducted from his $15 weekly salary, he proclaimed, “I was affluent!”

The conclusion of Parker’s essay published in The Sonoma Index-Tribune exactly 16 years ago, “I eventually became an editorial assistant at The Times and went on for another four decades working for magazines and newspapers.

“But best of all about my getting on at The Times was that my real education had begun. And what tutors I had – some of the most brilliant newspaper people in America. I began to develop that luxury one cannot buy – free thought.”

In a newsletter I’ve saved from the 1970s, a quote from Abraham Lincoln precedes a couple of jokes, “I don’t know who my grandfather was; I’m much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.”

A professor wanting to demonstrate harmful effects of a popular substance dropped worms into two glasses, one filled with pure water and the other pure whiskey. As his students watched one worm squirming with the spark of life, the other writhing in agony toward death, the teacher asked, “What is the moral of this story?”

One kid’s ready answer, “If you don’t want worms, drink alcohol.”

A very nervous passenger on a cross-country flight appealed to her seatmate as the plane jerked and bounced around in a thunderstorm. “You’re a clergyman,” she wailed. “Do something.”

“Sorry, madam,” came the reply. “I’m in sales, not management.”

During my turbulent years of the 1970s, I made a New Year’s list I’ve kept all this time. That was a period of upheaval as my 28-year marriage disintegrated and broke while my five teen-aged sons and I negotiated the challenges of fluctuating emotions and losses along with financial concerns.

New Year’s dreams, not resolutions, spelled out on a fading 3-by-5 inch card: 1. To acquire and maintain a strong, sustaining faith in God, 2. To help my family do the same, 3. To have basic harmony in my home among all family members, 4. To satisfy my creative urges in many ways, 5. To take an active part in community affairs and work for programs I consider important.

From a woman who’d quite completely submerged her sense of self-worth and mouthed only her husband’s sentiments on important matters came Number 6. To be well-read, well-informed and to have carefully formed opinions.

From a copy store’s monthly newsletter in 1981, a piece entitled “Remember Me?” reminds us of the era of customer service when you’d never think of pumping your own gas or helping yourself to merchandise to take to a non-existent check-out counter.

“I’m the fellow who goes into a restaurant, sits down and patiently waits while the waitresses finish their visiting before taking my order.

“I’m the fellow who goes into a department store and stands quietly while the clerks finish their little chit-chat.

“I’m the fellow who drives into a service station and never blows his horn, but lets the attendant take his time.

“You might say I’m the good guy. But do you know who else I am? I’m the fellow who never comes back. It amuses me to see businesses spending so much money each year to get me back – when I was there in the first place. All they needed to do was give me some service and extend a little courtesy.”

I’ve learned a great deal while writing these columns for you, not the least of which is discovering how wonderful you all are – yes even, and maybe especially – those of you who regularly disagree with my perceptions of things. I’m thrilled when any one of my readers takes the time to write a letter to the editor regarding my work.

My first sale of a piece of writing was to a small religious publication while I was living in China in 1987. As I flew back to the states, Chinese university students were demonstrating on Tiananmen Square. This action rather excited me because I felt the young people’s demands were quite reasonable and I naively thought they’d succeed in their quest for change.

My first stop was the Bay Area where I succeeded in selling to the San Jose Mercury News a report on my three years of teaching English to Chinese graduate students and adults as they related to the Tiananmen Square protests. Subsequently I resold the piece to additional major newspapers. Ironically, my story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal on June 4, 1989, right alongside stories of the Chinese government’s crackdown on those students.

Traveling across the country thereafter to visit my scattered children, I encountered another writing opportunity in Kentucky. There I met Jack Jezreel, the layperson hired as full-time peace-and-justice coordinator for a Catholic parish and creator of the dynamic Just Faith program of justice education. Jezreel and I were each intrigued at hearing the other’s story and he offered me a scholarship for an impending bus ride to Washington, D.C. to demonstrate with thousands for “Affordable Housing Now!”

A call to the opinion editor of The Courier-Journal in Louisville stimulated interest in a story, but no promise of publication. At my query regarding the length of my submission, he designated about 1,000 words. Riding the bus back to Louisville that Saturday night, my mind juggled images and sounds making me very eager to start writing while my seatmate wanted only to sleep, needing to have the lights turned off.

Pad and pen in hand, I wrote for a while in the cramped restroom, hoping no one else would need it for a while. Honoring the day of the Lord, I waited until Monday morning to get to my computer and after a few intense hours of writing, rearranging, editing and rewriting, I felt complete. When I activated my computer’s word count feature, the report came: 1,000. The Courier-Journal did publish the piece I consider one of my finest efforts.
One thing I’ve become quite experienced with in five years as “just joan” is gaining insights into someone’s life through a respectful interview. Recently I’ve found that skill to be invaluable for enhancing connections with people who are unquestionably the most important in my world, my own progeny.

How can a weekly columnist, social activist, teacher of many subjects, professional organizer for space and efficiency and world traveler possibly find time to meaningfully connect with eight children and their spouses, their 15 children and their four grandchildren? Well, the truth is, she can’t. And yet, and yet …

Posing as Brenda Starr, I recently interviewed one of my offspring by phone with heart-warming results. We agreed this was the first of a series of interviews and I’m so gratified by the outcome, I’m taking Starr on the road.

Depending on your age, you may have fond memories of Brenda Starr. She was conceived by Dale Messick in 1940, appearing in colorful Sunday comic sections through The Chicago Tribune syndicate. Wikipedia reveals the strip met resistance at first from Tribune editor Joseph Medill Patterson just because a woman was the creator.

As a 9 year old, I was an instant fan of “Brenda Starr Reporter.” Messick had the courage to maintain Starr’s femininity, wardrobe and hairstyle savvy and luscious good looks throughout her escapades as a clever, resourceful and adventurous investigative reporter for “The Flash.”

Although Dale Messick retired after 40 years, her replacements Ramona Fradon, Linda Sutter and June Brigman have creatively continued the glamorous reporter’s exploits and have even included interactions with contemporary figures such as George W. Bush. In all this time, Starr doesn’t seem to have aged by a single day.

Taking on the persona of Starr as I venture into the delight of getting to know my mature offspring more deeply gives me the advantage of no baggage, no previous history, no sticky remembrances. I’m an outsider, a professional with no agenda except to seek out a story, to capture the essence of another human being.

I’m sending out an e-mail as I leave tonight for the Midwest: “Brenda Starr Reporter is headed your way.”  I’m hoping for interviews everywhere I go. At the same time, I hold the expectation with a very light grip, completely willing to honor anyone’s unwillingness to be interviewed.
Confident and excited that 2010 will bring rich new connections among people I dearly love, I salute the New Year with great enthusiasm. I wish for you an abundantly fulfilling 2010 as well.

Anyone in such a position is almost certain to be experiencing deep emotional trauma as the world celebrates Chanukah and Christmas, Eid and the New Year. Feelings of isolation, loneliness, worthlessness are compounded by glimpses of others celebrating when a person is alone.

So consider whether your family might welcome someone in this category to share your holiday dinner. Short of this, would you be comfortable inviting them to go caroling with you, to ride around enjoying holiday decorations, or simply to join you for a cup of something hot and some conversation? Even one such invitation can make a huge difference. Can you consider it?

Last December, I was quite alone in another part of the world, facing interesting challenges. I’d been in the Holy Land for four weeks when I set out on my own for the final seven days. Having virtually run out of money, I genuinely appreciated the sweet offer of an Innkeeper in the Old City. Expecting many foreign guests for the annual celebration of the Muslim holiday of Eid, she couldn’t offer standard accommodations at a reduced rate. “However,” she added, “if you could tolerate a small windowless room with it’s own simple bathroom …”

I had a wonderful time in my little cocoon, writing another column for you and purchasing low-cost foods for preparation in the Inn’s simple kitchen. Each time I left the Old City, however, I faced ongoing consternation at the changing face of what had for so many generations been an International City, home to three major religions.

It was painful to watch older Arabic buildings destroyed, skyscrapers built, rail line installed down the middle of the main street, without regard for archaeological considerations in this land where precious artifacts have lain beneath the surface for centuries awaiting discovery. Hard to find my way, too, with all street signs, store names in Hebrew only, no longer including English and Arabic designations.

I did eventually figure out how to get myself by bus to Haifa and arrived in time for my appointment with the Vatican-appointed bishop of all of Galilee. The women who run the bishopric ushered me into a grand hall to join in with a pilgrimage group from Chicago and insisted I stay for lunch after interviewing the bishop. Then they asked their driver to personally deliver me to the bus station for my return to Jerusalem.

A few days later, a bus ride turned out quite differently. Rather than paying 50 shekels, less than $10, for the community taxi which runs frequently from the Old City to the Tel Aviv airport, I chose to go by bus for two reasons: I could get to Tel Aviv for only eight shekels and I wanted to visit a friend’s mother, Mrs. K., on the way to the airport.

She had told me to get off the Tel Aviv bus at the railway station and take a cab to her place. As I boarded the bus, the driver said yes, he could alert me when we arrived at the railway station. We reached a stop, however, where everyone else left the bus and I asked the driver if he was going to the railway station.

“No,” he answered peevishly, adding, “Get down here!”

Dragging my luggage, I entered the mall/bus station where few clerks speak English and signs are in Hebrew. With not a clue of where I was in relation to Mrs. K. or the airport, and with no suggestion of a Travelers Aid Society anywhere in view, I headed for the taxi stand.

Feeling like a lamb led before the slaughter, I arrived at the airport without visiting Mrs. K. and with the driver mercilessly claiming nearly all my 90 shekels and all of my 70 U.S. dollars. With hours to wait to enter the boarding area, I sat on the floor near the only outlet I could find, whipped out my laptop and worked on another column for you. I had not enough shekels to buy a bottle of water, much less anything to eat. Nearer flight time I was sent to the lineup for intense luggage inspection. However, gratefully someone deflected me from that line and I sailed right through to the departure gate.

Even though the first flight, to Amman, Jordan, was quite short, a lovely dinner was served and the third flight, from Mumbai to Hyderabad brought a sumptuous breakfast. So I was home free in India, where I’d prepaid all expenses. I was met at the beautiful new Hyderabad airport to be escorted through a month of activities.

Two weeks later, my atheist hostess surprised me by taking me to a Catholic church. However, our motorized rickshaw arrived to an empty church as Mass had been offered at midnight. To my amazement, Dr. Kranthi inquired about an alternative location, hired another rickshaw and we attended Christmas Mass in a sweetly simple church which included Santa Claus among the holiday decorations.

Merry Christmas, everyone, wherever in the world you are reading my reminiscences.

“Meanwhile, there is still time for you to make your voice heard: Do you favor a single system of national health insurance for everyone, a sort of cradle-to-grave Medicare – or should federal insurance go only to those too poor to buy their own?”

Wait! Please don’t stop, thinking this is just one more rehashing of the current controversy. Don’t stop reading, because the quote above comes from an article in the Reader’s Digest dated Feb. 1971!

I have no clue as to how or why such an antique magazine has come into my hands, but I am fascinated by the pertinence of much of its content.

In “The Folly of our Superhighway System,” author Helen Leavitt explains the huge public works project, when proposed in 1954 by President Eisenhower, was intended to provide a chain of roads to serve traffic between states. It would bypass all cities so “a motorist could drive from one corner of the country to another at high speed without stopping for a traffic light. Spurs from cities would connect to the Interstates, but there would be no massive highway construction in our cities.

“It hasn’t worked out that way…from 7:30 to 9 a.m., and from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., drivers on urban freeways are likely to whiz along at no more than 6 to 12 m.p.h. The horse and buggy did as well.”

Herb Caen, beloved long-running columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, gets quoted in a filler: “At a restaurant counter, one patron asked for a ham on rye, apple pie and coffee. ‘Sounds good,’ nodded his friend. ‘I’ll have the same – except make it roast beef, chocolate pie and tea.’”

February 1971 is exactly when I began my own campaign for protecting the environment and now I wonder … would so many world leaders gather in Copenhagen in 2009 if in 1971 anyone had listened to the many reports showing up like the one published in the February Reader’s Digest written by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis.? One would think the ominous title might have stopped us short: “Stop Killing our Oceans.”

“Because of sheer size,” the header says, “oceans were once considered invulnerable to pollution. Now we know better. Unless we act soon, and decisively, mankind will face an unthinkable catastrophe.”

And how might our state’s economy look today if someone had followed the instructions in “The Way to Lick the Jail Habit,” which contended, “California in the past five years has proved that real probation costs less and rehabilitates more than “get-tough” jail sentences.

Other advice articles include: “How to Relax Without Pills,” “Questions Everyone Asks About Sex,” “Beware the Pitfalls in the Fine Print,” “We’re Going Too Far on Consumerism!” and the one quoted at the beginning of this column, “National Health Insurance: Do We Need It? What Kind?”

That article begins … “If President Nixon has his way, Congress will pass – as one of several of his health proposals – a Family Health Insurance Plan. This plan would give free, comprehensive insurance policies to over 14 million of the poor, and near-free policies to an additional six million of the near-poor.

“If the American Medical Association has its way, Congress will pass a Health Insurance Assistance Act to give everyone Medicredit certificates good toward the purchase of private health insurance.

“If the (Republican-sponsored) National Health Care Bill is passed, the federal government will buy private health insurance for the poor and near-poor, while the states will insure them against the cost of catastrophic illness or injury.

“And if the National Health Insurance Bill (sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy and 47 others) is passed, the government will pay for almost all the care for any resident of the United States.”

An advertisement inside the back cover of the Reader’s Digest asks, “What Can You Do About Today’s $65-a-Day Hospital Costs?” and offers a cash plan to help pay for rising costs.

I have in hand my hospital invoice from 1955 when, in a three-month stay, I paid only $14 a day for a private room. $65 a day represents a 475 percent increase over 16 years. Medical insurance did not exist.

The monthly book feature in the Feb. 1971 edition of the Reader’s Digest just happens to be an autobiographical report from someone featured in the “just joan” column of last Aug. 21, Stanley Brock. You may remember the “Wild Kingdom” star who now spends his life gathering medical professionals who volunteer to provide free health clinics for the poor around the world and finds the greatest call for this service today is right here in the United States.

If you think I’m making all this up, I invite you to meet me somewhere for a cup of coffee and I’ll let you hold the Reader’s Digest, and the hospital bill, in your own hands to verify that every single one of these items is in there.

Knowing the author to be a creative activist with special concerns for the environment, when I opened the book, I fully expected to find ideas for simplifying the Holiday season and for finding alternatives to spending too much money and going into debt at Christmastime. It was surprising and delightful to find that and so much more.

How many times this year have you heard a groan at the mention of Christmas? When I began to tune in on responses to the C word, I encountered more dismay, dread and frustration than I expected. This little book explains why, for many, “Christmas has become something to endure at least as much as something to enjoy, something to dread at least as much as something to look forward to.”

Drawing heavily from two volumes published in the mid-1990s, “The Battle for Christmas” by Stephen Nissenbaum and “Christmas in America” by Penne Restad, McKibben goes back to the very selection of a date on which to celebrate the birth of Christ, the development of cherished traditions, the very real needs for a celebration among earlier generations and the gradual commercialization of the event.

Emblematic of this commercialization is the story from Restad’s book about F. W. Woolworth, owner of a very small store when he made a trip to Germany. He brought back some glass Christmas ornaments only to find they sold out in just two days. On subsequent trips, he placed massive orders and within a few years, Woolworth’s was a major chain and Christmas trade alone brought profits in the half-million dollar range.

And of course, everyone in retail had climbed on the same bandwagon. Witness an editorial in The New York Tribune of 1894: “The modern expansion of the custom of giving of Christmas presents has done more than anything else to rob Christmas of its traditional joyousness…most people nowadays are so fagged out, physically and mentally, by the time Christmas Day arrives that they are in no condition to enjoy it…The season of Christmas needs to be dematerialized.”

So I ask you, dear readers, what are we waiting for?

Bill McKibben is absolutely not opposed to celebrating. In fact, the book’s subtitle is “The Case for a More Joyful Christmas,” and upon reading it, I’m guessing you’ll be inspired to make a few changes this year that will make your holiday more joyful indeed. Then in subsequent years, you’ll likely make more and more changes until you find yourself beautifully extricated from the traditions that no longer bring joy while fully committed to activities that fill your heart with the true spirit of such an important spiritual holiday. I’d say it ‘s worth reaching for such a lovely goal.

McKibben suggests that the building of a powerful consumer society has caused us to change the way we think. At one point, while working on a writing project a few years ago, he monitored every minute of TV that came over a hundred channels of the largest cable network available at that time. He says he learned quite a lot from watching those 2,400 hours of videtape (I can’t even imagine watching that much TV) but adds that if one were to distill all those insights “into a single idea, it would be this: You are the center of the world.” I wonder if you’d agree that’s exactly what advertising is all about.

McKibben continues, “That notion, so central to a consumer society, is anathema to a religious one. Living a life of faith means, more than anything, putting something other than yourself at the center of your life. (Even for those who aren’t religious, leading a mature life demands finding some focus other than yourself.)”

McKibben tells us he loves to read about the nativity from the Gospel of Luke (Lk. 2:1-20) especially the verse that follows the departure of all the shepherds and other visitors: “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

The author suggests we make time in the midst of all our celebrations for pondering, for amazement and appreciation that God sent God’s only child to walk among us.

I can create no better ending for this piece than to quote the final words of “The Hundred Dollar Holiday”:

“Don’t do anything that isn’t fun–at least don’t do it twice. If you go to a nursing home and it just depresses you, then save that for another time of year. The point is not to do good, the point is not to save money.

“The point is to emerge from Christmas relaxed, contented, happy to have kept this season. To emerge closer to your family than you were when Advent began. To emerge with some real sense that Christ has come into your world.”

Now Conor stood in a handsome courtyard, quite astounded to see this degree of beauty in a city of Iraq. He sent his troops inside the house to do their usual – rip things apart, search every corner, break windows, drag out anything lurking under furniture.

He himself set to work in the courtyard with his mine detector, slashing at manicured lawn, shrub and tree. At a moment when he was on his hands and knees digging a big hole in the ground, he looked up to see the man of the house moving among the soldiers, presenting each with a cup of hot tea from a well-stocked tray he carried. Stunned, the sergeant sat back on his heels to watch and as the gentleman approached, Conor looked into the Iraqi’s eyes to see the very last thing his training had led him to expect – love.

“Then he starts speaking to me,” Conor tells his audience. “In English. And he’s talking to me like he wants to be my new best friend. Here I am tearing to shreds the tremendous beauty he had created and he brings me tea! And gentle, interested conversation.”

Love in Iraq! “This brief interaction on an Iraqi afternoon,” the veteran continues, “began to change my life profoundly. This man, this total stranger, this man I had been treating so inhumanely showed me so much love and compassion, I decided that day I must leave the Marines.”

How just joan happened to hear Conor Curran share this experience goes back to early this year in another part of the country when Iraq veteran Josh Steiber began his Contagious Love Experiment. Steiber and Curran recently wrapped up the nine-month experiment in Northern California.

Here’s a glimpse into their presentation for a group of intrigued listeners crowded into the office of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Berkeley.

Steiber had heard a consistent message while growing up – at home, school and church: the problems of the world are made right again through military action. So it was natural that this idealistic youngster joined the U.S. Army after high school graduation. “I wanted to be on the front lines of destroying my nation’s and my religion’s enemies,” he says, “I thought military might was synonymous to God’s will.”

He felt really proud of his service in Iraq until he became involved with house-to-house searches. That meant interacting with the folks living there. An intel suggesting hidden weapons required Steiber to lead his troops on such a search in Ramadi. In house after house they found nothing, until finally, in one home they hit pay dirt. An allowable AK47 was there, but also a couple of hand-guns. These, Steiber explained, were illegal because of their ability to be easily concealed. “Oh, oh,” he thought. “Maybe we have a terrorist here.” The clincher for him was the boxful of money they encountered next, which seemed out of place in this very poor neighborhood.

So they slapped handcuffs on the householder and dragged him away in spite of compassionate pleas of other family members. “This is a good man,” they cried. “He’s even studying to become a police officer.”

Steiber felt shaken a few days later when the Army released the imprisoned innocent who was indeed in training for the police force. Steiber had been so sure he had served his country by taking a terrorist out of action.

He started to think about what it would be like if troops came into his hometown in the United States to conduct similar house-to-house searches. Eventually Steiber left the Army under Conscientious Objector status.

Back home, he searched for a way to send the money he’d been paid for war to places where peace is practiced. After researching a number of proactive organizations dealing with problems in powerful, loving ways, he set out to visit several in a walk across the country. He’d learn about each as a volunteer, and do some interviews. In addition, he’d look for opportunities to tell his story.

When Curran heard the story in August, he was moved to join in and the two completed the journey by bike. They say they knew, “In standing for love, there’ll be the unwelcome laughter of cynical disbelief and hopelessness, which we’ve seen much of but will not cower to. We’ll be hurt by self-righteous censure that has forgotten human empathy but we’re ready for that too.”

The young men recognized that difficulties of relationship and understanding abound. On their blog they posted their response: “We believe it is love that will triumph. It is this love that will keep us journeying in the snow and the rain, even if we fall. It is this love that lends meaning to any family or friendship. It is this love we’re counting on not to fail. This love is how we’ll ask for peace.”

I’ve been very moved by reading their blog at contagiousloveexperiment.org. I’m confident you’ll be inspired by spending time there, too.

On more than one occasion, a little paperback called “The Book of Questions” by Gregory Stock, Ph.D. has wonderfully helped me to navigate such a challenge. The questions stimulate deep thinking or raucous laughter, sweet melancholy, an occasional tear and sometimes a flowing conversation. As mutuality is vital in such a game, we always take turns finding a question to ask the other.

Last week’s column strongly suggested you stay home today in support of the solid movement against the antithetical “celebration” of Christmas through expensive, exhaustive and exhausting shopping. In honor of International Buy Nothing Day, celebrated on the day after America’s Thanksgiving Day in many countries, throngs of people are choosing alternative activities on this, the biggest retailing day on the calendar.

Writing last week about the family playing a conversation-starting game as an alternative to visiting the malls on Buy Nothing Day got me thinking. Upon reporting to you that “The Christmas Game” has been made into a card game, ideas began to stir around for this columnist.

If you missed last week’s column, “The Christmas Game” was featured in editions of “Whose Birthday is it Anyway?” an annual guide to making room for Christ in the heart of your holiday activities.

Now I’m making an all-occasion card game of my own to have at the ready, tucked into a corner of my carry bag. I’ll include some of the Christmastime questions because it can be fun to recall those memories. Then the bulk of the questions will come from Stock’s book and my own imagination.

If you’d enjoy having these cards to have at the ready as well, because you never know when you’ll find yourself needing help with a conversation, I’ll happily send the questions, ready to be cut into cards. Just send your address (preferably on a label) with $1 toward postage to just joan c/o The Sonoma Valley Sun, 158 W. Napa St., Sonoma.

Continuing in the spirit of planning a meaningful, Christ-centered holiday season, here’s more from Alternatives for Simple Living who annually offer a new “Whose Birthday Is it, Anyway?” as “an instrument for reclaiming the real meaning, joy and value of Christmas. It is an invitation to rethink and re-feel the ways we celebrate.”

Most reflections published in the booklets include discussion questions for the family. This year’s reflections for the Sundays of Advent were written by Walter Brueggemann, renowned biblical scholar and professor at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Apparently sociology professor Dr. Tony Campolo raised his children with a sense of what Christmas is really all about. Witness the gifts he received last Dec. 25; a grandson recited from memory a difficult scripture passage as his gift while a granddaughter curled up small pieces of colored paper, each bearing a cherished memory about her grandparents during her years of coming of age. She presented them in a decorated glass jar from which Campolo and his wife withdraw one to delightedly begin each day.

On a page of the 2007 booklet, I was stopped by a picture of Jesus sitting in a big red chair with a child on his lap as other youngsters wait in line. This is actually an ad placed by the people of the United Church of Canada, promoting participation in wondercafe.ca “home of lively discussion on spiritual topics, moral issues and life’s big questions.”

On another page, a campaign promoting that you buy nothing for Christmas shows a picture of Christ next to the words: Where did I say that you should buy so much stuff to celebrate my birthday? Aiden Enns of Winnipeg, Canada, motivated by both his Christian faith and social beliefs, has widely promoted the seemingly impossible idea of celebrating the holidays without spending money. “Christmas has become more meaningful for me,” says Enns. “Now my celebration is focused on the spirit of generosity and the gift of life that is the spirit of Christmas.”
Marilyn Sharpe of Bloomington, Minn., writes that she had long felt obligated to have dinner parties when the house looked festive with holiday decorations. As she cogitated over the system in place among her friends, she recognized it was “a miserable economy of paybacks!”

Now she “evaluates absolutely everything” to be confident it bears Christ’s light into the world. She puts family activities first and simplifies the entertainment, e.g. potluck suppers or cookies and tea.
Sharpe offers another suggestion. “Do it differently,” she says. “Instead of hosting a dinner, go to a soup kitchen and serve those who are not overfed this season. Now that is welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed you, to the glory of God.”

For a catalogue from the nonprofit offering the Christmas Game cards and “Whose Birthday is it, Anyway?” call 1.800.821.6153.

And watch for your friends, and me, to be ringing the bell for F.I.S.H. again this year outside your favorite retail outlet. You’ve been so generous in the past and needs are truly great this year. We’ll joyously accept your donation. If you’d love to join in the fun of ringing, just let me know.