LaDonna Brave Bull Allard was a Standing Rock Sioux elder who spent most of her life educating people about the history of the land and protecting the sacred sites of her people in North Dakota. In 2016, she co-founded the Sacred Stone Camp on Standing Rock Sioux land to resist the building of the Dakota Access pipeline. The resistance to the pipeline, which would put the Missouri River (the water source for the reservation) at risk, attracted thousands from around the world. This week, we learned that LaDonna passed away at the age of 64 from cancer. We leave you with these excerpts of our interview with her last year. We will always remember her courage and undying determination to protect land and water, which she called, “life.”
“When you destroy a water of the community, you destroy a community. When you destroy life, you destroy everything…We cannot do that. We must stand up to protect the water.”
Award-winning author Laura Esquivel, 70, began writing while working as a kindergarten teacher in her native Mexico.
After having had written plays for her students and children’s television programs in the 1970’s and 80’s, she wrote the international best-seller “Like Water for Chocolate” in 1990. It sold over seven million copies around the world and was published in 36 languages. It was later adapted for film and debuted as a Spanish-language movie in 1992 and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It became the highest-grossing foreign language film ever released in the United States at the time.
The novel, which is also part cookbook, explores the relationship between women and the family structure in Mexico.
“In every family, we have our past there, in recipes…” says Esquivel, adding that the recipes are repeated over and over. “In the same way, we are repeating again and again painful stories.”
This year, thirty years after its first publication, Esquivel released two books completing the “Like Water for Chocolate” trilogy. The second book, “Tita’s Diary,” dives into the life of the best-selling novel’s main character, Tita. Esquivel says Tita is based on her own grandmother’s sister who was not allowed to get married.
The third book, “The Colors of My Past,” centers around Maria who reconnects with her roots and family traditions after discovering “Tita’s Diary.”
Additionally, a musical of “Like Water for Chocolate,” with original music by Grammy Award-winning group La Santa Cecilia, lyrics by La Santa Cecilia and Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes (“In the Heights”) will be directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer. A preview of the original score is available at www.broadwaycares.org.
Bob Johnson, founding director of Juneteenth Atlanta, one of the largest Juneteenth celebrations in the U.S., discusses the significance of remembering the anniversary of June 19, 1865 – the day the last enslaved Africans and African Americans in the U.S. became free.
“Juneteenth is a commemoration of all of those people who fought against slavery. Who fought to abolish slavery,” he says.
Johnson started his annual three-day parade and music festival in 2012, and he says it’s more relevant than ever.
Bob Johnson at Juneteenth Atlanta 2015.
“Events like this have to sustain. They have to be available to future generations so that we can put as many pieces of this puzzle together as possible. Knowing the contributions that you have made as a people is important to your esteem, your confidence, and your well-being.”
He says his event includes floats of inspirational black leaders of the U.S., as well as the kings and queens of Africa – so that the youth, especially, leave with more pride – and hope.
“Freedom is important, says Johnson. “To be able to be part of your community is important. To be able to have dignity is important.”
Audrey and Frank Peterman (Courtesy Audrey Peterman)
I’m a Jamaican-born immigrant to America where I met a man so elegant and gorgeous, he reminds me of James Bond. After seven years of friendship, when I tried to fix him up with all my most beautiful girlfriends (sometimes they took an instant dislike to each other), we finally realized that we were perfect for each other and got married within six months. We’re now approaching our 28th wedding anniversary, and we love and trust each other more than ever.
Three years into our marriage, we got in our truck and drove 20,500 miles around the country, visiting the spectacular destinations such as the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park, Washington State. That journey gave us a lot of time to talk and get to know each other even better. When we didn’t have even one blow up, Frank says he knew we would make it.
He had been married twice before and gently shared the lessons he learned. For example, one day he said,
“Honey, there are three of us in this marriage…”
“Wait!” I exclaimed! “I didn’t sign up for that!”
“There’s three of us in the marriage,” he continued unfazed. “There’s you, there’s me, and there’s the relationship. The relationship is made up of how we treat each other, how we speak to each other, and whether or not we make each other our priority.”
Well, that made sense. So we decided that, whatever happened, the two of us would make the decision together, then consider our mothers, our children, and our family and close friends, followed by everyone else.
Another time he said, “You know, each of us is going to go crazy sometimes. But it is very important that we don’t both go crazy at the same time.”
He explained that, if I was upset about something, it would be his job to listen and hear me out, then repeat back to me what he’d heard to make sure he got it right. If he had, he’d explain what had happened to produce that result. If I said he hadn’t got the point, we’d start over. I would do the same for him if he was upset.
Realizing that communication is difficult and that meaning doesn’t come directly from one person’s mouth into another’s head in just the way it is intended, keeps us open to being gently corrected.
I share some of our key principles for a successful, smooth and happy relationship in my brand new book, “From My Jamaican Gully to the World,” which tells the story of our environmental journey resulting in the White House taking action. As a result of our efforts to protect the national parks and share them with all Americans, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum promoting diversity and inclusion in January of 2017.
This Valentine’s Day, I wish everyone the privilege of looking at their partner with new eyes and appreciating what you saw in the beginning. No one is perfect, including you, and once you accept that, the relationship can become much easier and happier.
Read our interview with Audrey Peterman to learn more about her, and Frank, (and how they live on a boat in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) here.
On this late autumn day, the elms and oaks around my house seem determined to let go of all the leaves that have died on their limbs. Everywhere I look there is a letting go. The sky has let go of blue and allowed itself to be covered with a thick mantle of gray.
I am reminded of the letting go that I need to do. I am 66 (not that old as actuarial tables go) but like you and everyone and everything else that has been born, I am on my way to that final, total, letting go and I believe that it is time to shed what is no longer needed in this final stage of the journey.
It’s not a long list, the things I need to detach from. They are internal things mostly, like the ambition for worldly recognition that served me so well when I was young and yearned to be somebody. Now ambition and the search for glory and rewards are a heavy burden and I would like, if at all possible, to travel light.
Whenever I try to explain to people that in this phase of my life, I wish to let go of no-longer-needed wants, they get worried that I may be in the grips of depression. Sometimes, I see disappointment in their eyes. I am bailing out on the American dream to strive, always to strive for more, to never quit. I am giving up on living life to the fullest. Why, there are people older than me running marathons, running billion-dollar enterprises, running for president of the United States. A few of my more literary friends have even taken to quoting the famous lines from Thomas Dylan’s poem:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I try to explain that, actually, raving and raging are at the top of the list of what needs to go. And if there is any burning inside of me, it will be more like the gentle flame of a candle that stays lit in the windstorm. But isn’t rage needed now more than ever? Isn’t giving up on rage the equivalent of not caring, of standing silent in the face of suffering and injustice? Am I being irresponsible? I respond that anger is not the strongest force, the fiercest weapon, but my words are taken as defeat.
I want to keep on working, fighting if you will, by being as useful to others as I can. What I am letting go of is the old motivation and the old methods of work. I let go of working for the fruits of my labor and focus on the sincerity of the effort. If I work with honesty and truth the outcome will not matter. I embrace work as a gift. The energy and ability to work, the talent, the creativity behind it, all is a gift and my only hope is to pass the gift successfully to others. The method too will change from hurried and anxious productivity to work done with the urgency and seriousness of an inner calling, a sacred obligation. Waiting with receptive attention, listening, silence, the fecundity of leisure – all these will be part of the work. The value and priority of different daily tasks will change. What if everything I do each day is equally important? What if playing with my grandchildren is as significant as writing a story? What if I write a story with the same love with which I hold my grandchild? And what if love becomes the burning purpose of my work?
So many world traditions recognize old age as a special time. A spiritual time when a person can let go of the business of making a living and spend time looking care-fully at creation or searching for the presence of a creator, or developing virtues like humility, patience, kindness. Here in America that kind of letting go seems like giving up or, worse, cowardice. But letting go is an act of courage. It is choosing to finally, finally, follow the beat of your own drum. It means, if it comes to that, living on the margins of what is approvable by the world you live in. Courage could mean a solitude that is entered bravely, but not without fear. I am letting go of the images of myself that have served me well since I was a child. Who am I if not the talented boy who could read hardcover books in first grade? Or the dutiful lawyer or the Latino writer? Who am I, really, without these comfortable images?
These old, old, trees let go of their leaves effortlessly. For them, the process of letting go each year is part of their becoming and their becoming happens just as it is meant to happen. It is, unfortunately more complicated for me. The acorn “knows” it will become an oak tree. My own becoming takes some figuring out. Not just who I am but who I am supposed to be. Who is the person I am finally to become? For I feel the presence of becoming in my old heart and it is not the same restless energy of forty years ago. To find out where this becoming is taking me, I must let go of all that is not true, of all that belongs to others, of all those cherished fantasies. No one said it wasn’t going to hurt.
And yet, this letting go is not without a quiet joy, like the joy of the trees swaying in the wind, or the joy of the spiraling, falling leaf. I don’t know how to describe this joy. It is a paradox. It is joy filled with a light that is both dying and living.
I let go of trying to understand it.
Francisco X. Stork is a former attorney and an award-winning author of teen fiction novels. His eighth one will hit shelves in 2020. He often uses themes of his own life as inspiration for his writing. “The Memory of Light” is inspired by Stork’s own experience with depression, and “Marcelo in the Real World” is about a teen boy labeled as having a developmental disorder. Read our interview with him about his personal journey here.
