Zora Neale Hurston Festival, Jan. 21-29, 2012, in Eatonville

Come to Orlando in January for the 23^rd ZORA Festival of Arts and Humanities in Eatonville, the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the US. 

            Last week I had lunch with N.Y. Nathiri, Director of the ZORA Festival, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum, and the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community.  NY said we were commemorating almost a quarter century of working on ZORA projects.  NY grew up in Eatonville, and her grandmother knew Zora. 

NY and I met in 1987-88 on a team of activists resisting widening Kennedy Blvd through Eatonville into a four-lane highway, which would have destroyed the community.   We had people from the community, local educators, and a socially and culturally responsible FL state representative.  We decided to celebrate Eatonville’s most famous daughter. 

The first ZORA Festival began in January 1989 with Alice Walker as keynote speaker.  Brilliant!  The DOT of Orange County Florida never mentioned the highway project again. 

The 2012 ZORA Festival will kick off celebrations of the 125^th anniversary of Eatonville with a focus on landscape architecture.  Click here http://www.zorafestival.com/ for information on the festival and a handy Donate button so that you can be a part of keeping the ZORA Festival alive.

The arts grab people’s hearts and souls more than political speeches do.  We know that all arts organizations are struggling to stay afloat right now.  I plan to donate $100 or more.  Please join me. 

Every festival celebrates the arts and culture of the African diaspora.  Music, dancing, visual arts, and lots of food from all over!  You could simply eat your way through the weekend.  And you can visit me here in central Florida.

Lunch with NY Nathiri

Our Winter Park Home 1981-1993

Lisa and Cheyenne celebrating moving me into my new home

Home in Florida (back then and now)

Now in the middle of spending ten months in central Florida, I’m remembering my 12-14 years here back then (1979-1993).  My heart melts when I remember the sweet bungalow that Lisa and I called home 1981-93 on a tree-draped dead-end street, a two-mile bike ride to Rollins.  It was love at first sight.  It looked like Home! And it was.  Lisa went through high school and college living there.  Boys picked her up for dates and prom on that front porch even though I stood, arms crossed, grimly smiling, growling protectively like a mama panther warning them to keep their distance.

            Friends and strangers called our Winter Park home cozy and comfortable, meaning small.  It was all the space we needed (and could afford) then—two bedrooms, one bath, a dining room large enough for six to cluster around our claw-foot round oak table for family feasts, and a long living room with a wood-burning fireplace where we took off our shoes and put our feet up, held celebrations, hosted meetings and parties.  In that big room when I was Prez of Orlando NOW (1981-83 I think) we desperately plotted strategies for ratification of the ERA in FL as time ran out.  After we lost that, we shared our lives in CR sessions in our home on violence against women.

I often took my morning coffee and my last-minute class prep out to the glider on the screened front porch.  Sometimes I graded papers on the screened back porch while the washer/dryer chugged out clean clothes.  Friends gathered in our narrow un-renovated kitchen between the dining room and back porch to chop veggies and gossip.  It was on that kitchen wall phone with its coiled cord that I received my first call from Barbara Grier telling me that Naiad would publish “Convent Lesbian Stories,” that Nancy Manahan and must edit—a command.

When Lisa’s friend Lisa moved in with us in 1983 or 84, I moved to the back yard.  A friend with carpenter skills converted the garage into a studio apt that I called my “tree house” protected by tall oaks.  I stretched a long piece of plywood across two two-drawer filing cabinets and called it a desk.  A long clothes poll hung in the far left corner as a closet.  I spent most of my time in a comfy wicker chair with reading lamp on the right side reading, preparing for class, and writing in my journal.  I had a small bathroom with shower and a kitchen of sorts with sink, tiny frig, and a two-burner hotplate.  I slept on a futon in the loft which I climbed up to on a steep narrow ladder.

Friends had two responses to my tree house: “I love it. I want it!” Or “What are you doing living in the back yard when you have a house?”  I did join the Lisa’s for dinner.  But I loved my private retreat far from top 40 pop music and teen chatter.  It felt like a nun’s cell and reminded me of my first room of my own in the Pender Hotel in Nebraska in 1965.  I imagined I was still living the spirit of the vow of poverty with the wise words of St Augustine that I still believe: “It is better to need less than to have more.”

Lisa in my apt with office/bedroom on left

Home now in Florida

Now in October 2011, again I have a Florida address and phone, a FL driver’s license, a FL bank account, and a FL voter registration card coming in the mail.  I haven’t quite divested from NM where my heart is, where Doris is, where we’re still paying a mortgage. For our realtor’s listing click and scroll down to 316 Morning Sun Trail http://www.robinriegor.com/Realtor_-_Robin_Riegor_-_New_Mexico_listings/index.shtml

At the end of September the DeVore family moved me into my new digs.  Lisa wheeled me though IKEA on Oct. 1, for lamps, carts, tables, and a Poang chair. The next day the DeVores came with tools and put it all together.  Dave snapped the picture of the three generations celebrating.  Today Lisa brought up file crates I bought yesterday and clean laundry.  She made lunch and helped me select a dress-up outfit for Rollins events this weekend.

I love it here at 2102 Gachet Ct. #205, Orlando, FL, 32807.  My second floor home has a first floor entrance.  I can drive right up to my door, take off my oxygen in the car, open my door, immediately get on the home oxygen concentrator which I leave on 24/7, and sit as long as I need on my carpeted stairs to get my oxygen back up before climbing to my space all on the second floor with its many windows and two balconies looking out over trees and a pond with fountains and ducks. When I do cardio-pulmonary exercises MWF at WP Hospital, I can’t do much else that day.  I’m pacing myself, trying to learn patience (!) 

What’s your story of the month?

My front balcony view

Home to Corrales

I did the wild and risky thing of flying “home” to Corrales (Oct. 4-10) for Doris’s birthday.   With my magic wand I waved away altitude and pollution.   I never stepped out of Casa Corrales except to admire Doris’s spiffing up the exterior.  I told hardly a soul of my quick visit.    

Best of all, my entire memoir class from Meadowlark Senior Center in Rio Rancho came to my home on Thursday when they usually meet at the Center.  I told Doris five or possibly eight might show up.  Fifteen memoir writers swarmed into our great room with stories and home-baked goodies to share.   Several read memoirs of the memoir class and me.   My stony heart melted (to quote Mabel, which I can’t help doing).  I got downright dewy-eyed.   We all knew that this really was the last time I’d meet with them, but we stay connected in our low-tech ways.

Meadowlark memoir writer Ella Mae with me in Casa Corrales

Home, where the heart and files overflow

At home in Corrales Doris and I dragged out files and clothes.  Sorting clothes was easy.  Doris has carted off two-thirds of my wardrobe to the League where women returning to work can shop for almost nothing.  One small suitcase will hold the few winter sweaters I’ve saved for wherever we might be a year from now.  Doris is shipping a mini-trunk to me here with FL winter clothes.

                Sorting paper took most of my time.  My feminist papers will become part of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in 2012.  I’ve already sent three cartons of feminist theater memorabilia.  Doris will send another two soon.  Coming soon to the DeVore address are about eight cartons of my life story, including the LN files.   I’ll read the bitter and the sweet, finish writing the story of my life, and ship about five cartons of LN files to Smith, maybe burn the bitter and save the sweet, and be done with re-membering for a while.  That might take me through my seven-month lease.

                Casa Corrales (316 Morning Sun Trail) will go public on the real estate market next week for $444K in honor of the four directions.   Doris plans to stay in our home until it sells.  Uprooting her from the land of her dreams will be far more difficult than digging up St Joe, buried beside our bushiest pine, the one you see as you turn in our driveway. 

                Please send your thoughts on “home.”  Is it a location or an idea—a memory or a dream?  Is where you pay the mortgage or where you stash your leftovers?  I’ve been pondering while being vaguely itinerant.  My Jeep has been my only constant remnant of home with its land of enchantment license plate and its Obamanos and “Democratic Women are the Life or the Party” bumper stickers. 

                I’ve moved five times in five months I’ve lived in central Florida: into the DeVore home for two weeks plus a five-day detour in Florida Hospital recovering from heart attack, into the ocean front condo at Indian Harbour Beach for a month, back in with the DeVore’s for three weeks, into the WP condo for seven weeks, and now into an apartment of my own with a seven-month lease—shortest time allowed by FL law.  (Next entry will show my new digs with pictures.)

                I must establish FL residency in order to get a third insurance to cover my lung transplant possibly in 2012.  NM has cut itself off from federal funding (same as in AZ but with no media hype, just slipped in under the radar by sly Republican gov.)  FL is still part of the USA, so I can apply for additional Medicare supplement from here.  To do that, I must prove I have a FL address, drivers’ license, etc. 

I’ll remain a FL resident while living in NC before and after transplant.  From there Doris and I will land in a new home somewhere we haven’t yet discovered.

Hecate's Wheel leads Celebration of Merlin Stone's Life and Work

Celebrating Merlin Stone

“What We Remember Lives!”  

          Hecate’s Wheel led the forty or so women and four men chanting at the high noon celebration in Clearwater, FL, on Saturday, Sept, 24, just after the Equinox.  See http://merlinstone.net/merlin-stone-memorial-florida/  We came from the four directions to honor a pioneer scholar who wrote the book (When God Was a Woman, 1976) that forever shifted our vision of spiritual power. For more on her life and work see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Stone

Z Budapest came with her partner Bobbie from San Francisco to conduct the ceremony in the ancient (and invented) traditions of wise women before patriarchal conquests. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsuzsanna_Budapest for more on Z.

 Women in swirling skirts and flowing capes and scarves came forth with offerings for the simple altar, invoking the powers of the four directions. 

Merlin’s partner Lenny lovingly placed her ashes, and Z closed the circle.  He spoke of his 34 years loving and living with Merlin with exuberant awe, calling himself her significant other.

Margo Adler, who regularly reports on NPR, came from New York and spoke of Merlin as a sculptor and art historian who brought our vision of the Great Mother into sharp focus.  Margo connected Merlin’s insights with the work of Joseph Campbell.

Susun Weed came from her Wise Woman Center in Woodstock, NY, to assure us that Merlin lives on because her power and vision lives on in all of us.  Selena Fox, psychologist and writer, came from Wisconsin to rouse our collective spirits to action.

Ruth Barrett, who leads Hecate’s Wheel, described teaching Merlin’s art and scholarship and the art and work of other scholars of ancient matriarchies in her women’s spirituality classes.

Barbara G. Walker appeared as if from a mist in Avalon, a tiny quiet woman of 81 all in black with a pentagram medallion.  She spoke of earlier scholarly work, such as The First Sex by Elizabeth Gould Davis.  I’ve used Barbara’s books, especially the weighty Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983) as a text in my feminist spirituality classes along with Merlin’s books.  I’ve given it away many times for its fascinating research.   I was amazed to meet this powerful scholar at last.  I’m now reading her new book, Man Made God, which I’ll discuss later.  She’s published a dozen feminist books, which I’ve devoured, and another dozen on knitting patterns, which I haven’t touched: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_G._Walker

After songs and chants by Hecate’s Wheel and all of us, Z opened the circle.  At the communal lunch we had a chance to meet and reconnect.  I hadn’t seen Z since 1986 at the Vrouenfestival in Amsterdam or Susun at her goat farm.

Pat Gozemba flew from Boston to Orlando on Friday to spend five days with me and so we could go together to Clearwater, where we spent the rest of Saturday afternoon with Z, Bobbie, Margot, Selena, Susun, the chanters of Hecate’s Wheel, and friends, and on our motel balcony overlooking the Gulf at sunset.  

Left to right in photo: Selena, Ruth, Margo, Barbara, Z, Susun.

Celebrating Merlin Stone

Pat Gozemba visits me in Florida

        

Pat and I have been buddies since NWSA (National Women’s Studies Assoc.) in 1983 at Ohio State when Pat launched the Party Caucus as antidote to our politically correct sisters who were too ready to judge and censure.  I hadn’t seen Pat since NWSA 2001 in Minneapolis and up the north shore at the Scenic Café.  When I picked her up in Orlando, we resumed what seemed a continuous flow of words with no ten year gap.

Lisa joined us for lunch at a new sushi place in Baldwin Park.  In 1987 after an international women’s conference in Dublin, Lisa, Pat and I rented a car and toured the northern UK.  We made slow progress because both Lisa and Pat were snapping pictures, Lisa of landscapes and Pat of formal gardens. We reminisced about our first trip to the Isle of Skye shortly after the Solstice where we’d never seen daylight linger so long, the sun melting so slowly into the misty water almost at midnight.  

Pat has been writing memoirs about her Irish Catholic childhood in South Boston and her mother’s fondness for the Jesuits.  Pat creates witty scenes full of dialogue for the battles she fought with her mother “The Beak.”  We read and critiqued each other’s memoirs and talked about our mothers. 

Sunday evening Yvonne and Joan came with wine and snacks.  We watched interviews from the Lesbian Nuns tour that I couldn’t watch on my own: Donahue, Sally Jessie Raphael, and an odd one on LA TV.  SJR, our first national TV splash, was as awful as I remember, but Donahue was better.  Yvonne and Pat had seen the original shows, and both had interviewed me in 1985, Yvonne for the Orlando Sentinel and Pat for Gay Community News in Boston.  But it was all new for Joan, who exclaimed about how adept Nancy and I were at answering or deflecting rude intrusive questions, how we turned our answers into feminist messages.  Experiencing it with supportive friends now inspires me to get on writing my memoirs.

Carolyn Gage forwarded a new interview with Judith Brown (Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, 1986) which also inspires me to get going: http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/sexandgender/4845/les

On Tuesday Lisa joined us again for an award-winning lunch on Park Avenue in in Winter Park and then for a tour of Eatonville where we stopped at the Zora Neale Hurston Museum or Arts and Humanities.  I told Pat how we launched the first Zora Festival back in 1988, and it’s still going strong: http://www.zorafestival.com/

By the time Pat left it seemed we’d circled the globe several times politically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually with our memories and ideas.

Next entry in about ten days with news:  Home: What does it mean?  Email your thoughts to rkeefe66@msn.com or add a comment here.

Pat Gozemba and me at Clearwater Beach, FL