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Tar Creekkeeper
Rebecca Jim
Rebecca is the Executive Director of LEAD Agency and one of its founding members. She also serves as the Tar Creekkeeper with the Waterkeeper Alliance.
A Debt of Service
11/14/2021
Service to your community.
Lots of people take that as a thing we do as payback for wrongs we may have committed and as our way to repay the larger community for those wrongs, making them somehow right with that effort. But Thomas Jefferson thought differently, “There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.”
True service to community can be made and has been served by singular individuals as they sign up to serve America, not for an afternoon, but for whole stretches of their time. Not too long ago some of that service was not voluntary, not by personal choice, but the choice made by the military during periods when the draft took personal choice out of the dynamics of a person's required service to America. This week we honor those who took those oaths for military service by choice or not. They did their time and are honored publicly for it and sometimes simply when, "Thank you for your service" is uttered to a veteran.
But there are other ways to, as my Dad and Uncle Charles would long be quoted after a hot summer afternoon in the hay meadow, "There ought to be a better way to serve the Lord..."
There are other ways to be of service. After a few hours of Bell Ringing with the Salvation Army outside busy stores, and your own ears ringing for a time afterwards, or the times you bent and stooped to pick up trash along a stream or river, knowing there would be a need to return to that thankless chore. Service organizations perform their commitments of service in a multitude of ways.
Our Veterans are honored this week for their service and also this week the State of Oklahoma honored two of our own for their service in this community to promote the arts, and our lives are richer for their efforts. Both Barbara Smith and Ann Neal received well earned recognition with our governor and other elected officials.
In our little office on A Street, we held a simple ceremony to recognize the three year commitment Martin Lively had given LEAD Agency as a member of AmeriCorps/VISTA. Two of our board members were present, Kelda Lorax and Jill Micka, who herself had previously served LEAD Agency as a VISTA for two years a decade ago. Service should be acknowledged, and in our modest way, we did that in what I believed would be respectful and appropriate for the times we are living. Our newly elected board president, Earl Hatley zoomed with researchers from Wellesley College, Siena University and Silent Spring Institution to acknowledge and celebrate ending Martin's VISTA service and to congratulated him on the transition to a new position with LEAD Agency.
Martin is a Miami High School graduate who attended Grinnell College, received a law degree from Ohio State University, practiced law for eight years in Georgia before coming back to Miami to care for his ailing grandparents until their passing. It was at that time, we asked if he would like to do something totally different and serve a year as a VISTA with LEAD Agency, he accepted and stayed two more, not so much for LEAD, but truly in service to America at one of the largest and most complicated superfund sites impacted by extreme flooding in the country.
“I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” ― Albert Schweitzer
I truly believe my two years served in Teacher Corps on the Southern Ute Reservation set my path to a life made joyous through service.
And what do we take from Martin's service?
Trust youth, follow, guide and ride along with them as they take over, carrying on tradition, bringing new ideas and making the trail a little wider for the ones who we know will follow. That 7 generations thinking kicks in at LEAD Agency. The work we do, we may never live long enough to see finished, but those who follow will and their environment will be better and their lives longer and healthier.
Historian Howard Zinn understood the bigger picture and how each of us can do our part with our “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
This place is worth fighting for and we need our elected officials to join in that fight with us as we become stronger together, each doing our bit to serve the greater good.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
It costs nothing to be kind.
There is a generosity that is contagious and that season is upon us. You could be a giver and cause a cascade of giving to continue.
This is evidenced by the books that come through the back door. Just this week Pam Chaney brought her sacks to help us keep our Little Free Library filled, giving daily to the readers who pass by, stop and choose a selection. Perhaps they are building their own libraries for their families to enjoy, or once read, or finding just that special one to give a friend. Sometimes they pass them back to us.
This giving is seen where warm coats hang on a chain-link fence and in the private ways we choose to give of our time, a simple letter to a person locked away from freedom or the real letters we write to children in our lives. As we pause to remember the value, the joy when the mail arrives with your name hand written on a letter.
November is on us and my walnut trees have gifted all they will and it is no longer dangerous to walk beneath them. The pecan trees have company this month beneath their open leafless canopy, as their treasures are collected to enjoy as the food they are, or as the commodity they also can be.
When working at Will Rogers Junior High one fall a quarter of a century ago, there were so many children who had experienced death in their lives, that I organized a grief group that met after school in the most special place in the building: the teachers' lounge. As I write now, I am not sure how many times a month we met, but as the weeks passed, we got closer. I remember each of their young faces and the who then missing from their lives. But as the holidays approached, their first without that loved one, there were those thoughts of gift-giving.
There are lots of ways to give and what we did was to choose a person to tell what we wished we could give them. I still to this day love doing this. If I find a beautiful "thing" in a magazine, I love to rip it out and gift-wish it to just the right person. It doesn't cost a penny to share a wish, not for ourselves but what we wish for our others.
These great losses inspired the Candlelighting Ceremony that Indian Club sponsored for the remainder of my employment with the school district. The call went out In December, and the date set for the event, always the evening of the last school day before Christmas. Those who had most recently experienced a death in their lives worked hardest to prepare the little booklets with each of the names of their loved ones. Each name was spoken aloud and a memory shared by those who attended. We were always a small group, lighting those candles for our lost ones. The gift we gave them was remembering. What we gave each other was that time to be gently there. Each year the little booklet grew with new pages because we kept all who had been remembered from the year before.
I came across one of the little booklets with the red ribbon in the upper left corner and opened it and a flash of memories came, the faces lit from the light of the candles and the singular voice reading a name and telling a story that brought both a tear and a smile. I remember the places we held these events: on the steps at Miami High School with the luminaries lining the sidewalk and the candles burning inside the paper sacks filled with sand, at the Intertribal Council, downtown in the Mini-Mall. That one I will never forget as Megan Brown who had lost her dear grandmother sang Amazing Grace and her voice carried through the entire structure.
This year as last, our remembrances may be joined physically with fewer in our circle as the virus lingers and continues to suck the life out of our friends. This time last year without the possibility of a vaccine to hold it off, this year we are losing ones who may have waited just too long to take it, or the few for whom it failed to protect. We still are the carriers and we must remember our best gift is the life we don't take from others.
Walk gently on the earth and leave only footprints. I hope each of you will gift your time, your compassion to those near to you or those afar.
It costs nothing to be kind.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Gifting
11/14/2021
Magic Conatined in Water
10/30/2021
Dawn Hill's 7th hour Art Class project: Planet Earth - Lilli Kichler & Lily Bensley Little Fish - Hannah Ray
Aalissa Wiley - 2 fish in the upper left Maddison Matthews - little fish Ashley Stogsdill - Saturn River Rings
Brenlyn Key - Fish circling the Saturn rings Kale Derwin - Lettering Sarah Trew - Background
I take notes. It is better than jumbling the facts, the numbers, the rate and the parts per million into a set of unrecognizably useless dribble.
When scientists, engineers, regulators spout them, it is easy for them, their language, their world, their jobs. But as a regular person, an environmental activist, I actively have to dig, ask questions and do my best to learn it well enough I can translate it to people who haven't ever parts-per-millioned a thought.
My secret weapon? The teams of scientists, engineers and retired regulators who want to give back and set right what wrongs they may have been party to in their previous employments. Our stealth decoders, explain diagrams, decipher what looks like jargon and help me produce the cheat-sheets to use while sitting there on the front rows at these town halls and council meetings.
True, I have picked up a lot of accurate information on the situation we are nested in, but there is always more to learn, to pick apart and twist for not only the what is happening but the long term effects and the number of generations who will be messing with the mess we have unless we get this done right.
For years LEAD Agency has had what we have unofficially called our Science Advisory Board. At one point we were even going to list their names on our stationary. But we thought better. They have been our Secret Weapon. There could be a day that we go public. None of them have asked to be silent partners, they each have been willing at the end of a long day to make it even longer explaining and piecing out the dialect that might get through to a lay person.
So this week with the Tar Creek Conference, the notepad open, the Marantz recorder beside me, they began and my role changed from activist to host. Welcoming strangers, welcoming the speakers, among them, embedded are some of our silent to the public team-members. Our Tar Creek Conferences have been always open to the public and the public has wandered in and like me thought: "what did they say? what does that mean?" To help any newcomers we begin our conferences and always have with what we call a "Tar Creek 101" held to explain who the players are, which agencies and what slice of the work they manage.
There is no way better to begin a discussion of superfund than with someone who came onto superfund only when the one near her home she began to believe had caused her own father's death and inspired her new to be published book, GROUNDGLASS. Still grieving, Kathryn Savage drove to Oklahoma from Minnesota to be part of the Tulsa Arts Fellowship and that route led her through our superfund site.
Throughout the years artists and writers, potters, photographers and poets have found Tar Creek and LEAD has come to know them and their talents. Kathryn came to us, but we grew some of them, like novelist Vanessa Lillie who with Maryann Hurtt were featured in our first ever Writers' Circle.
As you know having survived childhood -- name calling is a thing that can haunt you or follow you throughout your life. Sometimes, as an adult in a new community you earn an unspoken label. For me I only learned one of mine when Joby Taylor wrote it and then actually spoke it aloud during the Water Session of the 23rd Tar Creek Conference. He said I was known as "our region's environmental conscience."
Just last week in headline text I was called a Whistleblower. There is rarely pride gained from random labels, but those descriptors bring it. I worked in public education for nearly 30 years and if teaching by example is still out there, join in, take the mantle, be and have an environmental conscience.
Tune in and watch the recordings of this year's Tar Creek Conference. My goodness listen to Nick Shepherd and be amazed at the fish population that has returned to the unnamed tributary in Commerce. "If there is magic, it is contained in water." - Loren Eiseley. (This year's conference theme)
And there they are, the magic can be seen by the numbers of fish species!
You will meet my teachers, you will hear the facts and you will be stronger and smarter when you march right up and lead your friends into those council meetings to speak truthfully and emit the call to action for the environment. That environment is the very one where you reside.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
MoU US
10/26/2021
Memorandum of Understanding
When Bill Smiley came to Miami in 2009 we were his first out-the-door-to-community assignment. In 2009 no one got the possibilities. Now he has experience and understands the power his position can offer.
The flood commission and the Miami City Council held a joint meeting with only Silver Jackets as the subject and Bill Smiley the only speaker.
When he took the podium he commanded the room and took us each with him as he elicited the power his office has to meet the needs this community knows will be needed. Not if but when. We know that next flood is coming. How do we get ready for it? We know where the water goes first. It inundates us by the same route each time.
He can help the city get ahead of the water. He has a machine that can produce 30,000 sandbags in a day. He can build temporary levees, he has pumps with the power to push water out of the subways flooded by Hurricane Sandy.
He had maps showing how the city becomes an island, shut off by most escapes. He knows the number of structures damaged first by Neosho and secondly by Tar Creek and how much damages cost.
Our needs muster around our water. When he describes the Neosho Reach and the Tar Creek Reach I visually could see that water moving, as it reaches the front yard, eases up to the porch, and climbs across the living room threshold to reach the beloved homes of our parents and their parents, our neighbors and those living across the street when we stand just out of reach this time.
All eyes and ears open and were listening. They paid attention and GOT the importance of the offerings this gives the city. They voted to approve and to move forward at the no-cost program known to us respectfully as Silver Jackets.
Before he left the podium, I asked permission from the mayor, Bless Parker if I would be allowed to ask a question. It was "with his understanding and expertise in MoU's, if he could work to pull one together for us, with Army Corps, FERC and EPA. and ... he said he could.
Re-licensing? One of the council members politely informed him of the 30-50 year license for the Pensacola Dam that would raise the level of the lake 2 more feet.
It was if Bill Smiley quit smiling. It gave him pause to know that fact. That the reach they had been figuring might be farther and faster and inundate yet more structures, that reach he was trying to figure to out run got a bit more challenging.
But he confirmed he could pull those agencies together for an MoU for us. And I began to imagine I felt hope for the community. I felt a sense of it rising from the floor reaching up to elevate spirits with a feeling who, tell me who had had in decades.
This City could be saved. The Army Corps was coming and bringing all that could mustered if the city does their part and defines the mission, gives the guidance and settles on filling out the forms that will lie dormant in a drawer somewhere, each box marked, every line completed, ready for the need, the trigger met and the date assigned to kick that work into action to save Miami OK.
But there are steps in the dance to make this happen, to get ready, the team must be built, the decisions made, the needs defined to bring his team to the table with all the resources the United States government has to offer. Those Silver Jackets. We are all going to want to wear one. We will plan the parades in their honor. Murals will go up and we will remember the day Bill Smiley came back to town and laid out the full force the US government can foster.
But one of the steps we have to do as a City is maintenance on Tar Creek, to clear the downed trees so they don't hamper or change the flow of the creek and take that water to reach areas not in the scope of work they know to form.
Which takes us back to the illegal dams on the creek that Army Corps is aware exist and already have a plan to remove. We have to work together to protect safety and property.
The rains will come and the reach of the water. We wait to see how the city picks up the tasks and does them. Your task will be to join the team if you are asked or if you know in your heart you must join it. And we wait to see if he can MoU us. (the MoU could bring EPA to the table with FERC )
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Check the Code
10/19/2021
This week began with Indigenous People's day, a holiday taking the place of a day Natives have long scorned and refused to celebrate and a day Native novelist, Louise Erdrich's Pulitzer was announced. Her Night Watchman was a summer read June Taylor was sure would wind up being one of my all time favorites. In The Painted Drum she writes:
"And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich, Chippewa
This is the season when the walnuts also fall. In the wind of course, but even on a still day watch out when passing under them so as not to have your head knocked by the randomness of one falling right on your head.
The sound as one of those walnuts gathers speed and falls through the branches is one you will stash away in your memory. It is primal. The forest making sure there will be future generations. Almost like they are falling hard and fast enough to self plant into damp soil or harm predators.
When I moved to this piece of the prairie, I planted 50 walnut trees so they could be my retirement. I figured they could feed me those nutritious nuts while I waited for them to grow into maturity until they would be harvested for the board-foot income they would provide.
But now, I rely upon their shade. They have become my friends. When one suffered so badly in the ice storm all those years ago, it pains me to see her injuries even today. In the gully where a dozen were planted, they are helping to 'Johnny Appleseed' walnut trees downstream every time the rains are heavy enough to float them to new homes.
New homes were the topic lately as a developer has made plans to give Miami a lot more homes on very small lots, lots one mature walnut might shade a couple of homes in Lance Windel's new Chisholm Springs neighborhood.
A city creates codes. They aren't born with them. Codes are rules, guidelines for a city to live by and they are created for the sake of the city. Zoning codes can help feed a city, provide guidance and in some cases figure out ways to profit the city by growing the tax-base income by having more taxable properties.
Zoning codes in the future could be examined perhaps amended to give residents who reside in the city a more even playing field so the residents could eye-to eye developers of subdivisions or businesses that might not end up being good neighbors.
Sometimes you are dealt a bad deal. But the deal can be made better when we all begin to pay attention. Sometimes it is the small print the whole time, but absolutely no one takes it off the shelf to get a look at how just regular folks loose power. And when that power loss is realized, a whole community can lose hope, look differently on their City Fathers.
The City Planning and Zoning Commission will vote on the proposed housing development project. All property owners have rights and the city has no power over what an owner does on his property other than the power the state gives the city which relates to public health and safety that is clearly defined within their set of codes.
Relating to regulations will require paying attention to that small print and amending for the future such segments that are not as strongly protective of the health and safety of those who choose to live within the boundaries.
There is a lot of responsibility running a city. There are rules, there are codes serving as guardrails. And within those words lies the protection of her citizens require but also the mechanisms to enable the city to not only operate but to grow.
Look closely at those words. Are you protected? Your health, your safety? Not is your wealth protected, not your property value, as I don't believe either the state or city regulations necessarily have to do that. Living in and downstream of one of the largest Superfund sites and being wedged in by the rising water in our Grand Lake risks your health and safety. These threats to your future, deserve effort.
I thought back to Louise's words and recognized when we are hurt and the apples (walnuts) are falling all around us, when codes are blocking every move, then taste trying, see what flavor effort has, just how sweet knowing you tried every one of them.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
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