First of all, Republicans successfully filibustered an attempt to restore Habeus Corpus this week. I made no phone call to congress. I did watch television yesterday.

You’ve probably heard about the UF kid, Andrew Meyer, who got tazered at a John Kerry speech on Sept. 17, 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiWCS10C5s

Why did no one stand up for this kid? The obvious answer: because they didn’t want to get tasered. But the students’ reactions (laughter, applause) reveal more than just fear. On this clip you can hear exactly one woman screaming for the cops to stop. But why didn’t John Kerry, Mr. Vietnam Vet against the war, intervene? Of all the people in the room, he was the one who could be sure he would not be tasered or unduly harrassed by police. He actually continues to answer the guy’s question as the po-po take him down (in a way this shows Kerry was sympathetic, but it also demonstrates that all the years he’s spent in the senate have castrated him).

Compare the reaction of these UCLA students to the library tazering of their fellow student, Mostafa Tabatabainejad, Nov. 14, 2006. At the end you will hear a cop threaten one of the protesters with getting tazed too. They got in the cops’ faces. There was, relative to the Andrew Meyer incident, an en masse reaction to the unnecessary use of force:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsXpRZmbm1Y&mode=related&search=

For years, as our rights have gradually eroded and our friends have come home in ziplock bags, I’ve wondered, where is the line? When will people get pissed off enough that they will rise up–nonviolently–against this oppressive bullshit? For our parents’ generation it was the Kent State shootings. What will it be for us? Would you risk your own body to protect a stranger who was being tasered unnecessarily? Would you risk arrest for peaceful protest when you could be labeled an enemy combatant and thrown in jail indefinitely, without the right to petition to have the your arrest reviewed in court?

I don’t know whether to run or fight, but I can’t pretend this isn’t happening. We are in some serious shit in the United States. I felt it at the University of Alaska, this apathy, this fear, and I’m fucking sick of it!

Here ye lovers of Science Fiction-Fantasy, have I got an online forum for you:  http://starmerrow.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi

This site is bona fide, started by a friend of mine from Sonoma, California. Her self-published book, Perdita, is awesome. If you’re interested in buying it, please purchase through her site so she can get some money for it and recoup those publishing costs.

Squirrel followed Cobra into an underground hollow. Cobra coiled himself around and around, folding back on his body until he resembled a spring. His head flared wide again. Squirrel pressed herself against the wall as far from him as possible.

“You follow me without questioning…?” said Cobra.

“I, Scorpion said I could trust you.”

“But, who is Scorpion?” Cobra’s tongue flicked out and back so quickly it resembled a flame to Squirrel, whose stomach was now heavy with dread. “Why do you trust him?”

Squirrel tried to be brave. She took a deep breath. “I had no choice. I just arrived and–”

“Wrong! You have choice. You lack power. You are alive right now only because you are too weak to give good sport. Ha! Helping. You come to me for helping? What do you think you are to me…a lovely soul, an apprentice? You are nothing but the lunch I can’t stomach. You don’t belong here, little Squirrel. But, you can stay until dark. Then be gone before I change my mind about your bony haunches.”

He left her just like that, trembling with fear and drinking the shame of her weakness. Cobra slithered further into his den, while Squirrel stayed put, breathing deeply. She stood that way for hours, afraid to move. Her gut roared its emptiness, but she quelled it, saying, “Be patient, stomach, it will soon be cooler. Then we can forage.”

From the tunnel Cobra had taken, an object bounced and skidded into the room. Squirrel could hardly believe her eyes: an acorn. She cradled the shiny nut in her paws, fell on her back, and tossed it into the air. Then, she tore into its soft flesh and chewed. Squirrel saved half for later, stuffing the uneaten portion into her cheek.

“Thank you!” she dared to call out to Cobra, who hissed long and low, and whispered, “What you should say, what you should want to know, is where? Where did I get it? Not far from here, little one. Not far. The desert is tricksy, a shifting mirage, but sweet nuts lie in hidden parts, mmmmn.”

Squirrel tried to imagine an oasis surrounded by oak trees. She couldn’t believe an acorn had gotten into Cobra’s desert lair. Around her, the air was cooling off, and Squirrel decided she should go out in search of water and more food. As she tiptoed around the corner, towards the opening above, Cobra called from behind her, “That’s more like it. Yes….”

Squirrel poked her head out of the tunnel’s entrance, into the orange dusklight. She sniffed the air for any trace of water, and felt drawn towards the westward horizon.

And that is the way she took, following her own nose.

After a long walk, Squirrel found the place where the desert floor rose in a mound. Jumping chollas hung irridescent in the sun, and saguaro reached their great arms to the sky. At the base of the hill, Squirrel spied a small opening in the ground.

She hesitated, sniffing around the entryway. Going in didn’t seem so smart. She smelled death. But, lifting her sore paw pads, and looking around at the tough plants made to withstand the sun, she saw that she had no choice. She was not built to be out in the desert. If she did not go in, she would surely die.

Squirrel stepped inside. Cool air wrapped around her and her lungs drank deeply. As Squirrel’s eyes adjusted, she saw that the tunnel dropped down a short way and then curved into the hillside. Squirrel took a few steps forward, until a distant hissing stopped her short. Around the bend came Cobra with his back up, tongue flicking forward in twin points.

Sure that she had reached the end of her days, Squirrel flattened herself against the floor and closed her eyes. She waited for the sharp pinch of Cobra’s teeth at her flesh, but the bite never came. Trembling, Squirrel opened her eyes.

Cobra looked thinner, deflated. ”Shhhh.” His voice was soothing. ”What pathetic sight is this? Rise, little one, and tell me, who sent you?”

Squirrel took a deep breath and stood on all fours, ready to back out of the tall, narrow hole should Cobra try anything. “S-scorpion told me you might be able to…to help me.”

“AAhhh.” Cobra’s voice took on a lilting tone. “In that case, come into my home, friend, and we will see just why it is you need helping.”

With that, Cobra wrested and rippled himself until his head was pointed back the way he came. He slithered farther into the den, casting Squirrel a backward glance and flicking his tongue before winding around the corner. Again, Squirrel hesitated, as if someone had whispered an admonition she couldn’t quite catch. But she thought again of the parched land above, the pain in her delicate feet, and Scorpion’s brusque manners.

Perhaps these creatures have different customs, she thought, and minced her way around the bend.

One day, after a long sojourn in the dark, cold depths, Squirrel found herself blinking in the bright sun of a teeming desert.

“Where am I?” she said to herself, “and where have I come from?”

 She looked at her feet, hoping she had become a rabbit, or a dragon, but no, she was still just a squirrel. As her eyes adjusted, Squirrel watched a thick patch of clouds hanging around the sun. She observed as they drifted towards it, and enveloped it, casting a red glow through the sky.

Squirrel hopped along the burning sand, into the bank of a wash, where the ground was softer. There, in the basin, Scorpion sat crouched on dagger limbs.

“Hello, there,” he said, and waved her over with the sharp point of his tail. “Sit.” Scorpion jabbed his stinger into the sand before him. Squirrel hesitated. “I won’t hurt you,” Scorpion said.

Squirrel lowered herself on shaking legs.

“You have questions,” Scorpion said in a lilting voice, “and I have lived here a very long time.”

His stinger hovered in the air, but Squirrel felt the urge to trust this creature.

“Scorpion,” she said. “I have just come up from a very dark place, and I would like to know, where am I?”

Scorpion rippled his legs and swayed in amusement. “You are here. Here is here, and what else matters?”

Squirrel nodded and rose to her hind legs. “I am not used to the heat. Do you know where I might find shelter?”

“Go to the near hill where the cholla and saguaro grow. Ask Cobra for help. He is old and wise, and has lived here even longer than I.”

Scorpion pointed his tail to the east, and when Squirrel stuttered–”But”–he lashed his stinger around as if to strike. Squirrel heard him chuckling as she scampered over the wash’s lip, on her way to the den of another desert sage.

Update from Anne Caston on the situation sending liquid to aid U.S. troops: 

“Hello everyone,

I want to thank all of you who responded directly, who offered to write letters, make phone calls, offered prayers; I appreciate you so much.  I also appreciate those of you who put the word out there on your blogs and got others involved.  It seems to be making a difference.  The local post office here in Southern Maryland has agreed to allow us to ship cases of water to specific units/soldiers stationed in Baghdad so long as the cases are wrapped and the seals on the bottles aren’t opened!  Hurrah!!!  So Ian & I are off to the local grocers to stock up on, and send out tomorrow, as many cases of H2O we can afford to buy and ship.  And word from the local US Post Office is that, while the decision to ship water rests squarely with the individual post offices, that most of them will be amenable to it if you follow the conditions about unbroken seals and non-carbonated water.

If you know soldiers in the region and have addresses for them, please send bottles of water (non-carbonated!) to their APO addresses.  If you want to send water but don’t know a soldier, you can send the troops drinking water in care of my son (address below) and he’ll be so happy to hand them out to his comrades and patients.  Again, thank you and bless you all.  This is one time when I fervently hope the old adage about “reaping what you sow” is more than a truism: if so, you all are gonna have an amazing harvest!

All good things to each of you,

Anne Caston

SFC Matthew D. Osborne

603rd ASD, HSC, CAB 43414

APO  AE  09322-3414″

A ragged mist clings to the Chugach mountains, today, the third morning left for me to wake up and call this place mine. But I know, if you ask hard, Alaska has owned me and not the other way around. I don’t count on the weather being good, anymore. A friend gets married today, safe inside the Hilton hotel. I will put on a bridesmaid dress and walk slowly up the aisle. Rain will pelt the roof twenty stories up and run off the sides of a brown-painted facade. Two mornings left, and when Sara slides the ring over Andrew’s knuckle, she will be his, he will be hers, but they will both be staying here, to be owned by this place, where the smallest yield is a great gift.

The following is the text of an email from the chair of my former department. Since writing this letter, she has convinced the postmaster to allow the sending of water overseas. As a mother, she is focused on providing relief. For me, the larger implications of this situation are most frightening: If the military-industrial-political complex would allow this to happen, what will they allow next? We obviously can’t afford to be over there, and I wish this country would finally do what it should have done immediately after 9/11, namely get on our knees and ask the rest of the world for some help, on their terms. It seems to me like the only decent way out of Iraq.We both appreciate anything you can do to help, from water-sending to letter-writing: 

At the 2006 AWP writers’ conference in Austin, Sandra Cisneros said she considered community service the mark of a truly generous person. Her words stuck with me. What have I done lately to give back? I asked myself, and the answer was, not much, friend. Not much at all.

Now that I have graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage MFA program, one goal is to consistently dedicate a portion of my time to community service. The first opportunity to land in my lap was a Mountainview-based nonprofit, The Mother Lawrence Foundation. ML provides aid such as food, cheap housing, and religious services. Although I don’t agree with all ML’s religious views, this woman’s foundation is doing good work to revitalize a low-income Anchorage community. I’ve spent the morning researching grant opportunitites and nonprofit development resources for ML. It’s not much, but it still feels good. I have always hoped to leave behind a positive legacy. This didn’t work out so well with the Department of Creative Writing and Literary Arts, which is moving to the low-residency model, thus erasing the department-level student advocacy organization I helped found. The new university-wide Graduate Student Association (modeled in large part after the Creative Writing organization) has fared much better, having given out $8,000 in student grants last year, enhanced graduate student library privileges, and (so I hear) secured health care coverage for University of Alaska Anchorage TA’s and RA’s. I received leadership honors from the school for my participation in the GSA, but in my heart I do not believe this was “community service” of the kind Cisneros was talking about.

 With a week to go in Alaska, I’m thinking it isn’t too late to reach out directly to the community, and be a little generous outside the university bubble.