Family • Dissertation • Poetry • Fiction

Gabrielle’s Lists

I've been spending quite a bit of time since September 11, 2001 sending out emails with political information that most people don't have access to.  I started by inundating my students with them at the time we were bombing Afghanistan.  Now I've pulled back on the general list and send out a local stuffs blog to friends and acquaintances mainly in Hawaii.  This list includes notices of local events, political and otherwise, interesting global information, discussions about the ongoing U.S. occupation of Hawaii, GMO issues, which are huge in Hawaii, parallel experiences in other military occupied territories—Iraq, Puerto Rico, Aotearoa, Australia, Okinawa, Guam, for instance, and so on.

Fiction and poetry and MySpace and family stuff

I'm also finally more or less finished my novel, Dora, of which you can read extracts.  I've put up a Myspace page and was uploading old poetry to it in the hopes that I'll be inspired to write some new poetry and get it published.  I think about getting a chapbook published sooner than later--but haven't done anything to set this in motion since 2006.  I also worked very hard, while I was visiting my son Tolemy for his high school graduation, in June 2007, on organizing the photos on my Picasa webpage (very slow on dial-up).  These include the Welford and Sanford family tree and timeline photos King and I put together in 2006 while we were staying with my mother in Weston, MA.

The MEC

I started in June 2007 working with King on a revival of the Mendocino Environmental Center newsletter.  For more about that, see the Media Forum.

I have uploaded a copy of my report on Patch Adams’ visit to Ukiah.  You can read it here.

Paula Gunn Allen

At the time I wrote this page, I had also been visiting my very dear old friend and teacher, Paula Gunn Allen across the mountains in Fort Bragg, one day with Thyme Siegel who did a radio interview with her. Paula was bedridden for about a year, and when I visited, we enjoyed exchanging readings and laughing uproariously about the insanity of life.  I met her very loving, humorous, and irreverent caregiver, Christy, who seemed perfectly in tune with Paula's joking, sardonic view on the world. Later, when Paula was taking an experimental medication for chronic fatigue and had more energy, she visited Santa Rosa to address Mary Churchill's Women's Studies Class at Sonoma State and gave another interview to Adrienne Lauby on living with disabilities. On another visit, at her daughter, Lauralee's in Larkspur, another friend, Lynette Cruz, a sovereignty activist from Hawai'i, videotaped an interview with her, which I will upload to this site as soon as I receive it.

Right now, early June 2008, is a sad time for me and many many other people, as Paula died on the late evening of May 29. Three weeks earlier, she was diagnosed with a return of the cancer she beat in 2006, much more aggressive and metastisized. She was given four to six months to live, but decided, I am convinced, that she would leave in her own time--long before the worst pain set in.

At a funeral on Monday, June 2, with family and friends present, Paula was buried in the Rose Memorial Cemetery in Fort Bragg. With her were ashes of her beloved son, Gene, who died in 2001. A few photos are here: after the coffin had been lowered, after each person who spoke had touched this last vessel, Paula's daughter Lauralee offered a basket of cornmeal, and we each scattered a handful into the grave. Friends and family have set up a website for Paula where you can leave tributes and share memories, here.

Jenny James

Another old friend is Jenny James who started a Reichian based People Not Psychiatry community in London in the early 70s.  I lived there for two years from 1975 to 1977 and have been in contact on a fairly steady basis ever since.  The community, Atlantis, is now based in Colombia, where they have a farm, and in Ireland, where they had a seagoing boat (now sold).  Jen puts out a series of news and reports called the Green Letters, which can be accessed here.  Click here for other information about the Atlantis community. And go here for photos from the Colombia farm.

 Yurt, garden and home at Round Mountain

Apart from life, love, joy and sorrow, I'm finally beginning at garden at Round Mountain Ranch, where King and I are living.  This is a nice earthy metaphor for my slow and painful ripping away from Hawaii and settling in to northern California over the last couple of years.  King is helping me turn the little yurt and its surroundings I'm renting into a space we can both use.  King’s friend Suzy has given me a bunch of trees, roses, mint to begin a garden round the yurt.