Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

I live in atop an elemental convergence, with the luxuries of fine dining. The weather is fickle, brutal: Mississippi expects steep toll to live here: your home, your trees… well, let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

It is not an easy place to live: there are bigger cities, more opportunities awaiting you. It is an uneasy place to live: people can be overwhelmingly THEMSELVES. It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

I feel like black clothing is often the institution built by designers as a place for fat girls to go to die. Or buy exercise wear. So, both. (I jest: I love a well constructed black dress, and also enjoy exercising.) So I’m enjoying the first Lane Bryant designer collection by Isabel Toledo. I’m loving the embroidered, foil and eyelet sets: so much gorgeous, body-conscious, timeless beauty going on here. And… the layered cocktail  and the cowl neck dresses are so elegant and shapely. It’s a great time to be a big girl!

How many modern org charts would nurture these minds? How many would tell them their ideas were too big, to start smaller, to work in how-it’s-been-done for a few years, and then they could talk about their big idea?

There are people here in Mississippi who fight the good fight, some who have lived here since before James Meredith became an Ole Miss student. I have met civil rights activists who endured horrific indignities to their souls at the hands of their government and neighbors. Instead of fleeing, they–with more courage and integrity than I have ever possessed in my life–stayed to fight tooth and nail to nudge Mississippi forward.

Faulkner (or Willie Morris… depending on whose story is best for the occasion) said you had to first understand Mississippi in order to understand the world. I don’t understand it tonight, and sometimes I think I never will. Sometimes, it’s scary to advocate for equality, agency, progress in Mississippi. Sometimes you feel like nothing you ever do will scab over the pain we inflict upon one another. Please don’t pile hate upon hate.

Both of these kids’ll come home with us on my birthday, officially Best Caturday in History.

Anything else I say will detract from my main message, which is that there’s a way for you to voice your disappointment/rage/frustration in a constructive way.

There is an online grassroots movement (GO COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS!!) urging people to donate to Planned Parenthood “in honor of” Sarah Palin.

Craig Newmark (yes, Craigslist Craig) writes on The HuffPo:

When you make a donation to PP in her name, they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.  Here’s the link to the Planned Parenthood website:

https://secure.ga0.org/02/pp10000_inhonor

You’ll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

P.S. Make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate–Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular “Donate Online”

In my opinion, this is using the full snark of the Internet for the highest good.  I would be thrilled if it came to be that Sarah Palin was responsible for the largest online fundraiser for Planned Parenthood.

We sat together and watched Obama make his “Presumptive Nominee” speech in MN, and my old man purred loudly.  It doesn’t surprise me: as a personable skinny Tuxedo cat with big ears and a funny name, they have a more than a bit in common.

Last week, we defeated the Child Protection Act (which was really a teen endangerment act) in the House, and now the Senate has put the language from that bill in as an amendment on another bill – HB 520.

HB 520 punishes parents for having trusting relationships with their teens and pits family members against each other. The possibility of family members suing each other because one tried to help a teen relative access safe health care could tear Mississippi families apart.

HB 520 creates an unconstitutional burden on teens. Minors without parental involvement may well have to go to court to obtain judicial waivers of two states’ laws: Mississippi’s and the state’s where they are obtaining an abortion, requiring the minor to go through two legal procedures in two states’ courts. This will delay minors’ abortions, creating unconstitutional burdens on their right to privacy and their right to travel interstate to seek medical care.

HB 520 infringes on First Amendment rights. The bill could inhibit the provision of factual information to minors about the services provided by out of state health centers as providing such information potentially could be viewed as “assisting” or “aiding” a minor to obtain an out of state abortion.

By traveling to a neighboring state, Mississippi teens are not evading parental consent requirements. In fact, every state surrounding Mississippi already has a parental consent law with which women seeking an abortion must comply.

HB 520 completely ignores geographic and economic realities. Out of state travel is often the simplest and least financially burdensome way for women to obtain needed medical services.

The mandatory reporting requirements of HB 520 expands reporting to include instances where teens are involved in normal sexual activity with other teens.

HB 520 removes the ability of health professionals, clergy members, teachers and childcare providers to make judgments as to whether teens are engaging in normal sexual activity and instead mandates that they report a wide range of sexual behaviors.

Please send emails or call:

Rep. Willie Bailey, Judiciary B Committee Chairman, phone: 601-359-1541
Speaker of the House William McCoy, phone: 601-359-3300, and
Your own legislator

Ask them to oppose the mandatory reporting requirements and abortion restrictions in the amendment to HB 520 because they are a threat to the health of Mississippi teens.

Please send your emails or make your calls immediately to help defeat this bill. It could receive a final vote as early as Friday morning (tomorrow) and could be on the Governor’s desk tomorrow if we don’t act now!

Distribute far and wide, please.

So, Deirdra, how does the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 affect reproductive freedom?

The provisions of the DRA have narrowed the scope of providers who would be eligible to continue to purchase deeply discounted drugs. The bill was intended to remove discounted drug pricing for hospitals that operate for a profit. College clinics were not specifically targeted, and so no one realized they would be affected until afterwards. As a result, brand name prescription prices for campus clinics rose from about the $3 to $10 range per month to the $30 to $50 range.

Most clinics had stockpiles of contraceptives, which allowed them to delay price increases until more recently. However, since January 2007, birth control costs have skyrocketed at university and public health clinics. According to Planned Parenthood’s research, some birth control pill packs have increased in price from $10 to $49 per month at Mississippi State University. Similar increases are soon expected at The University of Mississippi, as well as The University of Southern Mississippi. Nationally, clinics have had to cut staff, hours and services (such as prenatal care, educational programs and even cervical screenings) to try and keep contraceptives affordable for their patients. Unintended pregnancies are on the rise amongst women in their 20s.

The problem is simple: Due to an unintentional error made by Congress, we are facing a national health crisis that affects three million undergraduates and over 850,000 low-income women. Raising a child is hardly cheap, but scores of women are losing their access to reliable birth control because of the DRA’s provisions. When students and low-income families are forced to choose between groceries and contraception, everyone loses.

Fortunately, the solution is also a simple matter: if the Senate clarifies the language of the bill, the changes can be enacted immediately. Some senators have recognized the error and have been working to fix the problem, but the matter would benefit greatly from a huge surge of public support.

Nearly four million women are counting on Congress, and you, to help make birth control affordable.

Ask your senator to fix the birth control pricing problem caused by the Deficit Reduction Act. A small change will protect women’s health, and put birth control back within women’s reach.