In Memory of Gray Fitch Scariot

S.0.S. TO GRAY'S GHOST whom I expect to meet again at the Pearly Gates...

The Deep South was NEVER on my itinerary as Queen of Hipi Road. I was blessed to be a born Navy Brat, at the end of the post-war Baby Boom, the eldest Child of a Submariner. We traveled the Country in a 1954 Blue Plymouth station wagon, attending 8 different grade schools…from Tacoma, Seattle, Arco Idaho, Vallejo, Great Lakes, and San DiegoX2...to 4 years in an Imperial Beach Catholic High School, on the beach within sight of the Bullring by the Sea. There I married a Sailor from a Pennsylvania hometown 40 miles North of the Mason/Dixon Line, where I studied Feminist Political Science with the Yankee Colonial and still Revolutionary, Women of NOW’s Eastern Seaboard Ethics and Americana Movement, to Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, without the help of the Confederate States…(by fiat, if necessary.) I stood at Lincoln’s knees in WashingtonDC, and was introduced to Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and strange fruit hanging from Southern Trees. I’ve witnessed televised apartheid in the Deep South, and except for an occasional radical sojourn into southern streets, I have boycotted the modern confederacy these last 30 years, for not ratifying the ERA. But retirement, for me, obviously means hiding out in my Sisterfriend’s house in Macon, Georgia, for the duration of my 60’s, I guess. I am lucky that we need each other to survive in peace and love, but I can hear the screeching hellions mingling and thrashing behind closed doors, the hissing racists under every rock, the red-neck menace trashing the collective peace of mind, the angry boredom of the children. There has always been a viable reason for my presence along the Way, so in spite of my discomfort with the BUGS of Hell and the fouled English, I have to believe that my witness is important enough to publish as testimony that’ll maybe earn me a Hall Pass at the Pearlie Gates. I’m blessed with access to the World Wide Web, and I hope I survive into my 70’s, so I can live again, and die a floater, in Tecopa’s hot springs, South of Death Valley.

Two consecutive dreams about Gray

I've always thought that when it was time for me to pass away, Gray would come fetch me from a dream. But I WOKE UP from seeing her at 4AM this morning, thinking I should get up and write to Janet to pass along the howdy, but went back to sleep instead, only to find myself mingling at a party under a big crowded circus tent. Hmmm. Makes me think the first visit was only an invite to mingle awhile amongst our copacetic friends. Does anyone else remember the Party? Heh Heh Heh...I imagine that Gray is still hostessing Us in the DreamTimes. Blessed Be, SageXsojourner

Sojourner's Blues 2012

Sojourner's Blues 2012

http://sojournerssaloon.blogspot.com/Sojourner's Blues

The Deep South was NEVER on my itinerary as Queen of Hipi Road.

I was blessed to be a born Navy Brat, at the end of the post-war Baby Boom,
the eldest Child of a Submariner.
We traveled the Country in a 1954 Blue Plymouth station wagon, attending 8 different grade schools…from Tacoma, Seattle, Arco Idaho, Vallejo, Great Lakes, and San DiegoX2...to 4 years in an Imperial Beach Catholic High School, on the beach within sight of the Bullring by the Sea.

There I married a Sailor from a Pennsylvania hometown 40 miles North of the Mason/Dixon Line, where I studied Feminist Political Science with the Yankee Colonial and still Revolutionary, Women of NOW’s Eastern Seaboard Ethics and Americana Movement, to Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment,
without the help of the Confederate States…(by fiat, if necessary.)

I stood at Lincoln’s knees in WashingtonDC, and was introduced to Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and strange fruit hanging from Southern Trees. I’ve witnessed televised apartheid in the Deep South, and except for an occasional radical sojourn into southern streets, I have boycotted the modern confederacy these last 30 years, for not ratifying the ERA.

But retirement, for me, obviously means hiding out in my Sisterfriend’s house in Macon, Georgia, for the duration of my 60’s, I guess. I am lucky that we need each other to survive in peace and love, but I can hear the screeching hellions mingling and thrashing behind closed doors, the hissing racists under every rock, the red-neck menace trashing the collective peace of mind, the angry boredom of the children.

There has always been a viable reason for my presence along the Way, so in spite of my discomfort with the BUGS of Hell and the fouled English, I have to believe that my witness is important enough to publish as testimony that’ll maybe earn me a Hall Pass at the Pearlie Gates.

I’m blessed with access to the World Wide Web, and I hope I survive into my 70’s, so I can live again, and die a floater, in Tecopa’s hot springs, South of Death Valley.

OUR FAVORITE: WHOOPI

Visitations from GhostWalkers/ Winter Solstice 2011

Hiya Gray, Here's the Story I'm sticking to...to which I'm sticking?

Open Letter to Son of a Witch

Dearly Bobby,

It still hurts horribly trying to remember my reasons for leaving you behind, and I’ll always be ashamed of having been so cruel, but in that place and time I was very afraid that I was putting you in danger being a known women’s libber in such a provincial hometown.
Remember when my softball team refused to give up the practice field to a boy’s team that had been rained out of their scheduled time, and the story made the front page of the sports section in the newspaper, headlined, DANDY LIONS ROAR? The sports writer didn’t know that it was the girls’ mothers who insisted that their daughters not leave the field, before I even got there, but the story blamed me for the rebellion because I was President of the N.O.W. chapter at the time, and must have been guilty of influencing my team to take a stand.

I think it was soon after that, that I had a nightmare I still remember, of seeing a city salt truck roaring down that hill in front of Gramma’s house, plowing right thru our front yard with you kids in it. That was when I first realized that I was putting you in jeopardy of being harassed over my feminism. Then I remember the time Becky came home from school one day, skipping and singing “My mommie’s a nature witch”, over and over, in front of the neighbor kids. And I realized you kids and I could be targeted by reactionaries at anytime.

I questioned myself over and over, about whether my politics were worth running that risk, and I thought NOT, but couldn’t shirk or shake the sense of Commitment I had to the Revolution. I searched my soul trying to define exactly what I thought I could do about ANYTHING without a college education or marketable job skills, or even the motivation to add outside employment to my wife and mother jobs. I did try to find a real job besides the volunteer work I did at the YWCA and NOW, but in those days, nobody wanted to hire mothers because of the absentee problems over sick kids, school holidays, or possible pregnancies, etc. and most jobs went to single women.

I felt imprisoned and powerless and angry and frustrated, wondering why I had to care so much about being a Feminist, if I couldn’t do anything to make things better for women like me and my daughter.

I think I might have been suicidal if I hadn’t had been so committed to Feminism, and my daughter’s future in this world. What good would a dead mother be to a radical little girl, tho? What kind of trauma would I have imposed on you and your Dad? How confused and shocked the rest of the family would be? And it would’ve been a worthless gesture that proved nothing except my own incompetence.

So, I decided that the only thing I could do was go out on my own, educate myself by experiencing knowledgeable people, exploring other realities, other ways of living, being independent, making my own way thru the maze, gathering insight and understanding, finding honest labor, paid or not, contributing to the common good where I could, finding out what’s important to other people, and why.

It wasn’t easy to be so brave, but it felt better than cowardice and despair, and I did survive even the trouble I occasionally got caught up in. I figured if I could make my own way in the world, it would be OK not to worry too much about you kid’s being able to as well, because the world has changed, and that’s what I’ve come back to remind you…to keep the faith, magic works, and everything’s gonna be all right because failure is impossible.