By Dianne Reum 

     Well, to some it’s scary.

It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of 20th century politics, media, & economics.

~Douglas Rushkoff

     Monday I’d been called names by someone on Twitter because of my support for those protesting Wall Street. 

     That this movement is something to fear is the message peaceful protestors have certainly gotten from police,  who’ve arrested hundreds of marchers  and beaten and maced others.

     Anyone who’s watched videos from the march or listened to interviews with those there knows the Occupy Wall Street protestors are committed to both non-violence and non-partisanship. 

     Corporate mainstream media hadn’t bothered to cover the protests until this third week in and still largely misrepresent them.  I heard mention of police brutality once, very briefly.

     The brutality of New York’s police are an assault on constitutional rights that we, the people, of every size, shape, color and political persuasion have – to peacefully assemble and to protest. 

     Americans cherish this freedom because, historically, it’s how we’ve changed government when government stopped representing us.  We know the value of this freedom, from every walk of life.

      Asked why he was part of the Occupy Wall Street protest, Jesse LaGreca had responded he’d wanted economic and social justice in our country. 

     “You know, ’Jesus stuff”’, Jesse had elaborated. ”Feeding the poor, healthcare for the sick…” 

Calling all religious people.  Occupy Wall Street is a compassionate movement. Why haven’t you joined in?

~Mark Ruffalo

     The concept of caring for your neighbor as motivation for a movement that’s organically growing by leaps and bounds seems to be something some people  – and Wall Street - haven’t been able to wrap their heads around.

     I can’t wrap my head around the disconnect that makes them claw and scratch for the 400 wealthiest people responsible for the financial damage inflicted on 150,000,000 of their fellow Americans.

     In simple terms, it’s neither fair, logical nor patriotic.  It’s certainly not kind.

     Six months ago I’d had the honor of interviewing Agnes Baker Pilgrim of Oregon’s Rogue River Tribe, (a full-blooded granddaughter of a Takelma Chief), the Chair Person for the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers.  To my surprise, I learned it hadn’t been just Mayans with doomsday predictions for 2012. Tribes around the world, represented by these 13 tribal elders, are warning Earth is in her eleventh hour.

     That’s the bad news.

     The good news is, if we’re in the eleventh hour, we have time to turn from our course. 

     Three things destroying us, this Council cautions, are greed, violence and destruction of the planet.  (Violence and pollution are tied to greed).

     I hadn’t needed anyone to tell me America was in a downward spiral because of greed. 

     At over fifty-years-old, believing I’d had a “career” at a solid corporation, I lost my job.  The corporation I’d worked for is more solid, but employs less.  Many people I’d worked with lost their jobs.

     I see old people in grocery stores, carefully deliberating whether to buy the loaf of bread in their hands. 

     My nephew, in highschool, told me he worries about being spied on through his computer.  How could I tell him his worry was baseless when on an everyday drive, I see less fields and more cameras mounted on traffic signals? 

     I see closed businesses along my city’s main street and more homeless people than I’d ever imaged in our beautiful valley.      

     I see the once lush mountains surrounding my valley blighted with brown spots and bare ground. 

     Our planet’s ecosystem is being damaged while giant, polluting  corporations pour lobbying money into Congress to gut our Environmental Protection Agency.  I want to protect this planet whose life I depend on for my own, but I don’t have millions of dollars to give a lobbyist to give a Congressman.

     While detailing my conversations with Agnes for Rogue Attitude, a soon-to-published free online flipbook, I’d wondered what could possibly be a catalyst for changing the level of corporate greed so negatively impacting us when Americans have been uninvolved, uninformed, apathetic and/or lacking faith we can change anything.

     A sign of an oppressive society is one where most wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite few.  With only one percent of our population controlling two-thirds of America’s wealth, this certainly qualifies as an elite few running the show. 

     In fact, the widest income gap in the world between richest and poorest is now in the U.S.

We can have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both. 

~Louis Brandeis   

     The richest have been using their wealth to change our government in a way they can police themselves. 

     Though they can’t agree on much else, the ten wealthiest members of Congress, (worth more than $2 billion), had unanimously agreed on extending Bush’s 1950′s era taxes.  

     Darrell Issa and other pro-corporate politicians have been fighting to gut the Dodd-Frank act, calling for reform of financial institutions that brought about the unsustainable housing bubble and it’s inevitable, destructive pop.  (In 2010, one in seven mortgages were deliquent or in foreclosure).  Darrell Issa has a net worth of over $451 million.

      The super committee now deciding whether to increase taxes on financial interests consists of 12 politicians who’ve cumulatively received $42 million from the  finance, real estate and insurance sectors. 

     Raising tax rates on the wealthiest’s dividends and capital gains, not their wages, (which is how I’ve heard the tax issue implied by those wanting to keep their low taxes in place), is once again being hotly debated. 

     John Boehner has declared he and other pro-corporate politicians will reject ANY increased taxes for the elite investor class - and some are even in favor of shifting more taxes to the poor. 

     They also propose slashing programs our neediest depend on: benefits that don’t help the wealthiest.

As it stands, even though the richest one percent controls two-thirds of our nation’s wealth, the bottom 50% of Americans Pay More Taxes than they do. 

      Large corporations and the wealthy are avoiding paying $100 billion each year setting up offshore tax shelters. 

~Senator Bernie Sanders

     Would an increase in the 1950′s-era tax rate on dividends and capital gains of the wealthiest cause undue hardship? 

     In 2010, the average wage of a CEO was 325 times that of an average worker. 

     Pro-corporate politicians have claimed that raising taxes on the wealthiest will ultimately hurt you and me, because these people and their giant corporations provide jobs.  

     The pro-corporate, wealthy benefactors have spent billions of dollars on media like Fox News and other propaganda outlets to hype the message that it’s patriotic to strip resources from the federal government and allow corporations and the wealthiest to control everything.     

 ”Why would corporate media accurately report protests against corporate greed?” 

~Occupy Wall Street protestor   

     We’ve fallen for corporate lies before, republicans and democrats alike, and should know better. 

     In 2010, America’s poverty increased to the highest level in the U.S. in the 51 years poverty records have been kept.   

     Last year, 1 in 7 American households experienced food insecurity, 1 in 5 children were living in poverty, bankruptcy filings rose 20%,  consumer debt rose and savings accounts vanished.

     Yet in 2010, corporate profits grew 36.8%

     If corporations had a 36.8% increase in profits and had, indeed, been dedicated to using money to provide jobs, why is it unemployment has worsened?  Now one in six of us can’t find a job.

    The increase, from 39.8 million to 43.6 million poor, had been the 3rd consecutive year of an increase in the amount of us living in poverty. 

     The number of people without health insurance rose, too, from 46.3 million to 50.7 million.

Growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity.

~Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in Economics

     Instead of banks helping get Americans back to work, the $700 billion bailout , (an amount which grew to $800 billion), did nothing to create jobs. 

      The six biggest banks in America control of 60% of our assets.  After the bail-out, three became larger. 

     Through a rare audit of The Federal Reserve, it was discovered they’d given $16 TRILLION in low interest loans to every financial institution in the U.S., central banks around the world as well as large American corporations.  Like the banks, the Fed didn’t offer money to companies creating jobs.   

      No, no one had to tell me something was wrong in America.  I’ve experienced it.

      In my state, Bank of America made only 6 small business loans in 2010. 

The world’s economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed.

~Salman Rushdie

      The truth is, injustice has become the law.

      I’d thought it would take a miracle to undo the damage done by corporate greed and cronyism and for Americans to wake up.  I’d prayed for this miracle.

     Then along came the Occupy Wall Street protest.

When injustice is the law, revolution becomes a duty. 

~Thomas Jefferson

     I don’t know about you, but the word “revolution” evokes violent imagery.  It would be more accurate to call Occupy Wall Street “evolution”.

     Though both political parties have claimed knowing Occupy Wall Street’s agenda, Occupy Wall Street isn’t political.   

     Try starting with this nonpolitical reality:  Poverty is oppressive.  

     The people at Occupy Wall Street feel an oppression in their collective bones.  I feel it, too. 

     The person who’d called me names Friday had repeatedly asked, in regards to the protestors, “What’s the end game?”

     It’s hard to fathom that, without the backing of corporate dollars, a group of concerned humans came forward and publicly declared, “We want a kinder world.”

     Many of us lack faith in the goodness in humanity. In the goodness in ourselves.

     Tribes of the world say no one should ever have to be hungry because Earth provides everything we need.  Yet children are dying of starvation.  We know this is wrong, so what are we doing to one another?

     Like those that Occupy Wall Street and like the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, I believe we can have a kinder world.

     I don’t have a one-sentence solution or demand, either.  As the protestors remind me what freedom looks like, I’m still learning about my media-manufactured reflex.  (I had to edit my blog to remove references to any politician’s  “label”). 

     I’m groggy but waking up.

     If we’re in our eleventh hour,  I’d like to give God a reason to be proud of me: For laying down my weapons of words and remembering my divine connection to my neighbor.  

     It’s time to come together and take a good look at what is so foreign about the Occupy Wall Street protests.  

     It’s not scary.  It’s love.   

     There’s been a strange feeling hanging over almost everyone I know.  I can almost touch it.

     Before the March 11 earthquake had even struck Japan, Southern Oregon’s oldest member of the Rogue River Tribe, Agnes Baker Pilgram, (a medicine woman, full-blooded Takelma, granddaughter of a Chief, Keeper of the Sacred Salmon Ceremony and Chairperson for the Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers), had told me, “Mother Earth is angry.”       

      Though I’d went to interview her for my first issue of “Rogue Attitude”, after speaking with Agnes, I  decided to dump my entire first issue, with the exception of the article about the Rogue River Tribe, which had lead me to her.

     There was a much more important story than I’d imagined. 

     A series of seemingly coincidental things brought me to Agnes and the stalling of the first issue.

     I no longer believe the hold-up has been coincidental.  I feel I was supposed to meet Agnes and record what I learned through our meetings.

     I’m still not finished with Rogue Attitude’s completely revised first issue, but am getting close.   I feel as though it will be done right on time.

     This is how long I told my cats I’d love them.     

     I love my cats – even though today the last of 6 of died.  Within 2 years.  (Surely this is some kind of awful record).  I am writing about Guster with tears rolling down my face.  

     Guster and Imp, my two remaining, have died within a month of each other.  Animals have gotten them.  I never found Imp’s body, but heard a cat “scream” the night she disappeared.  It wasn’t until the fourth night I really knew something had gotten her, or she’d have been home.  

     Where I’m living I’ve been told there have been cougars, coyotes and even black bears spotted.

     My cats had been raised in the city and were at a disadvantage here.  They didn’t go near the street, but knew nothing about wild animals.  Though they’d insisted on going outside, (as they’d always gotten to do), they most likely didn’t have the fear they should have had.

     Today, Gus had only been gone a few hours when I’d went looking.  His norm is checking in every half hour.  He’s always stayed close.  I found him dead, just starting to get stiff, with a puncture wound in his side.  Like with Imp, I don’t know what got him.

     This blog is one of my final acts of love for Gusterson.

     There’s a powerful irony in the fact I’d went and visited Agnes, the oldest member of the Rogue River Tribe and respected Medicine Woman, yesterday. 

     Agnes had hurried through much of what she’d been sharing with me about her tribe, leaving me with important follow-up questions.  But she’d taken her time with one issue and, in fact, had went to great lengths in sharing details.

     Agnes had been called when the remains of a Native American had been found during landscaping around the new Tap Rock, regarding the proper way to handle the body.

     She told me once called, she had “guarded” the area herself.   Camping there.

     Agnes had instructed workers to erect a visqueen wall around where the body had been found so no one could take pictures.  “This was something between my people,”  she told me. 

     Noticing artifacts had been missing, she’d explained to the landscapers it would mean bad karma for them if these weren’t returned.  Then the workers had returned them.

     The workers had continued digging while Agnes had been there, next unearthing the remains of a child.  At this point, Agnes told the workers to stop digging. 

     “My people usually buried one another where they’d died,” she offered, as explanation.  Agnes told me she and the Council representing the local tribes and bands she’d gathered bought coffins with velvet, put the remains in them and had a ceremony, putting them back where they’d been found.

     Agnes explained how she’d put sand on top of the coffins, spreading it carefully with her own hands, then a layer of rocks had been put on top, then a barricade of mesh, then soil, then another deep layer of rocks.  “No one will ever disturb them again,” she declared.  Agnes had experienced a sense of their spirits and had known she’d done the right thing.  She’s at peace.  

     Thinking about burying Guster, such a painful chore, I remembered Agnes saying the Native Americans had buried one another where they’d died.  It had been hard to bury Jimmy and Bruno, Guster’s brothers, because they hadn’t been “home”.  

     I’m still not home, but I knew where I would bury Gus.

     My ceremony consisted of cradling Gus in my arms, walking back and forth and telling him all the things I loved about him.  I believed his brothers, sisters and mother would be waiting for him.  The sun broke through the clouds and, yes, I credit Gus.  He knows how much I like the sun. 

     After I’d dug Guster’s grave, I recalled Agnes telling me she’d put a layer of sand on top of those she’d just buried, spreading it carefully with her own hands.  I was glad to have had Agne’s guidance.  Looking for sand, I found some very small pea gravel.  It had been as close as I was going to get to sand in the wooded area I’d been in.  When I bent forward to scoop the gravel into the shovel, I saw a piece chicken wire, just the size of Guster’s grave.  I took this with me back to his grave site.  I’d been provided with mesh.

      I understand the significance of artifacts;  it was a compulsion to put something of mine with Guster. 

     Taking off my outermost layer, (a long-sleeved red shirt), I used the sleeves to tie it around him.  It suddenly became very profound.  “Mama’s arms will always be around you,”  I told Guster as I placed him in the hole.

     This made me hurt and feel better at the same time.

     Next I began putting pea gravel in and spreading it – carefully – with my hands.  I remembered Agnes mentioning rocks, so went and found some.  I placed rocks down next.  Then I shoveled dirt on top and put my mesh down.  On top of this, I put larger rocks, then soil again, which I tamped firmly down. 

     Agne’s words had helped me stay focused at a time I wanted to do nothing more than sob.  

     Please bear with me while I share a story about Guster and Imp.  When Guster and his brother and sister had gotten sick as kittens, I’d had to give them medicine with an eyedropper.  Jimmy and Mo, Guster’s brother and sister, had fought me when I’d put the eyedropper to their mouths.

     Not Guster.

     “This is going to make you better, Guster,” I’d told him.  “Please take it for mama.”   We’d had eye contact – and I could see his complete trust.  Gus hadn’t liked the medicine any better than his siblings, but he’d open his mouth and take his medicine without struggle.

     Guster couldn’t have been more trusting and loving.  In his eyes, I was unquestionably his mama.

     Beginning when Imp was a tiny kitten, she was into everything.  She may have been tiny, but she was tough.  She managed to scale a sheet of glass being used as a barricade to keep her in a bedroom at just 3 weeks old.   Imp made me laugh all the time with her sense of fun.

     I didn’t get to bury Imp.  But in a fair spiritual world, Imp is with her brothers that she adores right now.

BELOW:  Brothers Jimmy and Gusterson. 

(Guster had just started to come back to life after

his two brothers had been poisoned last spring).

     BELOW:  One of Imp’s baby pictures. 

(She was only 3 years old when she died).  

“Doodle-Bug”, as I called her, stayed very tiny, cute – and impish.

     Like I told Gus last night, I will love my Guster, Imp, Jimmy, Bruno, Mo and Charlie all the days.

     Well, not quite.  But CLOSE.

     I’ll be seeing my site designer today, handing off a CD with the text for Rogue Attitude reformatted for a searchable online magazine.

     Christy, the site designer, had told me I’d had the brunt of the work to do in retyping the text – and this had taken a week.  So by all appearances, Rogue Attitude is nearly ready to launch.  (If I had a tail, it’d be wagging).

we go a mile.

I’m behind my (self-imposed) schedule of re-entering all the text to make Rogue Attitude search engine-friendly as well as downloadable to handheld devices.

The text I’m re-typing, though the same font and size as had been entered in another program, isn’t lining up the same.  Besides re-typing the text, I’m forced to re-tweak.

I’ve been working all morning on two pages!  (But I AM more than half-way done with the magazine).

Everything takes what it takes, doesn’t it?  So I can’t let myself get riled.  Just gotta keep typing, tweaking – and whistling while I work.

I am SO glad I went to local site designer, Christy Kiltz. 

The way the pages had been formatted, to the only specs given by the “flip-book people” (I’m not going to plug them by even typing their name), the text would not have been searchable.  Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for a web site to thrive.

Christy is also going to create an automated email system, a blog and format the magazine so it can be downloaded (FREE) for iPads, Kindles and iPhones. 

I will also be donating a percentage of the magazine’s income to help keep the Rogue River scenic and wild – and to Wildlife Images, which Christy will set up.

I’ve got the task of reformatting the magazine then it will be go-time.  (I’m hoping I’ll be able to complete this by Monday).

Spring is coming. 

Um, if this is super crazy, ya might need to read this  ;)

Then it will be only somewhat crazy.

     I’ve had to let go of a lot of things in my life, especially in the last couple of years.  

     Now I’m having to let go of something very different.  Having done most my digital creating for the corporate world, I’ve found myself still thinking in the box; coloring neatly inside lines.

     The first cover, for example, I’d created for Rogue Attitude had been perfectly done, from a corporate standpoint.   I’d highlighted the focal points of the magazine, listed the articles and had a photo of Senator Ron Wyden on a deep red background.  It had been a respectable presentation.   

     Looking at my first cover I’d had a revelation:  The cover had looked like it was ”supposed” to.

     It lacked creativity.  (A recent example of the corporate world’s view of creativity is the new NBCUniversal logo; nothing more than fonts). 

     Besides recreating the cover, I’ve recreated three pages of the first issue of Rogue Attitude – because I realized I’d created them from the viewpoint of a corporate box.

     I don’t want to do something different simply for the sake of being different, but because the artist in me has a unique voice.  

     My wings had been clipped for so long, I’m having to relearn to listen to my creative instincts.

     Luckily, like a robin in springtime, my creativity is coming back.  By the second issue, I should be flying again.

…but after I’ve met with site designer, Christy Kiltz, on Tuesday, I might anyway. 

      I’d intended throughout the whole magazine’s creation to upload it when finished to an online business that creates magazines with flip-pages.  

     I am trained in print design and, though I can create graphics and animations for the web, I’m not a site designer.  I’d studied it this summer and realized it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  (I’ll bet people who build web sites like math).

     I’d had questions for the flip-page people about creating links and searchable text in the documents I’d be uploading.  Important stuff, I think.  My questions hadn’t been answered.    

     Recently I received an email from the flip-page site telling me after I’d signed a contract with them, my questions would be answered.  (They charge $225 a month).

     Sign the contract then my questions would be answered?   This doesn’t work for me. 

     I’m first and foremost an artist.  I have a vision of how I’d like Rogue Attitude to function.  I’d thought my questions had been reasonable and simple but extremely important.    

     I’m going to believe I’m being guided.  Tuesday I will be meeting with a web designer to see if my vision is doable. 

     I have the magazine ready to upload to the flip-page people, but launching Rogue Attitude is “on hold”.  

     I don’t know how long it will take to create the site I want – or if the web designer even has time to take on a new project.  (Or if now, because I’d created the pages to the dimensions the flip-page people had wanted them, I’m going to have to rework the pages).

     Still, there are the good things about waiting. 

     The site will be the foundation of the magazine and it’s important it’s built right.  Secondly, the web designer is local and I love the idea of hiring someone from the Rogue Valley to work on Rogue Attitude.

     Not only is the web designer local, I’d asked her a list of questions back when I’d been considering getting into web design.  (Large scale animation for the web, more precisely).  The web designer is Christy Kiltz, who built the city of Grants Pass’s website. 

     Months ago she’d taken time out of her schedule to answer a list of questions from me, a stranger, at no cost.  Being kind is the best P.R.

     I already like her.

        It’s always something.  ~Gildna Radner