Witch of WestcottNation @
Anti-Apartheid Encampment
on the Syracuse University Campus, 1985? 

A Y2K EPISTLE FROM HUMBOLDT NATION
TO THIS SEVENTH GENERATION

I FEEL INSPIRED to share some native understanding on the subject of Prayer.
Creative and effective Prayer for divine intervention seems to work best when envisioning nurturance and healing. These prayers seem always to be answered.
The Lakota Sundance did not work to avoid genocide, I think because to envision suffering tends to perpetuate it, and because to offer pain as a bribe to any god is inhumane and undignified. The Sundance was discontinued in the 18th Century, and it was only revived some 30 years ago, for the edification of New Age, pale-faced tourists.
The Ghost Dance that swept the Nations during the 19th Century, however, had great effect in regards to the prophecies saying that the Elders would return invincible, and in the 20th Century, the Rainbow Tribe was born from the dreams of a Ute homelander Medicine Man, to provide harbor for those Elders in the Hearts of Amerika’s Woodstock Generation, which explains, I think, the intense personal and political identification with Sovereign Native Spirit that so obviously makes It’s Self manifest in our counter-culture, these days.
Seems to me to be the logical development of the Great Purification Prophecy promising that the Spirit of the Land will rise from it, and be cleansed and healed.
So…it’s up to US. We are the last Seventh Generation. Our descendents are not guaranteed to make it that far into the future, whole.
It’s up to US to rise up, and quantum leap into the Spiral Dance of World Consciousness, and actually accomplish successful revolution NOW!
This Great Millennium Prayer for World Peace is programmed in the fabric of our DNA, the Helix of Life as we know it.
I think that Jesus (and Mohammed and Krishna and Buddha) will feel right at HOME this time around, as Our Original Elder Hipi Hero, dontcha know. Changing our attitudes is the easiest way to change our paradigm, thereby saving Ourselves, and whatever is left of Our Ancient Redwood Cathedral Forests.

By me…Morgana Sage, Woodstock Rainbow Elder’s Council’90
Queen of Hipi Road at Blackdog Junction, Tecopa Station’05

Dearly Y’all,
I did some housekeeping in my files this morning, and re-read Gray’s Guestbook. It’s so hard to believe she’s really gone when all my memories of her are so ever-lastingly fresh… especially when they dove-tail so well with all of yours, and I find myself feeling so very old, crying over the very best of times so long ago…but then I have to laugh about the fun we had in our earnest youth, laying the groundwork for our committed lives.
I remember especially, the formation of the Somerset 17, the convoy home from a Pa.NOW State Board meeting held in the far from center of the state, rushing into the jaws of a blizzard at Johnstown Pass. Gray was driving her yellow Cherokee, and I was riding shotgun, listening to the truckers on the CB radio cussing at us 4-wheelers for getting in their way when NOBODY would even dare to try stopping for any reason. We were bringing up the rear of the 6 or 7 car caravan and I can
still see eccentric Flo, alone in her car in front of us, driving blind and erratic, riding her brakes and swerving, almost skidding into the path of passing truckers. We had 4-wheel drive, but I knew that if Flo lost control of her car, Gray would have a really hard time avoiding entanglement in an accident,
so I told her that I was scared for Flo and us, and the drivers behind us, and Gray started flashing her headlights in a prearranged signal to take the next exit…nobody argued…it was consensus in action…the whole string curled off the Turnpike at the Somerset exit where the blizzard had already dumped a foot of snow, and crept into the parking lot at the Holiday Inn, where we all got out to confer about the situation over dinner. We were all very subdued by the hazardous conditions, and when everybody heard our report about the trucker’s comments on the CB radio, consensus was again reached very quickly, without argument, that we’d all just stay put until the storm passed. I distinctly remember the utter relief that overcame us when we all agreed to surrender to Mother Nature terms, to rest safely tucked, together in three or four packed rooms, that I’m sure Gray helped subsidize because most of us were almost out of weekend money. There were some babies with us, and once they were bedded down, the rest of us became quite giddy with celebration of being together in a suspended time warp under a blizzard. We were carefree… and so bold as to telegraph Gloria Sackman-Reed, with the news that we were safely west of Center but clearly not yet home, and we even announced that we were billing Pa.NOW for compensation of motel expenses. Heh-heh-heh! Next day, we laughed all the rest of the way home to Pittsburgh, and having proved our point that Harrisburg was NOT the center of the State, we wo-manufactured 17 big buttons to wear to the next Board Meeting in the East, that said:
SAVE THE SOMERSET SEVENTEEN

All my Love. Morgana Sage, Queen of Hipi Road
http://thebroadsside.blogspot.com
AKA: Kris Williams, Washington County NOW(and forever)

Mail from Cindy Wilder

Sage -- More later, but for the time being – were you at Michigan in 1980 (I think – last year in the original space) as Sage?? Gray had told me to look for her friend Sage and I found her – my daughter Lara was about 8 at the time and spent a lot of time with (you?).
Did you ever reach Janet?? I was hoping she would see the guestbook and email me, but no luck so far.
I’ve been through quite a few deaths with friends and family – I think it’s been harder to let go of Gray than practically anyone -- I think because I always thought I would see her again, even tho I’ve been on the west coast for 14 years.
Thanks for writing – I’ll share some memories later.
Love, Cindy

Diary Excerpts

Diary of a Second Wave Feminist

January 2006
Gray was my Oath Mother at the
Free Amazon Guild House on Indian Lake. She gave me the name of Sojourner and pretty much sealed my fateful future as a mountain guide for the Revolution. I spent months gazing out her kitchen window while she listened to my thoughts and doubts about taking on the mission to ratify the ERA, pondering whether the actions and commitment of one woman could even make a difference important enough to justify the loss of my family life, my status quo, my security. It’s been 28 years since I left her kitchen and my family behind to see if I could clear a Path my children could follow without compromising themselves. If I couldn’t make an honest, independent living as a Feminist in the sexist World, how could I expect my kids to survive the system whole?

January, 2006
Just woke up from siesta, and a miraculous dream of actually walking without pain or limp. I was thrilled to walk down a staircase and the first thing I did was take up all the throw rugs and take them outside to shake, and then my dogs followed me back inside to play and scrabble on the empty floor, barking with excitement, which woke me up into the real afternoon,
just in time to take some aspirin and see what Lillian was really barking at, outside. There was Jon across the road on a wood trip, and I was immediately taken back to when I was thirty, living on a communal farm outside Ithaca, New York. We had an old Chevy truck that we used to climb the big hill to the tree- line at the top side of the grazing field, and load up with dead wood for the stove in the kitchen. I learned real quick that the women I was with on the first wood run were way too macho with the chainsaw, so in self-preservation mode, I told them that I wouldn’t help with the work unless they let ME wield
the monster. They seemed relieved to concede to my conditions, I guess because none of them were as sure-footed as I was, and I got the job for the whole winter. By the time spring came around, I had developed a ganglia cyst on my left wrist from chainsaw related aggravation. One of the women let me read an article in one of her magazines diagnosing the exact problem, and recommending treatment with 1000mg of B6 daily, for six weeks, and it actually worked. It was so wonderful being Young.

A retrospective: January 2005
As I was approaching my Saturn Cycle, I dreamed of being more than just an average housewife and mother. I wanted to change the world I’d been raised to fit into, the world I’d delivered my children into, to be one in which adventure and personal growth could be achieved without being ground down to a common denominator of passive acceptance and dumb luck. I didn’t want an ordinary life of raising ordinary children to become ordinary cogs in a system of ordinary sacrifice and struggle. I wanted to walk the shining path I saw before me, the path that led to real freedom, and the chance to make a difference; a path that my kids could follow without losing faith in their abilities to make the World a better place. Liberation was not so much a goal for me as it was a means to become unshackled from the expectations that chained me to a grist mill, the same chains that my children would inherit from an average discontented mother, if I didn’t make a radical effort to change the course of my life. Having no marketable job skills, and only marginal talents, I had no other choice but to leave my kids safely tucked with their father and his family, as I made the jump into the ruthless, dog-eat-dog, world of sexist, racist, classist society of strangers, alone, with no economic, marital, or political status, with nothing but my naked feminism, and my willingness to hold fast to the idea that I had an obligation to do whatever I could to make the world a better place for myself, my children, my fellow travelers, in this one life I owned.
I almost didn’t make it thru the first two years.
Leaving my family and sisters tore a whole in my heart, and I still weep when I remember the terrible loss, the awesome guilt, the horrible pain of knowing that I could never return to the fold that I had so drastically changed with selfish ambition and cold desire to become someone important enough to right the wrongs of an indifferent society. I was crazy with grief and the idiocy of believing that I could just volunteer my services to change the world, to heal the ignorant, to accomplish revolution of the social order, one person at a time. Suffice it to say, that I did get tutoring at the hands of the mental health establishment, which eventually convinced me that I had to learn how to make a living as something other than a revolutionary feminist, or die an unsung martyr to masochistic idealism. So I abandoned my attempts to infiltrate women’s centers and lesbian affinity groups, and took advantage of a displaced homemaker’s training program to become a member of the pink-collar labor market, as a nursing assistant in old folk’s homes. For ten years, I privatized my radical tendencies, complied to rules of behavior and dress codes, and actually learned to care about the needs of others. I loved the work, and it took me a long time to get used to being paid to do something I really would have done for just the satisfaction of being loved and needed. The paycheck gave me the freedom to make a home for myself and my community of misfit artists, and musicians, and poets, who did our living and loving, and world-changing, on the street, as guerilla thespians, and we did make a difference when we occupied the campus of Syracuse University to demand that they divest their stock portfolio of South African apartheid. We must have been one of the last straws, because very shortly after our movement hit campus, Apartheid fell, and we were all astounded further when the Wall fell in Berlin. My employment in nursing homes ended shortly thereafter, because I was arrogantly determined to make a comparable difference at my worksite by arranging to organize a Union presence, activities for which I got fired and blackballed. My co-workers did vote in the Union, and invited me back, but I was already suffering job-related wear and tear, so I left home again to join the Rainbow Family of deadheads and hipis. Only to find myself living in a Police State, where there is no free camping. I traveled in a Volkswagen, up and down the Californicated Coast, trying to make a home for my self and my dogs, only to be told that I am too old to be of use, and that I take up too much room, and that my grant-writing skills aren’t worth a salary, because the alternative culture is full of volunteers who are happy to donate their talents to the Cause.
So I went back to a Mental Health Councilor, got diagnosed with depression, lymes diease, and osteoarthritis, and retired to the Desert with a nut check from Social Security, something I had always avoided like the plague because I thought it would damage my credibility as a writer. I was delusional thinking I had any.
The irony of all the years I spent in Syracuse was that after hearing Karen DeCrow warn against the trap that was Women’s Culture, as she stepped down from the presidency of N.O.W. in Detroit, and after being barred from that culture on my arrival at the doorstep of her hometown women’s “club”, I was forced to gather beautiful New York men around me who could feel empowered by my Feminism, not threatened by it, and that we together could accomplish such a moral victory by making an ethical stand, and sharing a very certain pride of actually accomplishing real change. Karen must have been right, in her own way…Women’s Culture failed to get the ERA ratified, reproductive freedom is still a political football, and the politics of sexuality is clamoring for the bondage of marriage. Woman, as an independent individual is still shackled by trite convention, her dignity, security and pleasure still measured with the shortest stick.
This one woman, however, has accomplished much, on any everyday basis, with the life and time allotted to me, and I do feel satisfied, justified even, that my choices have been good ones, and that if my children knew the woman I’ve become. they would be proud to call me their Mother.
The personal is political is personal. And it’s all been worthwhile.



Back to the Lesbian Farm called Northwoods: January 15, 1981

Seperatism, as a philosophy, is not valid because
it represents an abandonment of the problem of sexism,
not the resolution of it on any but a personal level,
usually resulting in political stagnation and/or regression
into patterns reminiscent of, if not identical to,
the oppression of patriarchal systems.
Ergo: Lesbian Separatism can be seen as a corruption
of Feminist Theory.

NorthWoods Blues, Christmas 1980

The ‘couples’ have left for a vacation in Florida leaving me to feed the dogs and the woodstove so the pipes don’t freeze.
It’s raining, cold and dreary, and I wouldn’t walk the distance to the yokel’s bar for the Wednesday Special…draft, a quarter…game a quarter…5 for 2 on the jukebox. If I walked a mile and a half in the rain just for the company of straight neighbors, and the women came home to that kind of gossip, they’d think I was a politically incorrect drunk.

Post-script: After re-reading this entry that day, I felt defiant and went anyway, ‘they’ found out, and I was forcibly packed-up and moved-out before planting season.

August, 2006
I’ve written my own epitaph to be carved on a rock and placed in my garden over my buried ashes, when the time comes.
On this blog, I can share it with Gray, whose passion inspired it.

STEEL CITY SAGE
Woman of an Age
Fired by her Anger
Woman of a Rage
Tempered by her Love
1941Gray Fitch Scariot2005

 

GRAY FITCH SCARIOT World's Greatest Aunt!

Gray Fitch Scariot, 64, of Indian Lake, Pennsylvania and Sanibel, Florida, died Saturday, June 04, 2005, after a brief illness. She was the daughter of the late Janet Reed Fitch and T.S. Fitch, founder of Washington Steel Corporation. Gray attended East Washington schools and graduated from Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh. She attended Vassar College and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. She also earned her private pilot's license. She was an avid reader and for many years operated a bookstore on the South Side of Pittsburgh. She was an active volunteer throughout her life, serving on the board of the Washington YWCA, and she was instrumental in the formation of the Washington Women's Shelter. She supported a wide range of women's causes. In her later years, she spent much of the year on Sanibel Island, where she was a docent for the Sanibel Historical Museum and a volunteer at the Sanibel Public Library. She enjoyed giving birding tours of the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge. Her summers were spent at Indian Lake in Somerset County, where she entertained extensively and taught friends and family to water-ski. All who visited found peace and support. Surviving are her husband, Louis A. Scariot of Washington, PA, and her daughter, Janet Reed Scariot of Sanibel, FL; two brothers, William T.S. Fitch and Thomas E. Fitch; three sisters, Mary Fitch Keliikipi, Rosamound Fitch Fergus, and Madeleine L. Fitch; numerous nieces and nephews and 3 great nieces and 1 great nephew. Friends will be received Wednesday, June 8 through Friday June 10 at her residence at Indian Lake, where a memorial service will be held at 1:00 pm on Saturday, June 11, 2005. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Washington Women's Shelter or the Sanibel Historical Museum. Arrangements PIATT & BARNHILL FUNERAL HOME, Washington, PA