Beyond Saguero Bliss

I'm standing at another crossroads, la otra encrucijada. I am alone again, but this time I have no guitar in my hands. From the Rio Grande/Bravo the multinational forest of US/Mexico borderland stretches out before me. I have arrived at the banks of decision , muddied by the struggle as hands and hearts gasp for last breaths in the chilly waters of her currents. This river is split down the middle and owned by two countries, patrolled by one. This river-receiver splits a whole land in two. I search through the half eaten elotes (corn cobs), the multicolor plastic bags hurled up into tree branches by an errant windstorm or car tires, looking for a sign of movement.

In this deserted park, residents of Nuevo Laredo are taking Sunday, parked in vehicles with little bands of people, all too aware of this psychological journey. Yet just one mile across asphalt and river the same land offers a different landscape. As I turn river rocks over in my fingers and contemplate how people who have never learned to swim ford the stream tied to car tires, I am again struck by the answer to the question...why would you cross a river you can't swim across?


I traveled through Texas to complete my trip from Maine to Mexico, and to look at programs that assist migrants across the most dangerous leg of the journey. My first stop in US borderland was Laredo, TX and it's twin, Nuevo Laredo in Mexico. As luck would have it, I met a young woman in New Orleans who invited me to stay with her family, her Mexican parents and their Mexican-American children in Laredo. My first night with the Hernandez family convinced me that I would do anything to stall my departure. They were warm, open-hearted folks with a foot on both sides of the debate. Interestingly enough, they have two daughters working as civil servants, one as a probation officer, and the other as a parole officer. They have a range of experiences with US Border Patrol. They would become my escorts into Mexico.

Fernando and his wife work in Mexico and live in Texas, as many Mexican families have done for years. Their children were all born in the US, and my friend in New Orleans grew up without learning the language of her parents. In fact, we train as interpreters together, and I often catch her inventing words in Spanish. Reflected in her language is the survival of her parents; to become more "American" meant having greater benefits in this society.

Between dinners of stuffed chiles and hot Mexican chocolate and bread, slumbers filled with dreams of cactus fields and native drumbeats, I find "New" Laredo. Traveling with Fernando I visit a social worker friend of his at a public hospital, a crowded waiting room in the middle of the city. This gentleman describes what it is like to work with a population dependent on travel to the US. He is a team of one, and I apologize to at least ten people as he ushers me into his office for an appointment. His primary responsibility is to talk to people about benefits, but he sees a lot of mothers caught in the real war at the border, the drug war.

We travel to the Casa del Migrante, a drop-in center for migrants at all stages of the journey. I speak with a young man there, himself a Mexican native who lived in Chicago for years. I feel very much at home in their kitchen, where there is an industrial-sized pot cooking for many, the smell of burnt rice warm and inviting. The Casa provides housing, food, resources.

Over the border back into her US counterpart, Laredo, we have no trouble passing through immigration. Mine is an unearned privilege, I think, as I watch the faces of my hosts turn to relief as we pass the checkpoint.And they do this everyday....

Back in town I ask a young man what you could do for fun here. He suggests I climb up to the top of the highest building in town and check out the Border Patrol checkpoints. Hmmm.....

A call from a friend in El Paso sets my next course, and I have to say goodbye to the Hernandez family. But not before the grandmother in the family, a shy, girlish woman in her seventies, presses a twenty into my hand. Get yourself something on the road, she says...I know she somehow means to keep me safer.

What's So Scary 'Bout New Orleans?: Masking Privilege and Power in the Big Easy

It's one am in the morning and I've just been released from my shift at the jazz club and restaurant where I work. After serving heaping dishes of Jambalaya and Crawfish Etoufee (etoufee, Brute?) and dubbing over in private the lines to the song being sung by tonight's musician, I am off to enjoy the fanfare in a city that practically invented costumes. In fact, the competition is so intense, I have decided to type cast myself as an overworked, trying-to-fit-in- newcomer to the city of New Orleans. I have my mask draped over my shoulder, my soiled apron in my backpack, and my red dress on. I am ready for my first night as more than a waitress, that is, as a human being.

Down past the French Quarter, swerving to avoid the revelers in matching provocation, dripping in sexuality. My crew sees quite a few priests and prostitutes, greasers and French maids and god knows what else. We careen around broken glass and rivers of beer. The frat party atmosphere leaves no one out, or alone for that matter. Musicians in masks push tip jars through the masses and their ethereal swaying in the nicotine haze feels dreamlike. Weeding through the garden gnomes and politically incorrect convicts and gangsters to find the more creative Halloween attire, I am catching my first glance of New Orleans at play.

Since I arrived in the city, I have had to do what most natives of the Crescent City do to survive: sell my soul to the restaurant devil. Yes, I wait hand and foot on New Orlean's wealthiest. Food on the left, drinks to the right, can I please kill myself for you for two dollars? Did you know I've waited my whole life just to clean up after you?

Yet, this is as real as it gets. I spent a long time thinking about coming to New Orleans, a culture and place so different from my home. While in Mississippi and Alabama I searched for clues about why I wanted to be a part of this masquerade. When activists from all over the country hopped on buses and planes after Katrina to be a part of the relief (and often, a part of the relieved), I did not feel compelled to leave my work in Maine. It felt like the work I was doing was a still a swirling, churning hurricane over our heads. Katrina only added to that disaster, and New Orleans felt so far away. Besides, the skills I had were better put to use elsewhere. Or so I thought.

And now, here I am, preparing for Mardi Gras in January in a distant city, singing with a band and making decisions about my life here for the next year. My own parade through the United States has never been as difficult as it has been for me in New Orleans. And Katrina is really only part of the equation.

I'm about to get really real, y'all. When I arrived in New Orleans, I still believed I could travel this country and not get really vulnerable. I thought I could balance my own poverty, work as a farmer and god knows what else and still be analytical. I still believed I could dance through the streets with my new freedom in cowgirl boots and not trip over the grooves left by power and privilege.

And I knew that what I would encounter in New Orleans would challenge and mold me. And not just because of Katrina- because of centuries of racism. I knew that the work I came to do- understand how to use my language privilege to provide health, safety and access to a new and growing group of Central American and Mexican day laborers- would have me questioning how I practice my politics.

I also learned very quickly- and got angry!- that the story of Katrina in New Orleans is not for the outsider to tell. I am not an expert, I was not here, moreover I stand humbled by the city and the resistance of its population. I refuse to tell it, except to ask, what is the Katrina in my homeland? With that message fixed to my heart like a nametag, I cry, "Hello, my name is Sarah and I'm starting with the story of my own privilege!"

So it was that I came to work in the blessed French Quarter, often riding my bike through a river of beads, fighting the urge not to scare off the tourists. I began to realize- and internalize- my place within this mafioso world of big money and big tradition. No matter what my background, my immediate financial situation saw me absorbed into a culture of racism and oppression. I was part of an all-white crew of servers, although I mostly hung out with the Black dishwasher and prep cook. I learned the ins and outs of the "back room" and the "front room" in the restaurant and even observed the separate relationships of wealth across race. I struggled with the decision to continue, because I knew I might have more freedom to choose. And then I didn't- my rich white male boss touched me inappropriately and then promptly stopped talking to me when I confronted him (we do things differently in the South) and I overdrew my bank account, made no money and had to leave the restaurant. I quickly became another desperate person in New Orleans- definitely with more privilege- but still, desperate.

As I waded through the restaurant and other options, my anxiety coursing through my veins like a bad trip, I experienced the other side of the Big Easy. Dripping with insecurity and inexperience here, I was not hired. It was as if they could taste my impoverished fear like a fine house wine. I was advised not to tell anyone I had left the first restaurant, as I would be marked for failure. When I finally was hired at a club, it was the worst possible situation I could have imagined, and I continued to face my failure.

The reason I am explaining my own story is because I want to be honest. I joined a group called the Anti-Racist Working Group here in New Orleans, a group of people who identify with having white privilege and want to do work with other white people. When I started to participate in this group, I struggled to explain my own intimate experience within this power structure. Whenever I applied to businesses in the Quarter, my race mattered. In fact, it entered first through the door. I wanted to talk about this, but I quickly realized that my current economic reality and bad luck distinguished me from other white people who were making it in the Big Easy. Why had I become afraid to just get out there and do what I had to do to survive while working for this really great free clinic intent on practicing health care with anti-racist principles? Didn't I know that most people in New Orleans had to do this type of work to survive? What made me so special?

I am still learning that the message of being in a Big Easy, turn-your-head kind of place is about access. Who has it, who doesn't. Even the message of Carnival has been about access for religious people unto days of free-spirited wildness. Some days I feel like I understand New Orleans, some days I just feel humbled by even riding my boat to the ferry. The beads are not the only things in my way; I have years of oppression caused by racist white people to ride through. (And ride through it I will...not around it or beside it).

The music, the heat off the bayous, riding decorated bicycles through neighborhoods crowded with multi-colored shutters...this is a culture so distinct from my own. I always imagine that while my own state lay dormant in winter, tons of plants and wildlife was springing into action on every little patch of earth in New Orleans. I am still asking myself if I can be a resource for anyone in this wonderful, difficult city, as she teaches me in so many ways to put down my masks of privilege and security to hear her tell her own story.

In Search of the Jellyroll in the Mississippi Delta

How else would I ever have arrived to the Mississippi Delta? I absolutely had the likes of Elmore James, Memphis Minnie, and Robert Johnson in this here little VW. The monotony of the cotton fields in Mississippi certainly lend themselves to the familiar patterns of the Delta blues. Sweet Lord, when I passed over flat land and literally drove down a mountain of highway to get into the delta, I could hear 'em calling.

I had made a pit stop in Jackson, to go to the Canton flea market with a good friend, and hear about life in Mississippi post-Katrina. Folks in the city felt somewhat despondent about recent population growth, and some attributed the rise in violent crimes to the amount of displaced hurricane victims. I had passed through many impoverished regions of the country thus far but I had not seen the likes of poverty in Mississippi. My memories of travel in this Blues homeland will always be painted with images of the men at the tire stops who sit around all day without customers, the disgraceful condition of worker's trailers outside of the chicken packing warehouse in Canton. But also, thankfully, of the white sands on the banks of the Mississippi, the richness of the conversation at Miss Sarah's Kitchen, and the smiles reflected in a slide guitar.

But, yes, I return to the little matter of the jellyroll.

Wait a cotton-pickin' minute! What's this here jellyrollin' y'all talkin about? From the Piedmont in NC to the Delta, the soul, struggle, and sensuality in the blues I play kept me on the road and my heart in the game. In so many of these songs, colorful metaphors emerge to poorly disguise the dastardly riskee flirtations of the music. One of these is the jellyroll. "Best jelly roll in town", "My man makes the best jelly roll in town." Uh-huh.

So I just had to turn the Urban Merchant (my car) north a little bit to the devil-fearin' , juke-joint town of Clarksdale. I creaked my way out of Jackson, MI and traveled along highway 49 until I reached the crossroads.

At thirty, the crossroads is a perfect beginning for my narrative. I took this journey to keep my professional soul, to realize my potential as an anti-racist worker. But I also traveled to remember who I could be when I am alone, and that hasn't been easy. When that train pulls out, will I have sold my soul to the devil? Or is it really that I have learned I can tap into both the good and evil to create something honest and meaningful? Life is, after all, about embracing the swells and the calm ocean.

But now, the jellyroll, with it's soft, flaky pastry exterior and it's sanguine ooze interior...

So down I went to Miss Sarah's Kitchen to see if she knew a thing or two about jellyrolls. One would imagine a culinary expert and elder such as herself to be appraised. I sat with a friend from town, an artist, on a bar stool and watched Miss Sarah bother around her stove to fix up the biggest plate of beans, cornbread, and potato salad with sour pickles in it. I washed this soul food down with some sweet tea and the biggest slice of lemon pound cake this apparent ex-vegan could sustain, and then we got down to business. When I asked if they still made jelly rolls in town, Miss Sarah scratched her head and offered little more than a smile. In the open parlor of the restaurant, one of her grandchildren (or great?) was jumping around and causing a scandal for her mother. A distracted Miss Sarah said she thought there was a donut shop in town, hesitated, and went back to the task at hand. Maybe Miss Sarah's days of sampling jelly rolls were long past her.

Down to Robert Johnson's grave on the old blues highway to collect pecans, do grave etchings and meditate of the existence of the jellyroll. Robert Johnson is credited with being a father of the Delta blues, and there are as many stories about his actual grave site, as there are about him. Today most people find it next to an old church, under a pecan tree, and well-kept. I didn't get any answers from the wind over the cotton fields next to the petite cemetery, but I did reflect on the long journey in my life that brought me a love of the blues that had me kneeling at Robert Johnson's graveside.

Down to the banks of the Mississippi, and out to the cotton fields, still an industrial revolution, to work off the jellyroll. I had never seen the Mississippi, and for some reason I thought I could swim in it. Yet everywhere I went, the River, busy and massive, was full of industry, adding credence to the notion that folks downriver in New Orleans would be swimming in sludge.

And I had never seen cotton in full bloom. This plant wintering is so majestic, I have to remind myself it is not snow. The cotton fields are again transformed by industrial invention. Men sit in huge machinery lifting bale after bale of cotton to be compacted into huge packages that are transported across the country. This is an enormous industry that still relies on old money, tradition, and cheap labor, as I understand it. The only sweetness here is in the plant itself. And even the plant could tell its own sad history.

So down to the Riverside Motel to ask about the jellyroll and recline on linen that reminded me of naps at Grandma's in Maine. Every guest has a bureau drawer in this establishment, maybe even the devil himself. You might just be staying in a room where your favorite blues player left his favorite hairbrush in the bottom drawer. It used to be an old hospital, the hallways narrowing and carrying on as they usually do in such places, leaving you wondering what horror film was made here. The floor creaks, the doors beckon.

The owner of this fine establishment goes by the nickname "Rat". A thin, older gentleman with engaging eyes, Rat entraps you in his parlor with stories of a Clarksdale past, a smoky room laden with memorabilia and gifts from fans around the world (it's hard not to love this feisty gentleman). Luckily, Rat is able to tell me as much about the jellyroll as I need to hear, for he is a lover of women. When I let him in on my quest for the jellyroll, he leans in, as if his answer is a secret for our ears alone, and answers that the jellyroll is something so sweet. She's my jellyroll.

Of course, Rat knows a lot about lovin', and informs his guests that Sundays and Mondays no one plays the blues in town because these days are reserved for making love. He doesn't really need to tell me this is a part of the jellyroll experience, I already know. I can feel these walls pulsing, hear the beat of their music. As I remember sinking my teeth into today's version of the jellyroll, feeling the confection coat my throat, I can taste the sweetness of his words.

And did I get my jellyroll in Clarksdale, you ask? As the song goes, ain't nobody's dirty business if I did.





Cotton---------------->

Freedom Walking in Birmingham

(stay tuned for some truly amazing photos that I currently can't get up....)


I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama on a rainy morning to visit the Civil Rights Institute. Back in Portland, Maine, the marches of the Civil Rights era seemed confined to the pages of my textbooks (if even!), and other historical reference points.

But in Birmingham, as the rain broke into humid heat, and the churches chimed out Amazing Grace and different songs made famous by the Civil Rights Movement, events were a bit more tangible.

Once upon a time, Birmingham was hailed as the most up-and coming industrial center. Access to the city by train was created by African-American laborers, their bosses chasing slavery into a new century. Despite segregation, Birmingham became home to one of the most successful Black business districts in the South. During the Civil Rights era, an important battle was waged here, as protesters risked their lives against police and their dogs and firefighter's hoses under the command of "Bull" Connor.

I was captured by the moments spent walking through the Civil Rights Institute, a museum of history that begins with a symbol not easily forgotten: a water fountain, from an era of blatant segregationist language everywhere. I walked through this historical tour of the Civil Rights Era, which encourages the journeyer to be enraged, to march for freedom, to mourn for Martin and Malcolm and quieter heroes. The water hoses, the police dogs, the fear of that era begin to be represented here.

Why did I come here, to Birmingham? I feel so immersed in this living history tour through the South. I came because I was encouraged to make this pilgrimage by certain elders in my community back home. I came because I know that my journey to practice anti-racism in New Orleans will not be easy, and that I have so much catching up to do. I came because being part of a multi-racial immigration struggle means honoring and learning about the struggle for justice of all people. To remember Birmingham, to be grounded in what was created here.

Leaving the CRI, I crossed the street to the Park of Reconciliation and Revolution, just as the sun was setting. The meditative me transitioned into the present as I was approached time and again for donations. I chattered away with many people in that park, feeling more myself in general with human collections than historical ones. My belly was advocating for the soul food that I had promised her, but my mission was clear. I would traverse the park, taking in the monuments to the students and adults who risked so much in their civil disobedience. At one point, I was aware of what was still being risked here when a seemingly agitated, older Black man moved away from my camera. This is a park still waiting for reconciliation.

In front of the 16th Street Church, where the four little girls were killed, a single tree was planted. Footprints in the form of plaques inform and capture still-lives. Hold fast the Dream! In a little while, they will march in with the setting sun, your sons and daughters, Birmingham, into the Park of Revolution and Reconciliation, to be fed not by Revolution, but by Wild Irish Rose. March on! There is still so much dreaming to do...

How She Lived in the Forest

The other day I was reflecting on my first experience solo-camping in Maine. During this trip, righteously freaked out with images of burly men in the night and anticipation of a whole night of listening to my own breath (which, in those desperate days, was probably the more terrifying). I carried a big knife, a big backpack and walked with a big dog.

We knew we would prevail, even when it poured harder the further up the mountain we walked. Rain was my favorite to sleep in. My dog agreed, and bounded through the forest. Exhausted, soaked, and trying to keep the canine within sight, I looked for a place to set up.

It became more than an adventure when it appeared I just couldn't get through the forest without my girl leaping over drenched tree trunks, and excitedly knocking a very unbalanced-packed me over on my back. Frustrated and even wetter, yelling out commands that were going nowhere, I felt a little defeated until I found our spot: a little patch of dryer land under a grove of deciduous trees. Educating myself that very moment about how to set up camp in the pouring rain, I slept in dry comfort, feeling the precious gift of taking care of the two of us. The journey was just as important as the settling in.

My gift on this road is still setting up and taking down camp. I self-imposed this job when I traveled across the deep south with ten dollars in my pocket to New Orleans, stopping only to reflect when my friend Alana remarked, "You're sleeping in the woods in Mississippi, alone? Girl!"Often frustrated with the reality of the difference in negotiating safety as a woman, so many times either pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised by circumstances, all the while thinking...we all must do this every once in awhile. I wanted to take the time to journey into Louisiana, to reflect and prepare, to be open to more surprises. To listen to a little of the language of this land.

So there I found myself in the Talladega National Forest in eastern Alabama, listening to the sounds of birds and insects and my own tent zippers. The patterns of tall, leafy trees reminded me of adults creeping around, their arms outstretched, with bedsheets over their heads to frighten little children. The night before I barely found my campsite before I up and turned around, headed toward Birmingham to the closest available motel for the night. I had already been lost twice when I stopped at the home of a native, a nice, older man out watching the sun go down. I asked for directions, adapting to speak 'bama, which sounds soft and gentle like Tennessee, but maybe a little faster. His directions led me to a creepy old horse farm, my imagination turning me right out of there. Alone, settled in my tent, water was dripping somewhere and I feel inundated with the weight of my own decisions.

So there I found myself in Mississippi, camping outside the ranger station where I have been instructed. The ranger had scratched his head and said, "Well, there are some spots you can camp, but we do have a local drunk who likes to go in there and mess with our water supply. But you can stay there for free. " Get what you pay for, I guess. I had a brief fantasy about swimming in the river, but the idea of poisonous water moccasins did away with that. I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, but I just figured I couldn't afford that hospital bill. I was so broke during this trip I actually had half a penny in my bag, like someone had taken a bite right out of it. Of course, I had a couple of dollars besides that, but it became symbolic, made me hungry just thinking about it.

I rested in places where I was amazed that the forest had not yet disappeared. On a map, I couldn't even decipher how much woodland Alabama actually had. And really, sometimes my motel experiences held just as much wildlife as the forest. Regardless, I have been challenged to rely on my survival skills (the greatest of which is patience!) and my extra-strength Benadryl in any and all accommodations.

My Car: A Lesson in Impermanence

Allow me to introduce you to the Urban Merchant.....

I started this trip envisioning it all by bus. Ah, the romance in the sweat and struggle of nights spent on the Greyhound station floor, waiting for that 2am bus we're all not sure is coming, that certain special customer eying you throughout the trip, his glance on the vacant seat next to you...that and your collarbone.

Besides my own safety, the main reason I decided to liberate the Urban Merchant from her grassy knoll in Black Mountain, North Carolina, was my desire to farm and camp my way across the south. I want to be connected to the land I'm loving. And after awhile, I just didn't want to give my money to Greyhound anymore. I may be in solidarity with the people I love in traveling this way, but this is the same company that keeps people waiting hours without information and doesn't usually chase la Migra away from arrival points, even after customers have paid for the ride.

Now, don't think I've sold out. My car, beautiful as she may be, is truly only a step above the Greyhound. For one, she has managed to attach herself to every insect that likes to travel and in doing so, keeps me very close to nature. (Sorry, Grandma, you're not going to appreciate this story very much...) I've been blessed that the ants my car is infested with do not actually bite, but I was not so keen to acknowledge while at a rest stop one day that I had a black widow who had taken a flat just below the engine. Much as I believe in fair housing (especially for single parents!), I had to evict her right then and there. And every once in awhile I turn off the engine to the tune of the gentle fluttering of a moth's wings from the back seat.

The Merchant likes to graze among the bounty of southbound trucks, straddling 60 mph as she plods along. So the other day, while pushing the limit to perhaps 62, I glanced over to my left and nearly turned off the road. This huge, brown spider was waving its legs, just hanging out on the window. Um, I'm not actually afraid of spiders, but I have total respect for their poisonous bites. So there I am on the highway- the wind in my hair, the ants crawling on my legs, and the spider who now lives in the vent, waving as the cars go by. If I so much as see one Palmetto, that's it. I mean, this is ridiculous!

Every time I enter my car I acknowledge that tomorrow she may not work. And honestly, I try to feel blessed with the lesson this holds for me in my life outside of her musty interior. I am a woman traveling alone across the south, navigating new boundaries about my own safety. I have to trust myself, trust that I am prepared if tomorrow my car stops working, my money runs out, I run into trouble. I cannot take myself for granted, because I am the only one I have at the end of the day. I chortle down the highway, making plans should she fail me, letting go... We are in this journey together for as far as it lets us, and then I may need to let her go.

I am blessed time and again with this message of life's impermanence, and the critical friendship I want to cultivate with myself. The road moves, warps, curves, shapes the next day. I follow with an open heart, ready for potholes.

Climbing out of the Highlands of North Carolina

(Hey, I know it's been awhile, and I have a lot for y'all. But I have been fairly unsuccessful at finding a computer. So I'm catching up.)

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There is a painful exchange I frequently have with an immigrant friend that goes like this:

Me: I call him on the telephone, worried, spittle hanging on mouthfuls of my best Mexican-accented concern and reproach. Como que no me has llamado? Why haven't you called me? Por qué te han apagado el teléfono la semana pasada? Why did they shut off your telephone last week? Quiero que me llames en seguida! I want you to call me now!

Him: Returning my call, all of which takes him two seconds, his voice masked by static, "Yeah, um, good to hear from you. Okay, take care."

Me: Of course I want to know if he is okay, safe from immigration, safe from injustice. When I do not hear from him for a long time, I worry.

Him: Of course he is not going to return my concern with his own, because he lives with the fear of being separated from his family daily.

Me: Of course it is my privilege that allows me the decision of when to freak out about this. Still, keeping in touch is one small way to count his story, and seek his safety. Ay!


I begin this entry with this little reflection, because it really represents for me the different containers we have for the fears and anger we live with in building this multi-racial struggle for immigrant justice. Living in the south.... states with some of the toughest anti-immigrant legislation, hearing about more and more ICE raids and their effects on children, learning that more and more friends are in danger at their jobs. It seemed for awhile that every month we were scraping together a few dollars to bail someone out of jail. It's easy to imagine it happening here more times, but I am always reminded that the north is like the south, only scabbed over. Conservative, racist politics may appear in more vivid color in the southland, but they spread their disease everywhere.


My own story left off with a brief trip back to Maine, where I snuggled with family, took a very deep look at the journey and walked the Freedom Trail through Underground Railroad history in Portland. The salty ocean cleaned my wounds from the road and I delighted in what I call "Maine moments", when the weather deliciously shifts and the sweatshirt comes out. I worked on a farm while on the road, biked forty miles, stayed on an island, smelled tomatoes at the Farmer's Market, and listened to the histories of radical abolitionist women from my homeland. Maine had taken me back as her own for a little bit, while I rested and ate string beans. It felt almost possible to sink back into the sands of my place of birth. Not yet, she whispered, go back to the south. Love and learn and eat okra. Play the blues.

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It just made sense that my journey continue where I left off: in eastern Tennessee, to celebrate 75 years of organizing at the Highlander Center in New Market! Highlander had become a place where I could charge my warrior-self batteries and be challenged in my work by activists who continue to inform my journey thus far. I was grateful to be invited to their anniversary to interpret for workshops. I love being challenged to step back and provide other organizers with the opportunity to dialogue in their own languages and ways. I heard Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon open the program by talking frankly about the inherent dangers in doing serious movement work and concluding "the universe needs you there, not as if you'd go on forever, but because you can act as you want the world to be." I heard, interpreted into Spanish, and sang Freedom Songs, such pesky little musical interludes that constantly interrupted my conversations there. The nerve! At one point, I tried to interview someone three times, but we kept getting interrupted by the likes of "We Shall Not be Moved".

In this spirit, I prepared for my journey to what a friend called the "southernmost point", New Orleans, Louisiana. (She was right, I will elaborate later on...). I read my anti-racism reader, I charted the course, I wrote and talked with volunteers. I still wasn't sure what I would do there, just that it was already becoming a part of the script of this one-woman show that had to be acted out. There was just one little thing to tie up on the way westward....

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You see....I'm doing this all by the skin of my chinny-chin-chin....


Before heading on to New Orleans, I settled into Asheville, NC for about a month to love the mountains and work again for very little money scrounging up the kinds of employment I love. There are so many places in this world where the way you say hello is a better indicator of success than a degree. Along the road, I have cultivated my ability to find work in rural America.

Alas, the beauty of this place competes with development and popularity. I find certain conversations in Asheville to be like the quarries in my home state: splendid on the surface, not too deep. I settled on its silty bottom for one month. A lot of people come to Asheville to retire, live on the streets, or have a safe place to raise a family. And why not? It's beautiful. However, I don't necessary feel like the people I love in Asheville are very safe.

Although I would eventually see some great resistance work and ally-building in this town, I also experienced Asheville's horrible, racist politics and struggles with environmental destruction. The majority of the construction workers I met there were Mexican, chopping down the forest to build houses for wealthy homeowners. Cutting down the trees to allow for a greater population has exposed the inequities that have always existed on the other side of pines and poplars . Look outside of the funky downtown, where I have felt so inclined to play my guitar from time to time, and you see so many social problems that are not being addressed.

Looking back, how fitting that while cradled in the foothills of Appalachia, I should experience some of the most intense poverty of my trip thus far. Of course, although I have been living as person out of money, I am not referring to myself.

During my time in Asheville, I fell utterly in love with a two-year old boy and his three-month sister. I lived with and was nurtured by them for one month, staying on the couch in the SRO where they lived with their mother. During the day, I often provided care while my good friend did errands or work. Among the sounds of Dora the Explorer, we developed our own little language and ways of checking in. I still feel like I have a space on my chest that has been molded to fit that little baby and whisper in her ear.

Were it not for those two little loves of our lives and great neighbors, the walls of that SRO could have swallowed us whole. Having worked with so many people to find better housing, I felt so powerless in my attempts to support my friend with hers. For a month I watched her survival as a single mother to bi-cultural children, living in poverty in a land of plenty, until it seeped into my bones and chilled me. I felt stuck, even as we finally moved her into a bigger apartment where she is now safer and the children are happier. I wanted to do the work.

If you haven't noticed, North Carolina feels like home to me now. It is a place I have come back to many times on the road and may someday come back to on a more permanent basis. However, I think the message for me about Asheville is about the lure of complacency. It would be easy to settle in Asheville and spout peace and appreciate the land and love the valley. But the people I love there are not so safe, and I am not ready to settle. So I send a lot of love out to Asheville, and get on board again. Get on board, children, children, get on board, children, children, get on board, children, children, let's fight for human rights.

On to 'Nawlins....