Finds Them & Kills Them, aka Osh-Tisch, was a famous Lakota warrior who was born a male and married a female, but adorned himself in women’s clothing and lived daily life as a female. Billy Bob Odom was a gay redneck cracker living in a broken down trailer in a broken down micro town just off the Tamiami Trail on the edge of the Everglades called Copeland. If you read my second book, you'll remember him as the guy who provided an "undercover" van to get me, Nokosee, and his 14-year-old sister Jerryragni to Hialeah so she could live with her mom's sister. At the time the raging war with Uncle Sam was getting heated and dangerous so Ma and Pa Osceola decided to get her the hell out of there.

Finds Them And Kills Them was the New Seminole link to the Outside world and proved to be a real bad ass when it came to fighting for Gaia. Once a Marine (I know, and always a Marine) he was skilled in hand-to-hand combat and a weapons master, from a machete to an AK. In short, he wasn't one to mess with when you got him riled. 

That said, he taught me how to apply my warpaint, what brand to use-- Maybelline was the NS brand of choice because of how it stood up in the humidity-- and introduced me to the work of Native American fashion designers. Those beaded boots you see in the picture are by Jamie Okuma. A pair just like them are behind glass in the National Museum of the American Indian. 

It's when I was hanging with the NS that I learned Native Americans had no problem with being gay. In fact "Two Spirit" people were highly revered and families that included them were considered blessed. Native Americans believe a person who is able to "see the world through the eyes of both genders at the same time was a gift from The Creator." You can learn more here.

One is 29 and the youngest member of Congress ever. The other is 16 and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize nominee ever. Both have become the most powerful voices on the front lines of saving Gaia, galvanizing millions of people around the world to make their countries take action against the rapidly approaching melt down of the planet. Using a video link, The Guardian brought them together to talk to each other for the first time. Click the link to read the conversation. Hopefully both will meet in Miami in a few weeks at the Youth Climate Summit to talk in person and to formulate a winning plan to sway our governments to save ourselves. 

Gurl power at its best. 

If you read my books, you know I have a real problem with Crocs. I can't stand looking at them. It has to be one of the ugliest shoes ever made, second maybe only to that Dutch Frankenstein monster called the wooden shoe. When the New Seminole (NS) hijacked a semi truck along Alligator Alley and discovered its hideous shipment of Crocs in a rainbow of colors, instead of retreating in horror, they took armloads with them and started wearing them in the Everglades. Yeah, they were great for trampling through mud and water but it was real hard for me to take any of the NS seriously after that, especially when they saw themselves as the modern day version of Geronimo's small Apache band. The only thing the NS had in common with those poor, starving Natives on the run from Uncle Sam was our leader (Busimanolotome Osceola was tough and brave like Geronimo) and the fact we were on the run from the same bastard, too. But then we also looked like a bunch of big-footed clowns trampling through the swamp.

​And now, the aesthetically challenged minds behind this hideous clodhopper have introduced high-heeled Crocs.  Of course, Nokosee-- who took a liking to the original versions back then-- reminds me that since Crocs now have a high-heel, they will help keep NS feet dry and only wished they'd come out with them in camo.  

I look him in the eyes to see if he's BSing me but that guy can keep a straight face better than anyone I've met. And since I've already seen him and his dad wearing the original chokeamokes, it's not too hard picturing my big hunk of man traipsing around the swamp in these high-heeled abominations from hell.

It makes me shudder and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 

​As for me, give me camo platforms anytime. 

Good news on the home front to save Gaia! After a two-year legal battle between a small group of Gaia-loving lawyers and the Trump administration's top legal teams, EarthJustice was able to stop the construction of a 43-mile pipeline through Mojave Trails National Monument. This pipeline would have enabled a company to pump massive amounts of groundwater (16-billion gallons of water a year) out of ancient desert aquifers — putting desert ecosystems and public health at risk. In a nutshell, this plan, defended by the Trump administration, "extracted private profits from beneath public lands" at the public's-- and Gaia's-- peril. 

But not this time around thanks to the lawyers at EarthJustice and a judge who saw the light. You can learn more about the legal battle here. 

You know Nokosee, Haalie, and I love her. As you can see, she'll be participating in the Zero Hour Youth Climate Summit in Miami this July. Hopefully the city and county will give her a welcome that she deserves, one usually reserved for "dignitaries."  Hopefully some of you who read my blog will be able to attend. She is truly an inspiration and will soon be the youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner ever! Mark my words.

Flipped on the TV this morning and the first thing I saw is this story about another Everglades fire. In two days it has burned 18,000 acres. They think a lightning strike set it off.  To me it's a continuing reminder of what Busimanolotome Osceola, founder of the New Seminole, loved to say, that dark matter, that stuff between the stars and atoms no one knows bupkus about, is really irony. In this case, how ironic Gaia is on fire only a few miles away from Miami where, in a few days, a whole slew of Democrats running for President will debate each other. Unlike the Repugs who don't believe there is a climate crisis, I suspect there won't be any Dems against the science. The only question is, which one will use the Everglades fire in his or her debate first. 

Still, seeing yet another summer fire in the Everglades, it immediately made me think about how I met Nokosee and how my life quickly changed from a high school party girl working weekends at the local Hot Topic to making the FBI's Most Wanted List before the end of summer vacation. 

After all, it was an Everglades fire that brought Nokosee and me together. If you read my books you know my dad, the "Great White Park Ranger" of the Everglades thought it would be a good idea to bring me along with his fire-fighting crew to put out an Everglades fire. Figured it would build character in me since, apparently, I didn't have any. I was 17, just graduated from high school, and spending the last divorce court ordered summer with my old man in a place that seemed perpetually on fire. Despite my heated objections to his cockamame plan, I soon found myself helicoptered out into the middle of nowhere and dropped off in the center of a raging fire with dad and the rest of the firefighters. Within seconds I was engulfed in smoke and ash. Within minutes I was lost. When I heard the chopper rising into the smoke covered sky, I knew I was in deeper shit than anyone had a right to be. Dad says he thought I had climbed on board, thought the guy coughing his lungs out in the back was me. A few hours later, after stumbling through sawgrass and fire and nearly getting eaten by an alligator, Nokosee found me. He was on a "Walkabout," something his equally nutcase dad had dreamed up. Borrowing the idea from a movie he saw, Busimanolotome was making his son traverse the burning Everglades-- barefoot, mind you-- to discover "The Outside." Before he got there, he discovered me, the first white person he had ever seen. Well, the rest is history. We fell in love by the time we stumbled through one adventure after another before finally stumbling  into The Outside, a Miccosukee tourist trap along the Tamiami Trail. Within a few hours of "coming home," my new boyfriend had broken dad's nose in a fist fight and mom had shot him in the arm. With cops on our tails and Nokosee with a bullet wound, we hightailed it back into the Everglades. And then, well, I chickened out. No matter how much I loved Nokosee, I wasn't ready to shuck all The Outside had to offer and so, like the the spoiled and shallow child I was back then, I turned away. 

And immediately regretted it.  I never cried so hard or hated myself so much.

It wasn't until I got back home to Milltown, NJ, that I discovered I was pregnant. And had to get back to Nokosee.

Yeah, so Everglades fires never fail to trigger my thoughts on how it all began.
​

I'm betting it's pretty much like mine in Miami, heavy on the orange, reds, and burnt siennas on the right. Climate scientists Ed Hawkins of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) at the University of Reading has devised a clever set of "visualisations" to show how temperatures have changed across Gaia over the centuries. He calls them "Warming Stripes." The color of each stripe represents the temperature of a single year, ordered from the earliest available data at each location to now.  If your city is old, it will go back centuries. You can find some of them here.  

To me they look like barcodes. And you don't need a machine to read it to tell you it's warming up faster than it has in centuries. As Greta has said, "climate change" needed to be replaced with "climate crisis" to get the world's attention to act now, not later. Hawkin's contribution to understanding the fast approaching meltdown can only help.  Hopefully.

How is it possible...
that the most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet Earth is destroying its only home?

How is it possible...
that after Trump's dismantling of our country's laws protecting its natural world, he still has supporters?

How is it possible...
that the filthy rich 1-percenters will stop at nothing-- including killing Gaia-- to get richer?

How is it possible?

Because not enough people vote against these people, their money, and their ideas. After all, Trump was elected. 

We have met the enemy and he is us.
​-- Pogo

"This would be no place to be without blues, jazz—Thank you/mvto to the Africans, the Europeans sitting in, especially Adolphe Sax with his saxophones... Don't forget that at the center is the Mvskoke ceremonial circles. We know how to swing. We keep the heartbeat of the earth in our stomp dance feet...

I could hear the light beings as they entered every cell. Every cell is a house of the god of light, they said. I could hear the spirits who love us stomp dancing. They were dancing as if they were here, and then another level of here, and then another, until the whole earth and sky was dancing.

We are here dancing, they said. There was no there.
There was no  "I"  or "you."

There was us; there was "we."

There we were as if we were the music.

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries--

—Or poetry, or art, or anything that is of value or matters in this world, and the next worlds.

This is about getting to know each other.

We will wind up back at the blues standing on the edge of the flatted fifth about to jump into a fierce understanding together."
--from "Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings"

Here she is accompanying her spoken word poetry on the sax. Pretty cool.

I hate to say it, but it's probably a lot lower than mine. But then, I have less control over mine than you do. I'm doing Sanctuary at the Miccosukee Embassy and it's a big building with lots of glass in Miami that uses lots of energy to keep everyone cool.* 

CoolClimate Network has a neat little online calculator that will tell you how big your carbon footprint is. If you fly a lot, you're going to fail mightily being a friend of Gaia since it's the biggest contributor to a person's carbon footprint, hence Greta Thunberg refusing to fly.  The calculator starts with where you live and makes the assumption from the start that your Zip Code pretty much tells whether or not you are a polluter, ie, richer Zip Codes mean more cars, bigger houses, etc. But it allows you to make "corrections" when inputting data (for instance, driving a hybrid or electric vehicle and being a vegan lowers your carbon footprint).

*Which reminds me, I gotta get out of this place. Aside from my gignormous carbon footprint, I'm going stir crazy.